Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
•••

imatinib

Low doses of imatinib can stimulate innate immunity

Low doses of the anti-cancer drug imatinib can spur the bone marrow to produce more innate immune cells to fight against bacterial infections, Emory and Winship Cancer Institute researchers have found.

The results were published this week in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

The findings suggest imatinib, known commercially as Gleevec, or related drugs could help doctors treat a wide variety of infections, including those that are resistant to antibiotics, or in patients who have weakened immune systems. The research was performed in mice and on human bone marrow cells in vitro, but provides information on how to dose imatinib for new clinical applications.

“We think that low doses of imatinib are mimicking ‘emergency hematopoiesis,’ a normal early response to infection,” says senior author Daniel Kalman, PhD, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.

Imatinib, is an example of a “targeted therapy” against certain types of cancer. It blocks tyrosine kinase enzymes, which are dysregulated in cancers such as chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

Imatinib also inhibits normal forms of these enzymes that are found in healthy cells. Several pathogens – both bacteria and viruses – exploit these enzymes as they transit into, through, or out of human cells. Researchers have previously found that imatinib or related drugs can inhibit infection of cells by pathogens that are very different from each other, including tuberculosis bacteria and Ebola virus. Read more

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer, Immunology Leave a comment