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
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Unexpected effect on flu immunity

Immunologists reported recently that the drug rapamycin, normally used to restrain the immune system after organ transplant, has the unexpected ability to broaden the activity of a flu vaccine.

The results, published in Nature Immunology, indicate that rapamycin steers immune cells away from producing antibodies that strongly target a particular flu strain, in favor of those that block a wide variety of strains. The results could help in the effort to develop a universal flu vaccine.

This study was inspired by a 2009 Nature study from Koichi Araki and Emory Vaccine Center director Rafi Ahmed, reports Jon Cohen in Science magazine. Read more

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

How beneficial bacteria talk to intestinal cells

Guest post from Courtney St Clair Ardita, MMG graduate student and co-author of the paper described. Happy Halloween!

In the past, reactive oxygen species were viewed as harmful byproducts of breathing oxygen, something that aerobic organisms just have to cope with to survive. Not any more. Scientists have been finding situations in humans and animals where cells create reactive oxygen species (ROS) as signals that play important parts in keeping the body healthy.

One example is when commensal or good bacteria in the gut cause the cells that line the inside of the intestines to produce ROS. Here, ROS production helps repair wounds in the intestinal lining and keeps the environment in the gut healthy. This phenomenon is not unique to human intestines. It occurs in organisms as primitive as fruit flies and nematodes, so it could be an evolutionarily ancient response. Examples of deliberately created and beneficial ROS can also be found in plants, sea urchins and amoebas.

Researchers led by Emory pathologist Andrew Neish have taken these findings a step further and identified the cellular components responsible for producing ROS upon encountering bacteria. Postdoctoral fellow Rheinallt Jones is first author on the paper that was recently published in The EMBO Journal. Read more

Posted on October 31, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Dealing with huff-puff? Think HFpEF

For this month’s Current Concept feature, we would like to explain a term from cardiology that is likely to become more prominent:

“Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction” (abbreviated as HFpEF and pronounced “heff-peff”).

Javed Butler, MD, an Emory expert on heart failure and deputy chief science officer for the American Heart Association, laid out in a recent seminar why this category of patients is so important. Look for more from him on this topic in the future.

Three points:

  1. The number of HFpEF patients is growing and they now make up the majority of patients with heart failure in the United States.
  2. No treatments have been proven to benefit them, in terms of reducing mortality.* In clinical studies, medications such as ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers and beta-blockers have not helped.
  3. Once hospitalized, HFpEF patients have a high rate of readmission to the hospital within 30 days. The federal Medicare program is penalizing hospitals that have high rates of readmissions and heart failure is one of the largest contributors to readmissions.

The symptoms that drive people with HFpEF to the hospital are mainly fatigue and dyspnea, or shortness of breath, along with fluid in the lungs and swelling of the limbs. Along with heart failure, HFpEF patients often have conditions such as hypertension, anemia, diabetes, kidney disease or sleep apnea. Read more

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

Blood pressure meds + PTSD

The connection between stress and blood pressure seems like common sense. Of course experiencing stress — like a narrow miss in morning traffic or dealing with a stubborn, whiny child — raises someone’s blood pressure.

Try reversing the cause-and-effect relationship: not from brain to body, but instead from body to brain. Could medication for controlling blood pressure moderate the effects of severe stress, and thus aid in controlling PTSD symptoms or in preventing the development of PTSD after trauma?

That was the intriguing implication arising from a 2012 paper from Grady Trauma Project investigators led by psychiatrist Kerry Ressler (lab at Yerkes, supported by HHMI).

They had found that traumatized civilians who take either of two classes of common blood pressure medications tend to have less severe post-traumatic stress symptoms. In particular, individuals taking ACE inhibitors (angiotensin converting enzyme) or ARBs (angiotensin receptor blockers) tended to have lower levels of hyperarousal and intrusive thoughts, and this effect was not observed with other blood pressure medications.

This was one of those observational findings that needs to be tested in an active way: “OK, people who are already taking more X experience less severe symptoms. But can we actually use X as an intervention?”

In mice, it seems to work. Read more

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Stop the blob!

For your viewing pleasure, we have two videos, courtesy of Winship Cancer Institute’s Adam Marcus. He and his colleagues are investigating whether Withania somnifera, a root used in Indian traditional medicine, could be a source for drugs that inhibit breast cancer invasion and metastasis. Metastasis occurs when cells from a primary tumor migrate to a new location and invade the tissues at the new location.

The first video, the blob that grows, shows MCF10a mammary Ray Ban outlet epithelial cells undergoing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in response to TGF-beta. This is a laboratory model for understanding breast cancer invasion and metastasis.

The second shows what happens when the same cells are treated with an extract from Withania somnifera. The blob doesn’t expand in such a threatening way anymore! The results were recently published in PLOS One.

 

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment

Cancer’s shield: PD-1

Gina Kolata has a section front story in Tuesday’s New York Times exploring the potential of a relatively new class of anticancer drugs. The drugs break through “shields” built by cancers to ward off the threat posed by the patient’s immune system. Many are based on blocking PD-1, an immune regulatory molecule whose importance in chronic infections was first defined by Emory’s Rafi Ahmed.

Of course, not every cancer research development described as transformative in the New York Times lives up to the hype. But the clinical trial results, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, are solid enough that the researchers Kolata talks with think they are seeing “a moment in medical history when everything changed.” [Winship Cancer Institute’s John Kauh was a co-author on one of the 2012 NEJM papers.]

Let’s take a moment to examine some of the roots of this story. Rafi Ahmed didn’t set out to study cancer. For the last two decades, he and his colleagues have been studying T cells, parts of the immune system that are critical for responding to infections. Read more

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer, Immunology 2 Comments

Packaging stem cells in capsules for heart therapy

Stem cell therapy for heart disease is happening. Around the world, thousands of heart disease patients have been treated in clinical studies with some form of bone marrow cells or stem cells. But in many of those studies, the actual impact on heart function was modest or inconsistent. One reason is that most of the cells either don’t stay in the heart or die soon after being introduced into the body.

Cardiology researchers at Emory have a solution for this problem. The researchers package stem cells in a capsule made of alginate, a gel-like substance. Once packaged, the cells stay put, releasing their healing factors over time.

Researchers used encapsulated mesenchymal stem cells to form a “patch” that was applied to the hearts of rats after a heart attack. Compared with animals treated with naked cells (or with nothing), rats treated with the capsule patches displayed increased heart function, reduced scar size and more growth of new blood vessels a month later. In addition, many more of the encapsulated cells stayed alive. Read more

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

High-contrast brain tumor imaging

This month’s intriguing images come from radiation oncologist Ian Crocker and colleagues. Each one shows a patient with a glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. The patient’s brain was scanned in two ways: on the left, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and on the right, PET (positron emission tomography), using a probe developed at Emory. We can see that the tumor’s PET signal is more distinct than the tumor’s appearance on MRI.

Since the 1990s, Mark Goodman, John Votaw and colleagues at Emory’s Center for Systems Imaging have been developing the probe FACBC (fluoro-1-amino-3-cyclobutyl carboxylic acid) as a probe for the detection of tumors.

Read more

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment

All about Saccharomyces boulardii

Pediatric infectious disease specialist Tracey Lamb earned recognition this week for her NIH New Innovator award. The goal of Lamb’s project is to develop a probiotic yeast as a platform for inexpensive oral vaccines.

“We have a long way to go to develop this vaccine Magliette Calcio A Poco Prezzo delivery system to the point where it is ready for testing in the clinic,” she says. “Now my lab can undertake more intensive research on this project to demonstrate that our design is effective in protecting against infection.”

Three points:

1. The probiotic yeast Lamb is planning to develop as a vaccine platform is Saccharomyces boulardii, which has been tested in clinical trials as a treatment for gastrointestinal disorders such as Clostridium dificile infection and several forms of diarrhea. It was originally isolated in the 1920s from fruit in Southeast Asia.

2. Saccharomyces boulardii is very close to standard baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and is actually considered a subspecies of S. cerevisiae. Genomic differences that http://www.magliettedacalcioit.com contribute to its probiotic properties are under investigation.

3. The New Innovator program, running since 2007, is one of the ways the National Institutes of Health seeks to reward especially creative or potentially transformative research proposals. The New Innovator awards, up to $1.5 million over five years, are meant for newly independent researchers building their careers. Lamb managed to snag Emory’s first.

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment

Growth factor mimics promote recovery after nerve injury

Peripheral nerve injury ranges from chronic irritation like carpal tunnel syndrome to violent trauma. Severe nerve injury can leave patients with lifelong disabilities. Even if nerves regenerate, functional recovery is often poor, because of problems with regeneration of axons, the signal-carrying “stalks” of nerve cells.Figure4.axons

Cell biologist Art English and his colleagues have shown that compounds identified by pathologist Keqiang Ye can promote axon regeneration when mice have injured peripheral nerves. The growth Cheap NFL Jerseys factor-mimicking compounds not only stimulate axons to regenerate twice as quickly (see figure), but also promote the restoration of connections between nerve and muscle. The results were published in September in PNAS.

Ye previously identified compounds that activate the same signals as the neuron growth factor BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). These compounds – 7,8-dihydroxyflavone and deoxygedunin — have shown promise in experimental models of diseases such as stroke and Parkinson’s disease. They also have been used to tweak learning and memory in animal models.

Posted on October 3, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment
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