Study: Regular aerobic exercise and prevention of drug abuse relapse

Exercise provides health benefits

Researchers at Emory University and the University of Georgia have received funding from the National Institutes of Health to study the neurobiological mechanisms for how regular aerobic exercise may prevent drug abuse relapse. The grant is for $1.9 million over the next five years.

David Weinshenker, PhD, associate professor of human genetics, Emory School of Medicine, is a co-principal investigator on the project.

David Weinshenker, PhD

“This research will provide new insight into how regular exercise may attenuate drug abuse in humans,” Weinshenker says. “More importantly, it may reveal a neural mechanism through which exercise may prevent the relapse into drug-seeking behavior.”

During the study, Weinshenker and UGA co-investigator Philip Holmes, professor of psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, will measure exercise-induced increases of the galanin gene activity in the rat brain.

Posted on April 29, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

NIAID Director Fauci: link seasonal and pandemic flu preparedness

Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, delivered the keynote address Sunday, April 18, as part of a three-day conference on H1N1 Virus: The First Pandemic of the 21st Century, sponsored by the Emory-UGA Influenza Pathogenesis and Immunology Research Center.

One of the most important lessons from this past yearâ€™s pandemic, Fauci said, is the need to â€œconnect the dotsâ€ between seasonal and pandemic influenza and not view them as two separate phenomena.

Fauci enthusiastically supports the CDCâ€™s call for universal flu vaccination.

â€œRather than trying to figure out one priority group over another,” Fauci said, “if we can get into a rhythm of getting most people vaccinated each year, we will have most of the population with some degree of immunity. We will get into a situation where we donâ€™t need to go from a seasonal approach to a crisis approach.

Posted on April 22, 2010 by admin in Immunology Leave a comment

NIH director visits Emory, Atlanta Clinical & Translational Science Institute

David Stephens, MD, Jim Wagner, PhD, Earl Lewis, PhD, Francis Collins, MD, PhD

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and chief of staff Dr. Kathy Hudson, paid a daylong visit to Emoryâ€™s Woodruff Health Sciences Center, including Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and Morehouse School of Medicine on April 14.

The purpose of Collinsâ€™ visit was to view the activities of the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute, one of 46 national CTSAs funded by the NIH through the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR).Â Collins also will visit CTSAs at Duke, UNC, and Vanderbilt in the future.

Collins asked that his visit focus on â€œhow CTSAs are enabling science.â€ It was an opportunity for the ACTSI, a partnership among Emory, Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Institute of Technology and others, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia BIO, Kaiser Permanente, CDC, the Atlanta VA Medical Center and the Grady Health System, to showcase the unique contributions the ACTSI makes to enabling clinical and translational research.

Posted on April 21, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

HER2-positive breast cancer treatment options studied

Emory oncologist Ruth O’Regan, MD, is leading a trial testing whether Afinitor can reverse resistance to Herceptin in metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer patients. As part of the trial, some patients been receiving a drug called Afinitor (everolimus) along with chemotherapy and Herceptin (trastuzumab).

Ruth O'Regan, MD

About 25 percent to 30 percent of breast cancers are HER2 -positive, which means they test positive for a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2). This protein promotes the growth of cancer cells, making HER2 -positive breast cancers more aggressive than other types.

They also tend to be less responsive to hormone treatment. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this type of cancer responds extremely well to Herceptin.

Herceptin specifically targets HER2 cells, killing them while sparing healthy cells, so side effects are minimal. Its effectiveness has made Herceptin the gold standard of treatment for HER2 -positive breast cancer.

Posted on April 20, 2010 by admin in Cancer Leave a comment

Hold out your finger: Epidemiologist developing test for colon cancer risk

Years from now, physicians may be able to determine whether you’re at increased risk for colon cancer by drawing blood from the tip of your finger.

Emory University researchers are working to identify biomarkers to detect a person’s chances of developing colon cancer. Much like blood pressure and cholesterol tests can indicate heart disease risk, researchers here hope that some day the makeup of blood and urine will be able to tell who’s at risk for colorectal cancer, why they may be at risk and what they can do to reduce their risk.

Postdoctoral fellows Joy Owen and Veronika Fedirko examine samples in Robin Bostick’s lab at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University.

For now, the Emory study team is analyzing the rectal tissue samples of people with colon adenomatous polyps, non-cancerous growths considered precursors to colon cancer, and comparing them to rectal tissue samples from people who don’t have polyps. They’re also looking at whether the differences they detect in rectal tissue can also be found in blood or urine. Currently, no accepted tests exist to determine whether someone may be at risk for colon cancer.

“Most people would rather provide a blood or urine sample than get a rectal biopsy,” says Robin Bostick, MD, MPH, Rollins School of Public Health epidemiology professor and study principal investigator. Bostick is also a clinical faculty member at the Winship Cancer Institute at Emory and a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar.

Posted on April 15, 2010 by admin in Cancer 1 Comment

Combined MR/PET imaging

On Thursday, April 8, Emory’s Center for Systems Imaging, directed by Department of Radiology Chair Carolyn Meltzer, MD, and the Atlanta Clinical & Translational Science Institute celebrated the launch of the CSI’s prototype MR/PET imaging scanner.

View of MR/PET scanner from front, with Ciprian Catana of MGH and Larry Byars of Siemens

The scanner is one of four world-wide and one of two in the United States, and permits simultaneous MR (magnetic resonance) and PET (positron emission tomography) imaging in human subjects. This provides the advantage of being able to combine the anatomical information from MR with the biochemical/metabolic information from PET. Potential applications include functional brain mapping and the study of neurodegenerative diseases, drug addiction and brain cancer.

Thursday’s event brought together leaders of the three other MR/PET programs in Boston, JÃ¼lich and TÃ¼bingen, the Siemens engineers who designed the device, and the Atlanta research community to explore the possibilities of the technology.

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Moving flu vaccine research forward

The scientists in the lab of Richard Compans, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at Emory, are hard at work, imagining the unimaginable: A time when patients can self-administer flu vaccines. A time when vaccination does not require exposure to inactive viruses. A time when a universal vaccine could protect from all varieties of influenza: swine, avian, seasonal and strains still emerging.

Richard Compans, PhD (right), with colleague Mark Prausnitz, PhD, from Georgia Tech

But it’s not just hope that motivates them as they work. Emory’s scientists are fighting the clock against another possible future: a time of pandemic and uncontrollable virus mutation. The recent emergence of H1N1 and H5N1, known colloquially as swine flu and avian flu, have added an even greater sense of urgency to their task.

“The H5N1â€”the virus derived from avian speciesâ€”has a 60 percent mortality,” says Emory microbiologist Sang-Moo Kang, PhD. Yet that strain of influenza hasn’t resulted in many human deaths, because, so far, avian flu spreads only to humans who are in contact with infected birds.

Posted on April 12, 2010 by admin in Immunology Leave a comment

Some thoughts on the pursuit of happiness

Corey Keyes, PhD

What does it truly mean to be in good mental health? How are good mental health and mental illness connected? That is, does being in good mental health simply mean the absence of mental illness, or is there more to it than that? And how do people achieve a healthy state of both body and mind?

These are some of the complex questions Emory researchers brought to the fore in a discussion over lunch last month.

Speaker Corey Keyes, an Emory sociologist, made clear the absence of illness does not necessarily mean the presence of health. He noted that the ancient Greeks batted around the subject of mental health, specifically, happiness. Some championed emotions and pleasures as a path to happiness, others tranquility, freedom and reflection. Read more

Posted on April 9, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

The Bayh-Dole Act: 30 Years of Innovation

At Emoryâ€™s recent Fourth Celebration of Technology and Innovation, faculty researchers and entrepreneurs were recognized for outstanding accomplishments in developing promising technologies that are moving from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Keynote speaker for the annual event was Joseph Allen, a key staff member in helping Senator Birch Bayh (D-IN) secure passage of the Bayh-Dole Act 30 years ago, opening up collaborations between research universities and U.S. industry.

Todd Sherer, executive director of Emoryâ€™s Technology Transfer Office, described Emoryâ€™s robust product pipeline, which includes products at all stages of development and regulatory approval. The pipeline helps ensure multiple missions of driving academic discoveries, advancing commercially protected technologies, and providing substantial public benefit.

Posted on April 7, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Two birds with one stone in treatment of Alzheimer’s

Allan Levey, MD, PhD

The drugs now available to treat Alzheimer’s address the symptoms of the disease — memory problems — rather than the underlying mechanism of neurodegeneration.

But what if something could do both? Here’s a tantalizing prospect, hinted at by a long-running thread of brain research: compounds that boost the function of certain acetylcholine circuits in the brain might also modify production of toxic beta-amyloid protein.

Emory neurologists Allan Levey and Jim Lah and members of their laboratories have been working on this idea, together with Jeffrey Conn’s group at Vanderbilt, for several years.

James Lah, MD, PhD

The possibility grows out of the properties of certain receptors for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, called “muscarinic acetylcholine receptors.” Acetylcholine is a major transmitter of signals in the brain, and there are several varieties of receptors, or receiver dishes for the signals, on brain cells.

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

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