Category Health/Medical

James Bibb, Ph.D., and colleagues have described a novel preclinical drug that could have the potential to combat depression, brain injury and diseases that impair cognition. The drug, which notably is brain-permeable, acts to inhibit the kinase enzyme Cdk5.

Cdk5 is a crucial regulator of signaling in brain neurons. Over three decades of study, it has been implicated in neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Knocking out the enzyme in mice makes them resilient to stress, enhances their cognition, protects neurons from stroke and head trauma, and lessens neurodegeneration.

While inhibitors of Cdk5 could offer potential therapeutic benefits and new ways to study basic brain function, previous first- and second-gene...

A genome-editing strategy developed at Rice University can correct dozens of errors at the same time with high precision and efficiency, a possible breakthrough for those who suffer from diseases caused by a combination of mutations.

The “drive-and-process” array, DAP for short, also appears to be highly adept at avoiding off-target edits, errors that have plagued earlier gene-editing strategies.

Engineer Xue Sherry Gao and graduate student and lead author Qichen Yuan of ...

Researchers from the Girona Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBGI) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain, have identified the role of an amino acid in humans, mice and flies suffering depression. It is proline, an amino acid that is present in a wide variety of foods. The results, published in the scientific journal Cell Metabolism, also associate the consumption of a proline-rich diet with a greater tendency to develop depression.

The study was led by Dr. José Manuel Fernández-Real and Dr. Jordi Mayneris-Perxachs, from the research group on Nutrition, Eumetabolism and Health at the IDIBGI and CIBEROBN, and Dr...

McMaster University researchers have found not only how some viral infections cause severe tissue damage, but also how to reduce that damage.

They have discovered how Type I interferon (IFN) stops the immune system from “going rogue” and attacking the body’s own tissues when fighting viral infections, including COVID-19.

Their paper was published in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

Senior author Ali Ashkar said IFN is a well-known anti-viral signaling molecule, that when released by the body’s cells, can trigger a powerful immune response against harmful viruses.

“What we have found is that it is also critical to stop white blood cells from releasing protease enzymes, which can damage organ tissue...