Category Health/Medical

Michigan Medicine researchers studying a class of naturally occurring protein called Sestrin have found that it can mimic many of exercise’s effects in flies and mice. The findings could eventually help scientists combat muscle wasting due to aging and other causes.

“Researchers have previously observed that Sestrin accumulates in muscle following exercise,” said Myungjin Kim, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in the Department of Molecular & Integrative Physiology. Kim, working with professor Jun Hee Lee, Ph.D. and a team of researchers wanted to know more about the protein’s apparent link to exercise. Their first step was to encourage a bunch of flies to work out.

Taking advantage of Drosophila flies’ normal instinct to climb up and out of a test tube, their collaborators Robert Wess...

New light-sensitive material could eliminate some of the endoscopic procedures needed to remove gastrointestinal devices

A variety of medical devices can be inserted into the gastrointestinal tract to treat, diagnose, or monitor GI disorders. Many of these have to be removed by endoscopic surgery once their job is done. However, MIT engineers have now come up with a way to trigger such devices to break down inside the body when they are exposed to light from an ingestible LED.

The new approach is based on a light-sensitive hydrogel that the researchers designed...

In a study published today in the international journal, Cancer Research a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, investigators at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (the La Trobe University School of Cancer Medicine) have shown that when the protein bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP4) is switched off, breast cancer can become more aggressive. BMP4 is active during fetal development and is maintained during adulthood in some healthy organs, including the breast.

In this study, led by investigators Dr Bedrich Eckhardt (a Susan G Komen Postdoctoral Fellow) and Prof Robin Anderson (Head of the Translational Breast Cancer Program), it was hypothesised that restoring BMP4 activity would block the ability of breast tumours to metastasise.

“At its core, ...

A byproduct of glucose called lactate, used by every cell in the body, may also prompt a mutated cell to become cancerous, according to new research from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The study was published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Oncology.
“We discovered that lactate is a catalyst that triggers a mechanism in mutated cells necessary to continue the cancer forming process,” said Iñigo San Millán, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. “This opens a new door to better understand cancer at the metabolic level. It also means we might be able to target lactate with new therapies.”

Lactate is not a waste product but a major source of energy for t...