Category Health/Medical

Lambert, Lucia and Gari (left to right) unpack the mechanism of investigational drug, AMPI-109, to show how its inactivation of PRL-3 flips an important switch on triple-negative breast cancer.

A new study offers compelling evidence that enzyme PRL-3 is ‘switch’ in TNF-R1 pathway, determining whether pathway helps cancer cells survive or die when challenged with immunotherapy. Previous studies at the University of Colorado Cancer Center show that the experimental drug AMPI-109 potently kills triple-negative breast cancer cells. But even the most compelling evidence of cell death in a dish isn’t enough to push a drug into human clinical trials, even for triple-negative breast cancer, which has a high mortality rate and remains largely without targeted treatment options...

The hallmark of an adaptive immune system is the ability of T-cells to recognise foreign substances, that are potentially harmful (Photo: Shutterstock)

In the past it was was largely assumed that “all receptors were equal.” as in George Orwell’s Animal Farm where the barnyard devolves into chaos, and the slogan “all animals are equal” becomes “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” Using powerful imaging technology and some of Australia’s only super-resolution microscopes that can zoom in to the level of a single molecule, UNSW researchers have viewed this critical first-stage in the immune response, inside a single functional T-cell, in unprecedented detail.

UNSW Scientia Professor Katharina Gaus said: “Although all receptors in a single T-cell are genetically...

Master Athlete

Researchers examined cerebral blood flow in master athletes (ages 50-80 years) before and after a 10-day period during which they stopped all exercise. Using MRI brain imaging techniques, they found a significant decrease in blood flow to several brain regions important for cognitive health, including the hippocampus, after they stopped their exercise routines.

“We know that the hippocampus plays an important role in learning and memory and is one of the first brain regions to shrink in people with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Dr. J. Carson Smith, associate professor of kinesiology...

Acetylcholine receptors, also known as nicotinic receptors

Several scientific studies have indicated that nicotine may be beneficial for memory function. Scientists set out to shed further light on the properties attributed to nicotine – which is known to have an adverse effect on health – by determining the precise structure of the nicotinic receptors in the hippocampus region of the brain. Using mouse models for Alzheimer’s disease, they identified the β2 subunit of the nicotinic receptor as a target that, if blocked, prevents the memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by two types of lesion: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary degeneration...