Category Health/Medical

One Alzheimer’s-associated mutation in the PKC protein leads to a cavity that enhances its activity. Credit: UC San Diego Health

Researchers found Protein Kinase C (PKC) alpha is necessary for amyloid beta to damage neuronal connections. They also identified genetic variations that enhance PKC alpha activity in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The study may present a new therapeutic target for the disease. “Until recently, it was thought that PKC helped cells survive, and that too much PKC activity led to cancer. Based on that assumption, many companies tested PKC inhibitors as drugs to treat cancer, but they didn’t work,” said Prof Alexandra Newton, PhD, UC SD School of Medicine.

“Instead, we recently found that the opposite is true...

Researchers have produced insulin-secreting cells from stem cells derived from the skin of patients with type 1 diabetes. The cells (blue), made from stem cells, can secrete insulin (green) in response to glucose. Credit: MILLMAN LABORATORY

Signaling a potential new approach to treating diabetes, researchers have produced insulin-secreting cells from stem cells derived from patients with type1 diabetes. The new discovery suggests a personalized treatment approach to diabetes may be on the horizon – one that relies on the patients’ own stem cells to manufacture new cells that make insulin. The new cells could produce insulin when they encountered sugar. The scientists tested the cells in culture and in mice, and in both cases found the cells secreted insulin in response to glucose.

“In theo...

Immunofluorescence imaging of human brain tissue generated from an active lesion from an individual with multiple sclerosis shows astrocytes (blue), the Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (red) and the phosphorylated Signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (green). Credit: Image courtesy of Jorge Ivan Alvarez, Assistant Professor at the Department of Pathobiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Bacteria living in the gut may remotely influence the activity of cells in the brain that are involved in controlling inflammation and neurodegeneration...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa killed by the engineered cationic antimicrobial peptide (eCAP). Killed bacteria (red), living bacteria (green). Credit: Jeffrey Melvin, Pitt

A potential drug therapy developed at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Vaccine Research (CVR) has proven effective against tough bacterial biofilms and a respiratory virus simultaneously. The drug outperforms traditional therapies in the laboratory setting. “To the best of our knowledge, no other antibiotics out there work on both the bacteria and the virus during a co-infection,” said Jennifer M. Bomberger, Ph.D., assistant professor in Pitt’s Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

Chronic infections, such as those that kill cystic fibrosis patients, resist the body’s efforts to clear them from the lungs, sin...