New NIH grant supports research on Alzheimer s disease caused by gene mutations
A new grant from the National Institute On Aging at the National Institutes of Health will support ongoing research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to address Alzheimer s disease caused by gene mutations. According to Chunyu Wang, the principal investigator and an assistant professor of biological sciences at Rensselaer, the project seeks to understand and counter the mechanism that produces Amyloid-Beta 42 peptide in brain cells.
A key pathology in Alzheimer s is accumulation of senile plaque in the brain, which is mainly composed of the Amyloid Beta-42 peptide. This grant supports research into an enzyme that is responsible for producing the toxic peptide using single molecule techniques, and may identify novel mechanisms and targets for future Alzheimer s therapeutics.
Recently a team of researchers from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States assessed travel-related anxiety in healthcare workers (HCWs) considering the emergence of new variants caused by SARS-CoV-2 mutations.
First-of-its-kind cardiovascular drug gets FDA approval based on study from Canadian VIGOUR Centre
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the drug vericiguat for use in patients with heart failure. The drug a first-of-its-kind, once-daily oral treatment for patients with worsening chronic heart failure was approved in part thanks to the VICTORIA (Vericiguat Global Study In Subjects With Heart Failure With Reduced Ejection Fraction) clinical study run by researchers at the University of Alberta s Canadian VIGOUR Centre.
As reported in March 2020, vericiguat works by stimulating an enzyme in the body called soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC), which is important for enhancing heart function and helping blood vessels relax to provide better blood flow. In patients with heart failure, sGC is reduced and unable to adequately stimulate cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), necessary for transmitting chemical signals to blood vessels, which results in vascular and coronary dysfun
A team of international scientists has demonstrated that therapeutic inhibition of a transcriptional regulator BRD2, required for the endogenous expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), can potentially suppress severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. The study is currently available on the bioRxiv preprint server.
New drug target valid for breast cancer as well as lymphoma
One more piece of the puzzle has fallen into place behind a new drug whose anti-cancer potential was developed at the University of Alberta and is set to begin human trials this year, thanks to newly published research.
The results provide more justification and rationale for starting the clinical trial in May. It s another exciting stepping stone to finding out if this is going to be a new cancer treatment.
John Mackey, First Author, Professor and Director of Oncology Clinical Trials, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Alberta
The drug PCLX-001 is designed to selectively kill cancer cells by targeting enzymes involved in myristoylation, a process key to the cell signaling system that is often defective in cancer cells. The molecule was originally developed by the University of Dundee as a treatment for African sleeping sickness. U of A cell biologist Luc Berthiaume was the first to realize it could work aga