Now that scientists understand what triggers key steps in the immune response to menacing fungi such as Candida albicans, they hope to develop ways to make it work better.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Every year, fungal infections threaten thousands of patients — from those with depressed immune systems to others who have had surgeries or devices such as catheters implanted. Moreover, some anti-fungal medications are beginning to lose their power.(more…)
Early Step toward Treatment for Diseases that Affect Blood Flow
University of Utah bioengineers showed that tiny blood vessels grow better in the laboratory if the tissue surrounding them is less dense. Then the researchers created a computer simulation to predict such growth accurately – an early step toward treatments to provide blood supply to tissues damaged by diabetes and heart attacks and to skin grafts and implanted ligaments and tendons.
“Better understanding of the processes that regulate the growth of blood vessels puts us in a position ultimately to develop new treatments for diseases related to blood vessel growth,” and to better understand cancer metastasis, says bioengineering professor Jeff Weiss of the university’s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. (more…)
For years, Brown University M.D./Ph.D. student Angel Byrd had dedicated herself to studying how immune system cells capture invading fungal pathogens. Like those cells, called neutrophils, she had seized on seemingly every opportunity that had come her way.(more…)
Dedicated, passionate and energetic, M.D./Ph.D. student Angel Byrd has earned many accolades and research opportunities. But she only recently won a young scientist’s most coveted prize: publication as lead author of a paper highly esteemed by her colleagues.
Well on her way to fulfilling her dreams both in research and medicine, Brown University M.D./Ph.D. student Angel Byrd nevertheless had recently begun to define herself by what was missing, said her adviser, Dr. Jonathan Reichner, associate professor of surgery (research) at Rhode Island Hospital. She still wasn’t a published author.
For years she had dedicated herself to studying how immune system cells capture invading fungal pathogens. Like those cells, called neutrophils, she had seized on seemingly every opportunity that had come her way. (more…)
In a study that holds major implications for breast cancer research as well as basic cell biology, scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered a rotational motion that plays a critical role in the ability of breast cells to form the spherical structures in the mammary gland known as acini. This rotation, which the researchers call “CAMo,” for coherent angular motion, is necessary for the cells to form spheres. Without CAMo, the cells do not form spheres, which can lead to random motion, loss of structure and malignancy.
”What is most exciting to me about this stunning discovery is that it may finally give us a handle by which to discover the physical laws of cellular motion as they apply to biology,” says Mina Bissell, a leading authority on breast cancer and Distinguished Scientist with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. (more…)
