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Modulating stress circuits
Feb. 15, 2019—Feb. 14, 2019, 12:00 PM by Leigh MacMillan (iStock) Stress contributes to psychiatric diseases including depression, eating disorders and addiction. Neurons that express the stress signal corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) in a brain region called the BNST are thought to promote negative responses to stress. Danny Winder, PhD, and colleagues reported in The Journal of Neuroscience that...
Adhesion protein optimizes border
Feb. 15, 2019—Feb. 14, 2019, 10:45 AM by Leigh MacMillan (iStock) The epithelial cells that line the intestines build a specialized cell surface — the “brush border” — that processes and absorbs nutrients, and defends against pathogens. The brush border consists of thousands of finger-like membrane protrusions (microvilli) on each cell. Matthew Tyska, PhD, and colleagues previously implicated...
NIC Cancer Biology Consortium July 2019 Consortium
Feb. 11, 2019—Hotel Accommodations Parking Campus Maps Searchable Vanderbilt Campus Map
New target for chronic kidney disease
Feb. 6, 2019—Jan. 31, 2019, 10:00 AM by Leigh MacMillan The kidney has a remarkable capacity to repair itself following acute injury, but maladaptive repair can lead to fibrosis (scarring) and chronic kidney disease. Craig Brooks, PhD, and collaborators at Harvard previously reported that after injury, some kidney proximal tubule cells (PTCs) are arrested in the G2-M...
Designing antibodies to fight the flu
Feb. 6, 2019—Jan. 31, 2019, 10:30 AM by Bill Snyder (iStock) The influenza virus is an annual threat to public health around the world. Rapid changes in viral surface proteins (antigens), however, make it difficult to identify antibodies with broadly neutralizing activity against different influenza subtypes. Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, James...
Cell death pathway implicated in bone marrow failure
Feb. 6, 2019—Jan. 31, 2019, 9:40 AM From left, Sandra Zinkel, MD, PhD, Christi Salisbury-Ruf, MS, Patrice Wagner, PhD, Jing Zou, MD, PhD, and Yuliya Hassan have linked a specific form of programmed cell death to myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of bone marrow failure. by Leigh MacMillan The production of blood cells in the bone marrow —...
Key to Islet Cell Differentiation
Jan. 31, 2019—The pancreatic islets of Langerhans are specialized structures containing five distinct types of cells, (α, β, γ, δ, ε), each of which secretes a different hormone (glucagon, insulin, pancreatic polypeptide, somatostatin, and ghrelin, respectively). Understanding the mechanisms that determine the total and relative quantities of these five islet cell types is key to understanding diabetes,...
Caprioli Earns 2019 ABRF Annual Award for Outstanding Contributions to Biomolecular Technologies
Jan. 28, 2019—The 2019 ABRF Annual Award for Outstanding Contributions to Biomolecular Technologies will be presented to Richard M. Caprioli, the Stanford Moore Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Caprioli’s research focuses on the discovery of temporal and spatial processes in biological systems using mass...
Crowe leads ‘sprint’ to find anti-Zika antibodies
Jan. 25, 2019—by Bill Snyder Scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues in Boston, Seattle and St. Louis are racing to develop — in a mere 90 days — a protective antibody-based treatment that can stop the spread of the Zika virus. This is the first of four “scientific sprints” sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research...