Cancer cells are not just a group of cells that are out of control; for their own survival, they actively participate in the struggle with the immune system. Being able to evade detection by the immune system is a feature of cancer. In a new study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that cancer cells release biological “unmanned aerial vehicles” – small vesicles called exosomes that circulate in the…
Review of the Control of Inflammasome Activation by Phosphorylation
Recently, Zhou Rongbin and Jiang Wei, professors of the Department of Life and Medical Sciences of the University of Science and Technology of China, the Key Laboratory of Natural Immunology and Chronic Diseases of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Center of Hefei Microscale Material Science, were invited to present in the Trends in Biochemical Sciences of Cell. A review article entitled Control of Inflammasome Activation by…
Alzheimer’s Disease and Insulin—Is There Any Connection?
Johnson & Johnson recently announced that the company has stopped a clinical trial of a new Alzheimer’s disease drug due to certain safety issues. This is another failed clinical trial following the announcement of several large clinical trials that have no effect in treating Alzheimer’s disease. More and more failure cases tell us that we need to stop and think about how we could find the cause of Alzheimer’s disease….
Nat Med: Key Factors Determining the Anticancer Effect of Immunological Checkpoint Therapy
Stimulatory dendritic cells (SDCs) play a key role in stimulating cytotoxic T lymphocytes and promoting immune responses against cancer. Studying the mechanisms that regulate the abundance of SDCs in the tumor microenvironment (TME) will provide new therapeutic strategies. Rencently, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, studied the abundance in human melanoma and the influencing factors of SDC, and found it was associated with intratumoral expression of…
Immunity: Why Can’t HIV Be Cured? Scientists Find the Key Mechanism!
Due to the rapid development of antiretroviral therapy (ART), HIV patients can live longer than before. But even if it is a very effective long-term ART, the HIV virus remains stubbornly incurable, so patients need medication for life. Scientists have been convinced that this is because the HIV virus has created a stubborn virus-infected cell nest that allows HIV to survive indefinitely. A recent study done by researchers at Brigham…
PNAS: A Key Switch in Biological Clocks Found
Multipoint phosphorylation of the PERIOD 2 (PER2) protein is a critical step in determining the mammalian clock cycle. Previous studies have suggested that the phosphorylation of PER2 by casein kinase 1 (CK1) requires the initiation of an undiscovered protein kinase. CK1 is an essential circulatory protein that is highly conserved from algae to humans. These phosphorylation processes stabilize the PER2 and delay its degradation to extend the circadian clock cycle….
Two Articles Revealed a Specific Gene That Makes the Human Brain Big—NOTCH2NL
Over the past 3 million years, the evolution of larger brains has played an important role in our ability to think, solve problems, and develop cultures. However, it has always been a mystery for us to become genetic changes in the human brain. In two papers published in Cell, two groups of researchers identified a gene family, NOTCH2NL, which appears to play an important role in the human-specific cortical development…
Ways to Promote Durable Weight Loss in Obese Patients Found
Recently, in a study published in Nature Medicine, researchers from Charite Medical College in Berlin successfully treated obese patients due to hereditary defects. The new drugs developed by the researchers not only benefit patients, but also help them understand the basic signal pathways that regulate the satiety of this new drug. Gene mutations that encode leptin receptors induce individuals to become extremely hungry during the first few months of…
Nature: Multiple Parkinson’s Related Brain Disorders May Stem from Different Strains of α-Synuclein
Recently, in a study published in Nature, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have found that the main features of different Parkinson‘s-related brain disorders may be intracellular misfolded proteins; the authors found that the pathological form of α-synuclein is the culprit in the induction of many diseases. Dr. Chao Peng said that the influence of cell types on different α-synuclein variants may be able to solve the most important…
The Latest Research Progress in Cancer Resistance (II)
(Continued) Scientific Reports: New Computational Approach to Identify Chemotherapy Targets (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-19284-3) One of the most important features of tumors is the methylation of deoxycytidine to form 5-methylcytosine (5mC). DNA methylation is the process by which a methyl group is added to a DNA molecule. It has been found that the occurrence and distribution of 5mC are important for gene regulation, and it can also serve…