- The Michigan Bloodspot Environmental Epidemiology Project will utilize the State of Michigan's newborn blood spot repository to investigate whether researchers can obtain environmental exposure and genetic information from the available bloodspots
- The second winning research proposal will study the effects of air pollution on asthma in the Dearborn area Arab American population. Read More
Biomedical
URC researchers team up on winning proposals
University Research Corridor seed funding of more than $750,000 will support two major environmental health studies including researchers from all three member institutions: Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University.
Probe human diseases in yeast? Possibly, protein study suggests
The molecular-level workings of proteins are surprisingly similar across a wide range of organisms, from humans to fungi and plants, research by U-M evolutionary biologist Jianzhi "George" Zhang and colleagues suggests. This finding raises the possibility of using much simpler organisms, such as yeast, to study the mechanisms underlying human disease. The study is scheduled to be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of May 9. Read More
Protein therapies promising for disease prevention
A computer analysis by U-M researchers shows promise for helping develop therapies for some major diseases by rescuing proteins that have stopped performing normally. The U-M findings appear as a cover story in the April 20, 2011 issue of Biophysical Journal.
“There are many diseases, including cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease and diabetes, that are products of improperly folded—but potentially functional—proteins,” says lead author Santiago Schnell, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the U-M Medical School, and Brehm investigator at the Brehm Center for Diabetes Research. “These diseases are known as protein folding or conformational diseases.
“Our model proposes a couple of remedies for recovering a patient’s own misfolded proteins so they become correctly folded and functional proteins again,” adds Schnell. Read More
How do you get a fruit fly to exercise?
Robert Wessells, Ph.D., puts his fruit flies through a grueling daily workout in a quest to understand how their genes respond to exercise and to uncover clues that may one day help people stay healthier and more active into their advanced years. A day in the life of a fly is roughly equivalent to a year for a human, so researchers like Wessells use them to study the long-term effects of exercise on the body without having to follow human subjects for decades or worry about outside influences contaminating their results. The experiments show, for example, that after “years” of regular exercise, elderly flies demonstrate the vigor of middle-aged flies, says Wessells, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the UM Medical School. Read More | Watch Video
Researchers inject nanofiber spheres carrying cells into wounds to grow tissue
For the first time, scientists have made star-shaped, biodegradable polymers that can self-assemble into hollow, nanofiber spheres, and when the spheres are injected with cells into wounds, these spheres biodegrade, but the cells live on to form new tissue. Developing this nanofiber sphere as a cell carrier that simulates the natural growing environment of the cell is a very significant advance in tissue repair, says Peter Ma, professor at the UM School of Dentistry and lead author of a paper about the research scheduled for advanced online publication in Nature Materials. Co-authors are Xiaohua Liu and Xiaobing Jin. Read More
New drug shrinks cancer in animals, U-M study shows
New drug compounds, developed by U-M researchers, shrank tumors in animal studies, with few side effects. The study, done in two mouse models of human cancer, looked at two compounds designed to activate a protein that kills cancer cells. The protein, p53, is often inactivated in human cancers. In some cases, it is because another protein, MDM2, binds to p53 and blocks its tumor suppressor function. This allows the tumor to grow unchecked. The new compounds block MDM2 from binding to p53, consequently activating p53. “For the first time, we showed that activation of p53 by our highly potent and optimized MDM2 inhibitors can achieve complete tumor regression in a mouse model of human cancer,” says lead study author Shaomeng Wang, Ph.D., Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor in Medicine and director of the Cancer Drug Discovery Program at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center. Wang presented the study at the American Association for Cancer Research 102nd annual meeting. Read More
U-M creates state’s first disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines
University of Michigan researchers have created the state's first human embryonic stem cell lines that carry the genes responsible for inherited disease. The achievement will enable scientists here to study the onset and progression of genetic disorders and to search for new treatments. With this accomplishment, the U-M joins a small handful of U.S. universities that are creating disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines. "All our efforts are finally starting to bear fruit," said Gary Smith, co-director of the U-M Consortium for Stem Cell Therapies and leader of the cell-line derivation project. "Creating disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines has been a central goal of the consortium since it was formed two years ago, and now we've passed that milestone." Read More
Prostate cancer spreads to bones by overtaking the home of blood stem cells
Like bad neighbors who decide to go wreck another community, prostate and breast cancer usually recur in the bone, according to a new U-M study. Now, U-M researchers believe they know why. Prostate cancer cells specifically target and eventually overrun the bone marrow niche, a specialized area for hematopoietic stem cells, which make red and white blood cells, said Russell Taichman, professor at the U-M School of Dentistry and senior author of the study.Read More
Sad dads spank more, read less
Compared to their non-depressed counterparts, depressed fathers are nearly four times more likely to report spanking their child. Depressed dads are also less likely to read to their children.Those are the results of a new study to be published in the April print issue of Pediatrics, by U-M researchers. The study was led by R. Neal Davis, a former fellow at the University of Michigan Health System’s Child Health and Evaluation Research (CHEAR) Unit in the Division of General Pediatrics. Read More