Washington State University recently announced that it has surpassed its $1 billion fundraising goal, making 2015 its highest funded fiscal year to date.
Tags: Washington, WA, WSU, Washington State University, 2015, Research Funding, Northwest Region, new grant, Pullman, new endowed faculty, new building expansion, New Life Science Funding, BioResearch Product Faire™, fundraising
Though there is currently no known cure for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), bioscientists at research universities across the globe are looking into ways to mitigate the disease. In our country, we’ve recently seen St. Louis researchers use bee venom to puncture HIV viruses and Twin Cities researchers investigate a genetic immunity to HIV. At Michigan State University, a team has discovered an inhibitor to the virus that is found inside the human body.
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For over 50 years, Stony Brook University in New York has been a venue for thousands of groundbreaking discoveries made by prominent medical researchers and clinicians.
Tags: Lyme Disease, cancer research, New York, Stony Brook University, 2015, Pediatric Research, Research Funding, NY, Northeast Region, Stony Brook, research grants, SunySB
Nearly 14.5 million cancer survivors currently reside in the United States, with more than 25 percent reportedly suffering from a cognitive impairment dubbed “chemo brain”, according to the American Cancer Society.
Tags: cancer research, FL, Florida, Tampa, NIH grant, Southern Region, cancer research grant, 2016, BioResearch Product Faire™, University of South Florida, USF
A rational approach to tackling diabetes using life science research is to focus on insulin. We’ve seen a research team at Emory University transplant insulin-producing cells, and we’ve reported on an Urbana-Champaign team trying to release insulin in patients’ cells. Now researchers at Washington University at St. Louis are taking a new approach by directly reducing blood sugar without the use of insulin.
Brian Finck (image left, courtesy WUSTL) believes that rather than rely on insulin to lower blood sugar in patients with diabetes, it’s easier to cut out the middle man and reduce glucose levels using genetics. He and fellow WUSTL professor Kyle McCommis found that shutting down a particular liver protein dramatically reduced glucose production in the liver.
“We think this strategy could lead to more effective drugs for type 2 diabetes,” says Finck, who is an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Geriatrics and Nutritional Science. “A drug that shuts down glucose production has the potential to help millions of people affected by the most common form of diabetes.”

(Brian N. Finck, PhD (left), and Kyle S. McCommis, PhD analyze blood sugar levels to evaluate their new strategy. Image courtesy WUSTL)
The team has already initiated clinical trials using the drug compound MSDC-0602. So far, the drugs have been successful in inhibiting the protein and reducing blood sugar levels. Dr. Finck is working with the biopharmaceutical company Metabolic Solutions Development Co. to facilitate production of the drug.
Funding for this research came from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health as well as the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the Robert A.Welch Foundation. For additional information about funding for research at Washington University in St. Louis, read our free WUSTL Funding Statistics Report, available via the link below:
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The University of Southern California is expanding yet again, thanks in part to a recent $10 million gift from USC Trustee Malcolm Currie and his wife, Barbara. The gift will help support the Keck School of Medicine of USC, as well as construction of the new USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience.
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Yeasts are valuable as both tools and allies in the life sciences. We saw how yeast taught Ann Arbor researchers about DNA and showed Urbana-Champaign researchers how to save bats from a deadly disease. Now a team at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is learning from yeasts how to slow the onset of another deadly disease, namely cancer.
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Researchers from the Washington State University School of Pharmacy have recently uncovered a previously unknown function of a protein called Activating Transcription Factor 5 (ATF5).
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Scientists at UC Irvine have created a new method to quickly and accurately track the progression of Huntington’s disease. Irvine researchers studied Huntington’s proteins present in spinal fluid to determine that they held a “seeding” property, which is essential to the disease’s progression.
Tags: CA, Bioresearch, University of California Irvine, California, 2015, disease research, Neuroscience, Research Funding, Neurology, Irvine, Southwest Region, UCI, UC Irvine, Huntington's Disease, BioResearch Product Faire™
Bioresearch can help the development of treatment for several eye diseases; for instance, the University of Illinois tackled macular degeneration and the University of Wisconsin developed solar contact lenses to treat the eye disease presbyopia. Now the University of Wisconsin, Madison is studying new solutions to the disease amblyopia, more commonly known as “lazy eye.”
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