Science Market Update

Alzheimer's is a devastating disease that causes memory loss, thinking and behavioral problems that get worse over time. Currently, there are no known cures for Alzheimer's, but there are some treatments available that can slow the onset of symptoms. Because of this need for a cure, Alzheimer's disease is heavily studied by researchers across the nation, and millions of dollars are given to Alzheimer's researchers annually to work towards finding more treatments and a potential cure. Earlier this year, researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia received a $7.2 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to help support their research of this disease. (Image on right courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Anyone with arachnophobia will tell you how terrifying spiders are, especially some of the larger ones like tarantulas. One of the biggest fears people report is getting bitten by a poisonous spider. Even though tarantula venom is very weak and not deadly to humans, the thought of getting bitten can cause some people to tremble with fear.

The mosquito-borne disease malaria is a threat to the  3.4 billion people living in the 106 countries where malaria has not been eradicated. Many of the countries at risk are located in Africa and parts of Asia. Although it was eliminated from the United States in the 1950's, U.S. travels account for between 1,500 and 2,000 malarial cases annually. There are drugs that can treat the disease, however these drugs are not effective everywhere due to drug resistance. 

In 2017, the University of Southern California will be a little bit larger, thanks to the addition of a new research center. Made possible by a $50 million donation from Gary and Alya Michelson, the USC Michelson Center for Convergence Bioscience will be the largest building on the USC campus (once completed) and will foster collaboration between researchers from different science disciplines. 

Every year about 1 million surgeries in the United States are performed to repair torn meniscus, the protective cartilage in the knee. When this cartilage is damaged, it can cause pain and lead to serious arthritis. Current treatments to repair meniscus involve performing a transplant with tissue taken from either different areas in the body or from a cadaver,. This method, however, has significant risks and relatively low success rates. 

The Centers for Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) gives out annual awards to assist researchers with biomedical research projects, as well as to help with the establishment of new university core facilities that will help carry out the objectives of these research projects. Kenton Sanders, PhD, from the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno, recently received Phase 3 COBRE funding in the amount of $5.4 million over five years to continue his research of Smooth Muscle Plasticity, as well as to establish new core facilities that will help with this research. (See map below for states receiving COBRE funding. Map created here)

Situated in Upper Manhattan, in the busy, bustling city of New York, Columbia University attracts a wide variety of highly intelligent students and researchers to its world-class facilities. Within the four main graduate schools in the Columbia Medical Center (College of Physicians and Surgeons, College of Dental Medicine, Mailman School of Public Health, School of Nursing), hundreds of researchers work in the different research facilities to find new knowledge and develop therapies to improve public health in New York and around the world. 

The University of Maryland, Baltimore Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) recently received a grant of $15.2 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) to establish a new research center. This 5 year award will be used to establish the IGS Genome Center for Infectious Diseases. 

The new center will be led by an interdisciplinary team of University of Maryland, Baltimore researchers from the Institute of Genome Sciences, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and the Center for Vaccine Development who will study pathogens and their hosts using different genomic techniques to gain a better understanding of how pathogens cause harm. In the IGS Genome Center for Infectious Diseases, researchers will be able to study pathogen biology, virulence, drug resistance, immune invasion, and host-microbiome interactions using different genomics and bioinformatics approaches. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia).

Researchers at UC Davis and other institutions have found that diets rich in whole walnuts or walnut oil, slowed prostate cancer growth in mice. In addition, both walnuts and walnut oil reduced cholesterol and increased insulin sensitivity (when you have high insulin sensitivity, you are able to eat carbohydrates without such a large rise in insulin. When insulin is kept low enough, fatty acids can still be released). The walnut diet also reduced levels of the hormone IGF-1, which had been previously implicated in both prostate and breast cancer. The study was published online in the Journal of Medicinal Food.

When someone gets an open wound or injury, one of the first things the body does is try to stop the flow of blood. The body does this by forming clots that turn the blood from liquid to gel to plug the wound and stop the body from bleeding out. If this clotting doesn't happen right away, it makes further treatment and healing of the wound more difficult or impossible. To help with the clotting process, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have created nanoparticles that resemble blood platelets that can be used to speed up the healing process and create clots faster to decrease blood loss from an injury.