Category Archives: Cell Biology

Five-Year Review of UNC Thurston Arthritis Research Center, Loeser and Archie | Newsroom – UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine

An ad hoc committee has been appointed to undertake a routine review of the UNC Thurston Arthritis Research Center and the leadership of Director Richard F. Loeser, Jr., MD, and Joseph P. Archie, Jr., Eminent Professor of Medicine. The review is a standard procedure of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will take place on June 21, 2022.

An ad hoc committee has been appointed to undertake a routine review of the UNC Thurston Arthritis Research Center and the leadership of Director Richard F. Loeser, Jr., MD, and Joseph P. Archie, Jr., Eminent Professor of Medicine.

The review is a standard procedure of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will take place on June 21, 2022.

The review committee invites your participation and input:

The deadline to request time on the review committee agenda, or to share written comments, is June 10, 2022.

Note that North Carolina law requires that any written materials developed or received by the committee during the review may be made available to the person reviewed upon request. All requests from the person reviewed will be handled by the Legal Department and any identifying information will be redacted prior to release of the material.

Members of the Review Committee

Mark Zylka, PhD Review Committee Chair, Distinguished Professor, Cell Biology and Physiology

Deborah Givens, PT, DPT, PhD, FAPTA Distinguished Professor, Department of Allied Sciences, Division of Physical Therapy

Corrine Keet, MD, PhD Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology

Yisong Wan, PhD Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology

Roland Tisch, PhD Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology

Shannelle Campbell, MD, MPH, FACS Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery

Adesola Akinkuotu, MD Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Pediatric Surgery

James Sanders, MD Distinguished Professor, Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery

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Five-Year Review of UNC Thurston Arthritis Research Center, Loeser and Archie | Newsroom - UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine

With or without sleep: Sleep neuron activity boosts protective gene expression and safeguards survival – EurekAlert

image:Activation of the sleep neuron causes a stress gene expression response in the entire body of the worm, visualized here in red by staining for HSP-12.6, a Heat Shock Protein required for survival. view more

Credit: Anastasios Koutsoumparis

Sleep is an essential process that influences all tissues and systems in our bodies. On a molecular level, sleep induces the expression of genes that help maintain the brain and body. Missing a night of sleep is a tremendous challenge to the body. It activates genes that carry out stress response and protect the body from the consequences of sleep deprivation. Part of this stress response is activation of protective genes from the so-called FOXO pathway. This pathway is involved in a multitude of cellular processes that overall contribute to recovery, survival, and longevity. How sleep and lack of sleep trigger these changes in gene expression was not understood. To address this long-standing question, scientists at the Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC) of TU Dresden led by Prof. Henrik Bringmann studied sleep in C. elegans worms.

To trigger sleep, our body has to turn off wakefulness. There is a special set of sleep neurons for this task. These sleep neurons send signals that shut down other neurons responsible for arousal, and in this way promote sleep. Humans have thousands of these sleep neurons located in various centers in the brain, says Prof. Henrik Bringmann. What makes C. elegans a wonderful minimal model to study sleep is that it has only one key sleep-active neuron that induces sleep.

Its All About the Sleep Neuron

The Bringmann team wanted to test how this sleep neuron affects changes in gene expression during sleep. Sleep neurons are active during sleep, and they are activated even further during sleep deprivation. This might be counterintuitive at first but it is because our body acts as a homeostat. If something throws it off balance, our body tries to compensate to restore equilibrium. In this case, disturbing sleep causes the body to activate sleep neurons more and more, in an attempt to force sleep, explains Prof. Bringmann.

The team has genetically engineered two versions of the C. elegans worms. One type had its sleep neuron permanently inactive and the other permanently active. Both of these extreme situations resulted in the loss of sleep. This was an experimental advantage for us, as we were able to test whether the sleep neuron controls gene expression independently of sleep, says Prof. Bringmann.

As a result, scientists observed that the expression of stress response and protective genes decreased when sleep neuron was off. On the other hand, the expression of these genes increased when the sleep neuron was permanently active. These results show that the protective gene expression is a function of sleep neuron activity, explains Prof. Bringmann.

The results provide a new interpretation of the consequences of disturbing sleep in C. elegans. Our experiments suggest that the protective gene expression response that is observed when sleep is disturbed is rather not caused by the actual loss of sleep, but by the overactivation of the sleep neuron, says Prof. Bringmann.

Lessons From The Worm

The results provide an unexpected link between sleep neuron activity and gene expression. While the results originate from the C. elegans worm, they present a potential paradigm shift for understanding the consequences of sleep deprivation and insomnia also in other animals.

Disturbing sleep is known to cause overactivation of sleep-active neurons in many animals, adds Prof. Bringmann. It could be that the activity of sleep neurons controls stress response and the protective, longevity-related gene expression also in other animals and perhaps even in humans. These questions make for an interesting topic of further studies.

Original PublicationAnastasios Koutsoumparis, Luisa M.Welp, Alexander Wulf, Henning Urlaub, David Meierhofer, Stefan Brno, Bernd Timmermann, InkaBusac, Henrik Bringmann: Sleep neuron depolarization promotes protective gene expression changes and FOXO activation. Current Biology (May 2022)Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.04.012

About the Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC)The Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC) was founded in 2000 as a central scientific unit of the TU Dresden with the goal of combining modern approaches in molecular and cell biology with the traditionally strong engineering in Dresden. Since 2016, the BIOTEC is part of the central scientific unit Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering (CMCB) of the TU Dresden. The BIOTEC is fostering developments in research and teaching within the Molecular Bioengineering research field and combines approaches in cell biology, biophysics and bioinformatics. It plays a central role within the research priority area Health Sciences, Biomedicine and Bioengineering of the TU Dresden.www.tu-dresden.de/cmcb/biotecwww.tu-dresden.de/cmcb

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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With or without sleep: Sleep neuron activity boosts protective gene expression and safeguards survival - EurekAlert

CERo Therapeutics’ Multifunctional CER T Cells Synergize with Standard-of-Care Small Molecule Anti-Tumor Inhibitors Across Hematologic and Solid Tumor…

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CERo Therapeutics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company pioneering the development of novel autologous engineered immune cell therapies, today announced new preclinical data to be presented at the 25th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) demonstrating significant anti-tumor effects of chimeric engulfment receptor (CER) T cells when combined with small molecule therapies in both hematologic and solid tumor models.

CER T cells are multifunctional, genetically engineered T cells that elicit dual cytotoxic and myeloid-like anti-tumor function. CER T-cells, which target a phagocytic ligand that can be induced by small molecules, offer the potential for broad anti-tumor synergisms through a differentiated mechanism of tumor clearance. The data indicate the potential for the unique CER T-cell reprogramming technology to restore immune dysfunction in advanced tumor microenvironments when used in combination with small molecule inhibitors. The differentiated and combined approach offers the potential for more complete and durable responses than targeted agents alone.

Our technology platform reprograms cytotoxic T cells to build in innate immune functions, creating multifunctional CER T cell products that intersect conventional T-cell and myeloid cell-like functions to attack tumors, said Daniel Corey, MD, founder and Chief Scientific Officer of CERo. These data show that CER T cells synergize with current standard-of-care targeted therapies and result in improved tumor clearance and immune activation than either therapy alone in lymphoma and ovarian cancer models. We now have evidence in clinically relevant disease models supporting our approach and look forward to advancing our lead candidate toward IND-enabling studies.

In the ovarian cancer model, CER T cells synergized with sub-clinical doses of the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors olaparib and niraparib to eliminate tumor cells in vitro. In these studies, the addition of PARP inhibitors drove CER T-cell cytokine and proliferation responses against ovarian cancer cell targets compared to untreated samples. By comparison, CER T cells or PARP inhibitors alone demonstrated minimal anti-tumor function. Synergisms were also observed in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) models with the Brutons tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib. The combinatorial approach cleared 90% of tumor cells at sub-therapeutic concentrations of ibrutinib. CER T cells also proliferated and produced T-cell activation cytokines upon target engagement.

Notably, CER T cells exhibited a differentiated mechanism of tumor clearance via enhanced endo/phagocytosis. In co-cultures with MCL tumor cells, CER T cells showed a 15-fold increase in engulfment activity compared to unmodified T cells. Further, in a model system, CER T cells demonstrated the ability to capture, process, and present tumor antigen, and trigger antigen-specific T-cell responses. Finally, in vivo MCL xenograft studies showed that CERs reduced tumor volume relative to controls, with no overt morbidity.

An oral presentation of the abstract entitled Tim-4-Chimeric Engulfment Receptor (CER) T Cell Therapy Elicits Phosphatidylserine-Dependent Cytotoxic and Antigen-Presenting Cell-Like Function and Synergizes with Approved BTK Inhibitors for the Treatment of Hematologic Malignancies (abstract 89) will take place on Monday, May 16, 2022 at 4:45-5:00 p.m. ET during the CAR T-cells and Beyond session in Room 102 A/B.

Data from the poster entitled Tim-4-Chimeric Engulfment Receptor (CER) T Cells Elicit Phosphatidylserine-Dependent Cytotoxic and Innate-Like Function and Synergize with Approved PARP Inhibitors in an Ovarian Cancer Model (abstract 314) will be presented on Monday, May 16.

About CERos Platform TechnologyCERo's technology aims to expand the therapeutic potential of engineered T cell-based therapies by introducing distinct and complementary tumor cell clearance pathways into a single T cell. By engineering T cells to express CERs, CERos platform technology enables T cells to target tumors, induce cellular damage, engulf tumor fragments, and clear tumors, effectively harnessing the anti-tumor attributes of both innate and adaptive immune responses. CER T-cell products are designed to generate a more complete and durable anti-tumor response. This novel biology amends itself to combinations with classic CAR T-cell or small molecule therapy and has potential applications in hematologic malignancies and solid tumors.

About CERo TherapeuticsCERo Therapeutics, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company pioneering a new class of cell-based therapies that combine attributes of the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system into single T cells. The integrated approach draws on recent advances in synthetic and T-cell biology with the intent to improve upon and optimize cell therapy to increase the curative potential and safety profile of current approaches. CERo is advancing a pipeline of engineered CER T-cell products directed against hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. To learn more about the company and its science, please visit http://www.cero.bio.

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New partnerships, programs and positions are part of Princeton’s ongoing commitment to combat systemic racism – Princeton University

An innovative research partnership with the United Negro College Fund and historically Black colleges and universities, the creation of the Effron Center for the Study of America, which embraces diverse and inclusive perspectives on what it means to be American, and a new vice dean position focused on faculty diversity are among Princetons many recent initiatives to address systemic racism.

In summer 2020, President Christopher L. Eisgruber announced a University-wide commitment to combat Americas record of structural inequality and racism as well as Princetons place in that history. Since then, academic and administrative offices have developed action plans to support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on campus, as well as to help address racial inequities embedded within society.

Princetons efforts have continued and expanded during the current 2021-22 academic year, and an annual report will be published in the fall.

In the meantime, the University is providing an interim update on the projects, programs and partnerships launched so far this year. Of note this spring is the appointment of two new positions at the University:

Princeton published its first annual report in October 2021 highlighting diversity, equity and inclusion work during the 2020-21 academic year. The report also featured demographic and climate data about students, staff, faculty and postdoctoral scholars.

The Universitys diversity, equity and inclusion work has been an ongoing, community-wide process, drawing on the input of hundreds of students, faculty, postdoctoral scholars, staff and alumni, said Michele Minter, vice provost for institutional equity and diversity.

She added that the redoubled efforts of the last two years build on decades of diversity, equity and inclusion work at Princeton.

Moving toward greater diversity, equity and inclusion requires sustained, multigenerational commitment, Minter said. We look forward to working with partners on campus and within higher education on developing new ideas and efforts, and the University will continue to report on our outcomes as this work progresses.

Below is a snapshot of how Princeton has supported its racial equity commitments during the 2021-22 year. The Racial Equity website also includes these updates, as well as more information on the Universitys existing and new diversity and inclusion efforts.

Commitment: Explore the possibility of a new credit- or degree-granting program that would extend Princetons teaching to a new range of students from communities disproportionately affected by systemic racism and other forms of disadvantage.

The Office of the Provost has appointed Cole Crittenden as the inaugural vice provost for academic affairs. Crittenden will identify new opportunities to leverage Princeton's mission, advantages and resources to address the specific needs and aspirations of non-traditional students, with a particular focus on adult learners. The vice provost for academic affairs will work with campus leaders and partner with other institutions serving non-traditional students to seek creative opportunities to support faculty and students at these institutions through collaboration, exchanges and complementary educational experiences and mentoring.

Commitment: Assemble a faculty that more closely reflects both the diverse make-up of Princetons students and the national pool of candidates; establish and strengthen parallel initiatives to diversify the pipeline of Princetons postdoctoral researchers, lecturers, visiting faculty and graduate students; and re-conceive the Faculty Advisory Committee on Diversity.

The Office of the Dean of the Faculty has appointed Frederick Wherry as the inaugural vice dean for diversity and inclusion in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, and as the director of the Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellows Program. Wherry will serve as the primary thought leader on matters of diversity and inclusion with respect to all the populations appointed through the Office of the Dean of the Faculty. Twelve scholars from across the disciplines have been named Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellows for academic year 2021-22. They are the third cohort of fellows appointed at Princeton with the aim of enhancing diversity in the professoriate. The Effron Center for the Study of America was established last November through a major gift to the Venture Forward campaign. For over 75 years, Princetons Program in American Studies has supported teaching and research on America from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives. The Effron Center for the Study of America will enable Princeton to make crucial investments in faculty, visitors and fellows to support emerging areas of American studies scholarship and provide an expanded roster of curricular offerings. Members of the Faculty Advisory Committee on Diversity (FACD) were elected in spring 2021. Chaired by President Eisgruber, the FACD met regularly during the academic year to review and provide feedback on the strategic priorities and planning of senior University academic leaders on diversity and inclusion. The committee also met with the Board of Trustees Committee on Academic Affairs to summarize their efforts and receive feedback from trustees.

Commitment: Develop an institution-wide, multi-year action plan for supplier and contractor diversity.

The Office of Finance and Treasury adopted a multi-year supplier diversity action plan last spring. The plan aims to establish a more diverse supplier base for the University that will broaden the pool of supplier expertise, capabilities and perspectives, and include more businesses that are at least 51% owned and operated by people of color, women, veterans or members of the LGBTQ+ community. An associate director for supplier diversity, Michelle Thomas, has been hired to support the plans implementation. A partnership between Princeton University and the New Jersey Educational Facilities Authority (EFA) will expand opportunities for colleges and universities to invest with diverse asset managers. Approximately $430 million bonds were issued through the EFA and the financing represents the largest transaction in EFA history. Princeton and the EFA plan to continue their groundbreaking partnership creating opportunities for diverse investment banks to participate in future bond issuance. This month, the Office of Facilities convened an action forum of peer institutions, architects, construction leaders and others to explore collaborative strategies for enhancing the pipeline of minority-owned firms in the construction trades.

Commitment: Develop general principles to govern questions about when and under what circumstances it might be appropriate for the University to remove or contextualize the names and representations of historical individuals honored on the Princeton campus.

In April 2021, the Trustee Ad Hoc Committee to Govern Naming and Changes to Campus Iconography released its recommendations for overarching principles for naming, renaming and changing campus iconography. In conjunction with the Trustee Ad Hoc Committees recommendations to continue to diversify and contextualize the visual environment of the campus, Prospect House and sections of Nassau Hall were refreshed with new, community-oriented artwork. This spring, the CPUC Committee on Naming made recommendations to the Board of Trustees regarding additional honorific naming opportunities on campus, which will be announced soon. Three new portraits commissioned in conjunction with the Universitys History and Sense of Place Initiativehave been completed and are scheduled for dedication this month and in the fall. The portraits are of: former U.S. Senator William (Bill) Bradley, Class of 1965; Elaine Fuchs, Graduate School Class of 1977 and a world-renowned leader in cell biology and molecular genetics; and Ruth Simmons, a distinguished Princeton administrator and former vice provost who now serves as president of Prairie View A&M University. The three are among eight new portraits of alumni and former faculty and administrators commissioned since 2018 to reflect the diversity of the University community.

Commitment: Undertake a review of employee policies and benefits with an eye to providing equal access to these benefits for employees in lower-paid positions and others who may have been disproportionally affected by systemic racism or other identity-based inequities.

Enhancements to the Employee Child Care Assistance Program, Childrens Educational Assistance Plan, Long-Term Disability, and Adoption and Surrogacy Program were announced in April. The changes are aimed at promoting greater equity and access to employee benefits, such as doubling the amount that eligible employees may receive to help pay for their childrens college and trade school tuitions and fees.

Commitment: Strengthen support for racial equity and diversity-related professional development and other educational programming. The University organized the Ad Hoc Committee on Racial Equity and Diversity-Related Professional Development, which delivered its report in May 2021. Based on the committees recommendations, Princeton has approved an action plan focused on expansion of training resources and infrastructure. A staff person has been hired to coordinate the implementation of the action plan. The Keller Center launched its inaugural cohort for the Program in Institutional and Historical Racism. The University offered more than 141 professional development workshops and other opportunities to faculty, postdoctoral researchers and staff members during the 2021-22 academic year. These were offered through the Office of Human Resources and the Office of the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity, with support from the Office of the Dean of the Faculty.

Commitment: Support academic curricular and scholarly initiatives focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, and addressing systemic racism.

As a part of the Office of the Dean for Researchs Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Action Plan, the Princeton Alliance for Collaborative Research and Innovation (PACRI) was announced this month. PACRI is one of several initiatives aimed at growing a more inclusive research, innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at Princeton and beyond. To support the launch of PACRI, Princeton is working with the United Negro College Fund, which has lent its extensive expertise to facilitate the selection of an initial cohort of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) for the pilot phase. The initial partners are: Howard University, Jackson State University, Prairie View A&M University, Spelman College, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) announced the appointment of Rayna Truelove as the inaugural associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion. The newly created role at SPIA reflects the schools efforts to build and sustain an inclusive environment while aligning with the Universitys commitment to diversity and inclusion. The Princeton University Library launched the Early Career Fellowship Programin collaboration with Princetons Office of the Provost and North Carolina Central University School of Library and Information Sciences (NCCU SLIS). The partnership creates eight fellowship opportunities aimed at recent graduates of NCCU SLIS over the course of the next four years. The NCCU SLIS program stands as the only American Library Association-accredited program at an HBCU. Creating a long-term partnership with NCCU SLIS is part of PULs ongoing commitment to implement strategies aimed at recruiting and retaining staff from underrepresented groups. The first two fellows are expected to join PUL this summer, with another two starting in summer 2023. The Program in Linguistics expanded American Sign Language and now allows students to fulfill their language requirement with ASL courses. Princeton also offers the class American Deaf Culture. These courses are part of an expanded focus on disability, accessibility and inclusion across the University, including Princetons physical campus and digital assets, services and programs for students, and new academic programs. Later this month, the Graduate School will host the inaugural Inclusive Academy Symposium. The symposium is an in-person two-day diversity conference focused on supporting graduate students and post-doctoral scholars from underrepresented backgrounds on an array of topics related to success in the academy and on the job market. The symposium will culminate in a dinner recognizing the Best of Access, Diversity and Inclusion, also known as the BADI awards. The BADI awards will honor and celebrate faculty, staff, post-doctoral candidates and graduate students who have made significant impacts in the Princeton graduate student community around diversity and inclusion.

Commitment: Provide increased accountability around institutional goals, and collect and publish additional University data around diversity, equity and inclusion. The inaugural Diversity, Equity and Inclusion annual report, published in October 2021, is available for review or download. The second annual report will be released in fall 2022.

Commitment: Enhance strategies to assure diverse representation and viewpoints on external advisory committees. Over the past two years with the support of the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, the Office of Advancement has worked extensively to begin to build broadly diverse pipelines of accomplished alumni, parents, spouses and friends to recommend for service on advisory councils across disciplines. The Office of Advancement has also engaged academic department chairs to increase partnership on council pipeline development, governance and volunteer management.

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New partnerships, programs and positions are part of Princeton's ongoing commitment to combat systemic racism - Princeton University

Pathway Discovered That Drives Genomic Changes in Rare Childhood Cancer – Technology Networks

In studies using mice grafted with human Ewing sarcoma tissue, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center and colleagues have identified a biological pathway that is activated when tissue is starved of oxygen due to rapid growth of a tumor, thereby allowing cancer cells to make genetic changes so they can metastasize to the bone and thrive even when exposed to chemotherapy.

The pathway the scientists identified involves a receptor on the surface of a cancer cell, called Y5R, which plays a role in mediating oxygen-deprivation effects if it was blocked or turned off, genetic changes would be limited, thereby inhibiting metastasis of a tumor.

The finding appeared April 28, 2022, inNature Communications.

Each year, about 200 children and young adults in the United States are diagnosed with a Ewing tumor. About half of all Ewing sarcoma diagnoses are in people between the ages of 10 and 20; almost all cases of Ewing sarcoma occur in white and Hispanic people. If the tumor has spread to distant areas at the time of diagnosis, the 5-year survival rate is 38 percent but if it spreads to the bone, survival drops to between 8 and 14 percent.

While the role of rapid genetic changes in spurring the growth of cancer is well known, the mechanisms initiating these changes are not well understood, and strategies to prevent them are lacking, says Joanna Kitlinska, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology at Georgetown University and corresponding author of the study. Thats why our identification of Y5Rs involvement in initiating such genetic alterations is important, as it gives us a target to aim at or block that could avert cancer genome evolution and resulting progression to metastatic tumors that are resistant to chemotherapy.

The current standard of care for Ewing sarcoma involves systemic cell-killing chemotherapy, which can affect all cells in the body, leading to side effects. There are no treatments targeted at genetic alterations that are used in routine treatment of Ewing sarcoma, which might make treatments less toxic. In particular, adequate treatments for patients with metastatic disease are lacking.

There are currently a number of drugs available that target Y5R because its also implicated in regulating food intake and psychiatric disorders. Several Y5R-targeted drugs have been successfully used in animal studies; one of them was used in human clinical trials for obesity. However, most of them are designed to block functions in the brain that inhibit food intake. According to Kitlinska, the main challenge will be to design Y5R-targeted drugs that do not cross the blood-brain barrier, as these effects are undesirable in cancer patients.

We will keep performing experiments in mice in order to try to identify the mechanisms triggering spread of Ewing to the bone, says Kitlinska. Findings in Ewing sarcoma may also be relevant to other cancer types known to have high expression levels of Y5R, including another pediatric cancer, neuroblastoma, as well as common adulthood malignancies, such as breast, prostate and liver cancers.

Reference:Lu C, Mahajan A, Hong SH, et al. Hypoxia-activated neuropeptide Y/Y5 receptor/RhoA pathway triggers chromosomal instability and bone metastasis in Ewing sarcoma. Nat Commun. 2022;13(1):2323. doi:10.1038/s41467-022-29898-x

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Pathway Discovered That Drives Genomic Changes in Rare Childhood Cancer - Technology Networks

Post-doctoral Fellow, School of Biological Sciences job with THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG | 290892 – Times Higher Education

Work type: Full-timeDepartment: School of Biological Sciences (26000)Categories: Academic-related Staff

Applications are invited for appointment as Post-doctoral Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences (Ref.: 512648), to commence as soon as possible for one year, with the possibility of renewal subject to satisfactory performance.

Applicants should possess a Ph.D. degree in Cell/Molecular Biology, with good research experience in cell culture and molecular biology technique, including CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing. Those with research experience in the purification of endogenous complex for biochemical/structural study or mouse xenograft model are highly preferred. The appointee will participate in a collaborative research project investigating the molecular mechanism of the ultrafine anaphase bridge (UFB)-resolving complex (see Chan and West, 2018 Cell Cycle. PMCID: PMC6226235; Chan et al., 2018 Nature Cell Biology. PMCID: PMC5742284). Further information can be found at the lab website https://sites.google.com/site/garychanlab/home. Enquiries about the post should be sent to Dr. Gary Ying Wai Chan atgywchan@hku.hk.

A highly competitive salary commensurate with qualifications and experience will be offered, in addition to annual leave and medical benefits. At current rates, salaries tax does not exceed 15% of gross income.

The University only accepts online application for the above posts. Applicants should apply online and upload an up-to-date C.V. Review of applications will commence as soon as possible and continue until August 31, 2022, or until the posts are filled, whichever is earlier.

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Post-doctoral Fellow, School of Biological Sciences job with THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG | 290892 - Times Higher Education

Sung to lead cancer institute; Bankston wins fellowship – ASBMB Today

Sung takes over at San Antonio cancer institute

Patrick Sung, a professor, interim department chair and associate dean for research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio's Long School of Medicine, has taken on another leadership role there. On March 1, he became the new director of the Greehey Children's Cancer Research Institute. He succeeds interim director Manjeet Rao and former director Peter Houghton.

Patrick Sung

The institute, founded in 2004, is a group of 18 labs doing research focused on topics related to pediatric cancers, including cancer genomics, DNA repair, tumor biology and drug development. Research in Sungs lab, which is part of the institute, focuses on DNA damage repair. He studies homologous recombination as a mechanism for repairing double-stranded DNA breaks, focusing on the mechanism of the recombinase Rad51. His lab is known for recapitulating double-stranded DNA repair in vitro. Failure of such repair can lead to chromosomal rearrangements that drive the development of cancer; at the same time, cancer cells are unusually adept at repairing DNA damage. Several years ago, Sungs lab found that Rad51 interacts with the well-known BRCA tumor suppressor proteins, suggesting new insights into how BRCA proteins suppress tumor formation.

Sung earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry at the University of Oxford in 1985. He came to the U.S. for a postdoc at the University of Rochester. After starting his faculty career at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, he worked as an associate professor at UT Health San Antonio before taking a position at Yale in 2003, in the department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, which he later chaired. He was recruited back to the University of Texas in 2019 as a professor.

Sung has been an associate editor of the Journal of Biological Chemistry since 2014. He also is on the editorial board of the journal Genes and Development and formerly served on the editorial board of the journal Molecular & Cellular Biology.

Adriana Bankston, a legislative analyst for the University of California, has received a 2022 fellowship from Advancing Research Impact in Society, or ARIS, a program supported by the National Science Foundation.

Adriana Bankston

This award, shared with the University of California, Irvine's Harinder Singh, will support a program for training in science policy. The project, titled "Developing the next generation workforce through science policy as a bridge between science and society," will use insights from a course that Bankston and Singh taught at Irvine to develop an educational toolkit for universities and to build a community of practice in science policy and advocacy.

Bankston received her Ph.D. in biochemistry and cell and developmental biology at Emory University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Louisville before becoming a policy and advocacy fellow at the Society for Neuroscience. Today, in addition to her position at UC, she works on numerous initiatives as chief executive officer and managing publisher of the Journal of Science Policy and Governance, and as a research investigator with the STEM Advocacy Institute. In February, she was part of a panel discussion hosted by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine's strategic council for research excellence, integrity and trust. She is also an ASBMB Today contributor.

The Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society is a project to improve public engagement with science and diversify the research workforce. Its fellows, selected annually, work on projects that synthesize research to help scientists achieve these goals.

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Sung to lead cancer institute; Bankston wins fellowship - ASBMB Today

Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroscience / Molecular and Cellular Biology / Life Sciences job with NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE | 290389 – Times Higher…

Job Description

Yale-NUS College is a highly selective liberal arts and science college in Singapore. Co-founded by Yale University and the National University of Singapore, the College is committed to excellence in research and teaching in a full residential programme that integrates living and learning. Its curriculum educates students in Asian and Western intellectual traditions as well as current scientific thought.

Yale-NUS College is seeking to hire a highly motivated Research Fellow in Mechanisms Underlying Behavior laboratory (https://mathurulab.com) directed by Assistant Professor Ajay S Mathuru for a project funded by an MOE Tier 2 grant (Nov 2021 to Oct 2024) on a three-year contract. The lab conducts research jointly at E6 Yale-NUS Research Labs and the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology institute in Biopolis (Proteos building). The main focus of the lab is to understand how brains operate to generate behavior, using methods of genetic manipulation, behavioral assays and neurophysiological observations. These findings are applied to understand the neurogenetics of human disorders of the brain. Current studies examine genes implicated in addiction, anxiety disorders, depression, epilepsy, and neurodegeneration in humans. See examples of our publications hereand see a recent news report here.

Are you excited about neuroscience research? So, are we. Apart from the standard requirements such as sharing the responsibility for scientific sourcing and procurement; safety and housekeeping of the laboratory; any other duties to ensure efficient lab work, the successful candidate is expected to:

Qualifications

We invite applications from exceptional candidates with a deep interest in neuroscience. The prospective candidate must:

More Information

For full consideration, please submit the following materials toAssistant Professor Ajay Sriram Mathuruvia email atajay.mathuru@yale-nus.edu.sg.

I understand that by sharing my personal data with Yale-NUS College, Iauthoriseits use for the purposes of thisapplication.

Only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Location: Kent Ridge CampusOrganization:Division of Science

Covid-19 Message

At NUS, the health and safety of our staff and students are one of our utmost priorities, and COVID-vaccination supports our commitment to ensure the safety of our community and to make NUS as safe and welcoming as possible. Many of our roles require a significant amount of physical interactions with students/staff/public members. Even for job roles that may be performed remotely, there will be instances where on-campus presences are required.

In accordance with Singapore's legal requirements, unvaccinated workers will not be able to work on the NUS premises with effect from 15 January 2022. As such, job applicants will need to be fully COVID-19 vaccinated to secure successful employment with NUS.

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Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroscience / Molecular and Cellular Biology / Life Sciences job with NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE | 290389 - Times Higher...

‘We were so damn lucky to find this’: Tennesseans close to developing radiation exposure drug – Knoxville News Sentinel

Russian troops exposed to radiation, Chernobyl experts say

Thousands of enemy tanks and troops rumbled into Chernobyl during Russias invasion of Ukraine churning up highly contaminated soil.

Scott L. Hall, USA TODAY

Scientists in Tennessee are developing a promising drug they desperately hope will never be used.

Its a treatment that could rescue people from gastrointestinal acute radiation syndrome. In blunt terms, radiation poisoning.

"We were so damn lucky to find this mechanism that nature invented for us," said Dr. Gabor Tigyi,a cell biologist and cancer researcher at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. "We made a drug to harness it. .. It took about 20 years to figure out what we had in hand."

There is no drug on the market for the treatment of this illness. It's a weakness in our country's preparedness for nuclear accidents and attacks.

The drug is important locally, too. Much of the nations nuclear waste is processed in Tennessee. The state is home to many legacy nuclear sites, some of which date back to the World War II Manhattan Project.

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When the human body is exposed to radiation, high-energy particles penetrate cells and tissues to damage our DNA and cellular machinery. DNA damage is the reason why radiation exposure can induce cancers. Not all DNA damage repair occurs without error, and those errors can induce mutations that favor tumors.

When the body is exposed to very high levels of radiation for a brief period of time the kind of exposure that can happen in a nuclear accident the danger isnt necessarily cancer but loss of function in organs and tissues. Each tissue has different tolerances for radiation doses.

Two of the most sensitive tissues are bone marrow and intestinal tissue. Bone marrow is the nursery of red and white blood cells. Stem cells in the bone marrow constantly grow and divide to replace blood cells that expire.

"The lymphocytes in the blood and bone marrow, those are exquisitely sensitive," said Carol Iddins, director of theRadiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site in Oak Ridge. "They are arguably the most sensitive cells in our bodies so they're going to drop faster and harder."

But bone marrow damage from radiation already has treatments, and they are effective. Those drugs were developed for cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.

"That was a low-hanging fruit, really," said Andrea DeCarlo-Cohen, director of the, Radiation and Nuclear Countermeasures Program at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Because bone marrow complications kill much faster than other radiation complications, the drugs were prioritized, she said.

But no treatment existed for gastrointestinal cells.

"It's a much more complex injury," DeCarlo-Cohen said. "The stem cell biology of the GI tract is behind. ...It's just a much more complex structure."

The intestine is lined with a single layer of rapidly-diving cells. These cells grow upward into wavy, hair-like structures called villi. The stem cells and youngest cells are at the bottom. As cells age, they are pushed up the villi until they are shed into the intestine. Each intestinal cell lives for about four or five days before being shed.

That kind of cell turnover requires active adult stem cells. The intestine is full of them, constantly growing and dividing. When the intestine is hit by a high dose of radiation, it can damage the stem cells, causing them to self-destruct.

One of the ways the body prevents most cancersis a cellular self-destruct mechanism called apoptosis.

Tigyi'sdrug stimulates the DNA repair mechanism and slows down apoptosis. This buys some time for the intestinal stem cells to save themselves from radiation damage.

In tests on mice and monkeys, Tigyi's drug improved the survival rate after radiation exposure.

Tigyioriginally stumbled onto this mechanism while looking at platelets, the cell fragments your body uses to form blood clots. He found a short-lived signaling molecule, LPA,associated with wound repair.

"Our compound is modeled after this natural compound,"Tigyi said. "It promotes these mechanisms that lead to survival, regeneration and radiation protection."

If you can interrupt the self-destruct process long enough for the cells natural DNA repair mechanism to kick in, then you can potentially savestem cells and prevent catastrophic damage.

"The fundamental issue is enhancing DNA repair," Tigyi said. "Your cells are programmed such that if DNA damage is not repaired, the cell undergoes apoptosis and dies."

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Dr. Shannon McCool was brought in to shepherd the drug process through FDA approvals. McCool is a graduate of UT's Health Science Center who has worked for large pharmaceutical operations like Eli Lilly and has experience navigating the regulatory landscape.

In 2000, the duo founded RxBio, a pharmaceutical company in Johnson City, toensure the drug was approved for treatment. The research wasin the final rounds of safety testing when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

The pandemic didnt just make the research harder from a logistical standpoint.McCool said it becamedifficult to get funding.

"Nobody would give you the time of day," McCool said, referring to discussions with the Pentagon about defense-oriented medical funding."COVID-19 had sucked all the air out of the room."

A drug like this doesnt have to go through the standard FDA phased clinical trials because, of course, its not ethical to irradiate human beings.But itdoes have to go through extensive safety testing in large animal model systems. Thatcan be expensive.

Nowthere is potential space for the drug to get additional funding. Tigyi hopes that working with the Tennessee congressional delegation will help secure enough funding to begin passing the FDA's safety standards.

"We've been barely staying alive for the last several years," McCool said. "We estimate that we need $35 million, plus another 50-100 million on top of that to get everything done that we estimate the FDA will want us to do."

In an earlier version of this storyDr. Gabor Tigyi's name wasmisspelled. The error has been corrected in this version.

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'We were so damn lucky to find this': Tennesseans close to developing radiation exposure drug - Knoxville News Sentinel

Retired Astronaut Wants to Grow Cannabinoids in Space – High Times

In the annals of phony viral images, the one of former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield holding a bag of weed while aboard the International Space Station is right up there.

The photo made the rounds in 2018, prompting a fact-check from the online watchdog Snopes.

In the original photo that was posted to Hadfields Twitter account in 2013, he is seen holding a bag of Easter Eggs.

The internet being the internet, that same image was manipulated years later and reposted by a Facebook page (ironically named Pictures in History), this time with the eggs replaced with ganja.

Not only is the image of Chris Hadfield holding a bag of marijuana fake, but its unlikely that any similar (but genuine) photographs of astronauts with drug paraphernalia exist, as NASA has been a drug-free workplace since at least the mid-1980s, Snopes said.

But the spurious image may have been somewhat prescient. Late last year, Hadfield joined the board of BioHarvest Sciences, a biotech firm involved in medicinal cannabis.

In an interview with Futurism that was published this week, Hadfield and BioHarvest CEO Ilan Sobel detailed how space might even be the perfect environment to produce out-of-this-world, medical-grade cannabinoids.

We see the potential ability for valuable minor cannabinoids to be grown at significantly higher quantities compared to its growth on Earth, Sobel told Futurism.

These unique compositions of full-spectrum cannabis could have significant value in providing more optimized treatment solutions for many palliative diseases where current pharma synthesized compounds are not delivering adequate solutions, he added.

But Hadfield told Futurism that cannabinoids are only one part of BioHarvests cultivation program, and what really drew him to the company was the scalability of the biotech platform, and how it can solve a lot of the agricultural problems we face in feeding 10 billion people.

As such, BioHarvest is focusing its efforts on providing future astronautsand humans back on the groundwith microgravity-enhanced nutrients, rather than a way to get high, Futurism reported.

Hadfield joined BioHarvests Board of Advisers in December, saying at the time that the companys proprietary platform technology has the potential to make a significant impact on the world as well as in bio-space science.

The company has built a world-class team of scientists, and I look forward to working with them, with my fellow advisors, to scale BioHarvests solution, Hadfield said in the announcement.

Sobel said at the time that Hadfields unparalleled experience will help marry our plant cellular biology expertise with space science.

He is a great addition to our advisory board at this phase of our growth, and hell help us in our drive to be a global biotech leader, Sobel said.

As for that infamous viral image, Hadfield told Futurism that toking in space might not be such a great idea.

On the space station, if theres an emergency, you are the fire department, he said. You cant have intoxicated yourself or inebriated yourself or whatever, just because if something goes wrong, then youll die.

He did leave open the possibility, however.

Once the population gets large enough, once you get to a stable enough situation, people are gonna want, you know, a drink, Hadfield told Futurism. People are gonna want some pot.

When it comes to cannabinoids and space, Hadfield and BioHarvest arent exactly going where no man has gone before.

In 2020, the ag biotech company Front Range Biosciences announced that it will be sending cell cultures of the hemp plant to the International Space Station on a resupply trip, Rolling Stone reported at the time, adding that the purpose of the project is to see whether or not these cells develop any genetic mutations in those conditions, and once they return, scientists will analyze their DNA to see if they have changed at all.

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Retired Astronaut Wants to Grow Cannabinoids in Space - High Times