Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

The last time i blogged on stem cells it was rather about a challenge in Fresh hurdle for stem cell hunt , but this time its more on a positive note and fairly quite an interesting and welcome news... a SERENDIPITY! Inspired by a chance discovery during another experiment, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have created a small molecule that stimulates nerve stem cells to begin maturing into nerve cells in culture. "This provides a critical starting point for neuro-regenerative medicine and brain cancer chemotherapy," said Dr. Jenny Hsieh, assistant professor of molecular biology and senior author of the paper, Small-molecule activation of neuronal cell fate, Jay W Schneider, Zhengliang Gao, Shijie Li, Midhat Farooqi, Tie-Shan Tang, Ilya Bezprozvanny, Doug E Frantz, Jenny Hsieh SUMMARY: We probed an epigenetic regulatory path from small molecule to neuronal gene activation. Isoxazole small molecules triggered robust neuronal differentiation in adult neural ...

By activating a cancer suppressor gene, a small molecule called nutlin-3a can block cancer cell division, according to researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. This activation of the p53 gene leads to cellular senescence. An opportunity for new genetic mutations occurs each time a cell divides, so limiting the number of cell divisions in a cancer cell inhibits tumor progression. Activation of p53 can suppress tumor growth through more than one mechanism. It can interfere with the cell cycle, prompting a cell with unrepaired DNA damage to commit suicide through a complex signaling pathway called apoptosis. Alternatively, p53 may trigger cellular senescence in response to DNA damage or cellular stress. The expression of p53 is regulated by Mdm2, a protein that is overexpressed in several human cancers. Nutlins are small-molecule ...