Free Republic

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – The work of a team of scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) led by Professor Nicholas Tonks FRS, suggests a way to overcome one of the major technical obstacles preventing a leading therapeutic target for diabetes and obesity from being addressed successfully by novel drugs. The target is an enzyme called PTP1B, discovered by Tonks in 1988 and long known to be an important player in the signaling pathway within cells that regulates the response to insulin. Insulin is a hormone that regulates carbohydrate and fat metabolism by spurring cells, particularly in the liver...

US researchers have found an antibody that hunts down prostate cancer cells in mice and can destroy the killer disease even in an advanced stage, a study showed Monday.The antibody, called F77, was found to bond more readily with cancerous prostate tissues and cells than with benign tissue and cells, and to promote the death of cancerous tissue, said the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). When injected in mice, F77 bonded with tissue where prostate cancer was the primary cancer in almost all cases (97 percent) and in tissue cores where the cancer...

Single molecule can bind firmly to two different antigens. The two-in-one antibody.llison Bruce and Jenny Bostrom Researchers have challenged an old immunological dogma — that an antibody can bind to only a single target or antigen — by engineering an antibody to bind tightly to two distinct proteins. The antibody, described in Science1, blocks two proteins: vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). VEGF is thought to promote growth in tumours, and HER2 is highly expressed by some aggressive breast tumours. Separate antibodies that target each protein individually are already used to treat some...

By Michael Perry Tue Aug 16,10:33 AM ET SYDNEY (Reuters) - Scientists in Australia's tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antimicrobial drugs for humans, after tests showed that the reptile's immune system kills HIV. The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights that often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs. "They tear limbs off each other and despite the fact that they live in this environment with all these microbes, they heal up very rapidly and normally almost...

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine have shown that an antibody treatment administered to the brain surface in mice with Alzheimer disease is capable of rapidly reversing disease-related structural nerve damage. The study will appear online on January 20 in advance of print publication in the February 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

New research into primitive protective proteins from the immune systems of sharks could lead to more versatile drugs to battle diseases such as cancer and dangerous bacterial infections and to robust diagnostic kits that could easily leave the lab, an area of intense research following the anthrax attacks of 2001. In a study published Thursday online by the journal Science, researchers at The Scripps Institute in La Jolla, CA, and the University of Maryland at Baltimore determined that the structure of the primitive antibody that marks a difference between the immune systems of sharks and mammals is unusually simple. Ian...