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Institute News

Our top 10 discoveries of 2020

AuthorMonica May
Date

December 14, 2020

notebook with Top 10 written at top of page

This year required dedication, patience and perseverance as we all adjusted to a new normal—and we’re proud that our scientists more than rose to the occasion.

Despite the challenges presented by staggered-shift work and remote communications, our researchers continued to produce scientific insights that lay the foundation for achieving cures.

Read on to learn more about our top 10 discoveries of the year—which includes progress in the fight against COVID-19, insights into treating deadly cancers, research that may help children born with a rare condition, and more.
 

  1. Nature study identifies 21 existing drugs that could treat COVID-19

    Sumit Chanda, PhD, and his team screened one of the world’s largest drug collections to find compounds that can stop the replication of SARS-CoV-2. This heroic effort was documented by the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, TIME, NPR and additional outlets—and his team continues to work around the clock to advance these potential treatment options for COVID-19 patients.

     

  2. Fruit flies reveal new insights into space travel’s effect on the heart

    Wife-and-husband team Karen Ocorr, PhD, and Rolf Bodmer, PhD, shared insights that hold implications for NASA’s plan to build a moon colony by 2024 and send astronauts to Mars.

     

  3. Personalized drug screens could guide treatment for children with brain cancer

    Robert Wechsler-Reya, PhD, and Jessica Rusert, PhD, demonstrated the power of personalized drug screens for medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain cancer in children.

     

  4. Preventing pancreatic cancer metastasis by keeping cells “sheltered in place”

    Cosimo Commisso, PhD, identified druggable targets that hold promise as treatments that stop pancreatic cancer’s deadly spread.

     

  5. Prebiotics help mice fight melanoma by activating anti-tumor immunity

    Ze’ev Ronai, PhD, showed that two prebiotics, mucin and inulin, slowed the growth of melanoma in mice by boosting the immune system’s ability to fight cancer.

     

  6. New test for rare disease identifies children who may benefit from a simple supplement

    Hudson Freeze, PhD, helped create a test that determines which children with CAD deficiency—a rare metabolic disease—are likely to benefit from receiving a nutritional supplement that has dramatically improved the lives of other children with the condition.

     

  7. Drug guides stem cells to desired location, improving their ability to heal

    Evan Snyder, MD, PhD, created the first drug that can lure stem cells to damaged tissue and improve treatment efficacy—a major advance for regenerative medicine.

     

  8. Scientists identify a new drug target for dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD)

    Francesca Marassi, PhD, showed that the blood protein vitronectin is a promising drug target for dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision loss in Americans 60 years of age and older.

     

  9. Scientists uncover a novel approach to treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy

    Pier Lorenzo Puri, MD, PhD, collaborated with scientists at Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome to show that pharmacological (drug) correction of the content of extracellular vesicles released within dystrophic muscles can restore their ability to regenerate muscle and prevent muscle scarring.

     

  10. New drug candidate reawakens sleeping HIV in the hopes of a functional cure

    Sumit Chanda, PhD, Nicholas Cosford, PhD, and Lars Pache, PhD, created a next-generation drug called Ciapavir (SBI-0953294) that is effective at reactivating dormant human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—an approach called “shock and kill.”

Institute News

An “Odd” gene affects aging of the heart

AuthorJessica Moore
Date

February 1, 2017

hands holding heart

As we get older, our hearts change in ways that make it harder for them to pump blood. They become stiffer, less efficient at generating energy, and more likely to respond to damage with inflammatory chemicals. To help find new ways to slow that decline, researchers in the laboratory of Rolf Bodmer, PhD, professor and director of the Development, Aging and Regeneration Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), are looking at how the heart ages at a molecular level.

Bodmer’s team recently discovered a new potential contributor to cardiac aging, a protein called Odd, opening up a novel direction for research on therapies to prolong heart health. In their study, published in the journal Aging Cell, the gene for Odd, which controls the activity of other genes by turning them on or off, was found to be turned up in the hearts of old fruit flies. Bodmer’s lab studies flies because their hearts deteriorate with age in the same ways that human hearts do, but their genetics are much simpler.

“It’s intriguing that Odd is linked to aging because its known function is in early development—it’s crucial for the heart to form properly, and, as we found here, is also important for preventing the heart from deteriorating prematurely,” says Bodmer.

Odd’s involvement in cardiac aging was uncovered by a genome-wide comparison of the genes that are active in the hearts of young and old flies. Odd was one of over 200 genes whose activity was significantly elevated in older flies. Remarkably, further analysis showed that in aging hearts, increasing Odd activity temporarily protects the heart from decline by supporting proper electrical function and heart rate.

“Our findings suggest that increased levels of Odd in older hearts may be a way to compensate for aging-associated loss of function,” comments Bodmer. “In combination with a companion paper showing that another gene-regulating protein, FoxO, helps preserve the adult heart, they support a growing body of evidence that genes that are crucial in development are also important to keep the heart running well into old age.”

Bodmer contributed to the other paper, from the lab of Anthony Cammarato, PhD, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and previously a staff scientist in Bodmer’s lab. The paper showed that FoxO helps protect the aging heart by turning on genes that help get rid of unneeded proteins.

“Following up on the findings of both studies could point to ways to keep our hearts working better for longer,” Bodmer adds.

The Bodmer lab paper is available online here and the Cammarato lab paper is here.

Institute News

The bright side of free radicals

Authorsgammon
Date

September 17, 2014

Header image

In a new study by Rolf Bodmer, Ph.D., director of the Development, Aging, and Regeneration Program at Sanford-Burnham, and Hui-Ying Lim, Ph.D., assistant member of the Free Radical Biology and Aging Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation as lead author, researchers report a previously unrecognized role for reactive oxygen species (ROS) in mediating normal heart function. The findings show how under normal physiological conditions, ROS produced in non-muscle heart cells act on nearby muscle cells to maintain normal cardiac function. The results provide vital insight on how ROS direct cell communications, and in addition to the heart, may be important for the function of other organs.

“Until now, scientists knew that ROS in non-muscle heart cells affected nearby muscle cells in conditions of cellular damage and stress,” said Bodmer. “We have shown that ROS have an essential role in normal cardiac health. Understanding the fundamental communication systems in healthy and damaged hearts has important implications for developing protective and therapeutic interventions for cardiac diseases.”

ROS—a reputation of destruction ROS are free radicals that are usually associated with diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative disorders. ROS have atoms with an unpaired electron in their orbit which can send them on a rampage to pair with other molecules, including DNA—causing mutations that contribute to disease. Antioxidants are molecules that soak up the extra electron and remove free radicals, raising the possibility that antioxidant vitamins and supplements might have a protective role in human health.

Opinions on antioxidant supplements are highly polarized. Several large-scale randomized trials of supplements have had inconsistent results and the antioxidant pendulum appears to be swinging from healthy to insignificant, and in some cases even toxic. More reliable data is needed to better define the role of antioxidants in the prevention of cardiovascular and other diseases.

ROS regulate cardiac function by cell-to-cell signaling The new study, published in Cell Reports, illustrates a previously unappreciated role for ROS signaling in the heart and supports the critical concept that optimal levels of ROS are needed in the body to provide protection to the heart and other organs.

“Interestingly, we found that ROS do not diffuse from non-muscle cells into cardiac muscle cells to exert their function. Instead, ROS in the non-muscle (pericardial) cells exert their function by starting a specific signaling cascade within the cell that in turn acts on nearby cardiac muscle cells to regulate their proper function,” said Lim. “Although the precise mechanism by which ROS maintain cardiac functions has yet to be established, our research provides a more complete understanding of the functional interactions between cardiac muscle cells and non-muscle cells—and possibly cell-to-cell (paracrine) communications in other tissues.”

The research team used Drosophila melanogaster—the common fruit fly—to decipher the ROS signals that impact the cell function. The Drosophila heart shares many of the same genes, proteins, and structural characteristics with humans, and has been used for decades as a model to understand the human genes that govern healthy development as well as those involved with disease.

A link to the paper can be found at: http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247(14)00143-0