(Press-News.org) Laura-Isobel McCall, Ph.D., and Zhibo Yang, Ph.D., co-principal investigators and associate professors of chemistry and biochemistry in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, have been awarded a prestigious R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health for their project, “Novel single-cell mass spectrometry to assess the role of intracellular drug concentration and metabolism in antimicrobial treatment failure.”
“Our project builds upon Dr. Yang’s research that shows variations in chemotherapy drugs inside individual cancer cells,” McCall said. “Using his techniques with single-cell mass spectrometry, if we find that cells with persistent pathogens also have less intracellular drug levels, then we could explain antimicrobial treatment failure.”
McCall’s lab, which works on parasitic infections, will collaborate with Carolyn Ibberson, Ph.D., assistant professor of microbiology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, and James Papin, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology in the OU College of Medicine. Ibberson’s lab will focus on bacterial infections while Papin’s will examine viral infections and focus on PAXLOVID, a COVID-19 treatment.
“My lab focuses on mass spectrometry, which is a very sensitive technique used to detect and identify molecules using trace amounts of samples,” Yang said. “With this tool, we can examine individual cells that are less than 10 micrometers in size to determine their resistance to drugs used to fight parasites, bacteria and viruses.”
This National Institutes of Health grant is expected to provide $2.65 million in funding over five years.
“I think this funding recognizes how exciting our idea is, and what a big impact our project can have,” McCall said. “It also acknowledges that our approach is a new way of thinking about infectious disease treatment failures. If our hypothesis is correct, it could change how we manage and treat infections and what we do about antimicrobial treatment failure.”
Learn more about this project at nih.gov.
END
Researchers use mass spectrometry to explore antimicrobial resistance
2023-07-19
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Novel therapeutic strategy against melanoma: combined targeting of hedgehog signaling and BRD4
2023-07-19
“This evidence strengthens the relevance of the findings by Pietrobono et al., shedding light on the potential application of SMO inhibitors in concert with BRD4 inhibitors.”
BUFFALO, NY- July 19, 2023 – A new editorial paper was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on May 26, 2023, entitled, “Combined targeting of HEDGEHOG signaling and BRD4 as a novel therapeutic option against melanoma.”
The Hedgehog-GLI (HH/GLI) pathway is aberrantly activated in several types of cancer. Canonical HH/ GLI pathway is triggered by binding of HH ligands to the twelve-pass transmembrane receptor Patched 1 (PTCH1), which retrieves its inhibition ...
Large study finds small associations between systemic inflammation and later dementia
2023-07-19
A study of data from about 500,000 people in the UK Biobank has uncovered small but statistically significant associations between signs of systemic inflammation and later risk of dementia. Dr. Krisztina Mekli of The University of Manchester, UK, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 19, 2023.
Millions of people around the world have Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia, and researchers are working to tease out the complex mechanisms behind these conditions. Prior research has suggested that inflammation—activation of the body’s innate immune system—may ...
STEM instructors who are women drive disclosure of concealable stigmatized identities to undergraduates
2023-07-19
Women working as STEM instructors are more likely than men in the same profession to disclose to their undergraduate students identities which could carry stigma, such as depression or growing up in a low-income household. In the new study, published July 19, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Carly Busch of Arizona State University, USA, and colleagues suggest that these decisions to disclose may be in order to act as role models for students.
Concealable stigmatized identities (CSIs) are identities that ...
Researchers used a LEGO robotics kit as a cheap, effective way to purify self-assembling DNA origami
2023-07-19
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283134
Article Title: Gradient-mixing LEGO robots for purifying DNA origami nanostructures of multiple components by rate-zonal centrifugation
Author Countries: USA
Funding: The research in Hariadi lab was supported by the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award (1DP2AI144247), National Science Foundation SemiSynBio II (2027215), and Arizona Biomedical Research Consortium (ADHS17-00007401). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. END ...
A 300,000 year-old double-pointed wooden stick was produced by Middle Pleistocene humans using sophisticated woodworking techniques and was likely used for throwing during hunts
2023-07-19
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287719
Article Title: A double-pointed wooden throwing stick from Schöningen, Germany: Results and new insights from a multianalytical study
Author Countries: UK, Germany
Funding: T.T. and this project are funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – project number 447423357. https://www.dfg.de/. The project is further funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture, with funds from the Future Lower Saxony Programme of the Volkswagen Foundation – project ...
1 in 5 rabbit owners in the UK report painful or debilitating ear disease in their pet, though it may be under-diagnosed and under-treated, with lop-eared and older rabbits being most at risk
2023-07-19
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285372
Article Title: Ear health and quality of life in pet rabbits of differing ear conformations: A UK survey of owner-reported signalment risk factors and effects on rabbit welfare and behaviour
Author Countries: UK
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. M.R.D.K included some of this questionnaire in part-fulfilment of her Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine at Royal Veterinary College. ...
CHOP researchers reveal how NSAIDs worsen C. difficile infections
2023-07-19
Philadelphia, July 19, 2023—Why do nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) exacerbate gastrointestinal infections by Clostridioides difficile, the leading cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea worldwide? In a new paperpublished in Science Advances, researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have begun to answer that question, showing that NSAIDs disrupt the mitochondria of cells lining the colon, sensitizing them to damage by pathogenic toxins.
Clostridioides ...
Early humans were weapon woodwork experts, study finds
2023-07-19
A 300,000-year-old hunting weapon has shone a new light on early humans as woodworking masters, according to a new study.
State-of-the-art analysis of a double-pointed wooden throwing stick, found in Schöningen in Germany three decades ago, shows it was scraped, seasoned and sanded before being used to kill animals. The research indicates early humans’ woodworking techniques were more developed and sophisticated than previously understood.
The findings, published today (Wednesday, 19 July) in PLOS ONE, also suggest the ...
New therapeutic target for Parkinson’s disease discovered
2023-07-19
· Contacts between lysosomes and mitochondria are broken due to Parkinson’s mutation
· Lysosomes cannot ‘feed’ mitochondria with essential metabolites
CHICAGO --- Northwestern Medicine scientists have uncovered a new mechanism by which mutations in a gene parkin contribute to familial forms of Parkinson's disease. The discovery opens a new avenue for Parkinson’s therapeutics, scientists report in a new study.
The Northwestern scientists discovered that mutations in parkin result in a breakdown ...
Enabling autonomous exploration
2023-07-19
A research group in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute is creating the next generation of explorers — robots.
The Autonomous Exploration Research Team has developed a suite of robotic systems and planners enabling robots to explore more quickly, probe the darkest corners of unknown environments, and create more accurate and detailed maps. The systems allow robots to do all this autonomously, finding their way and creating a map without human intervention.
"You can set it in any environment, like a department store or a residential building after a disaster, and off it goes," ...