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Epigenetic therapies — targeting enzymes that alter what genes are turned on or off in a cell — are of growing interest in oncology as a way to make cancers less aggressive or less malignant. But now, at least one epigenetic therapy that had looked promising for lung cancer appears to boost the cancer stem cells that are believed to drive tumors. A study published today in Nature Communications also identifies a strategy that reduces these stem cells, curbing lung cancer in mice. …
It’s known that cancer involves unchecked cell growth and that a pathway that regulates the size of organs, known as Hippo, is also involved in cancer. It’s further known that a major player in this pathway, YAP, drives many types of tumors. What’s been lacking is how to turn this knowledge into a practical cancer treatment. In a study published today in Nature Communications, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital identify a target downstream of YAP, called NUAK2, and show that it can readily be inactivated with a small molecule.
“The Hippo pathway, and especially YAP, has been hard to target with drugs,” says senior study author Fernando Camargo, PhD, of Boston Children’s Stem Cell Research program. “This is the first demonstration of a ‘druggable’ molecule that could be targeted in any type of tumor driven by YAP.” …
Most people who diet to lose weight regain the pounds within a year or two, in part because the body adapts by slowing down metabolism and burning fewer calories. A new study known as the Framingham State Food Study, or (FS)2, suggests that low-carb diets can help people keep the weight off, showing that eating fewer carbohydrates increases the number of calories burned. The findings, published today in the BMJ, could help make obesity treatment more effective. …
Zebrafish are an emerging power tool in cancer research. They can be engineered to light up when certain genes turn on — capturing the moment when a cancer is initiated. Because they breed so quickly, they lend themselves to rapid, large-scale chemical screening studies, so can help identify tumor promoters and suppressors. Now, as a new study in Science demonstrates, zebrafish can also help scientists dissect the intricate molecular pathways that underlie many cancers, and could help guide treatment strategies — in this case, for mucosal melanoma. …
Ed. note: This is an update of a post that originally appeared in 2014.
The neural tube is supposed to close during the first month of prenatal development, forming the spinal cord and the brain. In children with spina bifida, it doesn’t close completely, leaving the nerves of the spinal cord exposed and subject to damage. The most common and serious form of spina bifida, myelomeningocele, sets a child up for lifelong disability, causing complications such as hydrocephalus, leg paralysis, and loss of bladder and bowel control.
A growing body of research from Boston Children’s Hospital, though still in animal models, suggests that spina bifida could be repaired at least partially early in pregnancy, through intrauterine injections of a baby’s own cells. …
The developing brain is constantly forming new connections, or synapses, between nerve cells. Many connections are eventually lost, while others are strengthened. In 2012, Beth Stevens, PhD and her lab at Boston Children’s Hospital showed that microglia, immune cells that live in the brain, prune back unwanted synapses by engulfing or “eating” them. They also identified a set of “eat me” signals required to promote this process: complement proteins, best known for helping the immune system combat infection.
In new work published today in Neuron, Stevens and colleagues reveal the flip side: a “don’t eat me” signal that prevents microglia from pruning useful connections away. …
On October 30th, 2018, Boston Children’s will be marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of its Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center.
As the African-American civil rights movement was flowering in the 1960s, a less visible civil rights movement was dawning. And so was a revolution in science that may outshine that spurred by the U.S. space program.
It was a time when children with what is now called intellectual disability (ID) or developmental disability (DD) were “excused” from school and routinely abandoned to institutions. “Schools” like the Fernald Center in Massachusetts and the Willowbrook State School in New York housed thousands of residents.
Some participated in research, but not the kind you might think. At Willowbrook, children were deliberately infected with hepatitis to test a new treatment. At Fernald, they were deliberately exposed to radiation in an experiment approved by the Atomic Energy Commission. Institutional review boards did not then exist.
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy convened a panel to propose a “National Action to Combat Mental Retardation,” at the strong urging of his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Three weeks before JFK’s assassination, the first legislation passed. It changed the course of history. …
Many migrant children separated from their parents at the U.S. border, some of them very young, have landed in shelters where they often experience stress, neglect and minimal social and cognitive stimulation. The latest findings of the long-running Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), involving children in Romanian orphanages, tells a cautionary tale about the psychiatric and social risks of long-term deprivation and separation from parents.
BEIP has shown that children reared in very stark institutional settings, with severe social deprivation and neglect, are at risk for cognitive problems, depression, anxiety, disruptive behavior and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But BEIP has also shown that placing children with quality foster families can mitigate some of these effects, if it’s done early.
The new BEIP study, published this week by JAMA Psychiatry, asked what happens to the mental health of institutionalized children as they transition to adolescence. Outcomes at ages 8, 12 and 16 suggest diverging trajectories between children who remained in institutions versus those randomly chosen for placement with carefully vetted foster families. …
Scientists around the world have been trying to replace damaged heart tissue using lab-made heart-muscle cells, either injecting them into the heart or applying patches laced with the cells. But results to date have been underwhelming.
“If you make cardiomyocytes in a dish from pluripotent stem cells, they will engraft in the heart and form muscle,” says William Pu, MD, director of Basic and Translational Cardiovascular Research at Boston Children’s Hospital. “But the muscle doesn’t work very well because the myocytes are stuck in an immature stage.” …
How sensitive are hospitals to the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) patients? In a 2010 survey by Lambda Legal, 70 percent of transgender patients and 56 percent of gay/lesbian/bisexual patients reported discrimination from health care providers. Clinicians refused to provide needed care, refused to touch them or used excessive precautions, blamed them for their health status, were verbally abusive or were physically violent.
A new exploratory study, published in the October issue of Social Science & Medicine, turned to social media for a view from the ground. The researchers, Yulin Hswen of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Jared Hawkins, PhD, MMSc, of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Informatics Program, analyzed 1,856 publicly available tweets from 2015-2017.
“Information from social media and other online sources can help us gain authentic and unsolicited accounts from vulnerable patient groups, like LGBT individuals who are not typically represented,” says Hswen.
Based on the tweets, the team determined which hospitals were more supportive of LGBT patients (the blue dots in the above map) and which were less supportive (the red dots).
The identified tweets included Twitter handles from 653 hospitals and contained LGBT-related terms: LGBT, transgender, trans, intersex, sex change, transisbeautiful, tranny, drag queen, preferred pronoun, transhealth, genderodyssey, cis, gay, lesbian, queer, rainbowhealth, gender fluid, homosexual, bisexual, homo, homophob and transphobe. A tweet classed as supportive might read, “@Hospital is hosting a LGBT resource fair;” a negative tweet might read: “Having sex with men does not mean I deserve less @Hospital.”