Tag: Stanley Korsmeyer

  • Health

    Enzyme responsible for protein’s ‘Jekyll-and-Hyde’ personality

    Normally, a protein regulates when and how body parts develop, but when mutated, it triggers a rare, often-lethal infant leukemia called mixed lineage leukemia. The newly identified protease enzyme, Taspase1, plays a key role in the MLL protein’s dual-personality. (A protease enzyme cuts protein molecules into smaller pieces). Blocking Taspase1, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers say,…

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  • Health

    Death and survival proteins work together

    At a cellular level, life-sustaining activities such as glucose metabolism were thought to be carried out by entirely different proteins from those involved in apoptosis, or cell death. “People in the field always thought glucose metabolism and apoptosis were two independent pathways for the cell,” said Nika Danial, Harvard Medical School research fellow in pathology…

    1–2 minutes
  • Health

    Researchers isolate key part of cells’ ‘death’ signals

    In the cover article of the September 2002 issue of the journal Cancer Cell, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported that peptide subunits of cell-signaling “BH3” proteins could out-maneuver opposing “anti-death” proteins and trigger the suicide process. Cell suicide or “apoptosis” prevents wayward cells from growing out of control and becoming cancerous. “Many cancer cells…

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  • Science & Tech

    Scientists using gene chips identify unique form of leukemia

    Currently, physicians diagnose and treat a rare form of cancer that strikes infants as a particularly aggressive form of the more common acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The cancer may respond to chemotherapy at first, but it tends to recur fatally. That’s why the prognosis is so much worse than for most types of childhood leukemia, which…

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