May 20, 2021 11:53am Scientists at Harvard Medical School found links between the gut microbiome s genetic signatures and diseases such as coronary artery disease, inflammatory bowel disease and liver cirrhosis. (peterschreiber.media/Getty Images)
Recent research suggests that microorganisms living in the human gut may play a role in diseases ranging from obesity to cancer. A team at Harvard Medical School has gone one step further, linking the microbiome’s genetic features to multiple diseases.
By using a variety of statistical models and machine learning, the Harvard scientists identified what they call “microbiome architectures” behind human diseases. They linked several sets of genetic features of the microbiome to many conditions, including coronary artery disease, inflammatory bowel disease, liver cirrhosis, Type 2 diabetes and others, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.
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A path to aggressive breast cancer
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have followed the progression of breast cancer in an animal model and discovered a path that transforms a slow-growing type of cancer known as estrogen receptor (ER)+/HER2+ into a fast-growing ER-/HER2+ type that spreads or metastasizes to other organs.
The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has implications for breast cancer therapy as it suggests the need to differentiate cancer subtypes according to the path the cells follow. Different paths might be linked to different cancer behavior, which should be taken into consideration to plan treatment appropriately.
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Baylor recruiting MELAS syndrome patients for Phase 1 clinical trial
MELAS (Mitochondrial Encephalopathy, Lactic Acidosis, and Stroke-like episodes) syndrome is a genetic disorder affecting energy metabolism. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine are conducting a Phase 1 clinical trial to test L-citrulline, an amino acid treatment, in patients with MELAS.
Patients with this disorder suffer from stroke-like episodes, headaches, muscle weakness, fatigue and hearing loss. A major contributing factor is a decreased amount of nitric acid in the body.
“The lack of nitric oxide can cause blood vessels in the brain to constrict, leading to metabolic strokes,” said Dr. Fernando Scaglia, principal investigator of the study and professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor and attending physician at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center. “The amino acid citrulline is a foundation for nitric oxide. We have found that people who take L-citrulline treatment produce more
POT1 gene linked to glioma development mediates its effects in a sex-specific manner
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborators at other institutions have discovered that POT1, a gene known to be associated with risk of glioma, the most common type of malignant brain tumor, mediates its effects in a sex-specific manner.
Researchers found that female mice with glioma that lacked the gene survived less than males. This led them to investigate human glioma cells, where they found that low POT1 expression correlated with reduced survival in females.
Published in the journal
Cancer Research, the study also shows that, compared to males , female tumors had reduced expression of immune signatures and increased expression of cell replication markers, suggesting that the immune response and tumor cell proliferation seemed to be involved in favoring tumor growth.