88 results found for disease

Biological membranes define and compartmentalize the cells of higher organisms. Consisting of membrane proteins and lipids, they are basically impermeable for ions and polar substances, so that electric voltages (_membrane potentialsî) and substanc....

For cancer diagnosis and therapy, we are developing activatable cell-penetrating peptides (ACPPs), synthetic molecules with a novel amplifying mechanism for homing to diseased tissues. ACPPs are polycationic cell-penetrating peptides whose cellular ....

Aquaporin (AQP) water channel proteins enable high water permeability in certain biological membranes. Discovered in human red cells but expressed in multiple tissues, AQP1 has been thoroughly characterized and its atomic structure is known. Expres....

Many important drugs such as penicillin, aspirin, or digitalis, were discovered by serendipity - some by curious researchers who accidentally noted a "strange" phenomenon, and some by isolation of active ingredients form plants known for centuries to....

Analysis of the immune system is fascinating and progressing rapidly. As a field of medical enquiry, it has however, drifted and turned purely academic. This is because interest and appreciation of protective immunity in infectious disease medicine....

Since the first cases of AIDS in 1981 and the identification of its etiological agent in 1983, much progress has been made in both the development of tools to prevent and treat HIV infection and the access to these tools. In particular, the wide arr....

It is now axiomatic that, no matter what its causes, cancer ultimately arises from the malfunction of genes. A number of clues prefigured this paradigm: the persistence of the malignant phenotype through countless cell divisions; the mutagenicity of....

The epidemiology of Helicobacter pylori continues to be an area of discovery and controversy in the 21st century. The transmission of this bacterium from mother to child allows Helicobacter DNA to mimic the evolution of maternal mitochondria DNA. B....

Infectious microbes collectively represent the strongest selective pressure operating on our species, and over hundreds of millions of years, drove the evolution of the sophisticated immune system we have today. While the general outlines of immune ....

The selective degradation of many short-lived proteins in eukaryotic cells is carried out by the ubiquitin-mediated proteolytic system.  In this pathway, proteins are targeted for degradation by covalent ligation to ubiquitin, a highly conserved sma....

Molecules to observe and manipulate biological systems can be devised by a variety of strategies, ranging from pure chemical design and total synthesis to genome mining and high-throughput directed evolution. Examples of both successes and failures a....

Professor Martin Chalfie regrets the disproportionately high funding of translational research, defined as applied research for the treatment of human diseases.  With examples from the research in his lab he wants to show how important nontranslatio....