Research News
Modesto Orozco’s lab has published a paper in Chemical Communications about a therapeutic tool to prevent treatment resistance in breast cancer.
The tool has been tested in tumour cells in vitro and will now need to be tested in animal models before moving on to the development of a valid treatment for patients.
A team headed by ICREA researchers Salvador Aznar Benitah and Fran Supek concludes that care should be taken with drugs that inhibit epigenetic factors.
Published in Nature Cell Biology, the study is a collaboration between a biomedical lab and a computational lab at IRB Barcelona.
Researchers at IRB Barcelona modify chlorotoxin—a small protein present in scorpion venom with blood-brain barrier permeability—to transport drugs into the brain.
The barrier, which protects the brain, prevents drugs used for the treatment of neurological diseases and brain tumours from entering the organ.
A study in mice done at IRB Barcelona and CNAG-CRG explains that dermal fibroblasts lose their cell identify over time and with it their capacity to produce and secrete collagen and other proteins.
The team headed by Núria López-Bigas has published an article in Cell about what might have favoured the periodicity of certain base pairs in the genomes of eukaryotic organisms.
The structure adopted by DNA when packaged inside cells influences the periodicity observed.
A study done at IRB Barcelona and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel identifies camelid nanobodies able to block EGF, a protein that is abundant in tumour cells and that helps them to proliferate.
Most solid tumours with metastatic potential show a high degree of chromosomal instability.
A study published in the journal Developmental Cell demonstrates that chromosomal instability itself promotes invasive behaviour.
The researchers identify the oncogene Fos and the tumour suppressor Capicua as necessary molecular elements mediating this invasive behaviour.
The protein CPEB4, which coordinates the expression of hundreds of genes required for neuronal activity, is altered in the brains of individuals with autism
Published in Nature, the study indicates that a defect in CPEB4 could be the link between environmental factors that alter brain development and the genes that determine susceptibility to autism
- A group of scientists headed by Maria Macias, ICREA researcher at IRB Barcelona, describes the mechanism through which TGIF1 inhibits the activity of Smad proteins.
- The study, which used molecular and structural biology techniques to analyse this interaction, has been published in Nucleic Acids.
Published in Science Advances, the study shows that the TLK1 and TLK2 enzymes are critical for ensuring the copying of DNA.
Loss of TLK1 and TLK2 results in extensive DNA damage during DNA replication and in cancer cell death.
Depletion of TLK1/2 enhances the effectiveness of some chemotherapeutic agents currently being tested in clinical trials
