LA JOLLA, CA—Aging is the single greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. In their latest study, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that simply slowing the aging process in mice prone to develop Alzheimer’s disease prevented their brains from turning into a neuronal wasteland.
LA JOLLA, CA—The Salk Institute for Biological Studies has received a $4.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to build a state-of-the-art data center that will dramatically increase its research computing power for the next decade.
LA JOLLA, CA—The Salk Institute has named two highly accomplished, world-renowned scientists from the stem cell and genomics research fields to join its faculty as Non-Resident Fellows.
LA JOLLA, CA—When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their experiments in mice revealed that the daily waxing and waning of thousands of genes in the liver—the body’s metabolic clearinghouse—is mostly controlled by food intake and not by the body’s circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it.
LA JOLLA, CA—The Board of Trustees of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies unanimously voted to elect three new members during its November 13 meeting in La Jolla.
LA JOLLA, CA—The Salk Institute for Biological Studies has recruited three assistant professors who exemplify the next generation of leading international scientists hired to forge new research territory and to build on existing investigative areas at the Institute.
LA JOLLA, CA—Using a gene therapy delivery system developed in the laboratory of Inder Verma at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, an international team of researchers successfully treated two children with adrenoleukodystrophy or ALD, in which the fatty insulation of nerve cells degenerates. The genetic disorder leads to progressive brain damage and results in death within two to five years after diagnosis.
LA JOLLA, CA—The search for the holy grail of regenerative medicine—the ability to “grow back” a perfect body part when one is lost to injury or disease—has been under way for years, yet the steps involved in this seemingly magic process are still poorly understood.
LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute has been awarded a $10.8 million grant by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) for translational research focusing on developing a novel stem-cell based therapy for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) – or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
LA JOLLA, CA—Dr. Clodagh O’Shea, an assistant professor in the Molecular Cell and Biology Laboratory, has been selected by The Sontag Foundation to receive the 2009 Distinguished Scientist Award. She will receive $600,000 over a four-year period to develop new viral therapies to treat invariably fatal glioblastomas and other brain tumors.
LA JOLLA, CA—Dr. Fred H. Gage, a professor in the Laboratory for Genetics at the Salk Institute and the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Diseases, is one of only three Americans elected an Associate Member to the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2009.
LA JOLLA, CA—Our body’s activity levels fall and rise to the beat of our internal drums-the 24-hour cycles that govern fundamental physiological functions, from sleeping and feeding patterns to the energy available to our cells. Whereas the master clock in the brain is set by light, the pacemakers in peripheral organs are set by food availability. The underlying molecular mechanism was unknown.
LA JOLLA, CA—Although the human genome sequence faithfully lists (almost) every single DNA base of the roughly 3 billion bases that make up a human genome, it doesn’t tell biologists much about how its function is regulated. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute provide the first detailed map of the human epigenome, the layer of genetic control beyond the regulation inherent in the sequence of the genes themselves.
LA JOLLA, CA—The cerebral cortex, the largest and most complex component of the brain, is unique to mammals and alone has evolved human specializations. Although at first all stem cells in charge of building the cerebral cortex—the outermost layer of neurons commonly referred to as gray matter—are created equal, soon they irrevocably commit to forming specific cortical regions. But how the stem cells’ destiny is determined has remained an open question.
La Jolla, CA—Dr. Martin Hetzer, Hearst Endowment associate professor in the Salk Institute’s Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, has received a 2009 Senior Scholar Award in Aging from the Ellison Medical Foundation. He will receive $150,000 a year for four years to study the mechanisms at work in nuclear pore complexes, channels that mediate molecular traffic between the nucleus and cytoplasm of cells.
LA JOLLA, CA—Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D., a professor at the University of California in San Francisco and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 2001, will receive this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology for “the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase,” the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden announced today.
LA JOLLA, CA—Umbilical cord blood cells can successfully be reprogrammed to function like embryonic stem cells, setting the basis for the creation of a comprehensive bank of tissue-matched, cord blood-derived induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells for off-the-shelf applications, report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Center for Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, Spain.
LA JOLLA, CA—The brain never sits idle. Whether we are awake or asleep, watch TV or close our eyes, waves of spontaneous nerve signals wash through our brains. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies studying visual attention have discovered a novel mechanism that explains how incoming sensory signals make themselves heard amidst the constant background rumblings so they can be reliably processed and passed on.
LA JOLLA, CA—The Salk Institute for Biological Studies today officially launched PolioToday.org — a resource for polio survivors intended to raise awareness of the crippling post-polio syndrome (PPS), a serious neuromuscular condition that can strike an estimated 40-50 percent of people decades after they were first infected with the poliovirus.
LA JOLLA, CA—Protein S, a well-known anticoagulant protein, keeps the blood flowing in more than one way, discovered researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The protein contributes to the formation and function of healthy blood vessels.
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