Johns Hopkins Medicine News

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and four other academic medical centers have been awarded a $9.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health to pin down inherited changes that occur outside a cell’s DNA sequence in people with schizophrenia. Unlike changes or mutations in the DNA sequence itself, epigenetic marks or alterations can be affected by a lifetime of exposure to the environment in which cells operate.

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is awarding the Young Investigator Award to co-recipient Hongjun Song, Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for his work in understanding how adult neural stem cells mature into nerve cells and integrate into the existing neuronal circuitry.

Heart experts at Johns Hopkins have evidence that life-saving coronary angioplasty at community hospitals is safer when physicians and hospital staff have more experience with the procedure.

Taking a cue from the way drugs like Viagra put the biological brakes on a key enzyme involved in heart failure, scientists at Johns Hopkins have mapped out a key chemical step involved in blocking the enzyme.

Naturally produced sex hormones may influence the risk and progression of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, Johns Hopkins researchers report in a recent study. The findings may help explain the increased risk men have of developing heart disease, which runs about twofold higher than women’s heart disease risk worldwide.

A team of Johns Hopkins biochemists has identified a mixed bag of five key proteins out of thousands secreted into blood draining from the heart’s blood vessels that may together or in certain quantities form the basis of a far more accurate early warning test than currently in use of impending heart attack in people with severely reduced blood flow, or ischemia.

Outstanding researchers in cardiovascular medicine will be honored in The Johns Hopkins Hospital Houck Lobby at 4 p.m., Wednesday, Nov.5, as part of the Johns Hopkins Heart and Vascular Institute’s annual awards ceremony named to commemorate the late Hopkins physician Stanley L. Blumenthal, B.A. ’39 and M.D. ’43.