This is the twice-per-month electronic newsletter for basic, preclinical and translational research news related to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Please forward freely. Direct comments or questions to Joanna Downer, PhD, in the Office of Corporate Communications (4-5105, jdowner1@jhmi.edu).
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IN THIS ISSUE:
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS:
+ Digestive System's Chloride Channel Used in Odor Detection
+ Mysterious Protein Involved in Cells' Response to Hypoxia
+ Common Epigenetic Problem Doubles Cancer Risk in Mice
NEWS BRIEFS:
State Gives Approval for New Hospital Buildings
First American-Israeli Cancer Conference Mar. 16-18
AWARDS AND HONORS:
Jeffrey Han Named Weintraub Award Recipient
Leach Gets Grant from Lustgarten Foundation
IN THE NEWS:
Andrew Feinberg in the Daily Mail
Sol Snyder in the Jewish Times
Julie Watson in the Baltimore Sun
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Do you have an interesting research finding about one month from publication or presentation? Send manuscripts to Joanna Downer at jdowner1@jhmi.edu or fax to 410-614-8951. Information about awards and honors received by laboratory personnel and others is welcomed also.
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RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS:
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2/17/05
Digestive System's Chloride Channel Used in Odor Detection
A cellular channel known best for its role in the digestive system apparently has a major role in helping the brain sense odors, Johns Hopkins scientists report in the Feb. 17 issue of Neuron.
The NKCC1 channel, which lets chloride into cells, triggers the release of digestion-aiding materials from cells in the digestive system. It is also critical in hearing, balance, and fertility. Odor-sensing cells require lots of chloride ions to relay odor signals to the brain, but until now no one had linked NKCC1 to the process.
Postdoctoral fellows Jonathan Bradley, PhD, and Johannes Reisert, PhD, and their colleagues discovered that, without functional NKCC1, individual odor-detecting nerves from mice display no detectable chloride movement upon exposure to odor molecules.
"The involvement of chloride might also make the cells’ response to odor more robust and reliable," says Reisert.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/02_23_05.html
Neuron 17 Feb. 2005;45(4):553-561.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2005.01.012
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2/18/05
Mysterious Protein Involved in Cells' Response to Hypoxia
Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that OS-9, a ubiquitous protein of unknown function, plays a key role in human cells' ability to react to low oxygen levels. The findings are reported in the Feb. 18 issue of Molecular Cell.
Gregg Semenza, MD, PhD, and his colleagues discovered that OS-9 binds to hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha and to two enzymes that lead to HIF-1 alpha's degradation. In their experiments, OS-9 enabled degradation of HIF-1 alpha, and in its absence, expression of HIF-1-mediated genes increased.
Determining whether OS-9 depends on oxygen levels will require generation of an antibody, says Semenza, director of the vascular program in the Institute for Cell Engineering, a professor of pediatrics, medicine, oncology and radiation sciences, and a member of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine.
Molecular Cell 18 Feb. 2005; 17(4):503-512.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.molcel.2005.01.011
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2/24/05
Common Epigenetic Problem Doubles Cancer Risk in Mice
A team of scientists from the United States, Sweden and Japan has discovered that mice engineered to have a double dose of insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) develop more precursor cells in the lining of the colon than normal mice.
When these mice also carried a colon-cancer-causing genetic mutation, they developed twice as many tumors as those with normal IGF2 levels, the researchers report in the Feb. 24 online express version of Science.
"Both clinically and scientifically, this discovery should expand attention in colon cancer research to earlier events, situations present well before tumors appear," says the study's leader, Andrew Feinberg, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Epigenetics in Common Human Disease at Johns Hopkins.
"In the mice with a double dose of IGF2, everything is pretty normal except for the extra precursor cells," adds Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue, MD, assistant professor of pathology and oncology. "But when the genetic mutation is present, too, we found a clear cost for what otherwise appears to be a benign effect of extra IGF2."
In the mice -- as well as in about 30 percent of colon cancer patients and 10 percent of the general population -- the extra IGF2 stems not from a genetic problem, or mutation, but an "epigenetic" problem called loss of imprinting that improperly turns on the copy of the IGF2 gene that should remain off.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/02_24_05.html
Science Express 24 Feb. 2005
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1108080v1
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NEWS BRIEFS:
State Gives Approval for New Hospital Buildings -- On Feb. 16, the Maryland Health Care Commission approved Johns Hopkins' request for a Certificate of Need for its new Cardiovascular/Critical Care Tower and a Children's and Maternal Hospital. The project involves construction of two new clinical towers housing inpatient nursing units, a replacement emergency department, expanded surgical facilities, and expanded diagnostic treatment facilities and services. The project also involves renovations to existing hospital buildings and demolition of other buildings. The total cost of this massive undertaking is $577,774,237 and will come from the State, private donors, incremental long term debt and retained earnings. http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/02_16a_05.html
First American-Israeli Cancer Conference Mar. 16-18 -- Leading cancer researchers from Baltimore, Miami and New Jersey have organized the first Joint American-Israeli Conference on Cancer. The meeting, scheduled for March 16 through 18 in Jerusalem, seeks to foster collaboration among physicians and scientists in the two countries. Close to 200 cancer experts from institutions throughout Israel and the United States are expected to attend, making it Israel's largest scientific conference in at least four years, according to the conference planners, who include Hyam I. Levitsky, MD, professor of oncology, medicine and urology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/03_01a_05.html
http://www.novel-approaches.net/index.asp
AWARDS AND HONORS:
Jeffrey Han Named Weintraub Recipient -- Jeffrey Han, an MD/PhD candidate at Hopkins, has been named one of this year's recipients of the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award for his dissertation work, conducted with Jef Boeke in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics. Han and the 14 other recipients will participate in a scientific symposium May 6 and 7 at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which sponsors the award. Han also received this year's Michael A. Shanoff Research Award for his work, "L1 retrotransposons and their synthetic counterparts - massaging and manipulating the mammalian genome," and will therefore speak at Hopkins as part of the 28th annual Young Investigators' Day celebration on April 14.
http://www.fhcrc.org/news/science/2005/03/01/2005_weintraub.html
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/YIDWinners
Leach Gets Grant from Lustgarten Foundation -- Steven Leach, MD, chief of surgical oncology, is one of seven researchers to receive one-year grants of $100,000 from the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research. Leach's project is "Zebrafish Model of Early Pancreatic Cancer." The Lustgarten Foundation was formed in 1998 to provide direct support for promising pancreatic cancer research.
http://www.lustgartenfoundation.org/
IN THE NEWS:
Andrew Feinberg on epigenetics and cancer in the Daily Mail: "Study: Protein Link to Colon Cancer," The Daily Mail (UK), Feb. 25, 2005.
http://www.jhu.edu/clips/2005_02/25/study.html (must be at a Johns Hopkins computer for access)
Sol Snyder on the National Medal of Science in the Jewish Times: "Bush to honor local scientist," by Adam Stone, Jewish Times, Feb. 25, 2005.
http://www.jhu.edu/clips/2005_03/02/bush.html (must be at a Johns Hopkins computer for access)
Julie Watson on Harlan's wrong rodents in the Baltimore Sun: "Supplier of defective lab rodents to pay $7.2 million settlement to U.S.," by Matthew Dolan and Erika Niedowski, Mar. 2, 2005.
http://www.jhu.edu/clips/2005_03/02/supplier.html (must be at a Johns Hopkins computer for access)
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--JHMI--
