johns hopkins medical

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Collaborations between Johns Hopkins and National Taiwan University researchers have successfully manipulated the life span of common, single-celled yeast organisms by figuring out how to remove and restore protein functions related to yeast aging.

Doctors: Test all kids for cholesterol by age 11 Associated Press

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Researchers at Johns Hopkins have modified HIV in a way that makes it no longer able to suppress the immune system.

Their work, they say in a report published online Sept. 19 in the journal Blood, could remove a major hurdle in HIV vaccine development and lead to new treatments.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Johns Hopkins researchers say they have developed a formula to predict which heart transplant patients are at greatest risk of death in the year following their surgeries, information that could help medical teams figure out who would benefit most from the small number of available organs.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have found a protein normally involved in blood pressure regulation in a surprising place: tucked within the little "power plants" of cells, the mitochondria.

The quantity of this protein appears to decrease with age, but treating older mice with the blood pressure medication losartan can increase protein numbers to youthful levels, decreasing both blood pressure and cellular energy usage

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Johns Hopkins and South African scientists have further compelling evidence that new, simpler and shorter treatments with antibiotic drugs could dramatically help prevent tens of millions of people worldwide already infected with the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis, and especially those co-infected with HIV, from developing full-blown TB.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Johns Hopkins researchers have identified a natural mechanism that might one day be used to block the expression of the mutated gene known to cause Huntington's disease.

Their experiments offer not an immediate cure, but a potential new approach to stopping or even preventing the development of this relentless neurodegenerative disorder.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Cells grow abundant when oxygen is available, and generally stop when it is scarce.

Although this seems straightforward, no direct link ever has been established between the cellular machinery that senses oxygen and that which controls cell division.

Now, in the June 10 issue of Molecular Cell, researchers at Johns Hopkins report that the MCM proteins, which promote cell division, also directly control the oxygen-sensing HIF-1 protein.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Scientists at Johns Hopkins have shown in laboratory experiments in mice that blocking the action of a signaling protein deep inside the heart's muscle cells blunts the most serious ill effects of high blood pressure on the heart.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have discovered that a natural product isolated from a traditional Chinese medicinal plant commonly known as thunder god vine, or lei gong teng, and used for hundreds of years to treat many conditions including rheumatoid arthritis works by blocking gene control machinery in the cell.

The report, published as a cover story of the March issue of Nature Chemical Biology, suggests that the natural product could be a starting point for developing new anticancer drugs.