Sarah-Maria Fendt is a principal investigator at the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) in Belgium, and her laboratory focuses on cellular metabolism and metabolic regulation. Recent work from ...Sarah's laboratory has shown that pyruvate available in the metastatic niche enables cancer cells to shape their environment and promote metastatic outgrowth. We contacted Sarah to find out more about her journey in science so far.
Eran Elinav: Beyond the microbiome Houston, Stephanie
The Journal of experimental medicine,
01/2019, Letnik:
216, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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Eran is the head of the microbiome-focused research group at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. He has published seminal work demonstrating the importance of the microbiota in many different systems, ...from post-dieting weight gain to circadian rhythms. Recent work from Eran and colleagues shows how probiotics perturb rather than aid the recovery of the microbiota following antibiotic treatment in humans. We contacted Eran to find out about his journey in science so far.
Stephanie Eisenbarth is an Associate Professor in the Immunology Faculty at Yale University. Her work has shown that the guanine nucleotide exchange factor Dock8 plays a role in the migration of a ...specific dendritic cell subset, and that when Dock8 is missing, some dendritic cells can no longer prime CD4
T cells. Stephanie's laboratory now focuses on understanding how T cell-driven pathology is initiated. We chatted with Stephanie to find out about her journey in science.
Arkaitz Carracedo is a principal investigator at the Association for Cooperative Research in Biosciences (CIC bioGUNE) in Spain; his laboratory focuses on signaling and metabolic alterations in ...cancer. Arkaitz has investigated the regulation of fatty acid oxidation in cancer cells and how these changes could be manipulated therapeutically. We chatted with Arkaitz to find out about his career in science so far.
Claudia Jakubzick will be an Associate Professor at Dartmouth in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology working on immune homeostasis and how the immune system can recognize and target ...precancerous cells. She started her own laboratory at National Jewish Health in 2014, becoming a tenure-track Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor in 2017, and will relocate to Dartmouth mid-2019. She is also a member of the American Association of Immunologists' Minority Affairs Committee. We contacted Claudia to find out about her career in science.
Personal health records (PHRs) have the potential to improve patient self-management for chronic conditions such as diabetes. However, evidence is mixed as to whether there is an association between ...PHR use and improved health outcomes.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between sustained use of specific patient portal features (Web-based prescription refill and secure messaging-SM) and physiological measures important for the management of type 2 diabetes.
Using a retrospective cohort design, including Veterans with diabetes registered for the My Health e Vet patient portal who had not yet used the Web-based refill or SM features and who had at least one physiological measure (HbA1c, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, blood pressure) in 2009-2010 (baseline) that was above guideline recommendations (N=111,686), we assessed portal use between 2010 and 2014. We calculated the odds of achieving control of each measure by 2013 to 2014 (follow-up) by years of using each portal feature, adjusting for demographic and clinical characteristics associated with portal use.
By 2013 to 2014, 34.13% (38,113/111,686) of the cohort was using Web-based refills, and 15.75% (17,592/111,686) of the cohort was using SM. Users were slightly younger (P<.001), less likely to be eligible for free care based on economic means (P<.001), and more likely to be women (P<.001). In models adjusting for both features, patients with uncontrolled HbA1c at baseline who used SM were significantly more likely than nonusers to achieve glycemic control by follow-up if they used SM for 2 years (odds ratio-OR=1.24, CI: 1.14-1.34) or 3 or more years (OR=1.28, CI: 1.12-1.45). However, there was no significant association between Web-based refill use and glycemic control. Those with uncontrolled blood pressure at baseline who used Web-based refills were significantly more likely than nonusers to achieve control at follow-up with 2 (OR=1.07, CI: 1.01-1.13) or 3 (OR=1.08, CI: 1.02-1.14) more years of Web-based refill use. Both features were significantly associated with improvements in LDL cholesterol levels at follow-up.
Although rates of use of the refill function were higher within the population, sustained SM use had a greater impact on HbA1c. Evaluations of patient portals should consider that individual components may have differential effects on health improvements.
Social demands of the school-year and summer environment may affect children's sleep patterns and circadian rhythms during these periods. The current study examined differences in children's sleep ...and circadian-related behaviors during the school-year and summer and explored the association between sleep and circadian parameters and change in body mass index (BMI) during these time periods.
This was a prospective observational study with 119 children ages 5 to 8 years with three sequential BMI assessments: early school-year (fall), late school-year (spring), and beginning of the following school-year in Houston, Texas, USA. Sleep midpoint, sleep duration, variability of sleep midpoint, physical activity, and light exposure were estimated using wrist-worn accelerometry during the school-year (fall) and summer. To examine the effect of sleep parameters, physical activity level, and light exposure on change in BMI, growth curve modeling was conducted controlling for age, race, sex, and chronotype.
Children's sleep midpoint shifted later by an average of 1.5 h during summer compared to the school-year. After controlling for covariates, later sleep midpoints predicted larger increases in BMI during summer, (γ = .0004, p = .03), but not during the school-year. Sleep duration, sleep midpoint variability, physical activity levels, and sedentary behavior were not associated with change in BMI during the school-year or summer. Females tended to increase their BMI at a faster rate during summer compared to males, γ = .06, p = .049. Greater amounts of outdoor light exposure (γ = -.01, p = .02) predicted smaller increases in school-year BMI.
Obesity prevention interventions may need to target different behaviors depending on whether children are in or out of school. Promotion of outdoor time during the school-year and earlier sleep times during the summer may be effective obesity prevention strategies during these respective times.
Antibodies are a highly successful class of biological drugs, with over 50 such molecules approved for therapeutic use and hundreds more currently in clinical development. Improvements in technology ...for the discovery and optimization of high-potency antibodies have greatly increased the chances for finding binding molecules with desired biological properties; however, achieving drug-like properties at the same time is an additional requirement that is receiving increased attention. In this work, we attempt to quantify the historical limits of acceptability for multiple biophysical metrics of “developability.” Amino acid sequences from 137 antibodies in advanced clinical stages, including 48 approved for therapeutic use, were collected and used to construct isotype-matched IgG1 antibodies, which were then expressed in mammalian cells. The resulting material for each source antibody was evaluated in a dozen biophysical property assays. The distributions of the observed metrics are used to empirically define boundaries of drug-like behavior that can represent practical guidelines for future antibody drug candidates.
Given the higher presence of co-morbid conditions and associated health disparities when comparing African Americans to other racial and ethnic groups (Dillworth-Anderson and Boswell, 2007; Hill et ...al., 2015), African Americans can have worse physical health and quality-of-life. Medical eligibility criteria, job restrictions, time, and financial requirements to go to study sites) also undermine or limit the participation of African Americans and other participants of color (Wendler et al., 2006; Konkel, 2015). Using asset-based community development (ABCD) approaches (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993) can lead to improved access and delivery of care and ADRD knowledge among African Americans, increased social support for African-American caregivers and elders living with or at risk for ADRD, and increased African-American representation in neuroscience research. The leadership team developed this program with local music teachers through adapting current mainstream music therapy interventions (Mittelman and Papayannopoulou, 2018) designed to improve quality of life and social support for the caregivers and family members with ADRD (Refer to Table 1, Panel B for more programming examples).
This essay considers Food Will Win the War, an animated short made early in World War II by Disney Studios for the United States Department of Agriculture. Through a fantastical catalogue of ...hyperbolic images, the film shows how the mass production of American agriculture becomes the first wave of a new American-style consumerism of plenty that will transform the social order. The analysis blends contemporary theories of affective politics to show Food Will Win the War as a threshold text, revealing the post-war economy at its formation. Using food as a symbolic field, this film ultimately links the endless expansion of consumer desire to national identity and global colonization.
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