Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Boleslaw Szymanski, Ph.D., and Chunyu Wang, M.D. Ph.D., have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement Science (AAAS). Steven Cramer, Ph.D., who was elected AAAS Fellow in 2017, was elected Council Member of the Section on Engineering.
An antioxidant found in green tea may increase levels of p53, a natural anti-cancer protein, known as the “guardian of the genome” for its ability to repair DNA damage or destroy cancerous cells.
A new grant from the National Institute On Aging at the National Institutes of Health will support ongoing research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to address Alzheimer’s disease caused by gene mutations. According to Chunyu Wang, the principal investigator and an assistant professor of biological sciences at Rensselaer, the project seeks to understand and counter the mechanism that produces Amyloid-Beta 42 peptide in brain cells.
Armed with evidence that a specific site on heparan sulfate — known as the 3-O-sulfate group — is critical to the transfer of harmful tau proteins in the brain, a research program funded by the NIH’s National Institute of Aging is scrutinizing the interactions between heparan sulfate and tau, determining how misfolded tau spreads in the brain, and developing strategies to block it.
A newly identified compound is a promising candidate for inhibiting the production of amyloids, the abnormal proteins that form toxic clumps, called fibrils, inside the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. As published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Chemical Communications, the compound — known as “C1” — uses a novel mechanism to efficiently prevent the enzyme gamma-secretase from producing amyloids.
With support from the Warren Alpert Foundation, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have launched a search for drug candidates to block a biological process associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
A team of researchers led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will examine the link between zinc deficiency, Hedgehog, and prostate cancer in a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Zinc deficiency – long associated with numerous diseases, e.g. autism, lung cancer, prostate cancer, and ovarian cancers – can lead to activation of the Hedgehog signaling pathway.
New research, led by Chunyu Wang, has solved one mystery in the development of Familial Alzheimer’s Disease (FAD).