Diseases articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    African sleeping sickness, caused by Trypanosoma brucei species, is responsible for some 30,000 human deaths each year. Available treatments are limited by poor efficacy and safety profiles. However, a new molecular target for potential treatments has now been identified. The protein target is T. brucei N-myristoyltransferase. In further experiments, lead compounds have been discovered that inhibit this protein, kill trypanosomes in vitro and in vivo, and can cure trypanosomiasis in mice.

    • Julie A. Frearson
    • , Stephen Brand
    •  & Paul G. Wyatt

  • News & Views |

    The addition of a fatty acid to certain proteins is vital for the survival of protozoa that cause sleeping sickness and of their mammalian hosts. Compounds that target this process in the protozoa are now reported.

    • George A. M. Cross

  • Letter |

    Cancer 'chemoprevention' uses substances to reverse, suppress or prevent the initial phase of carcinogenesis or the progression of neoplastic cells to cancer cells. Here it is shown that treatment with TRAIL proteins and all-trans-retinyl acetate can cause the death, in vitro and in vivo, of premalignant cells deficient in the adenomatous polyposis coli gene. Normal cells are unaffected. Selectively eliminating premalignant tumour cells in this way is thus an effective method for chemoprevention.

    • Ling Zhang
    • , Xiaoyang Ren
    •  & Xiangwei Wu

  • News |

    Tiny particles carrying short strands of RNA can interfere with protein production in tumours.

    • Janet Fang

  • Article |

    A new mouse model is developed in which haematopoietic malignancies are caused by genetic changes in the microenvironment of blood cells. Deletion in bone progenitor cells of Dicer1, a gene involved in microRNA processing, leads to a myelodysplastic syndrome-like phenotype which can progress to leukaemia. Deregulation of Sbds, which is mutated in human Schwachman–Bodian–Diamond syndrome, may be involved in this process.

    • Marc H. G. P. Raaijmakers
    • , Siddhartha Mukherjee
    •  & David. T. Scadden

  • News & Views |

    Cellular senescence is a physiological mechanism for thwarting the proliferation of tumour cells. Encouraging cancer-prone cells to senesce might therefore be a way to nip this disease in the bud.

    • Manuel Serrano

  • News & Views |

    At present, only injectable drugs are available for treating multiple sclerosis. So clinical trials indicating that the drug fingolimod might be a step towards an oral treatment for the disease are exciting indeed.

    • Roland Martin

  • News & Views |

    Inhibitors of RAF enzymes can suppress or activate the same signalling pathway. The details of how this happens provide a cautionary note for those targeting the pathway for anticancer drug discovery.

    • Karen Cichowski
    •  & Pasi A. Jänne

  • Letter |

    In a mouse model of prostate cancer it is shown that infiltrating B cells promote tumorigenesis by secreting lymphotoxin. Lymphotoxin accelerates the emergence of castration-resistant prostate tumours in this model. Interfering with this pathway may offer therapeutic strategies for androgen-independent prostate cancer.

    • Massimo Ammirante
    • , Jun-Li Luo
    •  & Michael Karin

  • Opinion |

    Translational-research programmes supported by flexible, long-term, large-scale grants are needed to turn advances in basic science into successful vaccines to halt the AIDS epidemic, says Wayne C. Koff.

    • Wayne C. Koff

  • News |

    Immune cells seem to spark recurrent prostate cancer in mice.

    • Brian Vastag

  • Letter |

    Severe trauma can lead to death and sepsis in the absence of apparent infection. Here evidence shows that mitochondrial debris, released from damaged cells, is present in the circulation of seriously injured trauma patients. Such debris is shown to activate neutrophils via specific formyl peptide receptors, triggering systemic inflammation and end organ injury.

    • Qin Zhang
    • , Mustafa Raoof
    •  & Carl J. Hauser

  • News & Views |

    Mosquitoes' odorant receptors help the insects to find humans and, inadvertently, to transmit malaria. The identification of the odorants that bind to these receptors opens up ways of reducing mosquito biting.

    • Walter S. Leal

  • Article |

    Mutations near the ORMDL3 gene have been associated with childhood asthma. Here, in yeast, Orm proteins are shown to function in sphingolipid homeostasis; alterations in this control result in misregulation of sphingolipid production and accumulation of toxic metabolites. This raises the testable hypothesis that misregulation of sphingolipids may directly contribute to the development of asthma.

    • David K. Breslow
    • , Sean R. Collins
    •  & Jonathan S. Weissman

  • Opinion |

    After five years, the World Health Organization's tobacco-control treaty is starting to have an effect, but we need to tackle the smoking epidemic in the developing world, say Jonathan M. Samet and Heather L. Wipfli.

    • Jonathan M. Samet
    •  & Heather L. Wipfli

  • News & Views |

    In a feat of biological wizardry, one type of differentiated cell has been directly converted into another, completely distinct type. Notably, the approach does not require a stem-cell intermediate stage.

    • Cory R. Nicholas
    •  & Arnold R. Kriegstein

  • News |

    Studies in several nations show that treating people before they fall ill can curb the spread of disease.

    • Erika Check Hayden

  • Letter |

    Peptide hormones such as oxytocin and vasopressin influence social behaviour in several mammalian species. Here it is shown that a population of interneurons in the rat olfactory bulb releases vasopressin, and that vasopressin signalling is required in the olfactory system for proper social recognition in rats. Although vasopressin may not work in exactly the same way in humans, social recognition mediated by experience-dependent vasopressin release may be common.

    • Vicky A. Tobin
    • , Hirofumi Hashimoto
    •  & Mike Ludwig

  • Letter |

    Worldwide, 170 million people are infected with the hepatitis C virus, which is a significant cause of liver-related illnesses and deaths. Standard treatment combines pegylated interferon alpha and ribavirin (RBV), but has some negative effects, notably RBV-induced haemolytic anaemia. Here, a genome-wide study shows that a deficiency in the enzyme inosine triphosphatase protects against haemolytic anaemia in patients receiving RBV.

    • Jacques Fellay
    • , Alexander J. Thompson
    •  & David B. Goldstein

  • Letter |

    Genomic instability has been implicated in tumour development. Here, a new mouse model of Kras-driven lung tumours has been developed, in which genomic instability is caused by overexpression of the mitotic checkpoint protein Mad2. In this model, inhibiting Kras leads to tumour regression, as shown previously. But tumours recur at a much higher rate.

    • Rocio Sotillo
    • , Juan-Manuel Schvartzman
    •  & Robert Benezra

  • Letter |

    Sequence variations in a 58-kilobase interval on human chromosome 9p21 have been associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease. However, this interval contains no protein-coding genes and the mechanism underlying the increased risk has been unclear. Here, the corresponding interval has been deleted from mouse chromosome 4, revealing that this part of the chromosome regulates the cardiac expression of two nearby genes, Cdkn2a and Cdkn2b, and the proliferation dynamics of vascular cells.

    • Axel Visel
    • , Yiwen Zhu
    •  & Len A. Pennacchio

  • Article |

    One way of discovering genes with key roles in cancer development is to identify genomic regions that are frequently altered in human cancers. Here, high-resolution analyses of somatic copy-number alterations (SCNAs) in numerous cancer specimens provide an overview of regions of focal SCNA that are altered at significant frequency across several cancer types. An oncogenic function is also found for the anti-apoptosis genes MCL1 and BCL2L1, which reside in amplified genome regions in many cancers.

    • Rameen Beroukhim
    • , Craig H. Mermel
    •  & Matthew Meyerson

  • News |

    Some argue that tumour cells obtained directly from patients are the best way to study cancer genomics.

    • Brendan Borrell

  • Article |

    The transcriptome of Helicobacter pylori, an important human pathogen involved in gastric ulcers and cancer, is presented. The approach establishes a model for mapping and annotating the primary transcriptomes of many living species.

    • Cynthia M. Sharma
    • , Steve Hoffmann
    •  & Jörg Vogel

  • News |

    Experts question claims that malaria and osteonecrosis contributed to Pharaoh's decline.

    • Declan Butler

  • Opinion |

    HIV research in South Africa is world class. To halt the country's epidemic, scientists need to shift focus from global problems to priorities at home, say Salim Abdool Karim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim.

    • Salim S. Abdool Karim
    •  & Quarraisha Abdool Karim

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