The drug Dimebon, which has shown some significant promise for Alzheimer's, has now registered positive results in a trial designed to test the therapy's ability to improve thinking, learning and memory skills for people who suffer from Huntington's. Dr. Karl Kieburtz of the University of Rochester in New York says that the drug also appears to be safe and well tolerated.

"In diseases like Huntington's disease where there is degeneration of the brain, one thing we look for is compounds that might favorably influence that and sometimes those compounds come out of things that can slow natural aging," Kieburtz tells Reuters.

The study enrolled 91 people and was sponsored by Medivation, which is now in late-stage testing of the drug. It was originally sold as an antihistamine in Russia. Medivation has posted surprisingly strong mid-stage results for the therapy in Alzheimer's. Medivation CEO David Hung plans to start tests of altered forms of Dimebon for heart failure, Parkinson's and a range of other diseases.

Late-stage Alzheimer's data is expected in the first half of this year, and a number of analysts expect Medivation's stock to spike or plunge depending on the results.

- here's the story from Reuters

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Most available osteoporosis treatments can only prevent the breakdown of old bone. But an investigational drug that effectively cured osteoporosis in mice and rats in a study could point the way to a new class of therapies, according to researchers from Columbia University Medical Center.

A little more than a year after the publication of research that found serotonin released by the gut inhibits bone formation, a team led by Gerard Karsenty read about the investigational drug LP533401, which is able to inhibit serotonin in the gut. "When we learned of this compound, we thought that it was important to test it as proof of principle that there could be novel ways to treat osteoporosis with therapies that can be taken orally and regulate the formation of serotonin," Karsenty says in a statement.

The researchers tested the compound in rodents experiencing post-menopausal osteoporosis-administering the compound to the animals once a day for up to six weeks. Results demonstrated that osteoporosis was prevented from developing, or when already present, could be fully cured, according to a statement. In addition, levels of serotonin were normal in the brain, indicating the compound was unable to cross the blood-brain barrier, thereby avoiding many potential side effects.

Study results were published in the Feb. 7 issue of Nature Medicine.

-  check out the press release
-  the Nature Medicine article is available for purchase here

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A pair of top scientific institutes has agreed to license out flu antibodies they designed with the CDC to Roche and its subsidiary Genentech.  

Scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute as well as the CDC say they've been able to demonstrate that the antibodies attach themselves to novel segments of seasonal viruses as well as the H1N1 virus. And now the institutes will reap an undisclosed sum along with milestones and royalties for any new vaccines or diagnostics that are developed out of this program.

The scientists believe that the antibodies make it more difficult for the viruses to mutate in order to survive, closing a key escape route and keeping them vulnerable to vaccines. "Binding to the highly conserved stem region prevents changes in the protein that are necessary for viral entry into the host cell, thereby inhibiting further infection of host cells and the rise of escape mutants," says Dana-Farber in a release.

- check out the press release
- read the story from Mass High Tech

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Using pulses of laser light, researchers at Ohio State University were able to observe for the first time how the body heals itself after sunburn.

Tiny molecules called photolyases usually heal the damage caused by ultraviolet light exposure. Sunburn is caused when ultraviolet light damages skin beyond repair, causing DNA to die. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ohio State physicist and chemist Dongping Zhong took "snapshots" of photolyases in action in order to observe how the molecules repair DNA. Up to this point, researchers have always had to attach a fluorescent marker molecule to photolyases, which may have interfered with its natural motion.

"Now that we have accurately mapped the motions of a photolyase at the site of DNA repair, we can much better understand DNA repair at the atomic scale, and we can reveal the entire repair process with unprecedented detail." Zhong hopes that by understanding how photolyases, scientists can eventually develop a treatment that repairs DNA damaged by UV light.

- here's the article for more

A group of scientists at Scripps Research Institute has identified two compounds that bind to the HIV protease in novel locations, a discovery that opens the door to a new class of treatments that can either improve existing drugs, combat resistant strains or counter any growing resistance to currently used therapies.

"The study's results open the door to a whole new approach to drug design against HIV protease," says Scripps Research Associate Professor C. David Stout, the senior author of the study. "The fragments bound at not one, but two, different crevices in protease outside the active site. This is an important proof-of-concept that the protease molecule has two non-active site binding pockets ('allosteric sites') which can now be exploited as a powerful new strategy to combat drug-resistance in HIV."

"The experiments validate my hypothesis developed from computational modeling that HIV protease has pockets on its surface besides the active site that can bind drugs," says Research Associate Alex Perryman. "Drugs developed to target these sites could be used to make current FDA-approved active site inhibitors more potent and to restore their effectiveness against drug-resistant superbugs. The whole strategy of targeting non-active sites may also prove useful against other diseases, especially when there are mutations that cause drug resistance."

The research will appear as the cover story of the March issue of the journal Chemical Biology & Drug Design.

- here's the story on the discovery

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Stem Cell Research

> A group at Stanford's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine say they have found a simpler, safer way to turn stem cells taken from fat into induced pluripotent stem cells. Scientists used small circles of DNA to trigger the transformation. Report

> Changes in blood stem cells during aging can be reversed, according to scientists. Story

> Rudolf Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and Konrad Hochedlinger of Massachusetts General Hospital have won a patent on their approach to reprogramming somatic cells. And some of the leading experts in the field are afraid that a group of pending patents in the same field could eventually create a legal thicket that will hamper new scientific efforts. Report

> A pair of USC researchers has won $2 million in federal grants to support their work on embryonic stem cells. Story

Genetics

> Investigators say they have discovered genetic variants that help explain why some people age faster than others. "What our study suggests is that some people are genetically programmed to age at a faster rate," says Dr. Tim Spector of King's College London. Article

> After studying a group of morbidly obese people in the U.K., scientists say that many of them lacked a common set of genes, raising the question of whether the condition is inherited. Report

> Scientists have identified genetic variants in mothers and fetuses that appear to play a key role in triggering premature labor. Story

Cancer research

> A new study has unveiled 25 segments of DNA associated with leukemia, a discovery that offers developers a number of new drug targets. Report

And Finally... Researchers have identified a new target that could lead to an effective therapy for endometrial cancer. Release