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Salk News


Targeted tumor therapy: when antagonists do the better job

La Jolla, CA – Targeted tumor therapy lobs toxic payloads directly into tumors to destroy cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed. In the case of radiotherapy, these missiles, which should unerringly home in on the target and make it implode, consist of radioactive bullets guided by small molecules – known as agonists – that recognize and then activate specific receptors over-expressed on the surface of tumor cells.


A natural chemical found in strawberries boosts memory in healthy mice

La Jolla, CA – Mothers have long exhorted their children to eat their fruit and vegetables. But once kids are beyond mom’s watchful eye, the hated greens often go the way of Barbie dolls and power rangers. Now, there’s another reason to reach for colorful fruits past adolescence.


Vax and Pax: taking turns to build an eye

La Jolla, CA – Opposing ball clubs don’t take the field at the same time, and neither do teams of proteins responsible for creating the eye. While one team builds the retina, in adjacent cellular turf the opponents are busy constructing the cord that carries visual signals to the brain. And these guys aren’t supposed to mingle.


Algae provide new clues to cancer

La Jolla, CA – A microscopic green alga helped scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies identify a novel function for the retinoblastoma protein (RB), which is known for its role as a tumor suppressor in mammalian cells. By coupling cell size with cell division, RB ensures that cells stay within an optimal size range.


More than meets the eye

La Jolla, CA – Ever watch a jittery video made with a hand-held camera that made you almost ill? With our eyes constantly darting back and forth and our body hardly ever holding still, that is exactly what our brain is faced with. Yet despite the shaky video stream, we usually perceive our environment as perfectly stable.


Williams syndrome, the brain, and music

La Jolla, CA – Children with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder, just love music and will spend hours listening to or making music. Despite averaging an IQ score of 60, many possess a great memory for songs, an uncanny sense of rhythm, and the kind of auditory acuity that can discern differences between different vacuum cleaner brands.


Salk Nonresident Fellow Liz Blackburn awarded 2006 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research

La Jolla, CA – Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D., has been awarded the highly prestigious Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for her pioneering work on telomeres, the structures that protect chromosome ends, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced on Saturday.


Ronald M. Evans to receive Harvey Prize for outstanding contributions to human health

La Jolla, CA – Dr. Ronald M. Evans, professor and head of the Gene Expression Laboratory of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, was awarded the prestigious Harvey Prize in Human Health from the Technion-Israel Institute for Technology, Israel’s premier science and technology university.


Distinguishing friend from foe in the battle against cancer

La Jolla, CA – The latest generation of cancer chemotherapeutic drugs specifically targets mutant enzymes or “oncoproteins” that have run amok and now promote uncontrolled cell growth. As promising as these drugs are, cancer cells with their backs against the wall have the tendency to fight back. A major goal of cancer research is to frustrate these acts of cellular desperation.


Two Salk researchers win McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award

La Jolla, CA – Dr. Richard J. Krauzlis and Dr. Edward M. Callaway have been selected for the McKnight Technological Innovations in Neurosciences Award. The awards support scientists working on new and unusual approaches to understand brain function.


In a technical tour de force, Salk scientists take a global view of the epigenome

La Jolla, CA – A collaboration between researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the University of California at Los Angeles captured the genome-wide DNA methylation pattern of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana – the “laboratory rat” of the plant world – in one big sweep.


When the going gets tough, slime molds start synthesizing

La Jolla, CA – In times of plenty, the uni-cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum leads a solitary life munching on bacteria littering the forest floor. But these simple creatures can perform heroic developmental acts: when the bacterial food supply dries up, Dictyostelium amebas band together with their neighbors and form a multi-cellular tower designed to save the children.


Neuroscientists create technique to rapidly switch neurons off and on to study function

La Jolla, CA – Using molecules involved in insect molting, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have created a laboratory method that can quickly turn off neurons in the brain and spinal cord of live animals - and can just as rapidly switch them back on.


Life and death in the hippocampus: what young neurons need to survive

La Jolla, CA – Whether newborn nerve cells in adult brains live or die depends on whether they can muscle their way into networks occupied by mature neurons. Neuroscientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies pin-pointed the molecular survival gear required for a young neuron to successfully jump into the fray and hook up with other cells.


Computational analysis shows that plant hormones often go it alone

La Jolla, CA – Unlike the Three Musketeers who lived by the motto “All for one, one for all,” plant hormones prefer to do their own thing. For years, debate swirled around whether pathways activated by growth-regulating plant hormones converge on a central growth regulatory module. Now, the cooperation model is challenged by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. They show that each hormone acts largely independently in the Aug. 11 issue of Cell.


New research points toward mechanism of age-onset toxicity of Alzheimer’s protein

La Jolla, CA – Like most neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer’s disease usually appears late in life, raising the question of whether it is a disastrous consequence of aging or if the toxic protein aggregates that cause the disease simply take a long time to form.


New Target for Anti-Cholesterol Drugs, Antibiotics

La Jolla, CA – A natural chemical that has been ignored by researchers largely because of the runaway success of the blockbuster statin drugs may in fact yield a rare twofer: a prime target for novel cholesterol-lowering drugs and the blueprint for a new generation of antibiotics that can take down Streptococcus pneumonia and Staphylococcus aureus.


Salk Institute researcher named Pew Scholar

La Jolla, CA – Satchidananda Panda, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, has been named a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. He is one of only 15 researchers in the country to receive the honor this year. The distinction comes with a $240,000 award provided over four years to support his research on the molecular basis of circadian timekeeping mechanisms in mammals.


Finding a cellular Neverland: How stem cells stay childlike

La Jolla, CA – Despite their celebrated “immortality,” the capacity of embryonic stem (ES) cells for endless division has its limits. After a very extended childhood spent dividing in a culture dish, even stem cells tend to grow up and assume adult roles as workaday nerve, muscle, or blood cells, never to return to their youthful state.


Chewing up a key regulator of fat synthesis keeps mice lean despite a high-fat diet

La Jolla, CA – Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a novel pathway that regulates the body’s ability to store or burn fat, a discovery that suggests new ways to reduce obesity, diabetes and other fat-related human diseases.