2015 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award
Creative Minds: The Worm Tissue-ome Teaches Developmental Biology for Us All
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: Coleen Murphy, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
In the nearly 40 years since Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sydney Brenner proposed using a tiny, transparent soil worm called Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism for biomedical research, C. elegans has become one of the most-studied organisms on the planet. Researchers have determined that C. elegans has exactly 959 cells, 302 of which are neurons. They have sequenced and annotated its genome, developed an impressive array of tools to study its DNA, and characterized the development of many of its tissues.
But what researchers still don’t know is exactly how all of these parts work together to coordinate this little worm’s response to changes in nutrition, environment, health status, and even the aging process. To learn more, 2015 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award winner Coleen Murphy of Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, has set out to analyze which genes are active, or transcribed, in each of the major tissues of adult C. elegans, building the framework for what’s been dubbed the C. elegans “tissue-ome.”
Creative Minds: A New Chemistry for Aging Research?
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Tony Wyss-Coray / Credit: Stanford School of Medicine
Basic scientists have long studied aging by looking inside of cells. While this research has produced many important leads, they are now starting to look outside the cell for the wealth of biochemical clues contained in the bloodstream.
To introduce you to this exciting frontier in aging research, this blog highlighted a while back the work of Tony Wyss-Coray at Stanford School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA. He and a colleague had just received a 2013 NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award to explore the effects of exercise on the brains of mice. Their work, in fact, produced one of Science Magazine’s Breakthrough Discoveries of 2014. Their team showed that by fusing the circulatory systems of old and young mice to create a shared blood supply, the young blood triggered new muscle and neural connections in the older mice, while also improving their memories.
As fascinating as this theoretical Fountain of Youth was, Wyss-Coray recognized a critical limitation. He had no way of knowing how factors secreted by the young mouse could actually cross the blood-brain barrier and rejuvenate neurons. To solve this unknown, Wyss-Coray recently received a 2015 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award to build a potentially game-changing tool to track the aging process in mice.
Creative Minds: New Piece in the Crohn’s Disease Puzzle?
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Gwendalyn Randolph
Back in the early 1930s, Burrill Crohn, a gastroenterologist in New York, decided to examine intestinal tissue biopsies from some of his patients who were suffering from severe bowel problems. It turns out that 14 showed signs of severe inflammation and structural damage in the lower part of the small intestine. As Crohn later wrote a medical colleague, “I have discovered, I believe, a new intestinal disease …” [1]
More than eight decades later, the precise cause of this disorder, which is now called Crohn’s disease, remains a mystery. Researchers have uncovered numerous genes, microbes, immunologic abnormalities, and other factors that likely contribute to the condition, estimated to affect hundreds of thousands of Americans and many more worldwide [2]. But none of these discoveries alone appears sufficient to trigger the uncontrolled inflammation and pathology of Crohn’s disease.
Other critical pieces of the Crohn’s puzzle remain to be found, and Gwendalyn Randolph thinks she might have her eyes on one of them. Randolph, an immunologist at Washington University, St. Louis, suspects that Crohn’s disease and other related conditions, collectively called inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), stems from changes in vessels that carry nutrients, immune cells, and possibly microbial components away from the intestinal wall. To pursue this promising lead, Rudolph has received a 2015 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award.
