Highlights

Newsroom highlights for January 2020

Published in Fundamentals - Fundamentals January 2020

Little Size Holds Big Impact: Johns Hopkins Scientists Develop Nanocontainer to Ship Titan-Size Gene Therapies and Drugs into Cells

Confocal microscopy image of human embryonic kidney cells.

Squeeze the Titanic into a tugboat. That’s what it’s like to get a titan-size medicine into a nanosize container that can slip inside cells. The nanoparticles can deliver protein-based medicines and gene therapies of any size. Their creation could lead to a more efficient way to deliver medical compounds into targeted cells.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have successfully used a laser-assisted imaging tool to “see” what happens in brain cells of mice learning to reach out and grab a pellet of food. Their experiments, they say, add to evidence that such motor-based learning can occur in multiple areas of the brain, even ones not typically associated with motor control.

Helper Protein Worsens Diabetic Eye Disease

Blood vessels that feed the retina

In a recent study using mice, lab-grown human retinal cells and patient samples, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists say they found evidence of a new pathway that may contribute to degeneration of the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. The findings, they conclude, bring scientists a step closer to developing new drugs for a central vision-destroying complication of diabetes that affects an estimated 750,000 Americans.