University of Texas Southwestern Labs: Where Breakthroughs Happen

Liver cells have a vital metabolic inflexibility during regeneration to starve dysfunctional cells and keep damage from spreading, according to new research from Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) published in Science.

James J. Collins III, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pharmacology at UT Southwestern Medical Center who leads groundbreaking research into the parasitic disease schistosomiasis, has been named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator.

Cancer cells salvage purine nucleotides to fuel tumor growth, including purines in foods we eat, an important discovery with implications for cancer therapies from research by Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern published in Cell.

A team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers has discovered a new way that cells regulate senescence, an irreversible end to cell division. The findings, published in Cell, could one day lead to new interventions for a variety of conditions associated with aging, including neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer, as well as new therapies for a collection of diseases known as ribosomopathies.

A protein receptor called PAQR4 found within fat cells appears to act as a sensor for ceramides, waxy lipids whose overabundance has been linked to a variety of metabolic disorders and cancers, a study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers suggests.