mutation
Huntington’s Disease: Gene Editing Shows Promise in Mouse Studies
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
My father was a folk song collector, and I grew up listening to the music of Woody Guthrie. On July 14th, folk music enthusiasts will be celebrating the 105th anniversary of Guthrie’s birth in his hometown of Okemah, OK. Besides being renowned for writing “This Land is Your Land” and other folk classics, Guthrie has another more tragic claim to fame: he provided the world with a glimpse at the devastation caused by a rare, inherited neurological disorder called Huntington’s disease.
When Guthrie died from complications of Huntington’s a half-century ago, the disease was untreatable. Sadly, it still is. But years of basic science advances, combined with the promise of innovative gene editing systems such as CRISPR/Cas9, are providing renewed hope that we will someday be able to treat or even cure Huntington’s disease, along with many other inherited disorders.
Why Redheads Are More Susceptible to Melanoma
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
We’ve long known that redheads are 10 to 100 times more vulnerable than people with other hair colors to melanoma, a particularly dangerous form of skin cancer. What we haven’t known is why. Why would the hue of your hair have anything to do with your cancer risk? When you consider that melanoma is our most deadly form of skin cancer— expected to cause some 77,000 cases and 9,400 deaths this year alone—it’s important to figure out the connection. A new study [1], led by NIH-funded researchers in Boston, has identified a couple of key links.
Protein Pile-up: Common Cause of Brain Disease
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Caption: Left: High levels of the toxic ataxin-1 protein have destroyed nerve cells in the cerebellum of a mouse, causing a severe disease. Right: Here researchers have genetically blocked the genes that normally produce high levels of ataxin-1. This prevents the disease from developing and keeps the brain healthy.
Credit: Harry Orr, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota
With our aging population, more people are developing neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. We currently don’t know how to prevent or cure these conditions, and their increasing prevalence not only represents a tragedy for affected individuals and their families, but also a looming public health and economic crisis.
Even though neurodegenerative diseases have varied roots—and affect distinct cell types in different brain regions—they do share something in common. In most of these disorders, we see some type of toxic protein accumulating in the brain. It’s as if the brain’s garbage disposal system is blocked, letting the waste pile up. In Huntington’s disease, huntingtin is the disease-causing protein. In spinocerebellar ataxia, it’s the ataxins. In Alzheimer’s, it’s beta-amyloid; in Parkinson’s, it’s α-synuclein. When garbage builds up in your kitchen, it’s a bad situation. When it’s in your brain, the consequences are deadly.
Last week, a team of NIH-funded researchers based at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas and at the University of Minnesota revealed a clever way to identify genes that normally increase the levels of these rogue disease-causing proteins.
Meet Alex—Before and After NIH Clinical Trial
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Caption: Alex, then and now, with Dr. Goldbach-Mansky
Credit: Kate Barton and Susan Bettendorf (NIH)
Alex Barton recently turned 17. That’s incredible because Alex was born with a rare, often fatal genetic disease and wasn’t expected to reach his teenage years.
When Alex was born, he looked like he’d been dipped in boiling water: his skin was bright red and blistered. He spent most of his time sleeping. When awake, he screamed in agony from headaches, joint pain, and rashes. After a torturous 14 months, a rheumatologist told his mother that Alex suffered from Neonatal-Onset Multisystem Inflammatory Disease (NOMID). The doctor showed her a brief and scary paragraph in a medical text. Kate Barton, Alex’s mother, admitted that it “knocked her over like a freight train.”
