INHIBITING GLUCOSE TRANSPORT IN CELLS MAY HELP TREAT SOME SKIN DISEASES

A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center has demonstrated that targeting the metabolism in growing cells may be a promising way to treat skin diseases such as psoriasis.

The disease is caused by skin overgrowth resulting from excess cell division, known as hyperproliferation, and the team led by Dr. Richard Wang, assistant professor of dermatology, showed in mice that inhibiting glucose transport could be a safe, effective treatment for such diseases, according to UT Southwestern.

Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune disease that affects more than 7 million people nationwide. [Photo courtesy of UT Southwestern]

“The study provides a window for treatment of various diseases by specifically targeting the metabolic requirements of hyperproliferative skin disease,” Wang said in a release. “It also broadens our understanding of changes in skin metabolism in response to physiological stressors.” 

The team found that actively dividing cells such as those in psoriasis, are more dependent on glucose for their growth, and by inhibiting glucose transport in them, skin overgrowth and inflammation were reduced.

Read more here.

UNTHSC LIBRARY GETS $6.4M AWARD TO AID IN HISTORIC PROGRAM

The Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library at the UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth received a $6.4 million award from the National Institutes of Health to assist in a historic national effort to gather health information on 1 million people living in the U.S.

“We want to guide people of all ages to trusted health information so that they can make educated decisions about their health and that of their loved ones.”

Lisa Smith

The grant will allow the library to roll out community engagement programs in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

“Regional medical libraries like ours will partner with public libraries and community organizations to provide access to quality health information,” Lisa Smith, executive director of the South Central Regional Medical Library at UNTHSC, said in a release. “We want to guide people of all ages to trusted health information so that they can make educated decisions about their health and that of their loved ones.”

The library also received a $1.5 million supplement to support education programs for the NIH’s “All of Us” program intended to accelerate research and improve health, according to the medical school.

The program launched nationwide on May 6 with the aim of finding paths toward delivering precision medicine by taking into account individual differences in environment, biology, and lifestyle.

Find out more here.

GALDERMA STUDY SHOWS ITS GEL HELPED IMPROVE ACNE

Fort Worth-based pharma company Galderma announced this week that it had published the results from its Phase 4 ALAMO study evaluating the performance of its Epiduo Forte Gel plus oral doxycycline in patients with severe inflammatory acne.

The results were published in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology.

In a nutshell, participants in the 12-week study reported a large reduction in lesion count with the gel plus oral doxycycline. Acne affects up to 50 million Americans a year and is the most common skin condition in the nation.

Discover more about Galderma’s study here.

TWU RESEARCHER LOOKS AT PROCESS OF ‘JUDICIALIZATION’

Parker Hevron

An assistant government professor at Texas Woman’s University in Denton is conducting a research project on media coverage and its possible effects on what people think about the American court system. 

Parker Hevron is co-principal investigator along with Jeb Barnes of the University of Southern California. There work is being done with the assistance of a $219,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

The professors are looking at the policy problems in the U.S. that are handled by the court system rather than by elected lawmakers in a process called “judicialization.”

“We are hoping that policymakers will use our findings to help determine whether to seek policy change through the court system or through the legislative process,” Hevron said in a release. “For various reasons, it is often easier for activists to eschew legislatures in favor of the courts, but we argue that if policymakers go down that road then they must be aware that their efforts may lead to fundamentally distorted media coverage and that they should employ strategies to counteract this.”

It’s a timely study in the current political and journalistic environment, and you can find out more here.