Telomere length matters: scientists find shorter telomeres may cause aging-related disease

Aging is inevitable no matter how much you exercise, sleep or eat healthy. There is no magic pill or supplement that can thwart growing older. However, preventing certain age-related diseases is a different story. Genetic mutations can raise the risk of acquiring age-related diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia. And scientists are on … Continue reading Telomere length matters: scientists find shorter telomeres may cause aging-related disease

Understanding two heart problems by studying the domino effect of one gene network

Although heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes, are specialized to help pump blood to the organs, they nonetheless carry all the genetic instructions for becoming a nerve cell, an intestinal cell, a liver or any cell type in the body. But at the moment in time that the fetal heart begins to develop, master switch proteins, … Continue reading Understanding two heart problems by studying the domino effect of one gene network

The New World That iPS Cells Will Bring

A stem cell champion was crowned last month. Dr. Takahashi from the RIKEN center in Japan received the prestigious Ogawa-Yamanaka Prize for developing a human iPS cell therapy to treat a debilitating eye disease called macular degeneration. We wrote about the event held at the Gladstone Institutes in a previous blog and saved the juicy insights … Continue reading The New World That iPS Cells Will Bring