Welcome to the High-Throughput Bioscience Center (HTBC)

JUL 7, 2008

Also featured in NPR

STANFORD, Calif. - Kidney cancer patients generally have one option for beating their disease: surgery to remove the organ. 

But that could change, thanks to a new molecule found by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers that kills kidney cancer cells. Ideally, the researchers said, a drug created from this molecule would help fight the life-threatening disease while leaving patients' kidneys intact. 

"You now have a potential means of going after a disease that's been difficult to treat," said Amato Giaccia, PhD, professor and director of radiation oncology and radiation biology at the medical school. His findings are published in the journal Cancer Cell on July 8. Read More...

AUG 31, 2008

STANFORD, Calif. - The fight against the liver disease hepatitis C has been at something of an impasse for years, with more than 150 million people currently infected, and traditional antiviral treatments causing nasty side effects and often falling short of a cure. Using a novel technique, medical and engineering researchers at Stanford University have discovered a vulnerable step in the virus' reproduction process that in lab testing could be effectively targeted with an obsolete antihistamine.

The new research was published in the Aug. 31 online version of Nature Biotechnology. Read More...

SEP 11, 2008

Marauding molecules cause the tissue damage that underlies heart attacks, sunburn, Alzheimer's and hangovers. But medical school researchers say they may have found ways to combat the carnage after discovering a new cog in the body's molecular detoxification machinery.

The culprit molecules are oxygen byproducts called free radicals. These unstable molecules start chain reactions of cellular damage - an escalating storm that ravages healthy tissue. 'We've found a totally new pathway for reducing the damage caused by free radicals, such as the damage that happens during a heart attack,' said Daria Mochly-Rosen, PhD, professor of chemical and systems biology and the senior author of a study in the Sept. 12 issue of Science reporting the new findings. Read More...

AUG 3, 2011

Front Page Article in San Francisco Chronicle

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have identified a compound that attacks the Achilles’ heel of certain cancer cells by depriving them of their energy source, the sugar glucose.

Cancer chemotherapy can be a rough ride, in part because most of these drugs don’t distinguish between what’s cancerous and what’s not. The chemicals attack all rapidly dividing cells, from cancer cells, to blood cells and the cells that make hair. However, drugs that target a biological phenomenon only found in cancer cells, such as the compound recently discovered by Stanford researchers, could efficiently fight the disease with minimal side effects. The finding was published Aug. 3 in Science Translational Medicine. Read More...

OCT 13, 2014

A drug that activates targets of the hedgehog signaling pathway, which is lost when bladder cancer invades, could prevent the progression of the disease in humans. Clinical trials are planned.

A drug already approved for use in humans may prevent invasive bladder cancer, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The drug, FK506, is commonly used to suppress the immune system in organ transplant recipients to combat rejection. Read More...

NOV 26, 2014

The discovery of a new mechanism of DNA damage could offer new insights into cancer and neurodegenerative disease, and also reveals a surprising role for messenger RNA, the molecule that forms the genetic transcript.

Enzymes inside cells that normally repair damaged DNA sometimes wreck it instead, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found. The insight could lead to a better understanding of the causes of some types of cancer and neurodegenerative disease.

In a paper published online Nov. 27 in Molecular Cell, the researchers explain how the recently discovered mechanism of DNA damage occurs when genetic transcripts, composed of RNA, stick to the DNA instead of detaching from it. Read More...

APR 8, 2016

Researchers have discovered drugs with the potential to eliminate the Lyme disease-causing bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi at the onset of infection.

When physicians diagnose Lyme disease, they usually prescribe standard antibiotics — and for many patients, that’s enough. But for 10 to 20 percent of patients, the disease persists, causing joint paint, neurological difficulties and fatigue, among other symptoms.

New drugs, capable of completely eliminating the disease-causing bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi at the onset, are needed. Recently, a team of researchers at the School of Medicine have discovered a few promising leads.

In a study published April 1 in the journal Drug Design, Development and Therapy, the researchers tested 4,366 drug compounds for their efficacy against B. Burgdorferi in the HTBC. They picked the top 20, which have all been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a variety of uses — one, for example, is used to treat alcohol abuse — and subjected them to additional tests. These compounds blocked the growth of between 95 and 99.8 percent of the bacteria in the samples. Read More...