Evotec and venture capital consortium form "Breakpoint Therapeutics GmbH"

Early stage funding amounting to € 30 m

09-Jul-2019 - Evotec SE announced the formation of Breakpoint Therapeutics GmbH, a spin-off company focusing on the development of Evotec’s DNA damage response (“DDR”) portfolio, comprising discovery-stage assets and drug targets that promise broad therapeutic application in a variety of cancers. Breakpoint ...

How to quell a cytokine storm: New ways to dampen an overactive immune system

Penn Medicine, University of Leeds findings have implications for new drug targets for lupus, other autoimmune disorders

03-Jun-2019 - BRCA--the family of DNA-repair proteins associated with breast, ovarian, prostate, and pancreatic cancers--interacts with a multipart, molecular complex that is also responsible for regulating the immune system. When certain players in this pathway go awry, autoimmune disorders, like lupus, can ...

A new mechanism for accessing damaged DNA

03-Jun-2019 - UV light damages the DNA of skin cells, which can lead to skin cancer. But this process is counteracted by the DNA repair machinery, acting as a molecular sunscreen. It has been unclear, however, how repair proteins work on DNA tightly packed in chromatin, where access to DNA damage is restricted ...

Going fishing in the protein pond using histones as a bait – how do cells decide how to repair their DNA?

27-Feb-2019 - When DNA in the cell nucleus gets damaged, our cells can resort to a variety of repair mechanisms. A recent study published in 'Nature Cell Biology', to which scientists from Helmholtz Zentrum München made major contributions, elucidates the molecular basis by which a cell makes the choice ...

Faulty DNA repair in intestinal stem cells leads to cancer

07-Jan-2019 - A study by the Cluster of Excellence "Inflammation at Interfaces" finds a new mechanism by which DNA repair protects the genome and prevents the development of bowel cancer. Cancer is caused by the body's own cells, which change and start growing out of control. With bowel cancer, this affects ...

Defective DNA damage repair leads to chaos in the genome

14-Nov-2018 - Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now found a cause for the frequent catastrophic events in the genetic material of cancer cells that have only been known for a few years: If an important DNA repair system of the cells has failed, this ...

Mutant protein tackles DNA guardian to promote cancer development

How tumour development is driven by mutations in important gene in preventing cancer

09-Nov-2018 - Melbourne scientists have discovered how tumour development is driven by mutations in the most important gene in preventing cancer, p53. The research revealed that in the early stages of cancer, mutant p53 'tackles' the normal p53 protein and blocks it from carrying out its protective role. As a ...

How resistant cancer cells can be fought

31-Jul-2018 - An international research team under the co-direction of the University of Bern and the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) has discovered various mechanisms of resistance to cancer therapy. The findings help researchers to understand the self-repair of cancer cells after a therapy and thus help ...

A DNA 'shield' with crucial roles in normal cell division

20-Jul-2018 - In immune cells, this is crucial to make antibodies In cancer, mutations in complex could lead to resistance to BRCA-targeting PARP inhibitor drugs or platinum chemotherapies Scientists have made a major discovery about how cells repair broken strands of DNA that could have huge implications for ...

Less failure in CRIPSR gene editing

Biochemists discover cause of genome editing failures

13-Jul-2018 - Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago are the first to describe why CRISPR gene editing sometimes fails to work, and how the process can be made to be much more efficient. CRISPR is a gene-editing tool that allows scientists to cut out unwanted genes or genetic material from DNA, ...