Category: Science

National health and research project comes to Bethany Park in KCK

The All of Us Journey to Health Traveling Exhibit will be at Bethany Park, 1120 Central Ave., Kansas City, Kansas, through May 10. (Submitted photo)

The public has a chance to participate in a national health and research project today through May 10 at Bethany Park, 1120 Central Ave., Kansas City, Kansas.

The Central Avenue Betterment Association is the local host for the All of Us Journey to Health Traveling Exhibit, which will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. May 7 through May 10 at Bethany Park.

The exhibit is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the National Alliance for Hispanic Health. It will raise awareness about health and the All of Us Research Program, and will gather genetic, biological, environmental, health and lifestyle data from 1 million or more volunteers who live in the United States. The participants will share information about their health over time.

The All of Us Research Program will be at Bethany Park, 1120 Central Ave., Kansas City, Kansas, through May 10. (Submitted photo)

Edgar Galicia, executive director of CABA, said this is a biobank that will gather data for health at the molecular level from people. The data will be available to researchers, without individual names being revealed, and the researchers will conduct studies in order to cure diseases.

Galicia said this event is free and open to the public. Those who are asked to provide samples and decide to participate may be paid $25 in a gift card, cash or electronic voucher.

According to a spokesman for the All of Us Research Program, this traveling exhibit is an attempt to include all communities in clinical and biomedical research.

Participants in the All of Us Research Program will be able to access their own health information, summary data about the entire participant community and information about studies and findings that come from the All of Us Research Program.

For more information about the program, visit JoinAllofUs.org/juntos.

Study identifies two proteins that suppress tumor growth in fruit flies; suggests similar effect on human cancers

The concept sounds simple, but understanding the process has been elusive: Cut off the nutrient supply to suppress the growth of tumors.

Now researchers in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University are unveiling promising results for this concept by studying the behaviors of specific proteins in fruit flies. The proteins have known counterparts in humans.

“In our latest study, we identified ‘Headcase,’ or Hdc, and ‘Unkempt,’ or Unk, as two nutrient-restriction-specific tumor suppressor proteins that form a complex that acts to restrict cell-cycle progression and tissue growth in response to nutrient stress in Drosophila or fruit flies,” said Jianzhong Yu, assistant professor and cancer biologist in the college’s anatomy and physiology department.

Yu is collaborating with Naren Li, postdoctoral fellow in anatomy and physiology; Yulan Xiong, assistant professor of anatomy and physiology; and Qinfang Liu, doctoral student in physiology.

The four of them recently published an article on their latest research, “Headcase and Unkempt Regulate Tissue Growth and Cell Cycle Progression in Response to Nutrient Restriction,” in the journal Cell Reports.

Their study was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Kansas INBRE program, a startup fund and SUCCESS-FYI Intramural Grant from the College of Veterinary Medicine. The work is also supported by the Johnson Cancer Research Center at Kansas State University.

“Given the role of the human counterparts of these proteins, our results suggest that Hdc and Unk may function as tumor suppressors in mammals,” Yu said. “Although the human ortholog of Unk has not been studied in the context of cell proliferation, we showed that both Hdc and Unk are able to inhibit tissue growth in vivo in the Drosophila model. Thus, it is worthwhile in the future to investigate the growth control function of these two proteins, especially in regard to the formation of cancer tumors.”