Target ALS Foundation Inc. and the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation LLC (ADDF) have announced the first four award recipients in a new initiative to identify and develop biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal degeneration (FTD).

The prognostic role of complement inhibitor CSMD1 was assessed in 1,507 patients with glioma from three different datasets. Results of the bioinformatical analysis suggested that high expression of CSMD1 was associated with increased overall survival and disease-free survival, as well as lower tumor grade.

Hypomyelinating leukodystrophy is a genetic disorder characterized by deficient myelination of the central nervous system white matter. An international team of researchers has published a case report of 4 unrelated families with a hypomyelinating leukodystrophy phenotype.

The usefulness of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCHL1) for the early prediction of long-term traumatic brain injury (TBI) outcomes has not been well investigated.

Adiponectin (ADIPOQ) is an adipocyte-derived hormone that promotes insulin sensitivity, inhibits cell death and decreases inflammation. Previous studies identified common variants in the ADIPOQ gene that have been associated with aberrant adiponectin levels, obesity, type 2 diabetes and diabetic kidney disease. In a recent study, the first multigenerational family was identified as harboring a protein-truncating mutation in the ADIPOQ gene, p.Gly93GlufsTer73, that cosegregated with diabetes and end-stage renal disease.

Tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factor 3 (TRAF3) is a cytoplasmic protein that controls signal transduction from different receptor families, and plays a key role in regulating immunity.

Chemokines are small signaling cytokines that are involved in many physiological processes such as host immune responses, wound healing and bone remodeling, with two of these chemokines, C-X-C motif chemokine 9 (CXCL9) and CXCL10, being involved in different osteoimmuno-modulating pathways.

There is a need of better markers that reflect key mechanisms involved in diabetic kidney disease (DKD). In a new study, investigators have identified increased concentrations of neuroblastoma suppressor of tumorigenicity 1 (NBL1) as a strong and independent predictor of progression to end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in patients with diabetes.

Breast cancer progression depends on the interaction between the proliferating breast cancer cells and the biochemical and biophysical properties of the extracellular matrix (ECM).