Jordi Bove, Marta Martinez-Vicente & Miquel Vila AbstractA growing number of studies point to rapamycin as a pharmacological compound that is able to provide neuroprotection in several experimental models of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and spinocerebellar ataxia type 3. In addition, rapamycin exerts strong anti-ageing effects in several species, including mammals. By inhibiting the activity of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), rapamycin influences a variety of essential cellular processes, such as cell growth and proliferation, protein synthesis and autophagy. Here, we review the molecular mechanisms underlying the neuroprotective effects of rapamycin and discuss the therapeutic potential of this compound for neurodegenerative diseases.http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v12/n8/full/nrn3068.html Acontecera nos dias 12-15 de outubro na cidade de Floranopolis - SC o 7th International Conference of the Brazilian Association for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (AB3C) e o 3rd International Conference of the IberoAmerican Society for Bioinformatics (SoIBio). X-meetig 2011 (AB3C / SolBio). O encontro contara com os palestrantes brasileiros Ana Tereza Vasconcelos (LNCC) e Aristoteles Goes-Neto (UEFS), bem como os palestrantes internacionais Ana Teresa Freitas (INESC Lisboa), Robin Haw (Ontario Inst. Cancer. Res.), Erik Lindahl (Stockholm University), Arthur J. Olson (Scripps Res. Inst.), entre outros. As inscricoes serao no periodo de 12 de setembro a 15 de outubro de 2011 no site http://www.x-meeting.com/ . A submissao de artigos sera no periodo de 21 de junho a 1 de setembro de 2001 no site. Para maiores informacoes visite o site do x-meeting. Tightly targeted cancer therapy receives marketing approvalEventually, Clay Siegall got used to doors slamming in his face. When the cancer researcher decided to create a company that would fight cancer using weaponized antibodies, investors were sceptical. "We contacted 35, then 40, then 45 venture-capital companies," he says. "We got turned down over and over and over."Siegall and his partners kept trying, and 13 years later the investors who eventually bet on Siegall's company, Seattle Genetics, of Bothell, Washington, are getting their reward. On 19 August, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the company's lead therapy, an antibody engineered to deliver a poisonous payload directly into lymphoma cells. The hope is that such antibodies, called antibodydrug conjugates, will sidestep the punishing toxicities of classical chemotherapies, which run loose in the bloodstream and kill healthy cells in addition to their targets. Click for full graphicTim Illidge, an oncologist at the University of Manchester, UK, says that the approval is a "game-changer" for a promising class of drugs that has struggled to gain a foothold since it was first described in a 1964 Nature paper1 (see 'A long time coming'). "We're essentially in a renaissance of the antibodydrug conjugate," he says.Unembellished, or 'naked', antibodies are already used to treat cancer because of their unparallelled ability to target proteins found on the surface of tumour cells. Their high profit margins and strong patent protections have pharmaceutical companies clamouring for more. Siegall says that Seattle Genetics toyed with naked antibodies, too. "But by and large," he says, "most naked antibodies just don't have a strong, potent ability to knock out tumour cells."Enter antibodydrug conjugates, which do