New formulation of FDA-approved drug may help treat Niemann-Pick Type C disease
Niemann-Pick Type C (NPC) disease is a rare, fatal neurodegenerative disease for which there is currently no cure. NPC primarily strikes children before and during adolescence and affects one in every 150,000 children. Researchers Kasturi Haldar, the Nieuwland Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Parsons-Quinn Director of the Boler-Parseghian Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases in the College of Science, and Dr. Suhail Alam and Michelle Getz in the Center for Rare and Neglected Diseases used existing FDA-approved drugs in a novel approach to treatment with promising results.
Fr. Hesburgh's impact on UNDERC
During the one year anniversary of the death of Fr. Hesburgh, the College of Science recalls and appreciates the impact that he had on science at Notre Dame. Notre Dame’s nearly 8,000-acre Land O’Lakes property in Wisconsin, originating with a 1,000-acre gift from philanthropist Martin J. Gillen in the 1930s and vastly expanded by Father Hesburgh, has been the site of high-impact gatherings hosted by Hesburgh. In 1959, a group of Northern and Southern political leaders who happened to be fishermen hammered out an agreement that became the basis of the Civil Rights Act; in 1967, a global collection of top educators issued the Land O’ Lakes Statement on Catholic higher education in America.
New avenues found for treatment of pathogen behind diseases including fasciitis, toxic shock syndrome
One bacterial pathogen is responsible for a range of diseases, from pharyngitis and impetigo to more severe diagnoses such as toxic shock syndrome and necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating disease), a serious bacterial skin infection that spreads quickly and kills the body’s soft tissue. The pathogen, known as Group A Streptococcus, remains a global health burden with an estimated 700 million cases reported annually, and more than half a million deaths due to severe infections.
Haiti: Notre Dame’s fight to end Lymphatic Filariasis
It’s a little more than an hour by car from the village of Léogâne to the Port-au-Prince office of Dr. Joseline Marhone, Haiti’s director of food and nutrition in the Ministry of Public Health…