Provided is a biomarker for bipolar disorder, comprising Syt7 gene and/or an expression product thereof. Also provided is use of the Syt7 gene and/or the expression product thereof in the preparing a medicament for treating bipolar disorder. By monitoring the Syt7 gene and/or the expression product thereof, medicaments for treating bipolar disorder can be screened, thus providing support for diagnosis and treatment targeting Syt7 molecules.

Disclosed are engineered multicellular organisms. Also disclosed are systems and methods for designing, preparing, and utilizing the engineered multicellular organisms.

Disclosed are compositions and methods for determining aberrant cardiac function or a predisposition to aberrant cardiac function, said method comprising detecting a fragment of βII spectrin associated with aberrant cardiac function or a predisposition to aberrant cardiac function in a sample derived from a subject, wherein the detection is indicative of aberrant cardiac function in the subject.

Provided are methods for producing population of cells enriched for cells exhibiting sinoatrial node like characteristics. The cells can be produced from human pluripotent cells. Also provided are methods for using the SAN-like cells for identifying agents that can mitigate drug-induced cardiac toxicity. Also provided is a method for mitigating drug induced cardiotoxicity comprising administering to a subject an effective amount of physcion or a derivative thereof.

The present invention relates to a screening method for a therapeutic agent for pulmonary damage induced by the administration of high-concentration oxygen, and more specifically, to a screening method for a candidate material for a therapeutic agent for bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) induced by the administration of high-concentration oxygen. The present inventors have discovered that FPR1 is over-expressed in lung tissues exposed to high-concentration oxygen, and as a result of focusing on the correlation between the expression of FPR1 and the development of BPD, have confirmed that BPD can be suppressed by inhibiting the expression or activity of FPR1. In view of this fact, a prophylactic or therapeutic material for BPD may be discovered in a rapid and accurate manner by checking whether the expression or activity level of FPR1 is inhibited, and thus, the screening method of the present invention may be beneficially used to effectively select and develop therapeutic agents for BPD.

In one aspect, methods of diagnosing a subject as having Alzheimer's disease and prognosing a subject as being at risk of progressing to Alzheimer's disease are provided. In some embodiments, the method comprises determining one or more of the level of expression of rhotekin 2 (RTKN2), the level of expression of microtubule-associated Ser/Thr kinase 4 (MAST4), the level of binding of forkhead box O1 (FOXO1) to the RTKN2 promoter, and the level of binding of amyloid precursor protein (APP) to the MAST4 promoter in a sample from the subject.

A method for screening a therapeutic drug used for treating psoriasis includes the steps of: (a) isolating and separating fresh peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC); (b) activating the peripheral blood mononuclear cells with a stimulant to cause the cells to produce IFN-γ and RANTES; (c) administering the plurality of candidate drugs to the activated peripheral blood mononuclear cells; (d) detecting expression levels of IFN-γ and RANTES in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells administered with the plurality of candidate drugs; (e) recognizing and removing a disqualified drug from the plurality of candidate drugs according to a variation degree of the expression level of RANTES; and (f) screening the therapeutic drug from the plurality of the candidate drugs excluding the disqualified drug according to the expression level of IFN-γ.

A method of identifying a subject who is likely to be responsive to a treatment comprising an inhibitor of IL1α, or predicting the responsiveness of a subject to a treatment comprising an inhibitor of IL1α, comprising providing a sample from a subject; administering the inhibitor of IL1α to the sample; measuring levels of one or more biomarkers in the sample; and determining the pharmacodynamic or the pharmacokinetic effect of the inhibitor of IL1α based on the levels of the one or more biomarkers.

This document provides methods and materials related to genetic variations of neurological disorders. For example, this document provides methods for using such genetic variations to assess susceptibility of developing Parkinson's disease.

This invention provides modified IGFBP-derived peptides—collectively termed “immodulator peptides”—and related compositions and methods. Chemical modifications to peptides using small molecules, and sequence extensions to immodulator core sequences exhibit new and surprising biological activities. The invention builds the combinatorial power of the immodulator peptide class further by demonstrating which core sequences bind metal or glycosaminoglycans such as heparin. The invention discloses some surprising biological properties of compositions derived from these modifications, including a host of new therapeutic and diagnostic utilities (e.g. immune modulation of TLR signaling, enhanced collagen synthesis by skin fibroblasts, and synergy with a RIG-1 agonist in killing melanoma cells). The invention also teaches methods for enhancing previously disclosed uses of immodulator peptides by showing how the modifications of the invention can boost the efficacy of immodulator peptides in a model of burn trauma.