High blood lipids are a leading risk factor for developing heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States. Approximately one of every six adult Americans has high blood cholesterol and every 25 seconds, an American will have a heart attack, and nearly one every minute will die from one.

Blood lipids are made up of cholesterol and triglycerides that circulate in the body as lipoproteins. Statins are most commonly prescribed to treat patients with high cholesterol and fibrates and niacin are used to reduce blood triglyceride levels.

Niacin, also known as vitamin B3, is effective in lowering blood triglycerides and elevating HDLs, or good cholesterol. It is believed that niacin does this through suppressing the release of fatty acids by fat tissues. Fatty acids are essential for the synthesis of triglycerides in the liver. Lowering the level of fatty acids leads to less triglycerides that get released into the bloodstream.

In a paper recently published in Cell Metabolism, Life Sciences Institute Research Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, Jiandie Lin and colleagues get to the heart of exactly how niacin works in lowering blood triglycerides and finds that this drug influences lipid metabolism beyond its action in fat tissues.

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The LSI's Leadership Council convened in early October for their annual meeting with LSI Director Alan Saltiel and Managing Director Liz Barry to review the LSI's past year and to look to the future. Council members in attendance included: Mary Campbell, David Canter, Michael Finney, Paul Meister, Roger Newton, Craig Parker, Liam Ratcliffe, and Joe Schwarz.

By the numbers

LSI-centric facts presented at the meeting:

126. The number of articles that were published by LSI faculty between November, 2009 and September, 2010.

725. The number of papers that have been published by LSI faculty since its inception in 2002.

25. The number of high throughput screens completed by the Center for Chemical Genomics (CCG) in 2009-2010; the CCG also completed its first siRNA screen in September, 2009.

17. The number of new high throughput protein projects currently at the Center for Structural Biology.

23. The number of new projects currently in the X-ray/Crystallization Screening Lab.

+169. The number of structures that have been solved by the Center for Structural Biology since its inception.

6+. The number of significant papers published by LSI stem cell researchers in journals in 2010.