Latest news with #RobertHughes
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Rectify Pharma Presents Translational Data Demonstrating Improvements in Kidney Function and Reductions in Vascular Calcification at ERA 2025
Potent, selective ABCC6-targeting positive functional modulator (PFM) improved multiple markers of renal function in animal models of chronic kidney disease (CKD) PFM improved inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi) efflux via on-target engagement of the ABCC6 membrane transporter and reduced vascular calcification in animal models of CKD BOSTON, June 06, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rectify Pharmaceuticals, Inc., ('Rectify') a biotechnology company pioneering positive functional modulators (PFMs) that restore and enhance membrane protein function, today showcased new data from its cardiorenal program with its ABCC6-targeting PFM, RTY-822. The results were presented in an oral presentation during the European Renal Association (ERA) 2025 Congress, taking place in Vienna, Austria, June 4 – 7, 2025. 'These translational results demonstrate that Rectify's PFM reduces vascular calcification and kidney injury and improves kidney function through enhancement of ABCC6 function,' said Rajesh Devraj, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Rectify. 'We believe the strength of these data underscores the potential of our approach to offer a novel and differentiated therapeutic strategy to treat renal dysfunction and injury, as well as address vascular calcification driving cardiovascular disease. We are committed to continuing to advance meaningful therapies for patients with CKD and serious cardiovascular conditions.' Robert Hughes, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Rectify, added, 'Enhancing the function of ABCC6 holds the potential to address key drivers of vascular calcification and tubular dysfunction seen in CKD. With demonstrated on-target engagement, RTY-822 shows significant promise to reduce CKD-associated calcium deposits in arterial walls, a well-established contributor to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality seen in patients with CKD, and remarkably, also improves glomerular function and tubular injury. The translational readiness of this program makes it a compelling de-risked asset with the potential to address CKD and multiple cardiovascular indications.' Title: A Positive Functional Modulator of ABCC6 Decreases Vascular Calcification and Improves Kidney Function in a Rat Adenine Diet Model of Chronic Kidney DiseaseAbstract Number: 1723 Presenter: John Miller, Ph.D. Session: Chronic Kidney Disease, Focused Oral Room 4Date and Time: Friday, June 6, 2025, 8:51 a.m. – 8:57 a.m. CEST In CKD, reduced ABCC6 activity or expression may lead to lower PPi levels, contributing to pathological calcification in blood vessels and kidneys. Restoring ABCC6 function or enhancing its expression offers a new and compelling therapeutic strategy to prevent the progression of CKD towards end-stage renal disease in addition to reducing large vessel calcification, a major driver of cardiovascular complications in CKD. Key findings RTY-822, an orally administered PFM targeting ABCC6 increased both ABCC6 protein expression and plasma PPi levels in primary human hepatocytes, supporting its proposed mechanism of action In a rat model of CKD and vascular calcification induced by an adenine-enriched diet with calcitriol supplementation: RTY-822 treatment led to statistically significant reductions in vascular calcification in the aorta and the femoral arteries After a six-week treatment course, RTY-822 improved glomerular and tubular kidney functions, with statistically significant reductions in serum creatinine, urea, and cystatin C, and an improved estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) Calcium accumulation in the kidney was also significantly reduced Kidney injury biomarkers were reduced, including a significant decrease in plasma KIM-1 and urinary Lipocalin-2 (NGAL) levels In rats fed an adenine-rich diet without calcitriol supplementation, treatment with RTY-822 resulted in: Improved glomerular and tubular kidney functions Reduced serum creatinine and cystatin C levels Increased eGFR Reduced urinary NGAL levels, a biomarker of acute kidney injury The presentation is available on the Rectify website at About Rectify Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ('Rectify') Rectify is advancing Positive Functional Modulators (PFMs), a novel class of oral, small molecules that restore and enhance membrane protein function to address the underlying cause of serious diseases. Rectify's PFMs have potential to modulate the activity of wild-type and mutated membrane-bound proteins, a historically difficult challenge with a small molecule approach. The Company's breakthrough product platform enables efficient and rapid discovery of first- and best-in-class small molecule therapies with the potential to address membrane protein dysfunction for treatment of rare and common diseases, including liver, cardio-renal-metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases. Rectify was founded and seeded by Atlas Venture who co-led the $100M Series A round with Omega Funds and were joined by Forbion and Longwood Fund. For more information, please visit or follow us on X and LinkedIn. ContactMediaJonathan PappasLifeSci Communicationsjpappas@ in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Rectify Pharma Presents Translational Data Demonstrating Improvements in Kidney Function and Reductions in Vascular Calcification at ERA 2025
Potent, selective ABCC6-targeting positive functional modulator (PFM) improved multiple markers of renal function in animal models of chronic kidney disease (CKD) PFM improved inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi) efflux via on-target engagement of the ABCC6 membrane transporter and reduced vascular calcification in animal models of CKD BOSTON, June 06, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rectify Pharmaceuticals, Inc., ('Rectify') a biotechnology company pioneering positive functional modulators (PFMs) that restore and enhance membrane protein function, today showcased new data from its cardiorenal program with its ABCC6-targeting PFM, RTY-822. The results were presented in an oral presentation during the European Renal Association (ERA) 2025 Congress, taking place in Vienna, Austria, June 4 – 7, 2025. 'These translational results demonstrate that Rectify's PFM reduces vascular calcification and kidney injury and improves kidney function through enhancement of ABCC6 function,' said Rajesh Devraj, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Rectify. 'We believe the strength of these data underscores the potential of our approach to offer a novel and differentiated therapeutic strategy to treat renal dysfunction and injury, as well as address vascular calcification driving cardiovascular disease. We are committed to continuing to advance meaningful therapies for patients with CKD and serious cardiovascular conditions.' Robert Hughes, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of Rectify, added, 'Enhancing the function of ABCC6 holds the potential to address key drivers of vascular calcification and tubular dysfunction seen in CKD. With demonstrated on-target engagement, RTY-822 shows significant promise to reduce CKD-associated calcium deposits in arterial walls, a well-established contributor to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality seen in patients with CKD, and remarkably, also improves glomerular function and tubular injury. The translational readiness of this program makes it a compelling de-risked asset with the potential to address CKD and multiple cardiovascular indications.' Title: A Positive Functional Modulator of ABCC6 Decreases Vascular Calcification and Improves Kidney Function in a Rat Adenine Diet Model of Chronic Kidney DiseaseAbstract Number: 1723 Presenter: John Miller, Ph.D. Session: Chronic Kidney Disease, Focused Oral Room 4Date and Time: Friday, June 6, 2025, 8:51 a.m. – 8:57 a.m. CEST In CKD, reduced ABCC6 activity or expression may lead to lower PPi levels, contributing to pathological calcification in blood vessels and kidneys. Restoring ABCC6 function or enhancing its expression offers a new and compelling therapeutic strategy to prevent the progression of CKD towards end-stage renal disease in addition to reducing large vessel calcification, a major driver of cardiovascular complications in CKD. Key findings RTY-822, an orally administered PFM targeting ABCC6 increased both ABCC6 protein expression and plasma PPi levels in primary human hepatocytes, supporting its proposed mechanism of action In a rat model of CKD and vascular calcification induced by an adenine-enriched diet with calcitriol supplementation: RTY-822 treatment led to statistically significant reductions in vascular calcification in the aorta and the femoral arteries After a six-week treatment course, RTY-822 improved glomerular and tubular kidney functions, with statistically significant reductions in serum creatinine, urea, and cystatin C, and an improved estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) Calcium accumulation in the kidney was also significantly reduced Kidney injury biomarkers were reduced, including a significant decrease in plasma KIM-1 and urinary Lipocalin-2 (NGAL) levels In rats fed an adenine-rich diet without calcitriol supplementation, treatment with RTY-822 resulted in: Improved glomerular and tubular kidney functions Reduced serum creatinine and cystatin C levels Increased eGFR Reduced urinary NGAL levels, a biomarker of acute kidney injury The presentation is available on the Rectify website at About Rectify Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ('Rectify') Rectify is advancing Positive Functional Modulators (PFMs), a novel class of oral, small molecules that restore and enhance membrane protein function to address the underlying cause of serious diseases. Rectify's PFMs have potential to modulate the activity of wild-type and mutated membrane-bound proteins, a historically difficult challenge with a small molecule approach. The Company's breakthrough product platform enables efficient and rapid discovery of first- and best-in-class small molecule therapies with the potential to address membrane protein dysfunction for treatment of rare and common diseases, including liver, cardio-renal-metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases. Rectify was founded and seeded by Atlas Venture who co-led the $100M Series A round with Omega Funds and were joined by Forbion and Longwood Fund. For more information, please visit or follow us on X and LinkedIn. ContactMediaJonathan PappasLifeSci Communicationsjpappas@ in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
My journey through Provence in the footsteps of my favourite artists
To my hero, the art critic Robert Hughes, the painter Paul Cézanne's studio just outside Aix-en-Provence was 'one of the sacred places of the modern mind'. You can still visit it, a sparse, high-ceilinged room with a huge window looking out into the haze of green branches and pink blossoms of a deep garden (£8, reopens on June 28; It has been furnished (not untastefully) by its 21st-century curators with various objets that Cézanne's admirers will recognise from his still lifes: apples, onions, a statue of a cherub, a blue jug. It was from here that Cézanne — a prudish, pious provincial with a bald head and shabby clothes — launched one of the most important revolutions in modern art. In painting after painting, Cézanne captured the dry intensity of a Provençal landscape burned to an archaic, shimmering austerity of elementary forms by the Mediterranean sun: a tower is a cylinder, a village a jumble of polygons as clumsy as children's wooden blocks. Cézanne always seems to me to be trying to grasp some essential quality of reality beyond superficial appearances that no painter before him had ever seen. It is from his painting that the history of modern art unfolds. But Provence does not belong to Cézanne alone. Perhaps no landscape on earth has attracted such a concentration of artistic genius. The fierce clarity of Provençal light drew artists to it like fabulous moths: Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, André Derain. It has also, less exaltedly, lured innumerable tourists. Including, recently, me. I am a devoted fan of these 20th-century painters of the south of France (so much more exciting, in my opinion, than the often cloying and decorative impressionists of the preceding generation). It was time to see these famous, genius-catalysing landscapes for myself. A devotee of the French transport system — the comfiest seats in the world are in first class on the TGV — I travelled by train. The first leg is the Eurostar to Paris. It's good to do it this way because the city's museums provide a good taste of what is to come — a Cézanne view of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire and Matisse's Luxury, Calm and Pleasure (the qualities I'm hoping to get out of this holiday) in the Musée d'Orsay and some colour-saturated Bonnards in the Petit Palais (£14, free, Grey Paris makes these visions of southern light glow all the more seductively. The hotel my girlfriend and I are staying in, the Experimental Marais, is well situated for museum-going (B&B doubles from £320; My anxious speculation about what an 'experimental' hotel might involve — sleeping pods? Robot waiters at the breakfast buffet? — is soon assuaged. It is a resolutely conventional hotel with a nice restaurant (though avoid the desert-dry chicken) and just a hint of chic bohemianism about the interior design. About my level of 'experimental'. • 10 of the most beautiful places in France (and how to see them) From Paris, the train to Arles. The four-hour journey would be a nightmare in the UK; in France it's a privilege to sit in the TGV's luxurious armchairs for so long. Arles was where Van Gogh cut off his earlobe and gave it to a maid in a brothel — an act of morbid weirdness that he would be horrified to learn now defines his public image. Arles is also where he painted some of his most immortal masterpieces: The Yellow House, Starry Night over the Rhône and Café Terrace at Night. You can see the café and you can see the Rhône, and the past Van Gogh was painting from comes to seem less remote. In those days before the railways (and TGV seats) the south seemed a foreign land to a painter from northern Europe: 'The brothels, the adorable little Arlésienne going to her First Communion, the priest in his surplice, who looks like a dangerous rhinoceros, the people drinking absinthe, all seem to me creatures from another world,' Van Gogh exclaimed in a letter. Here he felt closer to the tropics than to the watery, cloud-shadowed Netherlands of his birth. 'Not only in Africa but even from Arles onwards, you'll naturally find fine contrasts between reds and greens, blues and oranges, sulphur and lilac,' he wrote. The intensity of southern colour matched the intensity of Van Gogh's soul. We love our B&B in Arles. Maison Huit is a 17th-century house crammed with arty junk (bowler hats, pictures, primitive statues, jars, sidetables) and presided over by the charming and attentive Julia, an artistic lady in a waistcoat and headscarf (B&B doubles from £76; In the mornings her sidekick Aladdin serves us breakfast (jam, croissants, yoghurt, coffee) in the ancient stone kitchen while she regales us with stories of growing up in Malaysia in the 1970s. One evening we are invited along to a soirée she is hosting to launch an exhibition by a luxuriously coiffed young French man who canoed all the way down the Rhône and did drawings of what he saw along the way. Julia introduces us to various of her friends, including a Shakespearean actor and a disarmingly mild-mannered retired bullfighter. In Arles, I get sidetracked from impressionism by my infatuation with the town's 12th-century church, Saint Trophime (free; Place de la République). For my money it's one of the finest Romanesque churches in Europe. I love its great square fortress of a tower looming up against the blue Mediterranean sky above the shady low-slung cloisters. Best of all is the church's portal, with its ranks of grim-looking saints and bishops, and beneath them bulky flat-snouted lions chewing on the limp, formless bodies of sinners. We sit on the steps and eat strawberries, which are in season and on sale everywhere. The Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles has no permanent collection of the artist's work (£8.50, free for those under 26; It gets a couple of works at a time from other museums and is hit and miss. On our visit we get two of his sludgy social justice-y early pictures — the bowed and unhappy labourers toiling under a muddy sky in Peasant and Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes look even more abject than the stone sinners cowering on the portals of Saint Trophime. Basket of Potatoes makes the viewer glad that Van Gogh moved on to more promising plants such as sunflowers and irises. The main show is a retrospective of the artist Sigmar Polke who was, we learn, haunted by the symbolism of the potato. 'The tuber's power to germinate is what interests the artist because it can evoke artistic inspiration and production,' one of the signs explains. One of Polke's artworks is a wooden house with potatoes nailed onto it. Another is a potato on a stick twirling around in circles by a motor. 'He never abandoned the potato motif,' another sign says. 'I wish he had,' I sigh to my girlfriend as we trudge into the fourth room of potato art. • The best things to do in Provence It is surely an important sign of Van Gogh's genius that he did abandon the potato motif. Our next stop, St Rémy de Provence, puts us more in touch with the visionary later-period Van Gogh. He lived in the Saint-Paul de Mausole insane asylum here for a year (£8; It's hard to imagine, amid the pleasant National Trust-style reconstructions of doctors' desks and iron bedsteads, how horrible this place must have seemed when Van Gogh stayed here in the grip of hallucinations, paranoid delusions, depression and mania. From his room he could hear the 'cries and howls' of the fellow patients like the noises made by 'beasts in a menagerie'. But outside Van Gogh feels almost eerily present. You can't go to Dickens's London and meet Magwitch and Oliver Twist, but you can go to St-Rémy-de-Provence and encounter Van Gogh's twisted silver olive trees and purple irises and the dark cypresses which, he wrote, were 'always occupying my thoughts as beautiful in line and form as an Egyptian obelisk, a splash of black in a sunny landscape' (Van Gogh is almost unique among great painters in writing well about his own art). The purple irises are especially present during our visit — out on every verge and in the garden of the lovely farmhouse Mas de la Croix where we're staying (room-only doubles from £72; Aix is the city of Cézanne and one of the most beautiful in Europe, with its crumbling yellow streets, shady squares and fountains. Cézanne didn't paint the town. To get in touch with his spirit you have to travel out into the countryside. One way to do it is to take an Uber (or drive) out to the charming little town of Le Tholonet. You don't have to walk far from there to get splendid views of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the grey leonine crag of mountain that Cézanne painted again and again towards the end of his life and which towers over the surrounding plain. It is one of the great presences in the history of art and you feel it peering over your shoulder even when you're not looking at it — it's like going for a walk with the Mona Lisa. For many people, Cézanne is one of those artists who is easier to admire than to love. Those formal, almost architectural landscapes are clearly important. But sometimes the sense of importance can become oppressive. Not so with Matisse. Everyone loves Matisse (just search for his name on Instagram), a painter of bright colours, blue Mediterranean skies and simple, legible designs. The place for Matisse, euphoniously enough, is Nice. He moved to the city in 1917 — to paint his pictures he believed he needed to access a serene state of mind that he couldn't find in 'any atmosphere other than that of the Côte d'Azur'. • Explore our full guide to France His most famous pictures of the city are of the interiors of shuttered rooms in apartments and hotels upholstered in womblike red carpets and curtains and drowsing in the warm summer light, with the blues of the sea and sky glimpsed beyond the windows as vivid as a dream. They are some of the most calming paintings ever made, marrying the peace of the interior with the oceanic calm of the sea. An exhibition at the Musée Matisse later this summer will show one of my favourite of these Matisse paintings, Interior with a Violin Case (£10; But we miss that. And sadly the weather we experience is a bit like that depicted in a painting in the museum's permanent collection — Tempête à Nice, with its surging sky and grey and brown sea. We retreat to our hotel room in the oddly named Mama Shelter Nice, which if not exactly womblike is certainly cheerful (verging on the zany). In our room there is a Bugs Bunny mask tied to the lamp — I would like to see what Matisse would have made of that (room-only doubles from £85; Often, to go in search of writers and artists in the place they lived is to be disappointed by nondescript houses and unimpressive landscapes. Not Provence. It still shimmers — not only with that famous light but with the living memory of Marriott was a guest of Byway, which has 13 nights' B&B from £2,289pp, including train travel ( Experimental Marais ( Mama Shelter Nice ( and Sawday's (
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Vietnam veterans share thoughts on Fall of Saigon on its 50th anniversary
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Fifty years ago today, South Vietnam's capital city, Saigon, was captured, bringing an end to the brutal years-long Vietnam War. 'It was inevitable. We had no chance. It was a political war,' said Army codebreaker Robert Hughes. 'I wasn't surprised at all. But I cried.' News Channel 11 asked every veteran featured in our 10-part series on The Vietnam War: 50 Years Later about their thoughts on the Fall of Saigon as people who served there, even though the United States had pulled out two years before. 'To lose Saigon and the whole South like that…it was a disgrace because we were better fighting men than that,' said Army veteran Lowell Cable. 'They didn't have the equipment that we had. We were fighting a conventional war with guerrilla warfare. It's like it was all for nothing. And that really gets disheartening when you think of it that way.' More than 58,000 servicemembers were killed in the war. Fifty years later, how it ended still stings to those whose lives were forever changed because of it. 'They died. What'd they die for? I don't know,' said Navy Seabee John White. 'I'm very disappointed in the way it all turned out.' The U.S. exited militarily in 1973. 'These South Vietnamese senior officers, generals, were leaking information to the North Vietnamese; that's why I could never get a B-52 mission that would go in and take out bridges and parts of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the truck parts,' said Master Army Aviator Thomas Reeves. Reeves was stationed in the headquarters in Saigon with one of the highest security clearances someone could get at the time. 'It was coming well before April of 1975, we had so much of our troops out and we lost a lot,' Reeves said. 'The Vietnamese training was going poorly. They were never going to be able to take over. They folded and ran, and I realized that this war was going to end. We were never going to win it.' Others also saw the Fall of Saigon coming well before it happened. 'We were turning stuff over to them. And, you could see some of the boats come back and their equipment, it'd be gone missing. You could see the writing on the wall,' said Navy Brown Water River-Rat TJ Miles. 'We didn't lose the war. Washington lost the war for us.' Those feelings that had been suppressed for decades resurfaced in 2021 when the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. 'Vietnam was a different situation. The enemy was in charge of the country long before we ever pulled out and leaving all the weaponry and the ammunition and everything in tact for them to have,' said Army Airborne Ranger Ed Johnston. 'When we pulled out of Afghanistan the way we did, that brought all that feeling right up to a big boil in a hurry because there was no sense in that withdrawal.' While each veteran News Channel 11 spoke with had a different duty in Vietnam, they all had similar feelings about what happened on this day 50 years ago, even though they had already returned home. 'They just turned their back on them. Left. All the equipment that's left, and we haven't learned anything. We did it again in Afghanistan,' said Army veteran Bill Blankenship. 'Everybody that served feels that way. They turned their back on all the guys who fought, died. ' The next segment of The Vietnam War: 50 Years Later airs Thursday at 5 p.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Yahoo
Army Codebreaker reflects on his time in Vietnam
ERWIN, Tenn. (WJHL)- It's 1967, and people are getting drafted to the war zone left and right. There were some exceptions, though, and one of those included being enrolled in college. That's where Robert Hughes was when his childhood best friend was killed in Vietnam, and he dropped out to go on the front lines. 'He was born six hours before I was. We grew up together. He lived across the street,' Hughes said of his best friend. 'He was with the 101st Airborne Division. He was killed at the Asha Valley in 1967.' Hughes went into the Army in hopes of becoming a helicopter pilot. 'A gentleman showed up at my door after I had signed up and told me about [the Army Security Agency] and said that I probably would qualify,' Hughes said. 'And I jumped at that.' 'We were the only group in the Army that did not report to the Department of the Army. We reported to the National Security Agency.' 'It took a year to get a security clearance. They talked to everybody,' he said. 'All of my teachers in grade school and high school. The people in my neighborhood thought I had robbed a bank because the FBI went to all of my neighbors. I'm very proud of [my security clearance].' He became what's known as a 'ditty bopper,' learning Morse Code and how to intercept it. '12 hours a day, I searched for North Vietnamese or Viet Cong radio transmitters and copy code, which we then were fairly successful in breaking,' he said. 'We provided approximately 70% of the tactical information gleaned during Vietnam… I was able to read most of the stuff we broke. I was involved quite a bit.' Hughes' team provided the information to help find the enemy. 'We were able to find transmitters using techniques that we had. And sometimes those transmitters were attacked after we found them,' he said. 'Sometimes we just follow them to find out where they were going and what they were doing.' Hughes was stationed in 'Rocket City.' 'We were hit more than any other place, except for Kazan, which is where the Marines were,' Hughes said. 'We were hit mostly every night with rockets and mortars.' The job requirements helped him get an Amateur Radio License, which turned into a hobby he still uses today. Hughes talks to people all over the world, and it really came into play when the floods hit Erwin in September. 'We did health and welfare for people that were involved in Hurricane Helene,' he said. 'A couple of people I was able to contact that had relatives there that and they had no telephone service. And I was able to hook them up.' His time in Vietnam also had an impact on his health. He was recently diagnosed with leukemia, presumed to be from Agent Orange. Join News Channel 11 on Tuesday at 5 p.m. as we continue our series The Vietnam War: 50 Years Later. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
