This circuit could offer a target for new drugs to help treat conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder the researchers say In the future one may be able to develop methods that help people to remember positive memories more strongly than negative ones says Susumu Tonegawa the Picower
whether reactivating pleasant memories has any effect on depression in hopes of identifying new targets for drugs to treat depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Furthermore these RNA therapies could be combined with more traditional drug therapies for an enhanced effect.
and how it will respond to different drugs. For example patients with glioblastoma a type of brain tumor respond well to a certain class of drugs known as alkylating agents
if the DNA-repair gene MGMT is silenced by epigenetic modification. A team of MIT chemical engineers has developed now a fast reliable method to detect this type of modification known as methylation which could offer a new way to choose the best treatment for individual patients.
It can take up to a year to determine the function of a single gene which has slowed efforts to develop new more targeted drugs and vaccines.
and boost drug-development efforts says Jacquin Niles an associate professor of biological engineering at MIT. Even though we ve sequenced the entire genome of Plasmodium falciparum half of it still remains functionally uncharacterized.
whether it s drugs or vaccines says Niles the senior author of a paper describing the technique in the Aug 10 online edition of Nature Methods.
and artemisin but the parasite is becoming more resistant to these drugs. There is an urgent need to develop new drugs
but potential genetic targets are hard to identify. In animals such as mice it is fairly routine to study gene functions by deleting a target gene or replacing it with an artificial piece of DNA.
which could generate new drug and vaccine targets. I think the impact could be quite huge Niles says.
Using CRISPR to generate tumors should allow scientists to more rapidly study how different genetic mutations interact to produce cancers as well as the effects of potential drugs on tumors with a specific genetic profile.
No fundamentally new drugs have been introduced since the 1950s. All but a handful of pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the pursuit of new treatments
As president of Merck Research Laboratories Scolnick led the development of the first drugs to effectively combat HIV;
the first drugs to effectively treat high cholesterol statins; the first vaccine against cervical cancer; and many other breakthroughs.
and Crohn s disease and translated that knowledge into descriptions of the underlying biological processes a critical step in the development of rationally designed drugs.
which relies on a nanoparticle that carries two drugs and releases them at different times,
who is a member of MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. ee moving from the simplest model of the nanoparticle just getting the drug in there
and targeting it to having smart nanoparticles that deliver drug combinations in the way that you need to really attack the tumor.
or more different chemotherapy drugs in hopes that a multipronged attack will be more successful than a single drug.
a 2012 paper from Yaffe lab was the first to show that the timing of drug administration can dramatically influence the outcome.
Yaffe and former MIT postdoc Michael Lee found they could weaken cancer cells by administering the drug erlotinib,
These pretreated tumor cells were much more susceptible to treatment with a DNA-damaging drug called doxorubicin than cells given the two drugs simultaneously. t like rewiring a circuit,
who is also a member of the Koch Institute. hen you give the first drug,
the wiresconnections get switched around so that the second drug works in a much more effective way.
and Drug Administration to treat pancreatic cancer and some types of lung cancer. Doxorubicin is used to treat many cancers,
Staggering these drugs proved particularly powerful against a type of breast cancer cell known as triple-negative,
a chemical engineer who has designed previously several types of nanoparticles that can carry two drugs at once.
Furthermore, packaging the two drugs in liposome nanoparticles made them much more effective than the traditional forms of the drugs,
even when those drugs were given in a time-staggered order. his particle delivery system not only provides a platform for time-staggered treatment strategies in cancer,
but also for delivering the drugs more directly to the tumor tissue itself, says Rune Linding,
They have devised several combinations involving cisplatin, a commonly used DNA-damaging drug and are working on other combinations to treat prostate, head and neck,
At the same time, Hammond lab is working on more complex nanoparticles that would allow for more precise loading of the drugs
The researchers also believe this test could be exploited to screen for new drugs that inhibit
or drug packaging during the manufacturing process, incorporated directly into 3-D-printed objects, or printed onto currency,
Current treatments include a low-protein diet and a drug called NTCB which disrupts tyrosine production.
This was enough to cure the disease allowing the mice to survive after being taken off the NCTB drug.
Lu engineered phages that could break apart antibiotic-resistant biofilms coatings where bacteria live and thrive by injecting bacteria with certain enzymes to make the biofilms self-destruct.
Seeing phages as better antimicrobial treatments than antibiotics to which biofilms and bacteria can build immunity Lu, Sample6 cofounder and now vice president of operations Michael Koeris,
#Fast synthesis could boost drug development Small protein fragments, also called peptides, are promising as drugs
Insulin and the HIV drug Fuzeon are some of the earliest successful examples, and peptide drugs are expected to become a $25 billion market by 2018.
However, a major bottleneck has prevented peptide drugs from reaching their full potential: Manufacturing the peptides takes several weeks,
making it difficult to obtain large quantities, and to rapidly test their effectiveness. That bottleneck may soon disappear:
The new system, described in a recent issue of the journal Chembiochem, could have a major impact on peptide drug development,
and theye used to control drug delivery. Theye also used as biological probes to image cancer and to study processes inside cells,
Creating and studying peptides that are mirror images of these natural proteins could pave the way to developing such peptides as new drugs with completely different functions from the right-handed versions.
all the current drugs are targeted to primary tumors. Once a metastasis appears, in many cases, there nothing you can do about it,
so it may be possible to create drugs that prevent metastasis by interfering with that binding. e need to understand how the proteins communicate with the cells,
they could also be good drug targets b
#Driving down fuel usage Despite their potential to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2 EMISSIONS and fuel consumption electric and hybrid cars and trucks struggled for years to find a solid customer base.
Bacteria concentrated in biofilms are up to 1000 times more resistant to antibiotics than those suspended in liquid.
#MIT robot may accelerate trials for stroke medications The development of drugs to treat acute stroke
because they have spent so much money on developing drugs that don work. They end up focusing somewhere else.
and his colleagues may help speed up drug development, letting pharmaceutical companies know much earlier in the process
whether a drug will ultimately work in stroke patients. To receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration,
a company typically has to enroll 800 patients to demonstrate that a drug is effective during a Phase III clinical trial;
this sample size is determined, in part, by the accuracy of standard outcome measurements, which quantify a patient ability over time to,
whether a drug works a reduction of 70 percent that Krebs says would translate to a similar reduction in time and cost.
and outcome measurements to receive final drug approval, Krebs says they could use the robot measurements to guide early decisions on
or abandon a certain drug. If, after 240 patients, a drug has no measurable effect,
the company can pursue other therapeutic avenues. If, however, a drug improves performance in 240 robot-measured patients,
the pharmaceutical company can continue investing in the trial with confidence that the drug will ultimately pass muster.
The researchers, including senior author Bruce Volpe of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N y,
To determine whether a drug works, the FDA will often look to a study effect size.
and performed a power analysis that determines the optimal sample size for a given technique finding that the robot scale would require only 240 patients to determine a drug effectiveness a reduction in sample size that would save a company up to 70 percent in time
Currently, only a few stroke drugs are in the late stages of development. However once a company reaches a Phase III clinical trial,
Krebs says it may use the MIT-Manus robot as a more efficient way to evaluate the drug impact by employing the measurement techniques on a smaller group of patients n
when treated with the drug cisplatin while tumors with functional MK2 kept growing after treatment.
The findings suggest that giving cancer patients a combination of a DNA-damaging drug and an MK2 inhibitor could be very effective says Michael Yaffe the David H. Koch Professor in Science
Several drugs that inhibit MK2 are now in clinical trials to treat inflammatory diseases such as arthritis
and colitis but the drugs have never been tested as possible cancer treatments. What our study really says is that these drugs could have an entirely new second life in combination with chemotherapy says Yaffe who is a member of MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
We re very much hoping it will go into clinical trials for cancer. Sandra Morandell a postdoc at the Koch Institute is the paper s lead author.
and Drug Administration which consist of pairs of drugs that each show benefit on their own. What we found is a combination that you would never have arrived at otherwise Yaffe says.
The drug kills cells very effectively by damaging nuclear DNA but if tumors become resistant to cisplatin they often grow back.
Moreover the mitochondrial-targeted drug could overcome cisplatin resistance. These results suggest that the mitochondria can be an important target for platinum-based drugs says Robert Radford an MIT postdoc
and an author of a paper describing the findings in the Oct 31 online edition of the journal Biology & Chemistry.
Mitochondria-targeting cisplatin might also be effective at lower doses than regular cisplatin helping to avoid some of the severe side effects often seen with the drug according to the researchers.
This is the first study to isolate the effects of a platinum drug in mitochondria and we were intrigued very to observe that the DNA damage caused by this drug outside of the nucleus were highly toxic Kelley says.
Overcoming resistancecisplatin which contains the metal platinum was approved to treat ovarian and testicular tumors in 1978
The drug forms crosslinks in DNA creating blockages that interfere with a cell s ability to read
To do that they developed a new way to tag the drug with a protein fragment developed in Kelley s lab that can enter the cell
The mitochondrial-targeted version of the drug killed cancer cells and cisplatin-resistant cells with the same success rate.
With regular cisplatin killing resistant cells requires about 10 times the amount of drug needed to kill the same number of nonresistant cells.
However by targeting the platinum-based drug to mitochondria at a given dose the researchers showed they could kill equal numbers of resistant and nonresistant cells.
The drug was even more effective in cells with an impaired ability to repair MITOCHONDRIAL DNA. This result was one of several pieces of evidence the researchers obtained proving that the new mitochondria-targeted platinum-based compound was working by targeting MITOCHONDRIAL DNA.
They also plan to try targeting cisplatin and other metal-based drugs to different parts of cells
Cisplatin and a handful of other platinum drugs are the only metal-based drugs now approved for human use
but researchers around the world are working on other types of metal-based drugs. People are interested really in using metals as therapeutics
and elucidating the cellular targets of metal-based drugs is challenging because they can interact with so many different biomolecules Radford says.
and what cellular consequences metal-based drugs elicit. The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute the Canadian Institute of Health and a David H. Koch Graduate Fellowship s
which the Food and Drug Administration has approved for human use coated with peptides (short proteins) that are specialized to interact with thrombin.
Devices can be coated with antibiotics, blood thinners, and other agents but these eventually dissolve, limiting their longevity and effectiveness.
and recently earned clearance from the Food and Drug Administration as a medical device deemed safe and effective for commercial distribution in the United states. It also recently received designation as a product meeting European union standards of health, safety,
Loose developed a means of applying naturally occurring antibiotics, called antimicrobial peptides found in bacteria
and human sweat on medical devices. These peptides would puncture bacteria that came near, and microbes would have trouble developing resistance to them.
and drug screening in cell populations, Popescu says. Mohanty lab at UTA is now using the system to study how neurons grown on a silicon wafer communicate with each other.
It could also help researchers test the efficacy of new drugs for sickle cell disease which occurs in about 300,000 newborns per year, more than 75 percent of them in Africa.
The best drug now available, hydroxyurea, works for only about two-thirds of patients. The research team also includes the paper lead author, E (Sarah) Du,
and they also plan to pursue it as a tool to test potential new drugs for sickle cell disease.
To demonstrate the device usefulness for evaluating new drugs, the researchers analyzed a drug called Aes-103, now in phase II clinical trials to treat sickle cell disease,
and found that it helped prevent patientscells from clogging in the microfluidic channel. They also studied cells treated with hydroxyurea
and found that the drug is more effective against red blood cells of higher density, which usually have more abnormal hemoglobin
they have created a system that could deliver optical signals and drugs directly into the brain,
optical waveguides to carry light, hollow tubes to carry drugs, and conductive electrodes to carry electrical signals.
At the same time, one or more drugs could be injected into the brain through the hollow channels, while electrical signals in the neurons are recorded to determine, in real time,
exactly what effect the drugs are having. Customizable toolkit for neural engineering The system can be tailored for a specific research
Drug addiction is defined as compulsive drug-seeking despite adverse consequences at school work, or home. Addictive drugs ijackthe brain the natural reward-processing center, the ventral tegmental area (VTA.
But food is a natural reward and, unlike a drug, is necessary for survival, so it has been unclear
whether overeating results from a similar compulsion, or from something else. his study represents, in my opinion,
might instead arise from ongoing alterations in synaptic signaling that can be corrected by drugs. Current research indicates that well over 100 distinct gene mutations can manifest as intellectual disability and autism.
as they indicate not only that drug therapies might be effective to improve cognition and behavior in affected individuals,
when choosing drugs that match individual patientsgenetic profiles, but it has not yet spread to the selection of biomaterials such as tissue glue.
#Major step for implantable drug-delivery device An implantable, microchip-based device may soon replace the injections
and pills now needed to treat chronic diseases: Earlier this month, MIT spinout Microchips Biotech partnered with a pharmaceutical giant to commercialize its wirelessly controlled, implantable,
and osteoporosis. Now Microchips Biotech will begin co-developing microchips with Teva Pharmaceutical, the world largest producer of generic drugs,
ouldn this be a great way to make a drug-delivery system??Langer says. He brought this idea to Cima,
and somewhat fantastical, applications beyond drug delivery, including disease diagnostics and jewelry that could emit scents. e were trying to find the killer application.
Any intense heat during final assembly, with hermetic sealing, could destroy the drugs already loaded into the reservoirs
yet carry the same volume of drugs. his means making the drugs take up more volume than the electrical and other components,
They initially sought to develop nanoparticles that could be used to deliver drugs to cancer cells. Brandl had synthesized previously polymers that could be cleaved apart by exposure to UV LIGHT.
But he and Bertrand came to question their suitability for drug delivery, since UV LIGHT can be damaging to tissue and cells,
and approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a food additive, and polylactic acid, a biodegradable plastic used in compostable cups and glassware.
The study also suggests the broader potential for adapting nanoscale drug-delivery techniques developed for use in environmental remediation. hat we can apply some of the highly sophisticated,
Products that use silica-based nanoparticles for biomedical uses such as various chips drug or gene delivery and tracking imaging ultrasound therapy and diagnostics may also pose an increased cardiovascular
However Erbb2 overexpression leads to enhanced sensitivity to certain drugs. The team believe that Fe-Au functionalised nanorods used in conjunction with these drugs could be useful in cancer treatment.
After characterising and tuning the interaction of the nanorods with the cells the research team assessed how the cells respond to mechanical stimulation.
In addition resistance against currently used drugs is spreading rapidly. To fight these diseases innovative strategies using new mechanisms of action are needed.
This could be used to create an array of nanoneedles for use in drug delivery or other applications says Xu Zhang a Ph d. student in Chang's lab
The discovery could lead to the development of new drugs against viruses that target the cell nucleus
the research may also hold promise for the development of new antiviral drugs and better delivery mechanisms for gene therapy.
there may be opportunities to develop drugs that prevent viruses entering in this way. It may also be possible to improve on the design of current mechanisms for delivering gene therapy to better cross the nuclear pores
The research team is also working on modifying the technique to read other single molecules which could be used in an important technology for drug development.
#Nanoparticles infiltrate kill cancer cells from within Conventional treatment seeks to eradicate cancer cells by drugs and therapy delivered from outside the cell
However the U s. Food and Drug Administration has approved now the use of iron-oxide nanoparticles in humans.
and delivers anticancer drugs Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has invented a unique biomarker with two exceptional functions.
And it can also release anticancer drugs at the same time to the specific cells. This new biomarker which has immense potential for drug development is made from a nanophosphor particle ten thousand times smaller than a grain of sand.
NTU associate professors Zhang Qichun and Joachim Loo have found a way to make the nanoparticle light up
Prof Loo said their new biomarker can#also release anticancer drugs by creating a layer of coating loaded with drugs on the outside of the nanoparticle.#
#The drugs are released when the biomarker lights up in response to the near-infrared light. This is the first time we are able to do bio-imaging
and potentially target the delivery of drugs at the same time as proven in small animal tests said Prof Loo a nanotechnology and bioimaging expert.
Moving forward the team from NTU's School of Materials science and engineering will be looking to load multiple layers of drugs into their biomarker.
If successful doctors will be able to release sequentially two or more drugs through the biomarker.#
and their use promises to lead to both conceptual and therapeutic advances in the important and emerging field of tissue engineering, drug delivery, cancer therapies and immune engineering,
This is a significant milestone in the development of synthetic platelets as well as in targeted drug delivery said Samir Mitragotri CBE director who specializes in targeted therapy technologies.
In other applications bloodborne pathogens and other infectious agents could be minimized with antibiotic-carrying nanoparticles.
Another ubiquitous use is in antimicrobial products which can contain suspensions of silver nanoparticles (but don't drink them you'll go blue).
a daisy-shaped drug carrier that's many thousands of times smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.
and release a cocktail of drugs to destroy them from within. The approach is more precise than conventional methods
By ensuring anticancer drugs reach their target in controlled coordinated doses nanodaisies could cut down on the side effects of traditional chemotherapy.
By using one nanocarrier to contain two different drugs we can potentially reduce their dose
which researchers attach the cancer-killing drug camptothecin (CPT) like bunches of grapes on a vine.
A second drug doxorubicin also floats in solution around the PEG. Both drugs are hydrophobic meaning they dislike water
and shy away from it. PEG though is hydrophilic: When exposed to water it stretches out to maximize contact
The anticancer drugs thus end up tucked into a protective shell of PEG. The resulting nanocarrier is shaped like a flower#hence the term nanodaisy.
Each drug inhibits different enzymes in the cell and they work in tandem to prevent
or delay the development of drug resistance. The result is that the drugs launch an attack on cancer that's more closely#coordinated
and tightly targeted than traditional drug cocktails. So far in vivo testing in mice has shown that this approach produces significant accumulation of drugs in tumor sites instead of healthy organs.
Gu noted that in vitro testing had demonstrated also the potential of nanodaisies to effectively target different kinds of cancer.
It's shown a broad killing effect for a variety of cancer cell lines including leukemia breast
Gu has led other research that#has yielded a bio-inspired cocoon that tricks cells into consuming anticancer drugs and an injectable nanonetwork that controls blood sugar levels in diabetics.
they could deliver drugs precisely to a target location a point on the retina for instance.
Other liquids in which such nanovehicles could deliver drugs for example include the vitreous humor of the eye mucous membranes and even blood.
and better at sniffing out explosives, deadly gases and illegal drugs. A carbon nanotube is a cylindrical material that is a hexagonal
#An unlikely use for diamonds Tiny diamonds are providing scientists with new possibilities for accurate measurements of processes inside living cells with potential to improve drug delivery and cancer therapeutics.
and because of their low toxicity they can be used as a carrier to transport drugs inside cells.
"This new imaging modality opens the exciting prospect of following complex cellular trafficking pathways quantitatively with important applications in drug delivery.
and to demonstrate a specific application in drug delivery
#Tracking heat-driven decay in leading electric vehicle batteries Rechargeable electric vehicles are one of the greatest tools against rising pollution and carbon emissions and their widespread adoption hinges on battery performance.
while minimizing the drug's adverse effects. The research was led by Jean-François Masson and Joelle Pelletier of the university's Department of chemistry.
hence the importance of closely monitoring the drug's concentration in the serum of treated individuals to adjust the dosage,
Until now, monitoring has been done in hospitals with a device using fluorescent bioassays to measure light polarization produced by a drug sample."
The detected colour reflects the exact concentration of the drug in the blood sample. In the course of their research
And the colour of the light detected reflects the exact concentration of the drug in the blood sample.
#Nanoparticle research could enhance drug delivery through skin Scientists at the University of Southampton have identified key characteristics that enhance a nanoparticle's ability to penetrate skin in a milestone study which could have major implications for the delivery of drugs.
and drugs delivered using them as a platform can be concentrated more targeted and efficient than those delivered through traditional means.
Our interest is focused now on incorporating these findings into the design of new nanotechnological drugs for transdermal therapy says Dr Kanaras.
#Drug-infused nanoparticle is right for sore eyes For the millions of sufferers of dry eye syndrome their only recourse to easing the painful condition is to use drug-laced eye drops three times a day.
The eye drops progressively deliver the right amount of drug-infused nanoparticles to the surface of the eyeball over a period of five days before the body absorbs them.
The nanoparticles about 1/1000th the width of a human hair stick harmlessly to the eye's surface and use only five per cent of the drug normally required.
Currently patients must frequently apply the medicine three times a day because of the eye's ability to self-cleanse a process that washes away 95 per cent of the drug.
if we focused on infusing biocompatible nanoparticles with Cyclosporine A the drug in the eye drops
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