#New Test Detects Drug Use From A Single Fingerprint, University of Surrey Study Research published today in the journal Analyst has demonstrated a new,
noninvasive test that can detect cocaine use through a simple fingerprint. For the first time, this new fingerprint method can determine
Led by the University of Surrey, a team of researchers from The netherlands Forensic Institute (NL), the National Physical Laboratory (UK), King's college London (UK) and Sheffield Hallam University (UK),
#Urine test For Early Stage Pancreatic cancer Possible After Biomarker Discovery, Study A combination of three proteins found at high levels in urine can accurately detect early-stage pancreatic cancer,
inexpensive test to screen people at high risk of developing the disease. A team at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, has shown that the three-protein'signature'can both identify the most common form of pancreatic cancer
when still in its early stages -and distinguish between this cancer and the inflammatory condition chronic pancreatitis,
which can be hard to tell apart. The study, published today, 03 august in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, was funded by the UK charity, the Pancreatic cancer Research Fund.
It looked at 488 urine samples: 192 from patients known to have pancreatic cancer, 92 from patients with chronic pancreatitis and 87 from healthy volunteers.
A further 117 samples from patients with other benign and malignant liver and gall bladder conditions were used for further validation.
Of these, three proteins-LYVE1, REG1A and TFF1-were selected for closer examination, based on biological information and performance in statistical analysis.
while patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis had significantly lower levels than cancer patients. When combined, the three proteins formed a robust panel that can detect patients with stages I-II pancreatic cancer with over 90 per cent accuracy.
With few specific symptoms even at a later stage of the disease, more than 80 per cent of people with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed
when the cancer has already spread. This means they are not eligible for surgery to remove the tumour-currently the only potentially curative treatment.
The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer in the UK is the lowest of any common cancer
standing at 3 per cent. This figure has improved barely in 40 years. There is no early diagnostic test available.
Lead researcher, Dr Tatjana Crnogorac-Jurcevic, said:""We've always been keen to develop a diagnostic test in urine as it has several advantages over using blood.
while to secure proof of principle funding in 2008 to look at biomarkers in urine, but it's been worth the wait for these results.
This is a biomarker panel with good specificity and sensitivity and we're hopeful that a simple,
people at higher risk of developing the disease include those with a family history of pancreatic cancer, heavy smokers, the obese and people over 50 years with new-onset diabetes.
if the 3-biomarker signature is present during the latency period-the time between the genetic changes that will cause the cancer to develop and the clinical presentation."
"For a cancer with no early stage symptoms, it's a huge challenge to diagnose pancreatic cancer sooner,
"says co-author and Director of Barts Cancer Institute, Professor Nick Lemoine.""With pancreatic cancer, patients are diagnosed usually
when the cancer is already at a terminal stage, but if diagnosed at stage 2,
Early diagnosis is an important part of our overall efforts against this aggressive cancer, alongside developing new treatments to tackle the disease once diagnosis is made.
It underlines the importance of increased research efforts to help improve survival rates.""Many of the urine samples from healthy individuals tested by Tanja's team were donated from the charity's own supporter community,
and I know they will be extremely proud that they have contributed directly to research progress in ways that go beyond traditional financial support
#Paralyzed Men Move Legs With New Noninvasive Spinal cord Stimulation, University of California, Los angeles (UCLA) Study In a study conducted at UCLA,
It is believed to be the first time voluntary leg movements have ever been relearned in completely paralyzed patients without surgery.
The results are reported in the Journal of Neurotrauma. hese findings tell us we have to look at spinal cord injury in a new way
said V. Reggie Edgerton, senior author of the research and a UCLA distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology, neurobiology and neurosurgery.
he now believes that it is possible to significantly improve quality of life for patients with severe spinal cord injuries,
because youe not going to recover function below the lesion,?he said. hey have been told that for decades,
Last year, Edgerton and colleagues, the University of Louisville Susan Harkema and Claudia Angeli and UCLA Yury Gerasimenko, reported that four young men who had been paralyzed for years were able to move their legs, hips,
along with Ruslan Gorodnichev of Russia Velikie Luky State Academy of Physical education and Sport, demonstrated that they could induce involuntary stepping movements in healthy,
The finding led Edgerton to believe the same approach could be effective for people with complete paralysis. In the new research,
a drug often used to treat anxiety disorders. Researchers placed electrodes at strategic points on the skin
at the lower back and near the tailbone and then administered a unique pattern of electrical currents.
who for nearly 40 years has conducted research on how the neural networks in the spinal cord regain control of standing,
stepping and voluntary control of movements after paralysis. t was remarkable. Edgerton said most experts,
including himself, had assumed that people who were paralyzed completely would no longer have had neural connections across the area of the spinal cord injury.
The researchers do not know yet whether patients who are paralyzed completely can be trained to fully bear their weight and walk.
But he and colleagues have published now data on nine people who have regained voluntary control of their legs four with epidural implants
and when the subjects see their legs moving for the first time after paralysis, they say it a big deal.
their injuries were suffered during athletic activities or, in one case, in an auto accident. All have been paralyzed completely for at least two years.
The research was funded by the National institutes of health National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (grants U01eb15521 and R01eb007615), the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation,
the Walkabout Foundation and the Russian Scientific Fund. hese encouraging results provide continued evidence that spinal cord injury may no longer mean a lifelong sentence of paralysis
and support the need for more research, said Dr. Roderic Pettigrew, director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. he potential to offer a life-changing therapy to patients without requiring surgery would be a major advance;
it could greatly expand the number of individuals who might benefit from spinal stimulation. It a wonderful example of the power that comes from combining advances in basic biological research with technological innovation.
Edgerton estimates that cost to patients of the new approach could be one-tenth the cost of treatment using the surgical epidural stimulator
(which is also still experimental) and, because no surgery is required, it would likely be more easily available to more patients.
The study co-authors were conceived Gerasimenko, who the new approach and is director of the laboratory of movement physiology at Russia Pavlov Institute and a researcher in the UCLA department of integrative biology and physiology,
as well as Lu, associate professor of neurosurgery in UCLA David Geffen School of medicine, and researchers Morteza Modaber, Roland Roy and Dimitry Sayenko, research technician Sharon Zdunowski, research scientist Parag Gad, laboratory coordinator Erika Morikawa and research
assistant Piia Haakana, all of UCLA; and Adam Ferguson, assistant professor of neurological surgery at UC San francisco. Edgerton and his research team also plan to study people who have severe,
but not complete, paralysis. heye likely to improve even more, he said. The scientists can only work with a small number of patients, due to limited resources,
but Edgerton is optimistic that the research can benefit many others. Almost 6 million Americans live with paralysis,
including nearly 1. 3 million with spinal cord injuries. person can have hope, based on these results,
Edgerton said. n my opinion, they should have hope s
#Artificial blood Vessels Become Resistant To Thrombosis, Study Scientists from ITMO University developed artificial blood vessels that are not susceptible to blood clot formation.
The achievement was made possible by a new generation of drug-containing coating applied to the inner surface of the vessel.
The results of the study were published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Surgery, associated with cardiovascular diseases, such as ischemia,
often require the implantation of vascular grafts-artificial blood vessels, aimed at restoring the blood flow in a problematic part of the circulatory system.
A serious disadvantage of vascular grafts is their tendency to get blocked due to clot formation
which results in compulsory and lifelong intake of anticoagulants among patients and sometimes may even require an additional surgical intervention.
head of the International Laboratory of Solution Chemistry of Advanced Materials and Technologies at ITMO University proposed a solution to the problem.
The team managed to synthesize a thin film made of densely packed aluminum oxide nanorods blended with molecules of a thrombolytic enzyme (urokinase-type plasminogen activator.
The matrix protects the plasminogen activator from the aggressive environment of the organism, at the same time preserving the ability of the enzyme to interact with certain external agents through a system of pores.
they actively release medicine into the blood. The lifetime of such grafts is determined often by the amount of drug stored within the graft,
but to any kind of implants. You just need to take the right kind of drug. For example, after the implantation of an artificial ureter, urease crystals often start to grow inside
and doctors do not know how to deal with this problem. It is possible to apply a similar drug-containing coating that dissolves urease.
The same approach may be used for kidney or liver surgery, but these are plans for the future,
"concludes Vladimir Vinogradov v
#Real-time Data For Cancer Therapy, MIT Study Biochemical sensor implanted at initial biopsy could allow doctors to better monitor
and adjust cancer treatments. In the battle against cancer, which kills nearly 8 million people worldwide each year,
doctors have in their arsenal many powerful weapons, including various forms of chemotherapy and radiation.
What they lack, however, is good reconnaissance a reliable way to obtain real-time data about how well a particular therapy is working for any given patient.
Magnetic resonance imaging and other scanning technologies can indicate the size of a tumor, while the most detailed information about how well a treatment is working comes from pathologistsexaminations of tissue taken in biopsies.
Yet these methods offer only snapshots of tumor response and the invasive nature of biopsies makes them a risky procedure that clinicians try to minimize.
Now, researchers at MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research are closing that information gap by developing a tiny biochemical sensor that can be implanted in cancerous tissue during the initial biopsy.
The sensor then wirelessly sends data about telltale biomarkers to an external eaderdevice, allowing doctors to better monitor a patient progress
and adjust dosages or switch therapies accordingly. Making cancer treatments more targeted and precise would boost their efficacy
while reducing patientsexposure to serious side effects. e wanted to make a device that would give us a chemical signal about what happening in the tumor,
says Michael Cima, the David H. Koch (1962) Professor in Engineering in the Department of Materials science and engineering and a Koch Institute investigator who oversaw the sensor development. ather than waiting months to see
if the tumor is shrinking, you could get an early read to see if youe moving in the right direction.
Two MIT doctoral students in Cima lab worked with him on the sensor project: Vincent Liu, now a postdoc at MIT,
and Christophoros Vassiliou, now a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley. Their research is featured in a paper in the journal Lab on a Chip that has been published online.
Measurements without MRI The sensors developed by Cima team provide real-time, on-demand data concerning two biomarkers linked to a tumor response to treatment:
ph and dissolved oxygen. As Cima explains, when cancerous tissue is under assault from chemotherapy agents,
it becomes more acidic. any times, you can see the response chemically before you see a tumor actually shrink,
Cima says. In fact, some therapies will trigger an immune system reaction, and the inflammation will make the tumor appear to be growing,
even while the therapy is effective. Oxygen levels, meanwhile, can help doctors gauge the proper dose of a therapy such as radiation,
since tumors thrive in low-oxygen (hypoxic) conditions. t turns out that the more hypoxic the tumor is,
the more radiation you need, Cima says. o, these sensors, read over time, could let you see how hypoxia was changing in the tumor,
so you could adjust the radiation accordingly. The sensor housing, made of a biocompatible plastic,
is small enough to fit into the tip of a biopsy needle. It contains 10 microliters of chemical contrast agents typically used for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
and an onboard circuit to communicate with the external reader device. Devising a power source for these sensors was critical,
Cima explains. Four years ago, his team built a similar implantable sensor that could be read by an MRI SCANNER.
RI scans are expensive and not easy to make part of routine care, he says. e wanted to take the next step
and put some electronics on the device so we could take these measurements without an MRI.
For power, these new sensors rely on the reader. Specifically, there a metal coil inside the reader and a much smaller coil in the sensor itself.
An electric current magnetizes the coil inside the reader, and that magnetic field creates a voltage in the sensor coil
when the two coils are close together a process called mutual inductance. The reader sends out a series of pulses,
and the sensor ings back, as Cima puts it. The variation in this return signal over time is interpreted by a computer to
which the reader is wired, revealing changes in the targeted biomarkers. ith these devices, it like taking blood pressure.
It a simple measurement. You get the readout and move on, says Ralph Weissleder, a radiologist and director of the Center for Systems Biology lab at Massachusetts General Hospital who is familiar with the research. hatever you can do right then and there without any complicated testing,
the better it is. Additional applications Cima team successfully tested the sensors in lab experiments
including implanting them in rodents. While the sensors were implanted only for a few weeks, Cima believes they could be used to monitor a person health over many years. here are thousands of people alive today,
because they have implantable electronics, like pacemakers and defibrillators, he says. ee making these sensors out of materials that are in these kinds of long-term implants,
and given that theye so small, I don think there will be a problem. These initial experiments showed that the sensors could quickly, reliably,
and accurately detect ph and oxygen concentration in tissue. The researchers next want to see how well the sensors do measuring changes in ph over an extended period of time. want to push these probes
so we can use them to monitor tumor response, Cima says. e did a little bit of that in these experiments,
but we need to make that really robust. While the primary application of these sensors would be cancer care,
Cima is also eager to collaborate with researchers in other fields, such as environmental science. or example,
you could use these to measure dissolved oxygen or ph from a lot of different sites all over a pond or a lake,
Cima says. excited about using these sensors to bring big data to environmental monitoring
#Modified Yeast Produce Opiates From Sugar, Stanford university Study It typically takes a year to produce hydrocodone from plants,
but researchers have modified genetically yeast to make it in just a few days. The technique could improve access to medicines in impoverished nations.
For thousands of years, people have used yeast to ferment wine, brew beer and leaven bread.
Now Stanford researchers have engineered genetically yeast to make painkilling medicines, a breakthrough that heralds a faster and potentially less expensive way to produce many different types of plant-based medicines.
Writing Aug 13 in Science, the engineers describe how they reprogrammed the genetic machinery of baker yeast
so that these fast-growing cells could convert sugar into hydrocodone in just three to five days.
Hydrocodone and its chemical relatives such as morphine and oxycodone are opioids, members of a family of painkilling drugs sourced from the opium poppy.
It can take more than a year to produce a batch of medicine, starting from the farms in Australia,
Europe and elsewhere that are licensed to grow opium poppies. Plant material must then be harvested, processed and shipped to pharmaceutical factories in the United states,
where the active drug molecules are extracted and refined into medicines. hen we started work a decade ago,
many experts thought it would be impossible to engineer yeast to replace the entire farm-to-factory process,
said senior author Christina Smolke, Phd, associate professor of bioengineering. Now, though the output is small it would take 4,
400 gallons of bioengineered yeast to produce a single dose of pain relief the experiment proves that bioengineered yeast can make complex,
plant-based medicines. his is only the beginning, Smolke said. he techniques we developed and demonstrate for opioid pain relievers can be adapted to produce many plant-derived compounds to fight cancers, infectious diseases and chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and arthritis.
From plant to test tubes Many medicines are derived from plants which our ancestors chewed or brewed into teas,
or later refined into pills using chemical processes to extract and concentrate their active ingredients. Smolke team is modernizing the process by inserting precisely engineered snippets of DNA into cells, such as yeast,
to reprogram the cells into custom chemical assembly lines to produce medicinal compounds. An important predecessor to the Stanford work has been the use of genetically engineered yeast to produce the antimalarial drug artemisinin.
Traditionally artemisinin has been sourced from the sweet wormwood tree in similar fashion to how opiates are refined from poppy.
Over the last decade as yeast-based artemisinin production has become possible, about one-third of the world supply has shifted to bioreactors. his is complicated the most chemical synthesis ever engineered in yeast,
Smolke said. Her team found and fine-tuned snippets of DNA from other plants, bacteria and even rats.
These genes equipped the yeast to produce all the enzymes necessary for the cells to convert sugar into hydrocodone,
a compound that deactivates pain receptors in the brain. nzymes make and break molecules, said Stephanie Galanie, a Phd student in chemistry and a member of Smolke team. heye the action heroes of biology.
To get the yeast assembly line going the team had to fill in a missing link in the basic science of plant-based medicines.
Many plants, including opium poppies, produce (S)- reticuline, a molecule that is a precursor to active ingredients with medicinal properties.
In the opium poppy,(S)- reticuline is naturally reconfigured into a variant called (R)- reticuline, a molecule that starts the plant down a path toward the production of molecules that can relieve pain.
Smolke team and two other labs recently independently discovered which enzyme reconfigures reticuline, but even after the Stanford bioengineers added this enzyme into their microbial factory,
the yeast didn create enough of the opioid compound. So they genetically tweaked the next enzyme in the process to boost production.
Down the line they went, adding enzymes, including six from rats, in order to craft a molecule that emerged ready to plug pain receptors in the brain.
Engineered with a purpose In their Science paper, the Stanford authors acknowledged that a new process to make opioid painkillers could increase concerns about the potential for opioid abuse. e want there to be an open,
deliberative process to bring researchers and policymakers together, Smolke said. e need options to help ensure that the bio-based production of medicinal compounds is developed in the most responsible way.
Smolke said that in the United states where opioid medicines are already widely available, the focus is on potential misuse.
But the World health organization estimates that 5. 5 billion people have little or no access to pain medications. iotech production could lower costs and,
with proper controls against abuse, allow bioreactors to be located where they are needed, she said. In addition to bioengineering yeast to convert sugar into hydrocodone,
the Stanford team developed a second strain that can process sugar into thebaine, a precursor to other opioid compounds.
Bio-produced thebaine would still need to be refined through sophisticated processes in pharmaceutical factories but it would eliminate the time delay of growing poppies. he molecules we produced
and the techniques we developed show that it is possible to make important medicines from scratch using only yeast,
she said. f responsibly developed, we can make and fairly provide medicines to all who need.
Stanford has patents on the technology, and Smolke and researchers on her team have formed a company.
postdoctoral scholar Isis Trenchard, Phd; and undergraduate Maria Filsinger Interrante r
#Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgical Tool Feels For Tumors, Study Tumors often look identical to healthy nearby tissue,
but they tend to feel different. Surgeons often use their fingers to feel the size and shape of
what to be resected, but palpation is essentially impossible when relying on minimally invasive access.
A team of researchers from Canadian Surgical Technologies & Advanced Robotics (CSTAR) and Western University developed a robotic arm compatible with the Da vinci robotic surgical system that can sense how hard
or soft a tissue is. The device was an entry into the Surgical Robot Challenge 2015 recently hosted by Imperial College London.
Hey check out all the engineering jobs. Post your resume today y
#International Team Discovers Natural Defense Against HIV, Michigan State university Study Researchers at Michigan State university were part of a team to discover a new natural defense against HIV infection.
The team's discovery, featured in the current issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, focuses on ERMANI, a protein that prevents the HIV virus from replicating."
"In earlier studies, we knew that we could interfere with the spread of HIV-1, but we couldn't identify the mechanism that was stopping the process,
"said Yong-Hui Zheng, MSU associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and co-author of the study."
"We now know that ERMANI is an essential key, and that it has the potential as a antiretroviral treatment."
"Antiretroviral treatments are not vaccines; they simply keep HIV in check in low levels in the body.
the Chinese Academy of Agricultural sciences and the University of Georgia. Most viruses have viral envelopes, or protective skins,
that comprise similar building blocks of the host the pathogens are trying to infect. On the surface of the envelope, there are viral glycoproteins, known as Env spikes,
leading viruses to binding sites that allow infections to spread at the molecular level. They serve as a key of sorts that gives viruses entry into the host to begin spreading.
Zheng's lab was the first to show that HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein biosynthesis can be inhibited specifically by ERMANI,
which future natural therapies can be developed. More than 1. 2 million people in the United states have HIV.
In China, doctors diagnosed 104,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS in 2014. The number of infections is rising,
though overall the country still has a low rate of infection. Currently, there is no cure for HIV-1;
once patients have it, they have it for life. While there are antiretroviral therapies available, they can only prolong life,
albeit dramatically, but they cannot cure the disease. Current drug treatments have to be taken for a lifetime,
which causes side effects and many other issues, Zheng said.""We see a way to treat this disease by helping the body protect itself,
"he said.""That's why we continue to move our research forward, seemingly slowly at times,
because finding a cure will take years. We feel that's it's important enough, on a worldwide scale,
to dedicate our work to fighting this disease
#Twin Study Suggests Genetic Factors Contribute To Insomnia In Adults, Virginia Commonwealth University Reveals DARIEN,
IL-A new study of twins suggests that insomnia in adults is explained partially by genetic factors,
and this heritability is higher in females than in males. Results show that the genetic influences on insomnia symptoms in adults were substantial and largely stable over time while differing significantly by sex.
In the longitudinal model, the estimated heritability of insomnia was 59 percent for females and 38 percent for males."
"This study indicates that genes may play a larger role in the development of insomnia symptoms for women than for men,
providing some of the first formal evidence for sex differences in an adult sample, "said first author Mackenzie Lind, a doctoral candidate at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond."
"Given the evidence for sex differences, it may be useful to specifically target females for sleep interventions."
"Study results are published in the September issue of the journal Sleep. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, transient insomnia symptoms occur in 30 to 35 percent of the population.
Chronic insomnia, which occurs at least three times per week for at least three months, affects about 10 percent of adults.
Insomnia is more common in women than men and involves difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
-or regularly waking up earlier than desired-despite an adequate opportunity for sleep. The VCU research team led by Lind and senior author Ananda B. Amstadter, Phd
analyzed data from the Virginia Adult Twin Studies of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders, a large twin data set of approximately 7, 500 participants collected by Dr. Kenneth S
. Kendler, MD, also an author on this paper. Insomnia symptoms were evaluated via self-report questionnaire at two non-overlapping time points.
According to the authors, this is the first study to examine the genetic and environmental influences on insomnia symptoms in adults in a longitudinal, representative twin sample.
The authors also noted that in addition to the substantial heritability estimates, unique environmental factors continue to account for a large amount of variance in insomnia symptoms s
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