#Cell Structure Discovery Advances Understanding Of Cancer Development, University of Warwick Study University of Warwick researchers have discovered a cell structure
which could help scientists understand why some cancers develop. For the first time a structure called he meshhas been identified
which is found to change in certain cancers, such as those of the breast and bladder.
associate professor and senior Cancer Research UK Fellow at the division of biomedical cell biology at Warwick Medical school.
s a cell biologist you dream of finding a new structure in cells but it so unlikely.
Researchers at the University Warwick Medical school made the discovery by accident while looking at gaps between microtubules
these gaps are incredibly small at just 25 nanometres wide 3, 000 times thinner than a human hair.
One of Dr Royle Phd students was examining structures called mitotic spindles in dividing cells using a technique called tomography
which is like a hospital CAT SCAN but on a much smaller scale. This meant that they could see the structure which they later named the mesh.
when they divide each new cell has a complete genome. Mitotic spindles are made of microtubules
and support from Cancer Research UK and North West Cancer Research. Dr Royle said: e had been looking in 2d
All of a sudden, tilting the fibre in 3d showed us that the bridges were not single struts at all
A cell needs to share chromosomes accurately when it divides otherwise the two new cells can end up with the wrong number of chromosomes.
This is called aneuploidy and this has been linked to a range of tumours in different body organs.
The mitotic spindle is responsible for sharing the chromosomes and the researchers at the University believe that the mesh is needed to give structural support.
Too little support from the mesh and the spindle will be too weak to work properly, however too much support will result in it being unable to correct mistakes.
TACC3, is overproduced in certain cancers. When this situation was mimicked in the lab, the mesh and microtubules were altered
and cells had trouble sharing chromosomes during division. Dr Emma Smith, senior science communications officer at Cancer Research UK, said:
roblems in cell division are common in cancer cells frequently end up with the wrong number of chromosomes.
This early research provides the first glimpse of a structure that helps share out a cell chromosomes correctly
when it divides, and it might be a crucial insight into why this process becomes faulty in cancer
and whether drugs could be developed to stop it from happening. North West Cancer Research (NWCR) has funded the research as part of a collaborative project between the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool,
where part of the research is being carried out. Anne Jackson CEO at NWCR, said: r Royle and Professor Ian Prior at the University of Liverpool have made significant inroads into our understanding of the way in
which cancer cells behave, which could potentially better inform future cancer therapies. s a charity we fund only the highest standard of research,
as evidenced by Dr Royle work. ll funded our projects undergo a thorough peer review process, before they are considered by our scientific committee.
Our specially selected scientific committee includes some of the UK leading professors, award-winning scientists and pioneering professionals.
Warwick Medical school division of biomedical cell biology carries out fundamental molecular and cellular research into biomedical problems.
Major human diseases such as cancer inflammation, neurodegeneration and bacterial/viral infection are primarily diseases of cells.
Without a molecular understanding of the underlying cell biology, intelligent directed therapeutic intervention is impossible. The division research focuses on fundamental cell biology processes such as cell division and intracellular communication.
Hey, check out all the research scientist jobs. Post your resume today s
#Could Dissolvable Microneedles Replace Injected Vaccines? Osaka University Study Eric is terrified. He stands outside the clinic and takes a few deep breaths before walking slowly through the automatic doors.
The nurse reassures him as he takes a seat. But then he sees it: the needle.
The blood drains from his head and he faints. An estimated 1 in 5 people suffer from trypanophobia a fear of needles
and studies suggest that around 1 in 12 people cite fear as their reason for not getting vaccinated.
A new vaccine delivery system could solve this problem: dissolvable microneedle patches are simple to use, pain-free and effective.
Flu vaccines delivered using microneedles that dissolve in the skin can protect people against infection even better than the standard needle-delivered vaccine,
according to new research published in Biomaterials. The authors of the study, from Osaka University in Japan, say their dissolvable patch the only vaccination system of its kind could make vaccination easier, safer and less painful.
Downsizing to address the needle problem Most vaccines are injected under the skin or into the muscle using needles.
While this is an effective delivery method it requires medical personnel with technical skills and brings the risk of needle-related diseases and injuries.
It also induces crippling fear in many people, often causing them to avoid vaccination. The new microneedle patch is made of dissolvable material,
eliminating needle-related risks. It is also easy to use without the need for trained medical personnel,
making it ideal for use in developing countries, where healthcare resources are limited. ur novel transcutaneous vaccination using a dissolving microneedle patch is the only application vaccination system that is readily adaptable for widespread practical use,
said Prof. Shinsaku Nakagawa one of the authors of the study and Professor of Biotechnology and Therapeutics at the Graduate school of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Osaka University. ecause the new patch is so easy to use,
we believe it will be particularly effective in supporting vaccination in developing countries. The new microneedle patch Microhyala is dissolvable in water.
The tiny needles are made of hyaluronic acid, a naturally occurring substance that cushions the joints. When the patch is applied like a plaster,
the needles pierce the top layer of skin without causing pain and dissolve into the body,
taking the vaccine with them. The researchers compared the new system to traditional needle delivery by vaccinating two groups of people against three strains of influenza:
A/H1n1, A/H3n2 and B. None of the subjects had a bad reaction to the vaccine,
showing that it is safe to use in humans. The patch was also effective: people given the vaccine using the microneedles had an immune reaction that was equal to
or stronger than those given the vaccine by injection. e were excited to see that our new microneedle patch is
just as effective as the needle-delivered flu vaccines, and in some cases even more effective, said Dr. Nakagawa. e have shown that the patch is safe and that it works well.
Since it is also painless and very easy for non-trained people to use, we think it could bring about a major change in the way we administer vaccines globally.
New approaches to vaccination According to the World health organization immunization prevents an estimated 2 million to 3 million deaths every year.
The continued threat of pandemics such as H1n1 swine flu and emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola makes vaccine development and mass vaccination a priority for global healthcare.
Delivery methods that do not require needles are safer for the person administering the vaccine,
more pleasant for the person receiving the vaccine, and potentially less expensive. The challenge is developing a delivery method that gets the vaccine into the body effectively.
Microneedles provide one such delivery method, and they can be made of various different materials. Previous research has evaluated the use of microneedles made of silicon or metal
but they were shown not to be safe. Microneedles made from these materials also run the risk of breaking off in the skin, leaving tiny fragments behind;
dissolvable patches eliminate this risk. For some diseases, vaccines may be more effective when theye absorbed through the mucous membranes in the nose.
For example, studies in mice have suggested that tuberculosis vaccines delivered through the noseare more effective than those that are injected,
as they target the respiratory system. Tuberculosis experts gathered in a workshop at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases at the National institutes of health in Bethesda, Maryland,
in April 2014 to discuss this approach. According to the meeting report, they mphasized the need for greater support to further explore the potential for this delivery methodology
either alone or as an adjunct to traditional parenteral methods of vaccine administration. e
#Bionic Hand Uses Smart Wires To Mimic Muscle fibers, Study Engineers in Germany have built a biologically inspired artificial hand with muscles made from bundles of'smart'wires.
An electric charge is all that's needed to make these wires tense or relax, meaning the hand can operate without the bulky and cumbersome electronics that often make artificial prosthetic hands impractical.
The lightweight plastic hand itself was designed and 3d printed by a research team from Saarland University.
The muscle-like fibers are made from strands of nickel-titanium wire, each about the width of a human hair.
The metal wire known as shape-memory alloy, has the highest energy density of all known actuation mechanisms,
which allows it to perform powerful movements in restricted spaces s
#"Pill On A String"Could Help Spot Early Signs Of Cancer Of The Gullet, University of Cambridge Study A ill on a stringdeveloped by researchers at the University of Cambridge could help doctors detect oesophageal cancer cancer of the gullet at an early stage,
helping them overcome the problem of wide variation between biopsies, suggests research published today in the journal Nature Genetics.
The ytospongesits within a pill which, when swallowed, dissolves to reveal a sponge that scrapes off cells when withdrawn up the gullet.
It allows doctors to collect cells from all along the gullet whereas standard biopsies take individual point samples.
Oesophageal cancer is preceded often by Barrett oesophagus, a condition in which cells within the lining of the oesophagus begin to change shape
and can grow abnormally. The cellular changes are cause by acid and bile reflux when the stomach juices come back up the gullet.
Between one and five people in every 100 with Barrett's oesophagus go on to develop oesophageal cancer in their life-time,
a form of cancer that can be difficult to treat, particularly if not caught early enough.
At present, Barrett's oesophagus and oesophageal cancer are diagnosed using biopsies which look for signs of dysplasia, the proliferation of abnormal cancer cells.
This is a subjective process, requiring a trained scientist to identify abnormalities. Understanding how oesophageal cancer develops
and the genetic mutations involved could help doctors catch the disease earlier, offering better treatment options for the patient.
An alternative way of spotting very early signs of oesophageal cancer would be to look for important genetic changes.
However, researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown that variations in mutations across the oesophagus mean that standard biopsies may miss cells with important mutations.
A sample was more likely to pick up key mutations if taken using the Cytosponge, developed by Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald at the Medical Research Council Cancer Unit at the University of Cambridge. he trouble with Barrett oesophagus is that it looks bland
and might span over 10cm, explains Professor Fitzgerald. e created a map of mutations in a patient with the condition
and found that within this stretch, there is a great deal of variation amongst cells. Some might carry an important mutation,
but many will not. If youe taking a biopsy, this relies on your hitting the right spot.
Using the Cytosponge appears to remove some of this game of chance. Professor Fitzgerald and colleagues carried out whole genome sequencing to analyse paired Barrett oesophagus
and oesophageal cancer samples taken at one point in time from 23 patients, as well as 73 samples taken over a three-year period from one patient with Barrett oesophagus.
The researchers found patterns of mutations in the genome where one etterof DNA might change to another,
for example from A c to a t that provided a ingerprintof the causes of the cancer. Similar work has been done previously in lung cancer,
where it was shown that cigarettes leave fingerprints in an individual DNA. The Cambridge team found fingerprints
which they believe are likely to be due to the damage caused to the lining of the oesophagus by stomach acid splashing onto its walls;
the same fingerprints could be seen in both Barrett oesophagus and oesophageal cancer, suggest that these changes occur very early on the process.
Even in areas of Barrett oesophagus without cancer, the researchers found a large number of mutations in their tissue on average 12,000 per person (compared to an average of 18,000 mutations within the cancer.
Many of these are likely to have been ystanders genetic mutations that occurred along the way but that were implicated not actually in cancer.
The researchers found that there appeared to be a tipping point, where a patient would go from having lots of individual mutations,
but no cancer, to a situation where large pieces of genetic information were being transferred not just between genes but between chromosomes.
Co-author Dr Caryn Ross-Innes adds: e know very little about how you go from pre-cancer to cancer
and this is particularly the case in oesophageal cancer. Barrett oesophagus and the cancer share many mutations,
but we are now a step closer to understanding which are the important mutations that tip the condition over into a potentially deadly form of cancer.
The research was funded by the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK. The Cytosponge was trialled in patients at the NIHR Clinical Investigation Ward at the Cambridge Clinical Research Facility
#Smartphone-Based Device That Reads Medical Diagnostic Tests Quickly And Accurately Created, University of California,
Los angeles (UCLA) Reveals UCLA Researchers Create Smartphone-Based Device That Reads Medical Diagnostic Tests Quickly And Accurately Enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay,
or ELISA, is a diagnostic tool that identifies antigens such as viruses and bacteria in blood samples.
ELISA can detect a number of diseases, including HIV, West nile virus and Hepatitis b, and it is used widely in hospitals.
It can also be used to identify potential allergens in food, among other applications. A team of researchers from the California Nanosystems Institute at UCLA has developed a new mobile phone-based device that can read ELISA plates in the field with the same level of accuracy as the large machines normally found in clinical laboratories.
The research, published online in the journal ACS Nano, was led by Aydogan Ozcan, associate director of the California Nanosystems Institute,
along with Dino Di Carlo, professor of bioengineering, and Omai Garner, associate director of clinical microbiology for the UCLA Health System.
UCLA undergraduate Brandon Berg was the study first author, and two other undergraduates also contributed to the research. t is quite important to have these kinds of mobile devices,
especially for administering medical tests that are done usually in a hospital or clinical laboratory, said Ozcan,
who is also Chancellor Professor of Electrical engineering and Bioengineering. his mobile platform can be used for point-of-care testing,
screening populations for particular diseases, or tracking vaccination campaigns in most resource-poor settings. It fantastic for an undergrad to be first author on the publication.
Traditional ELISA testing is performed with small transparent plates that resemble honeycombs, typically with 96 tiny wells. Samples are placed in the wells first,
followed by small amounts of fluid containing specific antibodies that bind to antigens in the samples.
These antibodies are linked to enzymes, so when a substance containing the enzyme substrate the molecule the enzyme acts upon is added,
the resulting chemical reactions cause a change in color. This color change is analyzed then to detect and quantify any antigens that may be present.
The new device which is created with a 3d printer and attaches to a smartphone, illuminates the ELISA plate with an array of light-emitting diodes.
The light projects through each well and is collected by 96 individual plastic optical fibers in the attachment.
The smartphone transmits the resulting images to UCLA servers through a custom-designed app. The images are analyzed then by a machine-learning algorithm that the researchers wrote for this purpose,
and the diagnostic results are sent back to the phone within about one minute for the entire 96-well plate.
The app also creates a visualization of the results for the user. This mobile platform was compared with the standard FDA-approved well-plate readers in a UCLA clinical microbiology laboratory.
The ELISA tests included those for mumps, measles, and herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2. With a total of 571 patient samples used in the comparison,
the mobile platform achieved 99.6 percent accuracy in diagnosing mumps, 98.6 percent for measles, and 99.4 percent each for herpes simplex 1 and 2. ur team is focused on developing biomedical technologies that work with mobile platforms to assist with on-site testing
and health-care in disadvantaged or rural areas, Berg said. e are always looking toward the next innovation,
and are looking to adapt the basic design of this ELISA cellphone reader to create smartphone-based quantified readers for other important medical tests,
Di Carlo said. The UCLA team included researchers from electrical engineering, physics and astronomy, bioengineering, pathology and laboratory medicine,
and surgery, as well as the California Nanosystems Institute and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. The other authors on the paper were UCLA graduate students Bingen Cortazar, Derek Tseng, Haydar Ozkan, Raymond Yan-Lok Chan, and Steve Feng;
postgraduate scholar Qingshan Wei; undergraduates Jordi Burbano and Qamar Farooki; and Michael Lewinski, an adjunct faculty in UCLA bioengineering department.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Howard hughes medical institute h
#Smart Hydrogel Coating Creates"Stick-Slip"Control Of Capillary Action, Georgia Institute of technology Study Coating the inside of glass microtubes with a polymer hydrogel material dramatically alters the way capillary forces draw water into the tiny structures,
researchers have found. The discovery could provide a new way to control microfluidic systems, including popular lab-on-a-chip devices.
Capillary action draws water and other liquids into confined spaces such as tubes, straws, wicks and paper towels,
and the flow rate can be predicted using a simple hydrodynamic analysis . But a chance observation by researchers at the Georgia Institute of technology will cause a recalculation of those predictions for conditions in which hydrogel films line the tubes carrying water-based liquids. ather than moving according to conventional expectations,
water-based liquids slip to a new location in the tube, get stuck, then slip again
and the process repeats over and over again, explained Andrei Fedorov, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. nstead of filling the tube with a rate of liquid penetration that slows with time,
the water propagates at a nearly constant speed into the hydrogel-coated capillary. This was very different from
what we had expected. The findings resulted from research sponsored by the Air force Office of Scientific research (AFOSR) through the BIONIC center at Georgia Tech
and were reported earlier this month in the journal Soft Matter. When the opening of a thin glass tube is exposed to a droplet of water,
the liquid begins to flow into the tube, pulled by a combination of surface tension in the liquid and adhesion between the liquid and the walls of the tube.
Leading the way is a meniscus, a curved surface of the water at the leading edge of the water column.
An ordinary borosilicate glass tube fills by capillary action at a gradually decreasing rate with the speed of meniscus propagation slowing as a square root of time.
But when the inside of a tube is coated with a very thin layer of poly (N-isopropylacrylamide
a so-called martpolymer (PNIPAM), everything changes. Water entering a tube coated on the inside with a dry hydrogel film must first wet the film
and allow it to swell before it can proceed farther into the tube. The wetting and swelling take place not continuously,
but with discrete steps in which the water meniscus first sticks and its motion remains arrested
while the polymer layer locally deforms. The meniscus then rapidly slides for a short distance before the process repeats.
This tick-slipprocess forces the water to move into the tube in a step-by-step motion. The flow rate measured by the researchers in the coated tube is three orders of magnitude less than the flow rate in an uncoated tube.
A linear equation describes the time dependence of the filling process instead of a classical quadratic equation
which describes filling of an uncoated tube. nstead of filling the capillary in a hundredth of a second,
it might take tens of seconds to fill the same capillary, said Fedorov. hough there is some swelling of the hydrogel upon contact with water,
the change in the tube diameter is negligible due to the small thickness of the hydrogel layer.
This is why we were surprised so when we first observed such a dramatic slow down of the filing process in our experiments.
The researchers who included graduate students James Silva Drew Loney and Ren Geryak and senior research engineer Peter Kottke tried the experiment again using glycerol,
a liquid that is not absorbed by the hydrogel. With glycerol, the capillary action proceeded through the hydrogel-coated microtube as with an uncoated tube in agreement with conventional theory.
After using high-resolution optical visualization to study the meniscus propagation while the polymer swelled, the researchers realized they could put this previously-unknown behavior to good use.
Water absorption by the hydrogels occurs only when the materials remain below a specific transition temperature.
When heated above that temperature the materials no longer absorb water, eliminating the tick-slipphenomenon in the microtubes
and allowing them to behave like ordinary tubes. This ability to turn the stick-slip behavior on and off with temperature could provide a new way to control the flow of water-based liquid in microfluidic devices,
including labs-on-a-chip. The transition temperature can be controlled by varying the chemical composition of the hydrogel. y locally heating
or cooling the polymer inside a microfluidic chamber, you can either speed up the filling process
or slow it down, Fedorov said. he time it takes for the liquid to travel the same distance can be varied up to three orders of magnitude.
That would allow precise control of fluid flow on demand using external stimuli to change polymer film behavior.
The heating or cooling could be done locally with lasers, tiny heaters, or thermoelectric devices placed at specific locations in the microfluidic devices.
That could allow precise timing of reactions in microfluidic devices by controlling the rate of reactant delivery and product removal,
or allow a sequence of fast and slow reactions to occur. Another important application could be controlled drug release in
which the desired rate of molecule delivery could be tuned dynamically over time to achieve the optimal therapeutic outcome.
In future work, Fedorov and his team hope to learn more about the physics of the hydrogel-modified capillaries
and study capillary flow using partially-transparent microtubes. They also want to explore other martpolymers which change the flow rate in response to different stimuli,
or the induction of mechanical stress all of which can change the properties of a particular hydrogel designed to be responsive to those triggers. hese experimental and theoretical results provide a new conceptual framework for liquid motion confined by soft,
dynamically evolving polymer interfaces in which the system creates an energy barrier to further motion through elasto-capillary deformation,
and then lowers the barrier through diffusive softening, the paper authors wrote. his insight has implications for optimal design of microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip devices based on stimuli-responsive smart polymers.
In addition to those already mentioned the research team included Professor Vladimir Tsukruk from the Georgia Tech School of Materials science and engineering and Rajesh Naik, Biotechnology Lead and Tech Advisor of the Nanostructured and Biological Materials Branch
of the Air force Research Laboratory (AFRL. This research was supported by the Air force Office of Scientific research BIONIC Center through awards FA9550-09-1-0162 and FA9550-14-1-0269, AFOSR award FA-9550-14-1-0015,
and by Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute Fellowship. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors
and does not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsors
#Oil Droplets Into Human Cells, Harvard Medical school Study Scientists have turned individual cells into miniature lasers by injecting them with droplets of oil
or fat mixed with a fluorescent dye that can be activated by short pulses of light. The finding, reported on 27 july in Nature Photonics1,
could help to broaden how light is used for both medical diagnosis and treatment. The system was devised by Seok Hyun Yun and Matja Humar, both optical physicists at Harvard Medical school in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
and uses droplets of fat or oil within a cell to reflect and amplify light,
His latest work goes a step further, producing a cell with a self-contained laser. Conventional luminescent probes,
says Jeffrey Karp, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. ne of the greatest implications of the work is to track thousands of cells simultaneously with a single technique,
he says. Yun and Humar report that they can vary the wavelength and tag individual cells using fluorescent polystyrene beads of different diameters,
rather than injected droplets of oil or fat. In theory, using different combinations of beads and dyes with different spectral properties should make it possible to individually tag almost as many cells as exist in the human body. t will be fun
He cautions that the technique is not yet ready for therapeutic use. But eventually the modified cells could be used to locate target tissue,
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