#New tool on horizon for surgeons treating cancer patients Surgeons could know while their patients are still on the operating table
if a tissue is cancerous, according to researchers from the Department of energy Oak ridge National Laboratory and Brigham and Women Hospital/Harvard Medical school.
In the journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, a team led by ORNL Vilmos Kertesz describes an automated droplet-based surface sampling probe that accomplishes in about 10 minutes
what now routinely takes 20 to 30 minutes. Kertesz expects that time to be cut to four to five minutes soon.
a technician might soon perform an equally conclusive test in the operating environment, Kertesz said.
which looks for specific protein biomarkers to make a diagnosis . Although the IHC approach provides a high degree of spatial recognition,
and specificity of the antibody used to detect the protein. ORNL researchers trace this success to patents resulting from previously funded DOE projects
and noted that this work advances the liquid microjunction surface sampling probe technology first patented by ORNL.
Additionally, ORNL houses the only laboratories in the world that have automated this droplet-based surface sampling probe and the requisite software.
While yet other mass spectrometry-based techniques such as desorption electrospray ionization and rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry are being evaluated for classifying tumors and providing prognostic information,
they are limited mainly to the analysis of lower molecular weight biomolecules. These include metabolites, fatty acids and lipids.
The new droplet-based method developed at ORNL does not share this limitation. he ability to quickly characterize the tissue distribution of larger macromolecular biomarkers like peptides
and proteins would harness the diagnostic value of validated immunohistochemistry approaches for surgical decision-making, Kertesz said.
rapidity and specificity of our method, there is great potential for our technology to assist surgeons in the detection of cancer from tissue biopsy samples,
a member of ORNL Organic and Biological Mass Spectrometry Group and lead author of the paper.
Gary Van Berkel of ORNL is a co-author s
#Scientists successfully test immunogen a component for potential HIV vaccine Team of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute, INTERNATIONAL AIDS Vaccine Initiative and The Rockefeller University have shown successfully that an experimental vaccine candidate
can stimulate the immune system activity necessary to stop HIV infection. This research is extremely significant.
In fact, scientists believe that findings of the study could provide key information for the development of an effective AIDS vaccine.
A protein nanoparticle called OD-GT8 60mer which already proved to help immunity of mouse models to cope with HIV,
may become one of the parts of first successful HIV vaccine. Image credit: scripps. eduefforts to create effective vaccine against HIV so far have been virtually fruitless.
However, scientists already describe results of this latest research as spectacular. The long-term goal of the research is to develop a vaccine that prompts the body to produce antibodies that bind to HIV
and prevent infection and current experiments with mice models showed promising results. Many vaccines for other diseases use a dead
or inactive version of the disease-causing microbe itself to trigger antibody production. However, this simple approach does not work with HIV immunizations with ativehiv proteins are ineffective in triggering an effective immune response
due to HIV ability to evade detection from the immune system and mutate rapidly into new strains.
This makes HIV vaccine a particularly challenging task for scientists, which explains why science still has produced not an effective one.
This challenge did not make scientists believe that AIDS vaccine is impossible. Instead they figured out that it has to consist of a series of related,
but slightly different proteins, called immunogens, to train the body to produce broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV.
It is a completely different approach than a traditional, so called oostershot, where a person is exposed to the same immunogen multiple times,
until develops imunity to a certain disease. The research required a broad partnership between different institutions.
During it scientists tested a protein nanoparticle designed to bind and activate B cells needed to fight HIV.
This protein is called an immunogen eod-GT8 60mer. This compound had to be tested, so another lab using genetic engineering created a mouse model to produce antibodies that resemble human antibodies.
The experiments showed that immunization with the compound produced antibody recursorswith some of the traits necessary to recognize
and block HIV infection. This suggests that eod-GT8 60mer immunogen could be a good candidate to serve as the first in a series of immunizations against HIV.
Professor David Nemazee evaluated results like that he vaccine appears to work well in our mouse model to rimethe antibody response In another research scientists used the same immunogen in a slightly different mouse model,
which showed promising results As well as scientists have taken approach to collect a variety of different immunogens to develop a united HIV vaccine,
now they have to find other needed immunogens. For further testing mouse models will have to be developed,
which means that collaboration between different disciplines and laboratories will remain crucial on the path to the ultimate goal.
HIV vaccine would be a major breakthrough at fight against AIDS, as it still is arguably the biggest threat to human population.
As previous attempts to prevent the spread of the disease proved ineffective and there is no cure for it,
vaccine could be one of the greatest scientific achievements of the century. Source: Scripp s
#Cancer Blocked by Halving Levels of Protein Thought To Be ntouchablein a surprising finding, a team of UC San francisco and Stanford university scientists has discovered that a protein thought to be crucial for the body to develop
and function correctly can be reduced by half in mice with no apparent ill effects. More strikingly, the group found that the full complement of the protein normally found in cells can be hijacked by cancer cells to fuel their growth.
The work raises the possibility that targeted cancer drugs that lower levels of the protein could suppress tumor growth without affecting healthy cells.
The findings are reported in the June 18 2015 online issue of Cell. e thought this factor would be impossible to target based on our previous understanding,
but that understanding seems to have been said incorrect co-first author Morgan L. Truitt, a UCSF graduate student in the Biomedical sciences Program. his represents a new and exciting finding in regard to how we might target the development of tumors.
The protein, known as eif4e, is a master regulator of a fundamental cellular process called translation
and has widely been considered to be said ntouchablein experiments UCSF Davide Ruggero, Phd, who holds the Helen Diller Family Chair in Basic Cancer Research,
and Maria Barna, Phd, assistant professor of developmental biology and genetics at Stanford, co-senior authors of the new study. he dogma in every textbook was that
if you tweaked eif4e in any way it would have profound and dramatic effects on cells and development of the embryo,
said Ruggero, a member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center (HDFCCC). During translation, strands of MESSENGER RNA (mrna) carry protein-making instructions from genes to ribosomes, the cellular machines in which proteins are made.
the researchers thought other known players in translation must somehow be working overtime in the engineered mice to take up the slack for the reduction in eif4e.
and co-first author Crystal S. Conn, Phd, a postdoctoral fellow in the UCSF Department of Urology,
especially since previous research has shown that eif4e is present at abnormally high levels in tumor cells. ancer cells rely on increases in protein synthesis as a critical means for sustaining their growth and survival,
In lab-dish experiments, mutations in certain genes known as oncogenes, such as Ras and Myc, reliably ransformnormal mouse cells into cancer-like cells the cells overproliferate,
just as tumor cells do. But when the researchers introduced oncogenic Myc and Ras into cells in
When the scientists used a tool called short-hairpin RNAS to sharply reduce eif4e levels in human lung cancer cells carrying a Ras mutation,
they again observed that the potential of these cells to develop tumors was weakened significantly. The researchers found,
when they set the stage for the development of cancer. These results were consistent with those seen in eif4e-deficient mice carrying Ras mutations
which had reduced a sharply propensity to develop lung cancer compared to mice with a full complement of eif4e.
potentially toxic molecules that accumulate when cells are under stress, such as that caused by oncogenic transformation.
Though cells require some ROS to survive, stress conditions can push ROS levels beyond a threshold,
triggering a program that causes cells to commit suicide. To maintain the correct balance, mildly stressed cells activate genes to create scavenger proteins that mop up excess ROS.
Most cancer drug development is aimed at specifically targeting faulty proteins caused by mutations in oncogenes such as Ras and Myc,
To that end, in 2013 Ruggero and UCSF colleague Kevan M. Shokat, Phd, professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology and a Howard hughes medical institute Investigator, founded San diego-based effector Therapeutics
. effector is developing new treatments for patients with cancer and other serious diseases, in part by characterizing drug action and identifying targets related to the cell translational mechanisms.
Some of the results in the new work reported in Cell made use of techniques that UCSF has licensed exclusively to effector.
but they make use of the surplus to initiate protective mechanisms when under stress. Cancer cells appear to hijack this mechanism,
using the extra reservoir of eif4e to ward off the stress response to enhance their own survival. his work pulls back the curtain on a very unique trick that cancer cells have developed during the course of evolution to promote their own growth, through a program that specific to cancer cells,
according to a study led by UC San francisco researchers. his work fundamentally changes the way we think about stem cells,
said principal investigator Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, UCSF professor of neurological surgery, Heather and Melanie Muss Endowed Chair and a principal investigator in the UCSF Brain tumor Research center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. t may be unwelcome
news for those who thought of adult neural stem cells as having a wide potential for neural repair.
whose lab was the first to identify neural stem cells more than 20 years ago. e did not see that. n mouse brains,
as in human brains, adult neural stem cells reside on the walls of cavities called ventricles, which are filled with cerebrospinal fluid.
Alvarez-Buylla and his team traced the development of mouse adult neural stem cells back to their embryonic progenitors.
when the mouse embryo is between 13 and 15 days old, uite early in embryonic brain development, said Alvarez-Buylla,
the scientists found that the mouse adult neural stem cells they studied are derived from embryonic neural stem cells that produce neurons in entirely different parts of the brain. his means that, somehow,
the implications for human biology are indirect at best. owever, mouse brains have long been accepted as excellent basic research models for the human brain,
he said. Alvarez-Buylla also noted that the paper has possible implications for the success of human stem cell therapy in the brain
and nervous system. ne implication for humans has to do with the fact that so many different progenitor cells are needed to make the different types of neurons,
this work tells us that if we don understand the embryology of the brain, going back to the origins of specific nerve cell types,
the likelihood of our being able to use stem cell therapy to repair brain injury is very low. ource:
#UCLA chemists devise technology that could transform solar energy storage The materials in most of today residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time.
A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The scientists devised a new arrangement of solar cell ingredients, with bundles of polymer donors (green rods) and neatly organized fullerene acceptors (purple, tan.
UCLA Chemistrythe new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy through photosynthesis. iology does a very good job of creating energy from sunlight,
a UCLA professor of chemistry and one of the senior authors of the research. lants do this through photosynthesis with extremely high efficiency.?
In photosynthesis, plants that are exposed to sunlight use carefully organized nanoscale structures within their cells to rapidly separate charges pulling electrons away from the positively charged molecule that is left behind,
and keeping positive and negative charges separated, Tolbert said. hat separation is the key to making the process so efficient. o capture energy from sunlight, conventional rooftop solar cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material.
There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics, rather than silicon,
but today plastic solar cells are relatively inefficient, in large part because the separated positive and negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy. odern plastic solar cells don have well-defined structures like plants do
because we never knew how to make them before, Tolbert said. ut this new system pulls charges apart
you can vastly improve the retention of energy. he two components that make the UCLA-developed system work are a polymer donor and a nanoscale fullerene acceptor.
The polymer donor absorbs sunlight and passes electrons to the fullerene acceptor; the process generates electrical energy.
The plastic materials, called organic photovoltaics, are organized typically like a plate of cooked pasta a disorganized mass of long, skinny polymer paghettiwith random fullerene eatballs.
But this arrangement makes it difficult to get current out of the cell because the electrons sometimes hop back to the polymer spaghetti
and are lost. The UCLA technology arranges the elements more neatly like small bundles of uncooked spaghetti with precisely placed meatballs.
Some fullerene meatballs are designed to sit inside the spaghetti bundles, but others are forced to stay on the outside.
The fullerenes inside the structure take electrons from the polymers and toss them to the outside fullerene
which can effectively keep the electrons away from the polymer for weeks. hen the charges never come back together,
the system works far better, said Benjamin Schwartz, a UCLA professor of chemistry and another senior co-author. his is the first time this has been shown using modern synthetic organic photovoltaic materials. n the new system,
the materials self-assemble just by being placed in close proximity. e worked really hard to design something
because the materials can assemble in water instead of more toxic organic solutions that are used widely today. nce you make the materials,
Schwartz said. o there no additional work. he researchers are already working on how to incorporate the technology into actual solar cells.
Yves Rubin, a UCLA professor of chemistry and another senior co-author of the study, led the team that created the uniquely designed molecules. e don have these materials in a real device yet;
#New way to produce carbon nanoparticles found only honey and microwave needed Researchers at University of Illinois have created a new inexpensive and simple way to produce carbon nanoparticles.
They are small enough to evade the body immune system, reflect light in the near-infrared range for easy detection,
However, when usual methods to produce carbon nanoparticles are rather complex and can take days,
and time that these carbon nanoparticles can virtually be made at home. Dipanjan Pan bioengineering professor one of authors of the study, said that you just have to mix honey
or molasses, put them into microwave oven and ook it for a few minutes, and you get something that looks like char,
but that is nanoparticles with high luminescence This method is extremely simple and highly scalable for eventual clinical use.
These carbon nanoparticles produced in such a simple and inexpensive way have several attractive properties.
First of all, they naturally scatter light in a manner that makes them easy to differentiate from human tissues,
these particles are coated with polymers, which fine-tune their optical properties and their rate of degradation in the body.
These polymers can be loaded with drugs that are released gradually. Finally, carbon nanoparticles are rather small, less than eight nanometres in diameter (in comparison,
a human hair is 80,000 to 100,000 nanometres thick). This is very important and useful, since human immune system fails to recognize anything under 10 nanometres,
which allows for a better therapeutic potential. The team of researchers tested the therapeutic potential of these carbon nanoparticles by loading them with an anti-melanoma drug
and mixing them in a topical solution that was applied to pig skin. However, scientists have to make sure they coated particles properly,
so they used vibrational spectroscopic techniques to identify the molecular structure of the nanoparticles and their cargo.
They used spectroscopy to confirm the formulation as well as visualize the delivery of the particles and drug molecules.
The experiment showed that the carbon nanoparticles did not release the drug payload at room temperature
which was one of the desired goals. They began to release the anticancer drug only at body temperature.
Scientists also found that they can alter the infusion of the particles into melanoma cells by adjusting the polymer coatings.
Study showed that cancer cells were affected positively by drugs delivered by these carbon nanoparticles. These carbon nanoparticles,
despite being made from honey in the microwave, are very useful indeed. They can be used to carry a variety of different drugs into a human body.
It is a very versatile platform to treat melanoma, other kinds of cancers and other diseases.
Scientists say that they can be coated with different polymers to give them different optical properties to make them even easier to detect in the organism,
as well as to make it carry several different drugs at the same time to allow for a multidrug therapy with the same particles.
Scientists also can make them glow at certain wavelengths and tune them to release the drugs in the presence of the cellular environment.
This is a great achievement, having in mind that currently production of carbon nanoparticles requires expensive equipment
and purification processes that can take days. New method will allow for a greater variety of experiments,
which will eventually lead to innovative drug therapies for cancer and other diseases i
#Access to electricity and artificial light shortened time of our sleep Science knows that nowadays people tend to sleep less than they used to before modern times.
We tend to blame modern lifestyle and technology for that. In other words, we stay longer at night browsing the internet
and alarm clocks wake us up early to go to work or class. But now scientists from University of Washington have conducted the study that links artificial light to our contemporary sleep deprivation.
The researchers compared traditional hunter-gatherer living conditions to a more modern setting. Results of this research for the first time suggest that access to artificial light
and electricity has shortened the amount of sleep humans get each night. Lead author Horacio de la Iglesia, said verything we found feeds
what we had predicted from laboratory or intervention studies, where researchers manipulate certain aspects of light exposure.
But this is the first time wee seen this hold true in a natural setting To get objective and informative results,
but differ in one key aspect access to electricity. They wanted to see if such simple factor of electricity and artificial light could lead to a smaller amount of sleep during an average week in both the summer and winter.
Scientists found these two groups in Argentina. One has a 24hour access to free electricity
and can turn on the light at any desired time, while another relies only on natural sunlight.
The community that had access to electricity slept about an hour less than their counterparts with no electricity.
when electricity became available. However because both of these groups, despite one having electricity, still live in very primitive conditions.
This must mean that with our access to electricity and technology the impact on our sleep habits is even greater.
Scientists, of course, could not watch people sleep and observe their sleeping habits directly. So they used technology.
and winter, placing bracelets onto the wrist of each study participant to monitor activity. These bracelets can track slight changes in movement
Now scientists are thinking about ways to expand the research to get more information about links between electricity and sleep patterns in such communities.
whether the later sleep onset and reduced sleep in the community with electricity is due to a shift in the biological clock by measuring melatonin levels in the two communities.
#Smart insulin patch could replace painful injections for diabetes This is the mart insulin patch, developed by researchers in the joint UNC/NC State Biomedical engineering Department.
A joint effort between diabetes doctors and biomedical engineers could revolutionize how people with diabetes keep their blood sugar levels in checkpainful insulin injections could become a thing of the past for the millions of Americans who suffer from diabetes, thanks to a new invention
from researchers at the University of North carolina and NC State, who have created the first mart insulin patchthat can detect increases in blood sugar levels
and secrete doses of insulin into the bloodstream whenever needed. The patch a thin square no bigger than a penny is covered with more than one hundred tiny needles, each about the size of an eyelash.
painless patch could lower blood glucose in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes for up to nine hours.
More preclinical tests and subsequent clinical trials in humans will be required before the patch can be administered to patients,
but the approach shows great promise. e have designed a patch for diabetes that works fast,
biocompatible materials, said co-senior author Zhen Gu, Phd, a professor in the Joint UNC/NC State department of Biomedical engineering.
Gu also holds appointments in the UNC School of medicine, the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and the UNC Diabetes Care Center. he whole system can be personalized to account for a diabetic weight and sensitivity to insulin,
he added, o we could make the smart patch even smarter. iabetes affects more than 387 million people worldwide,
Patients with type 1 and advanced type 2 diabetes try to keep their blood sugar levels under control with regular finger pricks and repeated insulin shots, a process that is painful and imprecise.
John Buse, MD, Phd, co-senior author of the PNAS paper and the director of the UNC Diabetes Care Center, said,
njecting the wrong amount of medication can lead to significant complications like blindness and limb amputations,
or even more disastrous consequences such as diabetic comas and death. esearchers have tried to remove the potential for human error by creating losed-loop systemsthat directly connect the devices that track blood sugar
However, these approaches involve mechanical sensors and pumps, with needle-tipped catheters that have to be stuck under the skin
and replaced every few days. Instead of inventing another completely manmade system Gu and his colleagues chose to emulate the body natural insulin generators known as beta cells.
These versatile cells act both as factories and warehouses, making and storing insulin in tiny sacs called vesicles.
They also behave like alarm call centers, sensing increases in blood sugar levels and signaling the release of insulin into the bloodstream. e constructed artificial vesicles to perform these same functions by using two materials that could easily be found in nature,
a Phd student in Gu lab. The first material was hyaluronic acid or HA, a natural substance that is an ingredient of many cosmetics.
the researchers inserted a core of solid insulin and enzymes specially designed to sense glucose.
Once the researchers designed these ntelligent insulin nanoparticles, they had to figure out a way to administer them to patients with diabetes.
Rather than rely on the large needles or catheters that had beleaguered previous approaches, they decided to incorporate these balls of sugar-sensing,
insulin-releasing material into an array of tiny needles. Gu created these icroneedlesusing the same hyaluronic acid that was a chief ingredient of the nanoparticles,
only in a more rigid form so the tiny needles were stiff enough to pierce the skin.
The researchers tested the ability of this approach to control blood sugar levels in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes.
They gave one set of mice a standard injection of insulin and measured the blood glucose levels,
They also found that the patch did not pose the hazards that insulin injections do.
Injections can send blood sugar plummeting to dangerously low levels when administered too frequently. he hard part of diabetes care is not the insulin shots,
or the blood sugar checks, or the diet but the fact that you have to do them all several times a day every day for the rest of your life,
the director of the North carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC Tracs) Institute and past president of the American Diabetes Association. f we can get these patches to work in people,
University of North Carolin o
#Expanding the DNA alphabet: xtradna base found to be stable in mammals A rare DNA base,
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Babraham Institute have found that a naturally occurring modified DNA base appears to be incorporated stably in the DNA of many mammalian tissues,
The new study, published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, has found that this rare xtrabase,
known as 5-formylcytosine (5fc) is stable in living mouse tissues. While its exact function is yet to be determined
5fc physical position in the genome makes it likely that it plays a key role in gene activity. his modification to DNA is found in very specific positions in the genome the places which regulate genes,
said Professor Shankar Balasubramanian of the Department of chemistry and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, who led the research. t had been thought this modification was solely a short-lived intermediate,
but the fact that wee demonstrated it can be stable in living tissue shows that it could regulate gene expression and potentially signal other events in cells.
The way these bases are ordered determines the makeup of the genome. In addition to G, C a and T, there are also small chemical modifications,
or epigenetic marks, which affect how the DNA sequence is interpreted and control how certain genes are switched on or off.
The study of these marks and how they affect gene activity is known as epigenetics. 5fc is one of these marks,
making it likely that it plays a key role in the genome. Using high-resolution mass spectrometry,
the researchers examined levels of 5fc in living adult and embryonic mouse tissues, as well as in mouse embryonic stem cells the body master cells which can become almost any cell type in the body.
They found that 5fc is present in all tissues but is very rare, making it difficult to detect.
and the role that these modifications may play in the development of certain diseases, said Balasubramanian. hile work is continuing in determining the exact function of this xtrabase,
its position in the genome suggests that it has a key role in the regulation of gene expression.
The research was supported by Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council UK e
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