#Scientists decipher the molecular basis of an as yet incurable leukemia in children Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of cancer in children.
It can occur in various forms, differing by specific changes in the genetic material of the leukemia cells,
but also by their response to therapies. An international team of scientists from Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hannover, Heidelberg, Kiel,
and Zurich has succeeded in decoding the molecular characteristics of an as yet incurable subtype of leukemia,
paving the way for new therapeutic approaches. Although intensive research over the least decade has led to significant improvement of the survival rates of children suffering from ALL
a subset of patients still remains resistant to treatment. One such example is a very aggressive and incurable subtype associated with a t (17;
which occurs due to breakage and aberrant fusion of genetic material in the tumour cells, resulting in the formation of a new oncogenic protein encoded by parts of the genes TCF3 and HLF, respectively (TCF3-HLF-positive leukemia cells).
Until now, the molecular basis of this dismal phenotype has remained elusive. An international group of clinicians and scientists from different universities and research institutions, among them the Berlin-based Max Planck Institute for Molecular genetics (Department of Vertebrate Genomics, Hans Lehrach, group
Marie-Laure Yaspo) has conducted an in depth analysis of the molecular features of the t (17;
With the aim of identifying therapeutic entry points for this incurable form of ALL THE consortium team decoded both the genome and the transcriptome of the cancer cells,
Using sophisticated bioinformatics methods, the team found genetic aberrations in addition to the known translocation, and deciphered the so-called expression profile of the cancer cells by means of RNASEQ, a focus of research in Marie-Laure Yaspo group in Berlin.
and an altered gene expression program leads to a reprogramming of leukemic cells to an early, stem-cell like, developmental stage,
Further, researchers from the team of Jean-Pierre Bourquin from the University Children Hospital in Zürich
Switzerland, transplanted the leukemic cells in mouse. By establishing a umanized mouse model they provided an invaluable tool for testing the therapeutic response of the leukemic cells to different drugs.
The consortium team demonstrated that the engrafted cells expanded in the mouse and retained most of the genetic features and expression profiles of the original leukemic cells.
The cells thus behaved in a similar manner than in the patient, offering attractive possibilities for translational medicine.
The Zürich Group tested close to one hundred drug substances, and demonstrated exquisite response of the mouse model TCF3-HLF-positive cells to the drug Venetoclax,
a drug targeting the protein BCL2, which has shown already efficiency in other type of cancers.
Source: MP s
#Paralyzed men move legs with new noninvasive spinal cord stimulation Five men with complete motor paralysis were able to voluntarily generate step-like movements thanks to a new strategy that non-invasively delivers electrical
stimulation to their spinal cords, according to a new study funded in part by the National institutes of health. The strategy, called transcutaneous stimulation, delivers electrical current to the spinal cord by way of electrodes strategically placed on the skin of the lower back.
This expands to nine the number of completely paralyzed individuals who have achieved voluntary movement while receiving spinal stimulation
A man with complete motor paralysis moves his legs voluntarily while receiving electrical stimulation to his spinal cord via electrodes placed on his back.
The subject legs are supported in braces so that they can move without resistance from gravity. The electrodes on his legs are used for recording muscle activity.
Image credit: Edgerton laboratory/UCLAIN the study, the men movements occurred while their legs were suspended in braces that hung from the ceiling,
allowing them to move freely without resistance from gravity. Movement in this environment is not comparable to walking;
nevertheless, the results signal significant progress towards the eventual goal of developing a therapy for a wide range of individuals with spinal cord injury. 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 Roderic Pettigrew, Ph d.,M d,
. director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at NIH. 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. he study was conducted by a team of researchers at the University of California, Los angeles;
University of California, San francisco; and the Pavlov Institute, St petersburg, Russia. The team was led by V. Reggie Edgerton, Ph d.,a distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology at UCLA and Yury Gerasimenko, Ph d.,director of the laboratory of movement physiology at Pavlov Institute and a researcher
in UCLA Department of Integrative biology and Physiology. They reported their results in the Journal of Neurotrauma.
In a study published a little over a year ago, Edgertonlong with Susan Harkema, Ph d,
. and Claudia Angeli, Ph d.,from the University of Louisville, Kentuckyeported that four men with complete motor paralysis were able to generate some voluntary movements while receiving electrical stimulation to their spinal cords.
The stimulation came from a device called an epidural stimulator that was implanted surgically on the surface of the men spinal cords.
believing it could greatly expand the number of paralyzed individuals who could potentially benefit from spinal stimulation. here are a lot of individuals with spinal cord injury that have gone already through many surgeries
whether physical training combined with electrical stimulation could enhance efforts to move voluntarily. For the final four weeks of the study, the men were given the pharmacological drug buspirone
and has been shown to induce locomotion in mice with spinal cord injuries. While receiving the stimulation, the men were instructed at different points to either try to move their legs
After just four weeks of receiving stimulation and physical training, the men were able to double their range of motion
The researchers suggest that this change was due to the ability of electrical stimulation to reawaken dormant connections that may exist between the brain and the spinal cord of patients with complete motor paralysis. Surprisingly, by the end of the study,
noninvasive stimulation can help individuals regain some autonomic functions lost due to paralysis such as the ability to sweat,
regulate blood pressure, and control bladder, bowel, and sexual function. The hope is that further research can help determine
Edgerton also wants to test noninvasive stimulation on individuals who have partial paralysis. e have focused on individuals with complete paralysis throughout this whole process
that those individuals with partial injuries have even more room for improvement, said Edgerton. Though a noninvasive stimulation could offer advantages over a surgically implanted device
whether undergoing surgery to implant a stimulator is warranted. Alternatively, Edgerton speculates it may be possible early after an injury for noninvasive stimulation to help patients achieve a certain level of motor control that then allows them to continue to improve with physical rehabilitation
and avoid surgery altogether. ll patients are going to need something slightly different, and maybe noninvasive stimulation is going to be best in some cases and epidural stimulation in others,
said Edgerton. hat we need to do is maximize the clinical tool box that we have
so that the physician and the patient can select a therapy that is best for them. ource:
In the first demonstration of how the technology works, published July 30 in the journal Cell, the researchers look inside the brain of an adult mouse at a scale previously unachievable, generating images at a nanoscale resolution.
which is a way of saying that I would prefer to generate a hypothesis from the data and test it,
The researchers have begun the process of mining their imaging data by looking first at an area of the brain that receives sensory information from mouse whiskers,
of the Boston University School of medicine. e had this clean idea of how there a really nice order to how neurons connect with each other,
and someone with schizophrenia would be a leap in our understanding of how our brains shape who we are (or vice versa).
The cost and data storage demands for this type of research are still high, but the researchers expect expenses to drop over time (as has been the case with genome sequencing).
To facilitate data sharing, the scientists are now partnering with Argonne National Laboratory with the hopes of creating a national brain laboratory that neuroscientists around the world can access within the next few years. t bittersweet that there are many scientists who think this is a total waste of time as well as a big
investment in money and effort that could be spent better answering questions that are more proximal,
Lichtman says. s long as data is showing you things that are unexpected, then youe definitely doing the right thing.
And we are certainly far from being out of the surprise element. There never a time when we look at this data that we don see something that wee never seen before. t
#Researchers design first artificial ribosome The artificial ribosome, called Ribo-T, was created in the laboratories of Alexander Mankin, director of the UIC College of Pharmacy Center for Biomolecular Sciences,
and Northwestern Michael Jewett. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University have engineered a tethered ribosome that works nearly as well as the authentic cellular component,
or organelle, that produces all the proteins and enzymes within the cell. The engineered ribosome may enable the production of new drugs and next-generation biomaterials and lead to a better understanding of how ribosomes function.
The artificial ribosome called Ribo-T, was created in the laboratories of Alexander Mankin, director of the UIC College of Pharmacy Center for Biomolecular Sciences,
and Northwestern Michael Jewett, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering. The human-made ribosome may be able to be manipulated in the laboratory to do things natural ribosomes cannot do.
When the cell makes a protein, mrna (MESSENGER RNA) is copied from DNA. The ribosomestwo subunits, one large and one small, unite on mrna to form the functional unit that assembles the protein in a process called translation.
Ribo-T may be able to be tuned to produce unique and functional polymers for exploring ribosome functions
or producing designer therapeutics and perhaps one day even non-biological polymers. No one has developed ever something of this nature. e felt like there was a small very small chance Ribo-T could work
but we did not really know, Mankin said. Mankin, Jewett and their colleagues were frustrated in their investigations by the ribosomessubunits falling apart
Jewett. ur new protein-making factory holds promise to expand the genetic code in a unique and transformative way, providing exciting opportunities for synthetic biology and biomolecular engineering,
#Microsoft Hololens Will Put Realistic, 3-D People in Your Living room Demonstrations of augmented reality displays typically involve tricking you into seeing animated content such as monsters
and robots that aren really there. Microsoft wants its forthcoming Hololens headset to mess with reality more believably.
It has developed a way to make you see photorealistic, 3-D people that fit in with the real world.
With this technology, you could watch an acrobat tumble across your front room or witness your niece take some of her first steps.
because Microsoft has built a kind of holographic TV studio at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Roughly 100 cameras capture a performance from many different angles.
Software uses the different viewpoints to create a highly accurate 3-D model of the person performing, resulting in a photo-real appearance.
The more traditional approach of using computer animation can compare, according to Steve Sullivan, who works on the project at Microsoft.
what Microsoft calls ideo hologramsat the LDV Vision Summit, an event about image-processing technology, in New york on Tuesday.
Microsoft has recorded also catwalk models using its system. That could help Internet shoppers by showing them how an item of clothing looks
and hangs more realistically than is possible with still photos or 2-D video, said Sullivan.
Hololens uses a novel holographic display technology that can trick the eye into perceiving 3-D objects more effectively than conventional stereoscopic displays (see icrosoft Making Fast Progress with Hololens.
Sensors in the headset allow the device to figure out how to present virtual objects so they fit in with the real world.
Sullivan showed how holographic videos can also be played back in 2-D on a tablet,
Several companies are working on ways to capture live action such as sports or movies for viewing on more conventional 3-D headsets like the Oculus Rift.
A startup called Magic Leap, backed by Google, is developing its own wearable augmented reality device based on display technology that similar to Microsoft (see 0 Breakthrough Technologies 2015:
Magic Leap. So far, however, Magic Leap demonstrations of its technology have involved animated content, not live action recorded in three dimensions o
#Injectable Implants Could Help Crack the Brain Codes A new type of flexible electronic device shows promise for long-term brain mapping
and could be a more effective way to provide therapeutic stimulation. Understanding how the brain worksr doesn,
Recording them requires inserting electrodes into the tissue. But the rigid devices traditionally used to record these signals,
and they tend not to work for very long. Now researchers have shown that a new type of flexible electronic device
which can be delivered via injection, could be a gentler alternative. In the near term, the technology could yield valuable insights about how the electrical activity of certain circuits,
or networks of neurons, is related to discrete functions, like the creation of a lasting memory.
like schizophrenia or Parkinson disease (see racking the Brain Codesand hining a Light on Madness.
Further down the road, the concept could lead to a better way to deliver therapeutic stimulation to address neurodegenerative diseases,
or a stable brain-computer interface that might help disabled people do things their condition usually wouldn allow them to do,
One current therapeutic use of implanted electronics is called deep brain stimulation, which is approved FDA and used to treat Parkinson disease.
The therapy involves inserting electrodes into certain regions of the brain and producing electrical pulses meant to regulate abnormal ones.
This approach is also being studied as a treatment for other disorders, such as epilepsy. Today technology is limited, not by the electronics,
which are already eally powerful, but because the interface between the brain tissue and the electronics is far from ideal,
says Charles Lieber, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard university. Existing implantable electrodes are too large and rigid,
and this echanical mismatchleads to tissue damage and immune response, he says. Over time the devices tend to lose their ability to record
or stimulate the area of interest. Researchers can only record for a matter of days or weeks.
Implants for deep brain stimulation often must be repositioned or have adjusted their settings, and usually don last for more than a few years.
In recent years, a lot of progress has been made in research labs toward designing new kinds of implantable electronic devices made of more flexible
and biocompatible materials (see ireless Micro LEDS Control Mouse Behavior, but none have overcome this problem,
Lieber says. The new nanoelectronic eshstructure that Lieber group has designed is much more like the biological tissue it is meant to interface with,
he says. Its features are the size of cells or smaller, and, according to the researchers, the mesh is several orders of magnitude more flexible than any previous implantable electronic device.
The group originally conceived of the design a few years ago with tissue engineering in mind.
and also house electronic sensors for taking measurements from those cells. That demonstration suggested that the technology was potentially useful for measuring cellular activity.
Now theye shown that they can use a syringe to inject the mesh scaffold into targeted areas in the brains of live mice.
They also demonstrated the ability to record signals from the injected implants by attaching a wire to a section of the mesh that remains outside the body.
the mesh is composed of nanoscale metal wires and polymers. Tiny electronic devices, such as sensors and electrode stimulators, can be built into it.
A scaffold that is a centimeter and a half in width can fold into a size small enough to be injectable through a needle
Once inside the body, it unfolds to conform to its 3-D environment. When it encounters a ventricular cavity in the brain, for example,
#Self-Charging Phones Are on the way, Finally The case that Will Zell slides onto his iphone doesn look that unusual,
but it doing something pretty out of the ordinary: capturing some of the radio waves that the phone transmits
when connecting to cellphone towers and Wi-fi routers, converting them to electricity, and feeding that power back to the phone battery.
Zell is the CEO of Nikola Labs, a startup based in Columbus, Ohio, whose energy harvesting technology was invented by Chi-Chih Chen, a research associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State university.
Like battery pack cases, the company case plugs into the bottom of the iphone; this way, Zell says,
it can intermittently send power right to the battery. Moore Law, which predicts that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years,
has held steady since 1975. Yet battery technology hasn kept the same pace, probably because its evolution is dependent on advances in chemistry.
So while smartphones have gotten increasingly capable, with faster processors, better displays, and higher-resolution cameras, it can still be a challenge to get the battery that powering all these features to last throughout the day.
One way the consumer electronics industry is trying to fix this is by aligning with wireless charging technologies like Qi and Rezence.
So far though, only a handful of smartphones from companies like LG, Samsung, and, HTC use the Qi standard,
while Rezence-supporting handsets are set to come out later this year. With such wireless charging still far from the mainstream
(and still requiring your phone to be on a charging mat or base that itself plugs into a wall),
a few companies, including Nikola Labs, are trying to figure out other ways to make you less dependent on outlets
so you can keep using your phone for battery-intensive things like looking at websites,
navigating trips, and streaming videos. They won make plugging your phone into a charger obsolete
but Zell says that Nikola phone case should be able to give users about 25 to 30 percent more battery life between charges.
The company built its first working prototype of a smartphone case this spring and plans to start selling it in the first three months of next year for about $100 (a Kickstarter campaign for the company had raised about $74, 000 of its $135,
000 goal with eight days to go as of publication; Zell says Nikola Labs has raised separately private funding to bring its product to market.
Though Zell acknowledges that there plenty of skepticism surrounding the utility of harvesting energy from radio waves,
he says Nikola Labstechnology works because it doing the harvesting so close to the transmitting antenna in the phone.
Eventually, he hopes to fit the technology into the phone itself; early talks with phone makers have begun.
A French solar technology company called Sunpartner Technologies is already working on this with a thin, see-through overlay called WYSIPS Crystal (the acronym stands for hat you see is photovoltaic surface that sits between the glass
and touch-screen layers on a smartphone or other mobile gadget. The WYSIPS layer is covered with small solar cells;
when the phone is exposed to artificial or natural light, it captures the light and converts it to an electric current.
A connection to the gadget battery would enable the layer to send power directly to it.
WYSIPS Crystal marketing director Matthieu de Broca says that Sunpartner is working with Kyocera, which makes a number of ruggedized handsets,
to get WYSIPS Crystal into phones next year. But while De Broca says the energy WYSIPS Crystal can produce depends on the kind of light it exposed tontense natural light will work better than diffuse indoor lightingn its current form it can boost battery life by only about 10 to 15 percent. t
will never be able to produce enough to charge the phone from scratch, he says. Much clunkier but perhaps more suited to that job is a wearable charger from Ampy,
a startup based in Evanston, Illinois. The device contains a battery you fill up by moving around. ee pretty active people,
says Ampy cofounder and CEO Tejas Shastry of himself and his cofounders. o we thought,
hy can we harvest some of the energy from motion to power our phones??The charger,
which is the size of a deck of cards, contains inductorsssentially, magnets moving within a coil. Shastry says the inductors are activated as you move during activities like walking, running,
or cycling, generating electricity that stored in an internal battery (users have to connect their phone to Ampy to siphon off its juice).
The battery inside Ampy can store enough power to fully recharge a smartphone. It might take a
while to get to that point, though, since an hour of exercise yields about an hour of ormalsmartphone usage, according to Ampy website.
The company raised $310, 000 on Kickstarter last fall, which was more than three times its goal,
and plans to ship out the first Ampy gadgets in the fall to crowdfunding backers and people who preorder it online.
To succeed on a wider scale, though, these companies must improve the ways the devices produce
and use power and then convince mainstream consumers to buy them. And youl probably continue plugging in your phone at least occasionally for the foreseeable future.
But Nikola Labszell at least, is optimistic that this could eventually change. ltimately what I love to create is where thinking about battery life is no longer something that in everyone minds,
he says. hat if you just didn have to consider it?
#A Better Way to Keep Milk Fresh Sometime this week a large milk refrigerator will arrive in Dhaka, the capital of bangladesh.
Since Bangladesh produces nearly four million tons of milk per year, that hardly seems remarkable; but this is a special kind of refrigerator.
Made by Promethean Power systems, a company based in Pune, India, and Boston, the system keeps milk chilled with a thermal battery that stores energy and releases it,
as cooling power, over the course of a day. Like India, Bangladesh has outdated an power grid that supplies electricity sporadicallyften as little as a few hours per day.
Rural dairy farmers on the subcontinent bring their milk to village collection centers that typically rely on diesel generators, a costly, dirty way of providing electricity.
Two Americans, Sam White and Sorin Grama founded Promethean Power in 2007 to address a simple but widespread and pressing problem:
how to keep milk cold without burning diesel fuel. Theye been selling refrigerators in India for two years;
this week marks their first export to neighboring Bangladesh. ee been at this for eight years,
says White, and ee gone through all sorts of different technologies, attempts, and failures to figure out a solution. t first,
he says, they were determined to craft a technology that relied on solar power noble attempt that ultimately failed because solar power,
like grid power in India and Bangladesh, is by its nature intermittent, and refrigerators need constant power.
Eventually they settled on a thermal energy storage system that uses a phase-change material to store energy in the form of ice.
When the grid is operating a portion of the material freezes, and the battery circulates that thermal energy into a heat exchanger to keep milk chilled over the course of the day.
The thermal battery can store up to 28 kilowatt-hours of energy. ee not delivering new forms of energy;
wee simply storing the intermittent power that they do get and parceling it out over time,
says White. Promethean Power has sold around 150 systems in India to date. The dairy collection center in Chetawala, in the state of Rajasthan, estimates that it saves around 40,000 rupees ($628) a month on diesel fuel and reduced milk spoilage since installing a Rapid Milk Chiller
from Promethean Power. The center has increased its average daily milk production from 500 liters a day to around 800.
That a huge improvement in a country where more than 300 million people live without access to electricity
and even villages that are electrified nominally often have spotty service at best. Prime minister Narendra Modi who took office last year,
has pledged to bring reliable electricity to the full population by 2022 t
#Google App Puts Neural networks on Your Phone to Translate Signs Offline In recent years Google has used networks of crudely simulated neurons running in its data centers to improve its speech recognition,
build software that learned to spot cats from Youtube videos, and power a photo storage service that knows what in your snaps.
Now the company wants you install artificial neural networks on your phone. Built into an updated version of Google translation app released today,
the technology expands its ability to translate printed text such as menus in a live view through your phone camera.
The app could previously translate between seven different languages. Now it can handle 27 and translate between them without an Internet connection.
That possible because Google engineers created slimmed-down versions of the artificial neural networks it uses in a technique called deep learning (see 0 Breakthrough Technologies 2013:
Deep Learning. They live inside the translation app and recognize the characters used by the different languages,
even when theye not crisp and appear against the clutter of everyday life. Google engineers first trained much larger
and more powerful neural networks to find and recognize different letters. Then they carefully shrank them down without compromising their accuracy too much.
This blog post has more details on how. It the first time Google has used that trick,
but it likely won be the last. Embedding the intelligence that artificial neural networks can provide into gadgets
so they don have to link to the Internet for tasks has clear benefits. Google is not the only company exploring that idea.
Coming changes to the design of the chips and software on mobile devices will make it easier and more powerful.
Mobile-chip maker Qualcomm has shown off a camera app with artificial neural networks inside that can recognize some objects
or identify the type of scene youe shooting. The company future chip designs are being tweaked to make it easier to make apps like that (see martphones Will Soon Learn to Recognize Faces
and More Other companies are also working on hardware that could run neural nets inside gadgets, robots,
and cars (see ilicon Chips That See Are Going to Make Your Smartphone Brilliant S
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