#Discovery of a eat-storage ceramicresearchers at the University of Tokyo have discovered a new type of material which stores heat energy for a prolonged period,
remote medicine and a wide variety of other business, civil and military uses. 3d Tau SSE technology is designed to be embedded directly into a new generation of screens for televisions, movie theaters, computer displays, game
to attack E coli, a bacterium that causes food poisoning; Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common disease-causing bacterium; Ralstonia, a genus of bacteria containing numerous soil-borne pathogen species;
and Staphylococcus epidermis, a bacterium that can cause harmful biofilms on plastics like catheters in the human body.
The nanoparticles were effective against all the bacteria. The method allows researchers the flexibility to change the nanoparticle recipe in order to target specific microbes.
a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular disease and a professor of medical genetics and cellular and molecular pharmacology at UC San francisco. his technology could help us quickly screen for drugs likely to generate cardiac birth defects,
Screening for drug toxicity To test the potential of the system as a drug-screening tool,
a drug known to cause severe birth defects. They found that at normal therapeutic doses the drug led to abnormal development of microchambers, including decreased size,
problems with muscle contraction and lower beat rates compared with heart tissue that had not been exposed to thalidomide. e chose drug cardiac developmental toxicity screening to demonstrate a clinically relevant application of the cardiac microchambers,
said Conklin. ach year, as many as 280,000 pregnant women are exposed to drugs with evidence of potential fetal risk.
The most commonly reported birth defects involve the heart, and the potential for generating cardiac defects is of utmost concern in determining drug safety during pregnancy.
and other UC Berkeley researchers publicly debuted a system of beating human heart cells on a chip that could be used to screen for drug toxicity.
cells along the edge experienced greater mechanical stress and tension, and appeared more like fibroblasts,
which is an imperfect model for human disease. The researchers pointed out that while this study focused on heart tissue,
#Could dissolvable microneedles replace injected vaccines? The microneedle patch can dissolve in the skin, delivering the flu vaccine painlessly.
New vaccine patch protects against flu in humansflu 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.
According to the World health organization, immunization prevents an estimated 2-3 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.
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.
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 Professor Shinsaku Nakagawa, one of the authors of the study from Osaka University. ecause the new patch is so easy to use,
we believe it will be particularly effective in supporting vaccination in developing countries. he 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 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 Professor Nakagawa.
Previous research has evaluated the use of microneedles made of silicon or metal, but they were shown not to be safe.
we think it could bring about a major change in the way we administer vaccines globally, said Professor Nakagawa.
This breakthrough was published in the scientific journal PLOS Pathogens and will be presented at the upcoming IAS 2015 conference in Vancouver.
The findings pave the way for future HIV prevention or cure strategies. The study goal was to determine how HIV manages to compromise antiviral responses in the initial period of infection
also called the acute infection stage, during which the virus establishes itself in the body.
The acute infection is considered a critical period in determining the complexity, extent and progression of the disease.
It is also during this stage that HIV establishes latent infection in long-lasting cellular reservoirs.
These viral reservoirs, which harbour the virus out of sight from the immune system and antiviral drugs, represent the primary barrier to a cure. n important component in this process is a group of proteins collectively called type 1 Interferons,
which are the immune system first line of defence against viral infections and are known to have a beneficial role in the early stages of HIV infection,
says Dr. Cohen, Director of the Human Retrovirology research unit at the IRCM. he problem is that HIV has developed mechanisms to suppress the Interferon response and, until now,
little was known about how this was achieved. Most of the Interferon is produced by a very small population of immune cells called pdcs (plasmacytoid dendritic cells), responsible for providing immediate defence against infections.
PDCS patrol the body to detect invaders and, when they recognize the presence of a pathogen,
they secrete Interferon. The Interferon then triggers a large array of defence mechanisms in nearby cells, creating an antiviral state that prevents the dissemination and
and leads to persistent infection, adds Dr. Bego. e found that HIV, through Vpu, takes advantage of the role played by BST2 by maintaining its ability to activate ILT7 and limit the production of Interferon,
all the while counteracting its direct antiviral activity on HIV production. he hope for a definitive cure
and an effective vaccine has been frustrated by HIV endless propensity to subvert the host defences and persist in small populations of long-lasting reservoirs despite antiretroviral therapy,
describes Dr. Cohen, who also leads Cancure, a team of leading Canadian researchers working towards an HIV cure. ur findings can provide tools to enhance antiviral responses during the early stages of infection.
By blocking Vpu action, we could prevent early viral expansion and dissemination, while also allowing pdcs to trigger effective antiviral responses.
We believe that such interventions during primary infection have the potential to limit the establishment and complexity of viral reservoirs,
which explains how the virus can be held down or wiped out during early periods of infection,
this new study will advance research for an HIV cure. t
#Futuristic brain probe allows for wireless control of neurons Scientists used soft materials to create a brain implant a tenth the width of a human hair that can wirelessly control neurons with lights and drugs.
Its development was funded partially by the National institutes of health. t unplugs a world of possibilities for scientists to learn how brain circuits work in a more natural setting. said Michael R. Bruchas, Ph d.,associate professor of anesthesiology and neurobiology at Washington University School of medicine and a senior author
The Bruchas lab studies circuits that control a variety of disorders including stress, depression, addiction, and pain.
Both options require surgery that can damage parts of the brain and introduce experimental conditions that hinder animalsnatural movements.
to construct a remote controlled, optofluidic implant. The device is made out of soft materials that are a tenth the diameter of a human hair
and lights. e used powerful nanomanufacturing strategies to fabricate an implant that lets us penetrate deep inside the brain with minimal damage,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a senior author. ltra-miniaturized devices like this have tremendous potential for science and medicine. ith a thickness of 80 micrometers and a width of 500 micrometers,
When the scientists compared the implant with a typical cannula they found that the implant damaged
In some experiments, they showed that they could precisely map circuits by using the implant to inject viruses that label cells with genetic dyes.
when they made mice that have light-sensitive VTA neurons stay on one side of a cage by commanding the implant to shine laser pulses on the cells.
t in line with the goals of the NIH BRAIN INITIATIVE. he researchers fabricated the implant using semiconductor computer chip manufacturing techniques.
and energy engineering at University of Colorado Boulder. e tried to engineer the implant to meet some of neurosciences greatest unmet needs. n the study,
the scientists provide detailed instructions for manufacturing the implant. tool is only good if it used,
On this website, doctors can, together with the patient, easily calculate the odds of recurrence of the disease.
More and more women in The netherlands have to face breast cancer. Due to early detection and better treatment more and more of them are cured.
however, is that the group of women who have to regularly be checked for recurrence of the disease is growing.
Up until 2012, women who were cured of breast cancer were checked every year for recurrence of the disease.
Since 2012 the oncological guidelines prescribe that doctors have to choose an individualized approach, where the risk of recurrence of the disease in a specific patient has to determine the follow-up course of action.
In practice this doesn happen, because doctors simply do not know the ecurrence riskin individual patients.
Odds of recurrenceresearchers of the University of Twente have developed therefore a system, a so-called nomogram, that doctors can use together with patients to simply calculate the odds of recurrence of the disease themselves, on the basis of the age of the patient, the information on the original tumour and the treatment used.
The system gives the odds of recurrence of the disease per year, including the uncertainty of the prediction.
To develop their system the researchers used the information of almost 40,000 breast cancer patients from The netherlands Cancer Registry (NKR, Nederlandse Kankerregistratie), a unique database in which all information about the occurrence,
survival and deaths of all instances of cancer in The netherlands have been registered since 1989. Follow-upwith this system
doctors have a tool they can use to help determine the best way to set up the follow-up for individual patients.
The University of Twente will now get to work on providing doctors with concrete recommendations for planning subsequent check-ups.
For patients with a very low risk, for example, it not necessary to get a check-up every year,
According to Joost Klaase, surgeon at the Medical Spectrum Twente (MST) and involved with the research, the medical world has need a for the system. he nomogram for risk of breast cancer recurrence gives us a tool to create a tailor-made follow-up for breast cancer patients:
#Xenotransplantation of MSC Sheets Attenuates Left Ventricular Remodeling Xenotransplantation of Bone marrow-Derived Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell Sheets Attenuates Left Ventricular Remodeling in a Porcine Ischemic Cardiomyopathy Model.
Bone marrow-derived autologous human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCS) are one of the most promising cell sources for cell therapy to treat heart failure.
and enhanced the efficacy of cell therapy. We hypothesized that the transplantation of MSC sheets may be a feasible, safe,
and effective treatment for ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM). METHODS AND RESULTS: Human MSCS acquired from bone marrow were positive for CD73, CD90,
These were transplanted successfully over the infarct myocardium of porcine ICM models induced by placing an ameroid constrictor on the left anterior descending coronary artery without any procedural-related complications (MSC group=6:
On histological examination 8 weeks after transplantation, left ventricular (LV) remodeling was attenuated significantly compared with the sham group (cardiomyocyte size and interstitial fibrosis were measured.
Immunohistochemistry of the von Willebrand factor showed that the vascular density in the infarct border area was significantly greater in the MSC group than the sham group.
Expression of angiogenesis-related factors in the infarct border area of the MSC group was significantly greater than that of the sham group,
#Graphene-Based Biosensor Could Detect Cancer within Minutes One of the main reasons why treating most cancers is such a difficult task is our inability to detect its presence before it becomes widespread.
many forms of the disease are often completely reversible. The new, graphene-based immunosensor could soon lead to a quantum leap in cancer diagnosis. Image credit:
Alden Chadwick via flickr. com, CC BY 2. 0. In order to help medical professionals combat this deadly affliction,
researchers at Trinity college Dublin are currently developing a highly-efficient biosensor that could pick up even the slightest presence of cancer within the body in mere minutes.
The prototype device, called Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) immunosensor, is a small strip of material based on advanced optical technology,
While the technology has already been proven to be capable of rapidly detecting cholera it took graphene to also make it sensitive to cancer. e showed experimentally that simply the addition of graphene led to a clear increase in the sensor signal, aid Dr. Georg Duesberg,
a researcher involved in the study. his type of sensing platform offers a large variety for medical diagnostics,
since it can be adapted to almost any type of disease markers. ven though the SPR sensor is not the only method scientists are currently developing for cancer screening,
it might just be the most exciting one due to its accuracy and speed while most current techniques require full vials of blood for an accurate diagnosis,
the new-and-improved device could detect malignancies from just a single droplet. ecause of the sensitivity, apart from faster results,
it could more easily detect smaller amounts of biomarkers, thus providing earlier diagnosis and prognosis of conditions such as cancer, said Dr. Andreas Holzinger,
another researcher involved in the study. Although the device is currently in early developmental stages
researchers are already hailing it as an important innovation in medical diagnoses. The sensor has shown yet its value in detecting cholera without error,
and, as the authors wrote in the current study, here is no reason why this method could not be used in any other chemistry
or pump liquids in miniature devices used for chemical analysis, said Dr. Carter Haines BS1 Phd5,
#New receptor for controlling blood pressure discovered High blood pressure is a primary risk factor in the development of many cardiovascular diseases.
which could be a factor in the development of hypertension: the physical forces of the flowing blood activate a receptor on the surface of the inner vascular wall.
or if it does not function correctly, this can cause hypertension. Under the leadership of the Max Planck researchers, a new study has now been shed able to some light on key elements of the mechanism that leads to the release of nitrogen monoxide
are of major clinical interest. e want to examine the extent to which malfunctions in this key blood pressure regulation principle are responsible for the development of vascular diseases such as hypertension
Knowledge about this principle could in future be used for the prevention and treatment of hypertension t
and cause other nonlethal infections that can lead to serious complications. Now scientists at the University of Zurich have found that adenoviruses penetrate the cells with the help of the cells themselves.
Adenoviruses cause variety of health problems to humans, such as eye or respiratory infections. Now scientists discovered that natural repair mechanism actually helps virus to penetrate the membrane and cause an infection.
Image credit: Yale Rosen via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2. 0 Adenoviruses cause variety of health problems to humans, such as eye or respiratory infections.
Now scientists discovered that natural repair mechanism actually helps virus to penetrate the membrane and cause an infection.
Image credit: Yale Rosen via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2. 0 Understanding mechanisms of adenoviruses is extremely important.
They cause numerous diseases, such as eye or respiratory infections, but they are used also in sciences adenoviruses are used widely in gene therapy.
use this natural repair mechanism to cause infections. Adenoviruses create small pores in the surfaces of the cell membrane as well.
And this mechanism is used by adenovirus to trigger the infection. In the repair process ceramide lipids are formed,
but also viruses. And so adenovirus increases the size of the lesion in the membrane, and can leave the endosome before the endosome becomes a lysosome
which is part of the explanation for the high infection efficiency of the adenoviruses. Scientists also managed to identify a new inhibitor against the adenoviruses,
New knowledge should also help with using adenoviruses in vaccination and gene therapy e
#Scientists discover first NA ambulanceu of T researchers have discovered how severely damaged DNA is transported within a cell
It a discovery that could unlock secrets into how cancer operates a disease that two in five Canadians will develop in their lifetime. cientists knew that severely injured DNA was taken to specialized ospitalsin the cell to be repaired,
a Professor in the Faculty of medicine Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology. ee now discovered the DNA mbulanceand the road it takes. ekhail discovered this DNA ambulance,
Mekhail team also found that the DNA hospital, also known as the nuclear pore complex, repairs damaged DNA inaccurately.
it has irregular cell instructions a scenario that could cause cancer. his process allows cells to survive an injury,
The tracking showed that this DNA ambulance is damaged necessary for DNA to efficiently change location within the nucleus. ancer often occurs
and disease settings. he processes wee studying are fundamental to the basic survival of a cell,
said graduate student and first author Daniel Chung. lmost every aspect of disease can be linked to problems with DNA. ow Mekhail team is searching for more DNA ambulances
and roads while conducting a study to see what role they might play in causing cancer. e expect that this may allow us to identify targets for a new class of anticancer drugs.?
Scientists have been searching for this DNA ambulance for a long time and now we suspect there may be said more than one
#New technology helps personalized medicine by enabling epigenomic analysis with a mere 100 cells A new technology that will dramatically enhance investigations of epigenomes, the machinery that turns on and off genes and a very prominent field of study in diseases such as
inflammation and cancer, is reported on today in the research journal Nature Methods. The examination of epigenomes requires mapping DNA interactions with a certain protein in the entire genome.
This epigenomic characterization potentially allows medical doctors to create personalized treatment of diseases by understanding the state of a patient,
For well more than a decade, Chang Lu, a professor of chemical engineering at Virginia Tech, has worked on the development of tools to effectively analyze living cells with the long-term goal of gaining a better understanding of a range of diseases.
the team plans to use this technology to study other epigenomic changes involved in inflammation and cancer in the near future.
The innovative approach may lead to more effective therapies with fewer side effects, particularly for diseases such as cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative disorders.
GPCR drugs that selectively modulate one pathway are preferred often as they can have better therapeutic benefits with fewer undesirable side effects than non-selective drugs. rrestin
interaction and function of each of these groups of proteins is vital to developing effective therapies.
Cell surface receptors are excellent therapeutic targets due to their location on the surface of the cell,
GPCRS are major targets in the development of new therapies and account for about 40 percent of current drug targets.
In the future, the researchers hope to study the signaling protein arrestin with other GPCRS that are involved in heart disease
and cancer as well as to use this structure to screen for drug compounds that are designed to treat these diseases with far fewer side effects,
and when they become dysfunctional it can lead to devastating diseases such as cancer, said Wei Liu,
and make important progress in the fight against cancer and other incurable human diseases. a
#New material opens possibilities for super-long-acting pills Medical devices designed to reside in the stomach have a variety of applications,
However, these devices, often created with nondegradable elastic polymers, bear an inherent risk of intestinal obstruction as a result of accidental fracture or migration.
Now, researchers at MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have created a polymer gel that overcomes this safety concern
which is a medical emergency potentially requiring surgical intervention, says Koch Institute research affiliate Giovanni Traverso,
as there is a greater risk for fracture if a device is too large or too complex.
a professor of medical science and engineering at Brown University who was not involved with this study. his is a very smart approach.
patientsadherence to long-term therapies for chronic illnesses is only 50 percent in developed countries, with lower rates of adherence in developing nations.
Medication nonadherence costs the U s. an estimated $100 billion every year, the bulk of which comes in the form of unnecessary hospitalizations.
The researchers also say that single-administration delivery systems for the radical treatment of malaria
and other infections could significantly benefit from these technologies. Source: MIT, written by Kevin Leonard e
Because these immune-system cells play important roles in a wide range of diseases, from diabetes to AIDS to cancer, the achievement provides a versatile new tool for research on T cell function,
as well as a path toward CRISPR/Cas9-based therapies for many serious health problems. Using their novel approach,
a protein that has attracted intense interest in the burgeoning field of cancer immunotherapy, as scientists have shown that using drugs to block PD-1 coaxes T cells to attack tumors.
The CRISPR/Cas9 system has captured the imagination of both scientists and the general public, because it makes it possible to easily
are an obvious candidate for medical applications of the technology, as these cells not only stand at the center of many disease processes,
but could be gathered easily from patients, edited with CRISPR/Cas9, then returned to the body to exert therapeutic effects.
But in practice, editing T cell genomes with CRISPR/Cas9 has proved surprisingly difficult, said Alexander Marson, Phd, a UCSF Sandler Fellow,
There are a lot of potential therapeutic applications and we want to make sure wee driving this as hard as we can.
and medicine. t been great to be part of this exciting collaboration, and I look forward to seeing the insights from this work used to help patients in the future,
and eventually for therapeutic use. e tried for a long time to introduce Cas9 with plasmids or lentiviruses,
He hopes that Cas9-based therapies for T cell-related disorders, which include autoimmune diseases as well as immunodeficiencies such as ubble boy disease,
will enter the clinic in the future. here actually well-trodden ground putting modified T cells into patients.
There are companies out there already doing it and figuring out the safety profile, so there increasing clinical infrastructure that we could potentially piggyback on as we work out more details of genome editing,
and deliver drugs and vaccines, a olar spongethat can capture and release carbon dioxide emissions andplastic material that gets better with age.
Evaluating this drug-induced liver injury is a critical part of pharmaceutical drug discovery and must be carried out on human liver cells.
can detect the toxic effect of over a dozen drugs with greater than 97%accuracy. he implications for liver biology
Oren Shibolet, Head of the Liver Unit at the Tel-aviv Sourasky Medical center, who was involved not in this study. he method provides access to unlimited amounts of functional liver cells
and is likely to critically improve our ability to predict drug toxicity, which was limited previously by the unavailability of liver cells.
#Nonsurgical approach helps people with paralysis voluntarily move their legs 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,
neurobiology and neurosurgery. Edgerton said although it likely will be years before the new approaches are widely available,
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,
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.
stepping and voluntary control of movements after paralysis. t was said remarkable. dgerton 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 our with epidural implants
and when the subjects see their legs moving for the first time after paralysis, they say it a big deal. he men in the newest study ranged in age from 19 to 56;
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
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 a wonderful example of the power that comes from combining advances in basic biological research with technological innovation. dgerton estimates that cost to patients of the new approach could be one-tenth the cost of treatment using the surgical epidural stimulator
because no surgery is required, it would likely be more easily available to more patients. The study co-authors were conceived Gerasimenko,
as well as Daniel Lu, associate professor of neurosurgery, researchers Morteza Modaber, Roland Roy and Dimitry Sayenko, research technician Sharon Zdunowski, research scientist Parag Gad, laboratory
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,
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
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