#A new weapon in the fight against cancer Cancer happens when cells in the body start growing uncontrollably.
But what if the tissue surrounding a tumour could be enlisted to stop the cancer spreading?
Many cancer researchers believe that targeting the spread of cancer to other organs, otherwise known as metastasis, holds the key to successfully treating the disease
because metastasis is the cause of death for 90%of those who die of cancer.
In the past, many treatments aimed at preventing metastasis have been targeted at tumour cells themselves, for example with chemotherapy,
but after a while the tumour cells can become resistant to the treatment and the cancer then spreads.
recruiting their help in creating a micro-environment with suitable conditions for the cancer to spread.
A large proportion of the cells found in the tumour micro-environment are associated cancer fibroblasts (CAFS.
and helps heal wounds. However in cancer, fibroblasts are coopted into re-sculpting and stiffening the surrounding matrix.
This helps the tumour to grow larger by encouraging cells to divide and allows cancer cells to escape into the bloodstream from where they can then spread to other parts of the body.
and help bring the cancer-associated fibroblast cells back on side against the cancer. Further experiments found that the CAFSCHANGE in behaviour was caused by a protein that is involved in sensing the amount of oxygen available to the cells.
The team then used a drug in the mice with cancer that fools this oxygen sensor into behaving
They found that the cancer was then less likely to spread in those mice that had been treated with the drug than in those that hadn.
However, it is an exciting development in the way we think about how cancer can be treated.
One of the great challenges in cancer treatment is that tumour cells are genetically unstable
As our understanding of the complex relationship between cancer and our bodies evolves, we will find new ways to target
and combat the disease. It is very likely that the chemotherapies of the future will exploit these interactions
business and economic growth does need not to happen at the cost of the environment and public health and safety.
#US ARMY Turns to Computer Software for Medic Training Technology already has pushed medical and emergency responder training well beyond the days of mock wounds and static mannequins.
Combat Medic, developed for the service by Applied Research Associates, places trainees in a 3-D collaborative world where they learn to treat the three injuries most associated with preventable battlefield deaths hemorrhage, blocked
a new ARA software program funded in part by the Army intends to significantly advance that training via a downloadable hysiology enginethat allows medical personnel see how their actions affect every other aspect of their patient physiology.
Physiology serves as the foundation for any medical simulation you have said out there Matthew Hackett, science and technology manager with the Army Research Laboratory.
The current options for amputees are a diverse range of prosthetics--incorporating many new forms of technology to help them feel real--or transplants,
In the case of transplants the limiting factor is need the for lifelong immunosuppressive drugs to stop a recipient's immune system from attacking their new limb.
Suppressing immunity in this way opens up the risk of new infections and certain cancers. Ott's ambitious technique therefore has an ambitious goal--to one day provide amputees with fully functional limbs that can be transplanted
Doctors in China save man's severed hand by grafting it to his legott's success with a rat's arm was the first bio-limb to ever be created.
But the success of human hand transplants in achieving this connection gives Ott some hope."
"We've learned from the transplant community, "he says.""We need to show we can apply this process to limbs of human scale,
Beyond inspiring curiosity, Prakash hopes Foldscopes can help health care workers quickly, cheaply and safely diagnose blood-borne illnesses in the field."
"I wanted to make the best possible disease-detection instrument that we could almost distribute for free.
"However), in situations where people have spinal cord injury, so they are quadriplegic...you probably couldn't give them sensation back through the nerves,
said Dr. Paul S. Cederna, professor of plastic surgery and biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan.
The big benefit of Sanchez's approach is being able to use prostheses for people with spinal cord injuries,
The 28-year-old man in the current demonstration has been paralyzed for more than a decade because of a spinal cord injury.
food and medical assistance to Nepalis following the quake. Patients Wheeled Out of Hospitalon Tuesday at the main hospital in Kathmandu
patients injured in last month's quake were being wheeled out in wheelchairs. People could be seen frantically calling their families as medical attendants rushed to set up tents in the parking lot.
The capital was filled with the sound of car horns as desperate residents rushed to get back home to check on loved ones.
but Kallistem plans to conduct preclinical trials next year. If these trials are successful, the company will remove a sample of immature spermatogonia from a man
#Artificial Octopus Arm Performs Surgery About 10 years ago, the Pentagon funded a science project to build an entire eight-armed artificial octopus,
but strong, device say it eventually will be able to inch itself into the body during surgery
In this case we tried to get inspiration from the octopus and put it in the surgeon suite.
or perform the same surgery with a smaller entrance. The device, developed by a consortium of European universities including King's college,
and saying that here is something we can build for surgery. i
#Google Self-driving cars Ready for Public roads Google announced Friday its self-driving prototype cars were ready to leave the test track
"arguing that descendants of cloned animals showed no health problems while a complete ban might be difficult to sustain in law w
#Implant Captures Wandering Cancer cells Scientists in the United states say they have created a tiny implant which, in mice for now, captures cancer cells spreading through the body.
Cells moving from the original cancer site to infect other organs in a stealthy process called metastasis are detected usually too late to save a patient's life.
The early detection of circulating tumor cells, or CTCS, in the bloodstream can speed up diagnosis and lifesaving treatment.
But these wandering cancer cells travel in very small numbers, often for long periods of time,
The study, published in the journal Nature Communication, suggests that capturing CTCS would prevent their spread and help halt disease progression."
"Animals receiving an implant had reduced a significantly burden of disease in their lungs relative to animals that did not have an implant,
The implant--which used immune cells as bait--also contained a scanner to detect the presence of trapped cells."
"The combined systems can enable the early detection of metastatic disease, "Shea said by email."
which therapies may be effective.""As a bonus, the implant collected metastasized cancer cells for analysis, making it easier to identify the best treatment.
There was no reason to believe the results achieved in lab mice could not be replicated in humans,
we think we can build that into the design of our implant.""Shea said he hoped clinical trials with human cancer sufferers could begin soon n
#Robotic Limb System Learns From Its Mistakes The science of brain-machine interface, or BMI, has made enormous leaps in the last few decades.
and said only that he had suffered a spinal cord injury.""By wiring a sense of touch from a mechanical hand directly into the brain,
#Smart Mirror Diagnoses Health problems Mirror, mirror on the wall, what my cholesterol level? The Wize Mirror, developed by 11 European research groups,
and to actually displaying information about your health from your cholesterol levels to indicators for diabetes.
which are substances that have been linked with diabetes and other diseases. The mirror can also assess nutrition and physical activity.
as well as the possibility of using gene-editing to engineer a disease-free human. The finding reported this week by Harvard university researchers in the journal Science Express uses a technology known as CRISPR/Cas-9,
I do have Huntingtons or Tay-sachs or some other miserable disease,?, said Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at New york University. omeone will say let try to engineer embryos to see
Church also is cofounder of the biotech firm Editas Medicine. He said he expects the company will enter clinical trials next year on a gene-editing process for humans e
and an injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) after they had been ormedas adults. LPS is a noninfectious component of bacteria that trips the immune system alarm,
Rats without worm protection will have an overreactive immune response to the initial E coli infection, which increases levels of a specific type of signaling molecule in the brain called interleukin-1 ß (IL-1ß).(
if a second infection occurs, in this case, LPS. To test the effects on the brain, specifically memory,
the rats got an LPS injection. The following day, researchers placed them back in the box
But the wormless rats paused only half as muchuggesting their memories of the box were incomplete, the team reports in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
and infection-free, suggesting that the worms had protected somehow the rats against memory loss after the infections.
Pups born to wormy moms showed no increase in IL-1ß after the E coli infection,
The theory suggests immune systems that evolve without enough exposure to infections (like the wormless rats) overreact
when exposed to even milder forms of infection (like E coli or the LPS injections). Following that theory,
I think it has a lot of therapeutic potential. h
#Tiny ant takes on pesticide industry Few people like antshey bite and overrun kitchen counters.
or Prepo all people at ubstantial riskof infection. Currently, only 15 million HIV-infected people are receiving antiretrovirals.
But in rich countries, it's becoming more and more common to start therapy early, before a patient's CD4 cells have had significant declines.
The Joint United nations Programme on HIV/AIDS earlier called for a ast-trackapproach to end the world AIDS epidemic by 2030 that would increase the necessary annual investmentsow at $21. 7 billiony $12 billion.
Doing so will require more domestic spending by low-income countries that are hardest hit by the epidemic as well as larger contributions from wealthy nations.
#Designer antibodies may rid body of AIDS virus Anti-HIV drugs have extended life for millions of people,
Two new studies show that artificial antibodies could edirectthe immune response to these latently infected cells
But this new work ups the ante by designing so-called bispecific antibodies that both promise to reverse latency
a HIV cure researcher who directs the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne,
was conducted by a team from the Vaccine Research center at the U s. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland.
Both groups designed artificial versions of antibodies, the Y-shaped molecules made by the immune system to target pathogens.
With natural antibodies, both rmsof the Y clasp the same target. But the arms of bispecific antibodies each grab a unique protein.
In this case both teams designed their antibodies to clasp an HIV protein and CD3, a receptor found on the surface of white blood cells.
The bispecific antibodies focus on the CD3 receptor for two reasons. One is that HIV hides its DNA inside white blood cells,
or T lymphocytes, that have CD3 receptors. The other is that a second type of CD3-studded lymphocyte known as a killer T cell destroys HIV-infected cells.
The bispecific antibody first binds to CD3 on cells that harbor latent HIV. This prompts the cells to divide, an ctivationprocess that wakes up the sleeping virus. New HIV proteins are produced subsequently that migrate to the surface of the cell.
the bispecific antibody grabs a killer T cell that has a CD3 receptor and, with its second arm, finds a recently activated cell that has HIV proteins on its surface.
director of NIAID Vaccine Research center and head of the group reporting the Nature Communications study.
But neither team has shown yet that their bispecific antibodies can actually reduce reservoirs of HIV in monkeys
says draining a reservoir ultimately may require combining bispecific antibodies with other latency reversing approaches and immune system stimulators like anti-HIV vaccines.
UCSF Deeks cautions that anti-CD3 antibodies can cause too much activation of T cells, leading to a massive inflammatory reaction that damages organs and can even cause death.
in one 1999 study of anti-CD3 antibodies used to purge reservoirs in three HIV-infected people,
But the anti-CD3 antibodies in the earlier study had both arms, Mascola notes, which led to far more activation than the single arm in the new bispecific antibodies.
He further points out that two cancer bispecific antibodies on the market both have anti-CD3 arms. he key is to find the right balance between CD3 activation and toxicity,
Mascola says. hat the real challenge here. c
#Researchers create a sonic tractor beam Using a simple set of loudspeakers, scientists have figured out a way to levitate
and doctors to demonstrate applications that until now, were impossible to explore. And that exactly what Drinkwater and Asier Marzo, first author and computational engineer at the University of Bristol, hope to do next. y main target for the future is in vivo levitation,
and a member of MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, is the paper senior author.
The research was funded by the U s army Research Office, the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology,
#Researchers identify new target for anti-malaria drugs A new target for drug development in the fight against the deadly disease malaria has been discovered by researchers at MIT.
which causes toxoplasmosis, and Plasmodium, which causes malaria, access vital nutrients from their host cells.
Around one-third of the world deadly infectious diseases, including malaria and tuberculosis, are caused by pathogens that spend a large portion of their life inside specially built compartments within their host cells.
These compartments known as arasitophorous vacuoles, separate the host cytoplasm and the parasite by a membrane,
and thereby protect the parasites from the host cell defenses. They also provide an environment tailored to their needs, according to Dan Gold,
This makes it more difficult for the parasite to release proteins involved in the transformation of the host cell beyond the membrane in order to spread the disease
and for the pathogen to gain access to vital nutrients, Gold says. ltimately what defines a parasite is that they require certain key nutrients from their host,
Similar research into how the related Plasmodium pathogen performs this trick had identified a so-called rotein export complexthat transports encoded proteins from the parasite into its host red blood cell,
which transforms these red blood cells in a way that is vital to the spread of malaria. he clinical symptoms of malaria are dependent on this process
they could be used as a drug target against the diseases they cause, including malaria, he says. his very strongly suggests that you could find small-molecule drugs to target these pores,
which would be very damaging to these parasites, but likely wouldn have any interaction with any human molecules,
he says. o I think this is a really strong potential drug target for restricting the access of these parasites to a set of nutrients. n addition to malaria,
a professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard School of Public health who was involved not in the research. trikingly,
#How chronic inflammation can lead to cancer Chronic inflammation caused by disease or exposure to dangerous chemicals has long been linked to cancer,
but exactly how this process takes place has remained unclear. Now, a precise mechanism by which chronic inflammation can lead to cancer has been uncovered by researchers at MIT a development that could lead to improved targets for preventing future tumors.
In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
the researchers unveil how one of a battery of chemical warfare agents used by the immune system to fight off infection can itself create DNA mutations that lead to cancer.
As many as one in five cancers are believed to be caused or promoted by inflammation These include mesothelioma,
a type of lung cancer caused by inflammation following chronic exposure to asbestos, and colon cancer in people with a history of inflammatory bowel disease, says Bogdan Fedeles,
a research associate in the Department of Biological engineering at MIT, and the paper lead author.
Innate immune response Inflammation is part of the body innate response to invading pathogens or potentially harmful irritants.
However, these molecules can also cause collateral damage to healthy tissue around the infection site:
he presence of a foreign pathogen activates the immune response, which tries to fight off the bacteria,
and James Fox all professors of biological engineering at MIT had identified the presence of a lesion,
or site of damage in the structure of DNA, called 5-chlorocytosine (5clc) in the inflamed tissues of mice infected with the pathogen Helicobacter hepaticus.
This lesion, a damaged form of the normal DNA base cytosine, is caused by the reactive molecule hypochlorous acid the main ingredient in household bleach
The lesion 5clc, was present in remarkably high levels within the tissue, says John Essigmann, the William R. 1956) and Betsy P. Leitch Professor in Residence Professor of Chemistry, Toxicology and Biological engineering at MIT,
who led the current research. hey found the lesions were very persistent in DNA, meaning we don have a repair system to take them out,
Essigmann says. n our field lesions that are persistent, if they are also mutagenic, are the kind of lesions that would initiate cancer,
he adds. DNA sequencing of a developing gastrointestinal tumor revealed two types of mutation: cytosine (C) bases changing to thymine (T) bases,
and adenine (A) bases changing to guanine (G) bases. Since 5clc had not yet been studied as a potentially carcinogenic mutagen,
the researchers decided to investigate the lesion further, in a bid to uncover if it is indeed mutagenic.
Using a technique previously developed in Essigmann laboratory, the researchers first placed the 5clc lesion at a specific site within the genome of a bacterial virus. They then replicated the virus within the cell.
The researchers found that, rather than always pairing with a guanine base as a cytosine would,
when triggered by infection, fires hypochlorous acid at the site, damaging cytosines in the DNA of the surrounding healthy tissue.
he explains. his scenario would best explain the work of James Fox and his MIT colleagues on gastrointestinal cancer.
the researchers replicated the genome containing the lesion with a variety of different types of polymerase,
or patterns of DNA mutations, associated with cancerous tumors. e believe that in the context of inflammation-induced damage of DNA,
says the paper provides a novel mechanistic link between chronic inflammation and cancer development. ith a combination of biochemical,
a type of mutation that is frequently observed in human cancers, Wang says. Studies of tissue samples of patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease have found significant levels of 5clc,
Fedeles adds. By comparing these levels with his team findings on how mutagenic 5clc is,
the researchers predict that accumulation of the lesions would increase the mutation rate of a cell up to 30-fold,
who was honored with the prestigious Benjamin F. Trump award at the 2015 Aspen Cancer Conference for the research.
an we do it in the medical space??Industry partnerships work best hen we can actually collaborate to invent the future,
and while many of these are beneficial, some can cause disease. For example, some reports have linked Crohn disease to the presence of certain strains of E coli. e like to be able to remove specific members of the bacterial population
and see what their function is in the microbiome, Lu says. n the longer term you could design a specific phage that kills that bug
but more information about the microbiome is needed to effectively design such therapies. The paper lead author is Hiroki Ando, an MIT research scientist.
but efforts to harness them for medical use have been hampered because isolating useful phages from soil
so that simplifies that workflow in the lab. The new approach also overcomes an important hurdle in using bacteriophages to treat disease,
which makes it difficult to choose the right phage for the right infection, if such a phage is available at all,
who was involved not in the research. his is a big step in the development of phage therapies with predictable outcomes and a good demonstration of
what synthetic biology approaches will bring to medicine in the near future. A targeted strike In this study,
and gastrointestinal infections, including pneumonia, sepsis, gastritis, and Legionnairesdisease. One advantage of the engineered phages is that unlike many antibiotics,
Lu says. e aim to create effective and narrow-spectrum methods for targeting pathogens. Lu and his colleagues are now designing phages that can target other strains of harmful bacteria
as well as treating human disease. Another advantage of this approach is that all of the phages are based on an identical genetic scaffold,
The newly described Cpf1 system differs in several important ways from the previously described Cas9, with significant implications for research and therapeutics,
including in cancer research, says Levi Garraway, an institute member of the Broad Institute, and the inaugural director of the Joint Center for Cancer Precision Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women Hospital,
and the Broad Institute. Garraway was involved not in the research. An open approach to empower research Zhang,
These groups plan to offer licenses that best support rapid and safe development for appropriate and important therapeutic uses. e are committed to making the CRISPR-Cpf1 technology widely accessible,
Zhang says. ur goal is to develop tools that can accelerate research and eventually lead to new therapeutic applications.
unicorn fever has raised fears of a bubble in the private equity markets.""You have a frenzy of investors looking for the next Facebook.
#Self-assembling, bioinstructive collagen materials for research, medical applications A Purdue University researcher and entrepreneur is commercializing her laboratory's innovative collagen formulations that self-assemble
drug discovery and chemical toxicity testing. In addition, they can be used to create next generation tissue engineered medical products that foster improved tissue integration and regeneration.
Sherry Harbin, an associate professor in Purdue's Weldon School of Biomedical engineering and Department of Basic Medical sciences
and founder of Geniphys, has worked for more than 10 years to tap into the secrets of the extracellular matrix component of tissues.
"Conventionally, cells cultured on the surface of plastic dishes have been used to identify new drug targets, test chemical toxicity,
and disease states such as cancer, "Harbin said.""Unfortunately, growth of cells in these oversimplified environments has been shown not to correlate well with human cell responses in the body.
including tumor metastasis and drug/toxin sensitivity.""This is important as pharmaceutical companies and regulatory agencies look for new,
less expensive ways to better predict human outcomes as part of drug development and chemical toxicity testing.
This technology also is supporting the development of the first bioinstructive collagen-based therapeutics for medical applications,
including regenerative medicine strategies involving therapeutic cells, multifunctional drug delivery, surgical implants, and tissue engineered medical products.
Conventional biological products including collagen sponges require extensive chemical and physical processing to improve their mechanical strength
Geniphys plans to produce medical-grade collymer products for veterinary and medical applications, including wound and hemostatic dressings,
cell-instructive implants, engineered tissue and organ replacements, hybrid medical devices and therapeutic cell and molecule delivery.
Research into the nature of this process is of significant importance in biology and medical science.
This is expected to lead to medical treatments in various fields that can for example, prevent cancer cells from multiplying,
it can cause a range of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, Alzheimer's and diabetes.
This patented technology will allow pharmaceutical companies to measure simultaneously a large number of compounds and select which one can be developed into drugs to fight against diseases.
The device was developed at Bath by researchers Dr Pedro Estrela and Phd student Nikhil Bhalla in the Department of Electronic & Electrical engineering, Dr Mirella Di Lorenzo in the Department of Chemical engineering,
and facilitate the development of new drugs for diseases like cancer, stroke and dementia.""The simplicity is the strength of this technology.
and frees it from the use of radioisotopes or antibodies.""""The free flow of information between departments at the University of Bath promoted this collaboration
Greater accuracy requires a more precise measuring process as well as adjustable implants. Now, a new type of measurement method coupled with a modular implant should allow orthopedic surgeons to precisely calibrate leg length after the operation
so it matches its original length. The researchers will be introducing their development at the Medtec expo in Stuttgart, April 21-23.
Implant manufacturers face numerous challenges; for example, the artificial joints may eventually Break in addition, orthopedic surgeons currently have no suitable method for precisely measuring leg length before the operation
or for adjusting the implants accordingly. The result is that after the operation, the leg can actually be longer
or shorter than it used to be. This leads to problems with the spine, which have to be resolved using shoe inserts.
orthopedic surgeons will be able to measure their patients'leg lengths much more precisely. The Fraunhofer researchers collaborated on the new system with several project partners:
the Clinic for Orthopedics, Trauma Surgery and Plastic surgery at the Leipzig University Hospital; University of Applied sciences Zwickau and its Research and Transfer Centre;
AQ Implants Gmbh; and MSB-Orthopädie-Technik Gmbh.""The margin of error in our process is less than one centimeter,
"Currently, the usual procedure calls for the doctors to determine leg length with a tape measure,
With the patient in a prone position, the doctor affixes a small plastic box containing two LEDS to the patient's shin.
The doctor then takes hold of the patient's heel and lifts it upward. With that motion, the two lights trace an arc that is recorded by a camera positioned about 1. 5 meters to the side of the patient.
The doctor takes this measurement twice once right before the operation and once after the implant has been inserted temporarily.
The box remains on the leg during the operation. A software program compares both arcs to determine
If necessary, the doctor can make adjustments to the artificial hip. Initial testing of a measuring system prototype has met already with success at the Leipzig University hospital.
Unbreakable, adjustable hip implants Fraunhofer's researchers also optimized the hip implants, again working together with partners from industry, medicine and research."
"We've developed an implant that can be adjusted to each individual patient, "says Grunert. The trick was to do away with prefabricated implants in various sizes and use a modular system instead.
In this method, the doctor can select the right hip stem as well as the right neck for each patient.
Special screw connections are used to attach the individual parts to each other and the combined unit is implanted in the hip for testing.
The doctor now measures the leg length, and, if necessary, can easily separate the implant's various components to exchange them for better-fitting parts
or adjust them as required. Another advantage is that the artificial hip is less prone to breakage than conventional modular models with a conical clamping ring.
Currently, the doctor connects the stem and the neck of the prefabricated artificial hip during the operation with a well-placed stroke of the hammer.
This puts tremendous stress on the connection point, a conical clamping ring. Furthermore, once the parts have been joined together,
it's virtually impossible to separate and adjust them. That's not the case for the specialized screws that hold the parts of the new implants together.
The point where they connect is mechanically stable and prevents the implant from breaking. The new system was developed within the"artificial joints"cooperative network
which is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWI) and coordinated by Fraunhofer IWU.
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