#Drug Disarms Deadly C. Difficile Bacteria Without Destroying Healthy Gut Flora Scientists successfully defeated a dangerous intestinal pathogen, Clostridium difficile,
C. difficile is responsible for more than 250,000 hospitalizations and 15,000 deaths per year in the United states, costing the country more than $4 billion in health-care expenses,
said the study's senior author, Matthew Bogyo, Phd, professor of pathology and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford university School of medicine.
By not aiming to kill the pathogen with antibiotics, scientists were able to avoid wiping out sizeable numbers of beneficial gut microbes.
"Unlike antibiotics--which are both the front-line treatment for C. difficile infection and, paradoxically, possibly its chief cause--the drug didn't kill the bacteria,
Infection often recurs About one in 20 people, and possibly many more, harbor C. difficile in their gut, said study co-author Justin Sonnenburg, Phd, professor of microbiology and immunology,
who has conducted pioneering research on the trillions of microbes constituting our intestinal ecosystems. Usually, the pathogen causes no harm,
he said. But in those with immune systems weakened by age, chemotherapy or antibiotics that wipe out their"lawn"of beneficial intestinal microbes,
Plus, the pathogen can dehydrate and condense into shrunken, long-lived spores, making it difficult to get rid of.
Most C. difficile infections originate in settings such as hospitals, clinics and assisted living facilities. Making matters worse,
the infection recurs despite antibiotic treatment. When it does succeed, antibiotics in eliminating it only 25 percent of the time.
About 7 percent of infected people die within 30 days of diagnosis. Treatments for C. difficile infection include fecal transplants,
as well as in neurological changes. Bogyo's group has extensive expertise in studying the activity of proteases, proteins capable of slicing up other proteins.
with symptoms ranging from severe diarrhea to intestinal lesions to death. Bogyo's team has developed ways of conducting high-throughput screens of small molecules to speedily test their ability to inhibit
Helping the good guys"We figured that a molecule that interfered with the pathogen's virulence could prevent inflammation
ebselen also has been tested in clinical trials for chemotherapy-related hearing loss and for stroke. Preclinical testing provided evidence that ebselen is safe and tolerable,
and it has shown no significant adverse effects in ensuing clinical trials. Bogyo's team conducted another test to see how ebselen affected human cells.
whose lab is adept at using mouse models of C. difficile infection. The researchers incubated Toxin B in a solution either containing
The upshot of this and other experiments conducted by Bogyo's team is that using ebselen to disable a toxin in C. difficile was enough to significantly reduce the clinical symptoms of the infection and block the persistent gut damage in mice e
#Hand And Arm Movement To Quadriplegic Patients Restored A pioneering surgical technique has restored some hand
and arm movement to patients immobilized by spinal cord injuries in the neck, reports a new study.
however, instead of trains on a track, the surgeons redirect peripheral nerves in a quadriplegic's arms and hands by connecting healthy nerves to the injured nerves.
The researchers assessed outcomes of nerve-transfer surgery in nine quadriplegic patients with spinal cord injuries in the neck.
"Physically, nerve-transfer surgery provides incremental improvements in hand and arm function. However, psychologically, these small steps are huge for a patient's quality of life,
assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at at Washington University School of medicine in St louis."One of my patients told me he was able to pick up a noodle off his chest
'Before the surgery, he couldn't move his fingers. It meant a lot for him to clean off that noodle without anyone helping him."
Ultimately, medical professionals hope to discover a way to restore full movement to the estimated 250,000 people in the United states living with spinal cord injuries.
More than half of such injuries involve the neck. However, until a cure is found, progress in regaining basic independence in routine tasks is important.
Indeed one of the most humbling effects of spine damage is the inability to manage bladder or bowel functions."
"People with spinal cord injuries cannot control those functions because their brains can't talk to the nerves in the lower body,
who performs surgeries at Barnes-Jewish Hospital?.""Patients often can't insert a catheter to empty their bladders
But after this surgery, one of my patients was able to independently catheterize himself, which he hadn't been able to do since his accident over a decade ago.
"Nerve-transfer surgery has been very successful in helping me because it restored triceps function and improvement in my grip,"said Bavlsik, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the School of medicine."
"I am extremely grateful for this surgery.""Surgeons at Washington University pioneered nerve-transfer surgery.
Developed about 25 years ago by the study's senior author, Susan E. Mackinnon, MD, director of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the School of medicine,
the technique initially was performed to restore movement in the extremities of patients who had injured peripheral nerves
and lost the ability to move a foot or an arm. But in the past five years, the same technique has been used to restore limited movement to patients with spinal cord injuries.
Quadriplegics from Colorado, Michigan and Arizona, among other states have traveled to St louis for the surgery.
The operation can be performed even years after a spinal cord injury. It usually takes four hours,
and most patients go home the next morning. Since surgeons connect working nerves in the upper arms to a patient's damaged nerves in their arms and hands,
the technique targets patients with injuries at the C6 or C7 vertebra, the lowest bones in the neck.
It typically does not help patients who have lost all arm function due to higher injuries in vertebrae C1 through C5.
Bypassing the spinal cord surgeons reroute healthy nerves sitting above the injury site, usually in the shoulders or elbows, to paralyzed nerves in the hand or arm.
Once a connection is established, patients undergo extensive physical therapy to train the brain to recognize the new nerve signals,
"The gains after nerve-transfer surgery are said not instantaneous Mackinnon, director of the School of medicine's Center for Nerve Injury and Paralysis,
and the Sydney M. Shoenberg Jr. and Robert H. Shoenberg Professor of Surgery.""But once established, the surgery's benefits provide a way to let individuals with spinal cord injuries improve their daily lives."
"Another patient benefiting from the nerve-transfer technique is a 72-year-old right-handed man who had the surgery two years after he suffered a cervical spinal cord injury.
The doctors took healthy tissue from the patient's upper arm, connected it to a paralyzed nerve that controlled his ability to pinch
and then plugged it into a working nerve that restored the man's ability to flex his thumb and index finger.
This allowed him to feed himself and to hold a water bottle to maintain hydration, which,
in turn, reduced his risk of developing urinary tract infections and has bolstered his overall health h
#Rare Variant Discovered Through Deep Whole-genome Sequencing Of 1, 070 Japanese People A research group at Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization (Tommo) has constructed successfully a Japanese population reference panel (1kjpn), from the genome information of 1,
%and its value for identifying causal rare variants of complex human disease phenotypes in genetic association studies.
and study of the genes related to the physical constitution and diseases that are peculiar to the Japanese.
It has yielded so far important results that can accelerate the research of personalized healthcare and medicine.
which is the second most common cancer and accounts for over one-quarter of all cancer-related deaths.
"The scientists demonstrated that blocking PEPCK in cancer cells could slow tumor growth in mice. Alternative fuels for cancer cells The group also found evidence of increased PEPCK levels in tissues from lung-cancer patients."
"The fact that PEPCK levels are elevated in some cases of human lung cancer suggests that this enzyme may play a role in the human disease,
"adds Russell Jones, Associate professor of Physiology at Mcgill University's Goodman Cancer Research Centre. The study suggests that nutrient availability in the organism,
and other nutrients, can impact cancer progression.""Our work shows that cancers can use alternative fuel sources to help drive their growth under stressful conditions,"notes Prof.
Jones."This remarkable flexibility is part of what makes cancer so deadly, but offers hope in finding new therapies.""
""Understanding the mechanisms used by cancer cells to adapt to their environment creates new possibilities to treat this deadly disease,
"explains Alexey Sergushichev, bioinformatician and Phd student at the Department of Computer technologies at ITMO University."
"We hope our work on PEPCK and the metabolic alterations in lung cancer cells will lead to innovations in treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, one of the most deadly types of cancer
#Artificial skin That Can Send Pressure sensation To Brain cell Stanford engineers have created a plastic"skin"that can detect how hard it is being pressed
Assessing just three features of a common kind of testicular cancer-called non-seminomatous germ cell tumor-can identify those at most at risk of relapse even where there is no evidence of tumor spread.
The researchers believe the test could be used in the clinic to make decisions about which patients should be given chemotherapy.
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, analyzed 177 tumor samples from patients with stage I non-seminomatous tumors enrolled in clinical trials through the Medical Research Council (MRC
Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR found that three different features of the tumors were important indicators of relapse risk:
the levels of a molecule called CXCL12, the percentage of the tumor with an appearance of cancer stem cells and whether or not blood vessels were present in the tumor.
They scored tumors based on these features, and found that combining scores could divide patients up into three different risk groups based on how likely patients were to suffer a relapse of the disease within two years.
It is rare for a patient to relapse from testicular cancer beyond this time. They found that the vast majority of patients were in the low-risk group-where 94.3 percent of patients were relapse free for two years.
Testicular germ cell tumors are the most common solid malignant tumor in young Caucasian men. Patients diagnosed with early-stage disease face a choice between monitoring with treatment
if relapse does occur or upfront chemotherapy with its associated long-term side-effects. Predicting who does
therefore important to minimize treatment in this largely curable disease. Study leader Professor Janet Shipley Professor of Cancer Molecular Pathology at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said,
"Our research has led to the development of a test that can detect patients that will benefit from treatment up front
Approaches such as this to minimize chemotherapy are particularly important for cancers like testicular cancer, which affect young adults who could live with the side-effects for decades."
"Professor Robert Huddart, Professor of Urological Cancer at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said,
"Patients with stage 1 non-seminomatous germ cell tumors have to make a difficult choice of
We now need to test this prognostic index in larger groups of men in the clinic"The work was funded by the MRC with support from the National Cancer Research Institute Testis Cancer Clinical Studies Group,
and is published in Clinical Cancer Research h
#Artificial'skin'Provides Prosthetics With Sensation Using flexible organic circuits and specialized pressure sensors, researchers have created an artificial skin"that can sense the force of static objects.
#Protein Found In Malaria Could Help Stop Cancer Researchers have discovered how a protein from malaria could some day help stop cancer.
While exploring why pregnant women are particularly susceptible to malaria, they found that the mosquito-borne parasite that causes malaria also produces a protein that binds to a particular type of sugar molecule in the placenta.
Researchers found that the same type of sugar molecule also is present in many types of cancer.
They realized that the sugar molecule--oncofetal chondroitin sulfate--could be a target for anticancer drugs,
called VAR2CSA, could provide the tool for carrying such drugs to tumors. It's somehow fitting that a disease as destructive as malaria might be exploited to treat another dreaded disease like cancer."
"Based on our clinical data, we helped validate that this could be applied to melanoma and lung cancers,"said Dr. Nhan Tran, an Associate professor in Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN)' s Cancer and Cell biology Division,
and one of the authors of the study.""This specific type of developmental protein--oncofetal chondroitin sulfate--is expressed in the placenta,
and is expressed also in lung cancer and in melanoma.""Malaria uses VAR2CSA to embed itself in the placenta--hiding itself from the immune system--by binding to oncofetal chondroitin sulfate.
In laboratory experiments, researchers found that if they used the malarial protein, VAR2CSA, and attached an anticancer drug to it,
it would bind with the oncofetal protein in the cancer, delivering the drug to the tumor."
"Scientists have spent decades trying to find biochemical similarities between placenta tissue and cancer, but we just didn't have the technology to find it,
"said project leader Mads Daugaard, an assistant professor of urologic science at UBC and a senior research scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre, part of the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute."
"When my colleagues discovered how malaria uses VAR2CSA to embed itself in the placenta, we immediately saw its potential to deliver cancer drugs in a precise, controlled way to tumors.""
""This is an extraordinary finding that paves the way for targeting sugar molecules in pediatric and adulthood human cancer,
and our groups are vigorously pursuing this possibility together, "said Poul Sorensen, a UBC professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and distinguished scientist with the BC Cancer Agency and co-senior investigator on the study y
#Epilepsy Switch Discovered Approximately five percent of people suffers an epileptic attack, during which the nerve cells get out of their usual rhythm and fire in a very rapid frequency, over the course of their lives.
This results in seizures and such synchronous discharges in the brain occur most frequently in the temporal lobe.
Often, a seizure disorder develops after a delay following transient brain damage-for example due to injury or inflammation.
So-called ion channels are involved in the transfer of signals in the brain; these channels act like a doorman to regulate the entry of calcium ions in the nerve cells.
Scientists at the University of Bonn and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) have decoded a central signal cascade associated with epileptic seizures.
If the researchers blocked a central switch in epileptic mice, the frequency and severity of the seizures decreased.
Using a novel technology, it was possible to observe the processes prior to the occurrence of epileptic seizures in living animals."
"It has also been known for a long time that following transient severe brain injury and prior to an initial spontaneous epileptic seizure, the concentration of free zinc ions increases in the hippocampus.
But science has been puzzled about the significance of this phenomenon, "says Prof. Dr. Albert J. Becker from the Institute of Neuropathology of the University of Bonn.
The hippocampus, located in the temporal lobe, is a central switching station in the brain. MTF1 acts like a switch in the brain The team of Prof.
Becker, together with scientists from the departments of Experimental Epileptology and Neuroradiology of the University of Bonn Hospital as well as from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Israel
If the number of zinc ions increases following transient severe brain damage, these ions dock in greater numbers onto a switch, the so-called metal-regulatory transcription factor 1 (MTF1.
This leads to a large increase in the amount of a special calcium ion channel in the nerve cells and overall, this significantly boosts the risk of epileptic seizures.
The scientists demonstrated the fact that the transcription factor MTF1 plays a central role in this connection using an experiment on mice suffering from epilepsy."
we inhibited MTF1 in the epileptic mice and as a result, the seizures in the animals were much rarer
This makes it possible to examine the processes which take place during the development of epilepsy in a living animal."
"If the fluorescence molecules glow, this indicates that the mouse is developing chronic epileptic seizures, "says the molecular biologist Prof.
Dr. Susanne Schoch from the department of Neuropathology at the University of Bonn. The researchers also see a possible potential in this new technology for novel diagnostic approaches in humans s
and break down the blot clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. No only does the minuscule device start working within minutes, it portable,
"This can be given in the ambulance straight away so you really save a lot of time and restore the blood flow to the critical organs much faster than currently possible,"one of the team,
Christopher Hagemeyer from the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, told Rachael Brown at ABC News. Around 80 percent of all strokes occur
If this formation of blood clots, known as thrombosis, happens to block blood flow to the heart,
a heart attack can follow. The longer the brain or heart are oxygenated without blood the greater the risk that vital tissues will begin to die,
it set to make a huge difference to the many heart attack and stoke patients who don actually respond to current treatments.
around half of the 55,000 Australians who experience heart attack or stroke every year cannot use the clot-busting treatments administered by paramedics due to the severe side effects that can cause excessive internal bleeding."
"They administer drugs which are also very fast-acting, but because it's free in the blood stream everywhere it causes side effects like bleeding
"The drug-loaded nanocapsule is coated with an antibody that specifically targets activated platelets, the cells that form blood clots,
as they are attached to the skin with a biocompatible, medical-grade adhesive. The current prototype,
that sort of'range anxiety'could be gone for good-the roads actually charge your car as you drive.
survey shows New figures released by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that fewer Americans are smoking than ever before,
it could lead to the creation of MRI machines that don't require people to lie inside the claustrophobic machine,
They say that ultra-low-power communication systems in wearable devices will transmit signals of much less power than things like MRI SCANNERS and wireless implant devices, with magnetic fields passing freely and harmlessly through biological tissue.
Having been paralysed for more than a decade due to a spinal cord injury, the man was able to identify
Responsible for the majority of marijuana's psychological effects-including the high-THC can also be use to treat symptoms of HIV infection
and cannabidiol-another active compound that has shown promise as a medical treatment-told The New york times. Back in August, researchers from the University of California,
Cannabis is hard to beat.""The idea instead is to offer up an alternative for places such as Europe,
where medicinal compounds from marijuana would be welcomed if they didn come in the form of a plant that could be farmed illegally.
What yeast could also offer is the potential to more efficiently test the medicinal properties of specific active compounds in marijuana,
which have shown promise in treating everything from seizures and inflammation to cancer and parkinson disease.
a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at Icahn School of medicine at Mount sinai, told Tech Insider that using all the compounds in marijuana simultaneously is like"throwing 400 tablets in a cocktail
'"rather than figuring out which component of that cocktail is really beneficial for the specific disease.
"Marijuana is embraced increasingly as medicine, yet there is limited evidence that it is effective against many of the conditions for
such as ejector pins for iphones, watch springs for expensive hand-wound watches, trial medical implants,
Paralysed man walks again via brain waves rerouted to his legs A paraplegic man who was paralysed for five years has walked again on his own two feet,
The anonymous man, who experiences complete paralysis in both legs due to a severe spinal cord injury (SCI), is the first such patient to demonstrate that brain-controlled overground walking after paraplegia due to
SCI is feasible. ven after years of paralysis, the brain can still generate robust brain waves that can be harnessed to enable basic walking,
one of the researchers, Zoran Nenadic from the University of California, Irvine in the US, said in a press release. e showed that you can restore intuitive, brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury."
such as brain implants, said co-author An Do, an assistant clinical professor of neurology. e hope that an implant could achieve an even greater level of prosthesis control
because brain waves are recorded with higher quality. In addition, such an implant could deliver sensation back to the brain,
enabling the user to feel his legs. r
#A 16-year-old has devised a faster and cheaper way to detect Ebola Oliva Hallisey,
and up to 12 hours from testing to confirmed diagnosis The test provides rapid, inexpensive, accurate detection of Ebola viral antigens based on colour change within 30 minutes in individuals
and up to 12 hours from testing to diagnosis. While Hallisey wasn able to test her invention on real Ebola patients or virus,
which is made up of antibodies (the tags that our immune system uses to mark viruses and bacteria as invaders) and chemicals that cause the test to change colours if these antibodies bind to Ebola proteins in the sample.
The big innovation: To make the test stable, Hallisey used silk fibres to stabilise the chemicals on card stock, allowing them to sit around at room temperature for up to three weeks
The three chemicals used to detect the Ebola protein-bound antibodies are added to separate corners of the paper (2, 3, 4 in the diagram below.
And the anti-Ebola antibodies are in the center. To run the test, the serum sample is added to the open corner (1). Then, one by one,
The early detection of virus infection is critical for patients, since the faster you start to treat someone the more likely they are to survive.
says her test could also be adapted to detect HIV, Dengue and Yellow fever viruses, Lyme disease, and even certain cancers.
The winners of the fifth annual Google Science Fair were announced live from Google Headquarters in Mountain view
Back in February, a Svartedalens retirement home in Gothenburg implemented a 6-hour work day for their nurses with no changes to wage,
at Gothenburg Sahlgrenska University hospital, orthopaedic surgery has moved to a 6-hour day, as have doctors and nurses in two hospital departments in Umeå to the north,"The Guardian reports.
While impressions of staff being happier and full of energy aren exactly scientific basis for declaring 6-hour work days as'better'than the 8. 7-hour work day endured by the average American,
and a 13 percent increased risk of developing coronary heart disease, while a separate study found that working 49-hour weeks was associated with lower mental health, particularly in women.
And as we reported earlier this month, we probably shouldn even be forced to clock on at 9am anyway,
#Scientists discover new gene that increases Alzheimer's disease risk An immune system gene that associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer disease has been identified by researchers in the US.
which is one of the key drivers of the disease. Not only could the discovery lead to quicker diagnoses and better identification of at-risk patients,
but researchers suggest that by manipulating the IL1RAP immune pathway they could figure out how to either slow the progression of the disease,
and fighting an important cause of progression in Alzheimer's disease,"said one of the team, Andrew Saykin from the Indiana University School of medicine.
Previous research has linked another genetic factor to the development of Alzheimer's disease-the APOE e4 allele.
they found that the IL1RAP variant had an even stronger effect on the progression of the disease than APOE e4.
which triggers the production of pro-inflammatory proteins in response to infection, tissue damage, or stress.
'and the focus of heavy investigation in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases,"said one of the researchers, Vijay K. Ramanan.
the presence of the IL1RAP variant was associated with an overall greater likelihood of progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's disease.
and fighting an important cause of progression in Alzheimer's disease,"said Saykin n
#China now spends more on science than the EU, will soon overtake the US On Monday,
Chinese scientist Youyou Tu was awarded jointly the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of a new malaria therapy.
In addition to Tu's malaria drug, Artemisinin, China has pioneered also development of solar and wind technology, and is working on trains that will reach 500 km h.
any of these factors could be therapeutic targets to extend healthspan. What we have to do now is figure out which ones are amenable to targeting.
which racers with disabilities pilot advanced assistive devices. racks are excellent for this use case
#Scientists have found a way to make leukaemia cells kill each other Researchers in the US have found an antibody that turns cancerous leukaemia cells into natural killer cells-a type of white blood cell that's able to seek out
"It's a totally new approach to cancer, and we're working to test it in human patients
His team had discovered recently that by exposing marrow cells to antibodies from other parts of the body,
Based on this knowledge, Learner and his colleagues started looking for an antibody that could transform cancerous leukaemia cells back into healthy bone marrow cells.
But instead they stumbled across a rare human antibody that has even more potential: it can actually turn leukaemia cells into cancer killers.
The antibody in question binds to a receptor called TPO-or thrombopoietin-which is found on most acute myeloid leukaemia cells.
When the researchers first exposed the leukaema cells to the antibody, they watched as it turned many of them into harmless immune cells known as dendritic cells.
That in itself was an awesome discovery, but they showed that when they continued to apply the antibody to the cells,
a number of them developed further into cells very similar to natural killer (NK) cells,
"That antibody could have turned those acute myeloid leukaemia cells into a lot of other cell types, but somehow we were lucky enough to get NK cells,
Fortunately, the antibody only affected leukaemia cells, and not healthy bone marrow, which suggests that it could work as a targeted cancer therapy.
And for some reason, the NK cells also didn't seem to attack all cancer types-only their former brethren.
That's both good and bad, as it means they're more specific and are less likely to have side effects.
and Lerner's team is now trying to figure out exactly how the antibody works. But they're pretty keen to get the therapy into clinical trials soon."
"We're in discussions with pharmaceutical companies to take this straight into humans after the appropriate preclinical toxicity studies,
"said Lerner. The team is also screening for antibodies that could have a similar effect on other cancer types.
The new approach is incredibly exciting, and we really hope it lives up to its potential l
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