"The UC Berkeley engineers teamed up with Dr. Thomas Nutman from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases,
or parasitic worm, diseases onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis. The video Cellscope, which uses motion instead of molecular markers
May 6, in the journal Science Translational Medicine.""This research is addressing neglected tropical diseases, "said Fletcher."
"It demonstrates what technology can do to help fill a void for populations that are suffering from terrible, but treatable diseases."
"Battling parasitic wormsriver blindness is transmitted through the bite of blackflies and is the second leading cause of infectious blindness worldwide.
Lymphatic filariasis, spread by mosquitoes, leads to elephantiasis, a condition marked by painful, disfiguring swelling in parts of the body.
It is the second leading cause of disability worldwide and, like river blindness, is highly endemic in certain regions in Africa.
The antiparasitic drug ivermectin, or IVM, can be used to treat these diseases, but mass public health campaigns to administer the medication have been stalled because of potentially fatal side effects for patients co-infected with Loa loa,
which causes loiasis, or African eye worm. When there are high circulating levels of microscopic Loa loa worms in a patient,
treatment with IVM can lead to brain or other neurologic damage that can be severe or fatal.
The standard method of screening for levels of Loa loa involves trained technicians manually counting the worms in a blood smear using conventional laboratory microscopes,
making the process impractical for use in field settings and in mass campaigns to administer IVM.
representing a major setback in the efforts to eradicate river blindness and elephantiasis. Next generation Cellscope uses video, automationfor this latest generation of the mobile phone microscope, named Cellscope Loa, the researchers paired a smartphone with a 3d printed plastic base where the sample of blood
"The availability of a point-of-care test prior to drug treatment is a major advance in the control of these debilitating diseases,
#Photoactive dye could prevent infection during bone-repair surgery Despite extensive procedures to sterilize small and large bone fragments used in joint replacement or reconstructive surgeries,
the rate of infection remains around 5 percent and can reach 11 percent or even higher in bone repairs for gunshot wounds or reconstruction after tumor removal.
Infection after surgery is a serious complication that can require further surgery and can be life threatening.
A new study demonstrates for the first time that an antimicrobial dye activated by light avidly adheres to bone to prevent bacteria from growing on bone fragments used in reconstructive surgery
and remove any bacteria that has attached already, thereby sterilizing the bone for surgery. The study was published online April 17 ahead of print in the journal of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research."
"We used a class of chemicals called porphyrins that are tolerated very well by the body in the dark
and appear to have excellent antimicrobial properties in the presence of light, "says Noreen Hickok, Ph d.,Associate professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University."
"These properties allow sterilization during surgical procedures, which occur in bright light.""Surgeons often use bone chips
or bone powder as a sort of putty during bone reconstruction to help areas of bone re-grow.
when a tumor or accident requires replacement of a large segment of bone. These bone materials can come either from the patient
the TAPP dye could be added to the currently used protocols for sterilizing the bone prior to use in surgery."
and the other would be the continuation of the activation in the bright lights of the surgical suite
so that the sterilizing effects of the ROS release could continue well into surgery and implantation,"says Dr. Hickok."
"We need to continue testing in conditions that more closely resemble the surgical suite, but we think that this method could offer a more effective method to help improve patient outcomes by reducing infection rates
#Smarter, cheaper technologies offer improved point-of-care medicine A team from Stanford university School of medicine (Bio-Acoustic MEMS in Medicine Labs) developed assays for the simple and rapid detection
of HIV-1, various bacteria, and CD4+T lymphocytes. The assays for pathogens and cells were used as proof of concept to demonstrate the utility of several new detection and sensing technologies.
Overall, the group has developed platforms and sensing devices that are easy to make, easy to use and can be disposed safely of after use--characteristics necessary for developing affordable tools with broad applications in both developed and developing countries.
"The group is simultaneously developing multiple novel methods that target important diseases in underserved communities,
inexpensive technologies that can be applied to a wide range of health care problems and settings.""Testing for HIV-1 in whole bloodcurrent tests for HIV infection detect antibodies to HIV in the individual's blood.
However, because it takes up to several months for those antibodies to form, these tests do not detect individuals in the earliest stage of infection
when they are most likely to pass on the disease. In order to detect HIV-1 in recently infected individuals the researchers developed an assay that can detect the presence of the virus in whole blood or plasma.
The platform is a disposable flexible polyester chip with implanted electrodes. HIV-1 antibodies are added to whole blood
In addition to detecting early stage infection, the electrical readout is much simpler and less expensive than current assays.
CD4+T lymphocyte capture and detectionaccurate CD4+T cell count is essential for HIV-1 diagnosis and treatment monitoring.
World health organization guidelines recommend antiretroviral therapy for individuals with a CD4+T cell count of less than 500 cells/ml.
and S. aureus are the most common bacterial pathogens that cause food poisoning, skin infections and blood infections.
The group developed a sensitive biosensing platform that detects E coli by the aggregation of nanoparticles on cellulose Paper gold nanoparticles are covered with surface molecules that bind to E coli bacteria.
of the Demirici Bio-Acoustic-MEMS in Medicine Laboratory at Stanford School of medicine,"is to simplify the techniques that both capture the biotarget
These platform technologies can be applied potentially broadly to other diseases such detecting oncogenic viruses such as KSHV, HPV, HBV and HCV,
#3d'organoids'grown from patient tumors could personalize drug screening Three-dimensional cultures (or'organoids')derived from the tumors of cancer patients closely replicate key properties of the original tumors,
reveals a study. These'organoid'cultures are amenable to large-scale drug screens for the detection of genetic changes associated with drug sensitivity
and pave the way for personalized treatment approaches that could optimize clinical outcomes in cancer patients."
"This is the first time that a collection of cancer organoids, or a living biobank, has been derived from patient tumors,
"says senior study author Mathew Garnett, a geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.""We believe that these organoids are an important new tool in the arsenal of cancer biologists
and may ultimately improve our ability to develop more effective cancer treatments.""To study the causes of cancer
and develop new cancer treatments, many laboratories use experimental model systems such as cells grown from patient tumors.
However, currently available cell lines have been derived under suboptimal conditions and therefore fail to reflect important features of tumor cells.
As a result, it has been challenging to predict the drug sensitivity of individual patients based on their unique spectrum of genetic mutations.
In recent years, scientists have developed organoid cell culture systems as an alternative approach to grow normal and diseased tissue in a dish.
In contrast to cell lines organoids display the hallmarks of the original tissue in terms of its 3d architecture,
whether these cultures could potentially bridge the gap between cancer genetics and patient outcomes. In the new study, the researchers grew 22 organoids derived from tumor tissue from 20 patients with colorectal cancer
and then sequenced genomic DNA isolated from these cultures. The genetic mutations in the organoid cultures closely matched those in the corresponding tumor biopsies and agreed well with previous large-scale analyses of colorectal cancer mutations.
These findings confirm that the cultures faithfully capture the genomic features of the tumors from
which they are derived as well as much of the genomic diversity associated with colorectal cancer. To link drug sensitivity to genetic changes,
the researchers next screened the responses of the organoids to 83 experimental and approved cancer drugs.
indicating that the subset of cancer patients with RNF43 mutations would strongly benefit from a drug that inhibits a protein called porcupine."
"At some point in the future, this approach may be suitable for modeling individual patient response to cancer therapies to inform clinical treatment,
Moving forward, the researchers plan to expand the panel of existing colon organoids as well as develop an organoid biobank for other tumor types."
"Cancer is a diverse and complex disease and having a large collection of organoids is necessary to encompass this diversity to enable scientists
By increasing the stiffness of erythrocytes infected by the causal agent of malaria, Viagra favors their elimination from the blood circulation
and Tropical Medicine, could lead to a treatment to reduce the spread of malaria within a population.
Their work is published in PLOS Pathogens on 7 may 2015. Plasmodium falciparum the parasite that causes malaria, has a complex developmental cycle that is partially completed in humans and partially in the anopheline mosquito.
Treatments for malaria target the asexual forms of this parasite that cause symptoms, but not the sexual forms transmitted from a human to a mosquito when it bites.
Eradication of this disease thus necessitates the development of new types of treatments against sexual forms of the parasite
in order to block transmission and thus prevent dissemination of the disease within the population. The sexual forms of the parasite develop in human erythrocytes sequestered in the bone marrow before they are released into the blood.
They are then accessible to mosquitoes which can ingest them when they bite (see the top of the image on page 2)
This discovery could help find new ways to stop the spread of malaria in a population.
#Urine test for early stage pancreatic cancer possible after biomarker discovery A team at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, has shown that the three-protein'signature'can both identify the most common
--and distinguish between this cancer and the inflammatory condition chronic pancreatitis, which can be hard to tell apart.
while patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis had significantly lower levels than cancer patients. When combined, the three proteins formed a robust panel that can detect patients with stages I-II pancreatic cancer with over 90 per cent accuracy.
With few specific symptoms even at a later stage of the disease, more than 80 per cent of people with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed
when the cancer has already spread. This means they are not eligible for surgery to remove the tumour--currently the only potentially curative treatment.
The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer in the UK is the lowest of any common cancer, standing at 3 per cent.
This figure has improved barely in 40 years. There is no early diagnostic test available. Lead researcher, Dr Tatjana Crnogorac-Jurcevic, said:"
people at higher risk of developing the disease include those with a family history of pancreatic cancer, heavy smokers, the obese and people over 50 years with new-onset diabetes.
if the 3-biomarker signature is present during the latency period--the time between the genetic changes that will cause the cancer to develop and the clinical presentation."
"For a cancer with no early stage symptoms, it's a huge challenge to diagnose pancreatic cancer sooner,
"says co-author and Director of Barts Cancer Institute, Professor Nick Lemoine.""With pancreatic cancer, patients are diagnosed usually
when the cancer is already at a terminal stage, but if diagnosed at stage 2,
Early diagnosis is an important part of our overall efforts against this aggressive cancer, alongside developing new treatments to tackle the disease once diagnosis is made.
It underlines the importance of increased research efforts to help improve survival rates.""Many of the urine samples from healthy individuals tested by Tanja's team were donated from the charity's own supporter community,
3-D printed'tissue'to help combat disease A bench-top brain that accurately reflects actual brain tissue would be significant for researching not only the effect of drugs,
but brain disorders like schizophrenia, and degenerative brain disease. Researchers have completed now 3-D printing a six-layered structure similar to brain tissue, in
which cells are placed accurately and remain in their designated layer. Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) have taken a step closer to meeting this challenge,
Pharmaceutical companies spend millions of dollars testing therapeutic drugs on animals only to discover in human trials that the drug has an altogether different level of effectiveness.
but brain disorders like schizophrenia, and degenerative brain disease. ACES Director and research author Professor Gordon Wallace said that the breakthrough is significant progress in the quest to create a bench-top brain that will enable important insights into brain function,
in addition to providing an experimental test bed for new drugs and electroceuticals.""We are still a long way from printing a brain
Various sight recovery therapies are being developed by companies around the world, offering new hope for people who are blind.
what vision would be like after two different types of sight recovery therapies. Lead author Ione Fine,
if they undergo sight restoration surgery, an invasive and costly procedure.""This is a really difficult decision to make,
"These devices involve long surgeries, and they don't restore anything close to normal vision. The more information patients have, the better."
Loss of rods and cones is the primary cause of vision loss in diseases such as macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa.
But those diseases leave most remaining neurons within the retina relatively intact, and various technologies under development aim to restore vision by targeting the surviving cells.
Fine said better simulations can provide valuable information about how implants need to be improved to produce more natural vision."
we're just shooting in the dark in trying to improve these implants
#Small tilt in magnets makes them viable memory chips University of California, Berkeley, researchers have discovered a new way to switch the polarization of nanomagnets,
not only for a range of neuropsychiatric disorders such as ADHD, eating disorders and anxiety disorders, but also for more common problems involving maladaptive daily decisions about drug or alcohol use, gambling or credit card binges.
Importantly, lesions to other parts of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, known to be involved in certain aspects of decision-making,
and those with brain disease,"said Prof. Yogita Chudasama, of Mcgill's Psychology department and the lead researcher on the paper."
to be a therapeutic target in human patient groups
#Missing piece surfaces in the puzzle of autism A study carried out by the Laboratoire Neurobiologie des Interactions Cellulaires et Neurophysiopathologie (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université),
in collaboration with clinicians from Marseilles Public Hospitals (AP-HM) and scientists from the Salk Institute in San diego (US), has revealed a new gene that plays a crucial role during early development in humans and
whose under-expression may induce certain autistic traits. This work is published on 4 august 2015 in Molecular Psychiatry.
Understanding the mechanisms that underlie autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which affect 7. 6 million people according to the World health organization,
is a major challenge. Characterized by heterogeneous symptoms and a multifactorial origin, this complex condition evolves during brain development.
in order to determine new genes involved in this disease. Easily accessible from nasal biopsies, these cells--which belong to nerve tissues
and can differentiate into neurons--constitute an interesting model to identify the genes and proteins whose expression is deregulated in patients with ASD.
In these different organisms, under-expression of the enzyme induced hypersensitivity to oxidative stress (i e. to the toxicity of free radicals), a smaller number of synapses and abnormal neurotransmission due to a reduction in the number of vesicles carrying neurotransmitters.
The involvement of this enzyme in susceptibility to oxidative stress, which has frequently been observed in autistic children, its association with gastrointestinal diseases
--which often accompany autistic disorders --and its role in nerve development and neurotransmission mean it is an ideal candidate for deregulation of its expression to lead to the abnormal brain development observed in ASD.
in the longer term, lead to the development of therapeutic tools and new diagnostic methods d
Obtained in collaboration with Juanma Vaquerizas from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine (Münster, Germany),
"This expansion and contraction of aluminum particles generates great mechanical stress, which can cause electrical contacts to disconnect.
and give rise to mature cells, even in the absence of injury or disease.""Nusse and his colleagues reported their findings August 5, 2015, in the journal Nature.
The lab is now investigating how the newly identified stem cells might contribute to regeneration of liver tissue after injury.
whether liver cancers tend to originate in these replicating cells, as opposed to more mature hepatocytes,
This deeper understanding of how cells become differentiated is extremely important when considering therapeutic potentials.
#Super-small needle technology for the brain However, one challenge is reducing the tissue/neuron damage associated with needle penetration, particularly for chronic insert experiment and future medical applications.
In addition, as an actual needle application, we demonstrated fluorescenctce particle depth injection into the brain in vivo,
as well as in nine renowned academic hospitals s
#Scientists determine how antibiotic gains cancer-killing sulfur atoms In a discovery with implications for future drug design,
scientists have shown an unprecedented mechanism for how a natural antibiotic with antitumor properties incorporates sulfur into its molecular structure, an essential ingredient of its antitumor activity.
This new discovery could open the way to incorporating sulfur into other natural products, potentially advancing new therapies for indications beyond cancer."
A number of compounds that contain sulfur have proven useful in the treatment of conditions ranging from acne and eczema to arthritis and cancer."
"With many other natural products, sulfur could add other therapeutic properties. This is the beauty of fundamental research--it lays the foundation to create novel technologies that enable innovative translational research with implications far beyond the original discovery."
#Engineering a permanent solution to genetic diseases In his mind, Basil Hubbard can already picture a new world of therapeutic treatments for millions of patients just over the horizon.
It's a future in which diseases like muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and many others are treated permanently through the science of genome engineering.
Thanks to his latest work, Hubbard is bringing that future closer to reality. Hubbard's research, published in the journal Nature Methods, demonstrates a new technology advancing the field of genome engineering.
"There is a trend in the scientific community to develop therapeutics in a more rational fashion,
"We're moving towards a very logical type of treatment for genetic diseases, where we can actually say,
'Your disease is caused by a mutation in gene X, and we're going to correct this mutation to treat it'."
'"In theory, genome engineering will eventually allow us to permanently cure genetic diseases by editing the specific faulty gene (s)."Genome engineering involves the targeted, specific modification of an organism's genetic information.
and may one day revolutionize medical care. One of the obstacles still to be addressed in the field before it can see widespread use in humans is how to ensure the proteins only affect the specific target genes in need of repair.
but more improvements are needed to ensure off-target genes aren't modified--a result that could potentially cause serious health problems itself.
"Currently much of the research in the field of genome engineering is focused on treating monogenic diseases--diseases that involve a single gene--as they're much easier for researchers to successfully target.
Examples include diseases such as hemophilia, sickle cell anemia, muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis. While the field is still in its relative infancy,
gene editing could possibly provide a permanent cure for a lot of different diseases, "says Hubbard.""We still have to overcome many hurdles but
I think this technology definitely has the potential to be transformative in medicine
#Mechanism of epidemic bacterial disease identified Through identification of increased toxin production by epidemic forms of group A streptococcus (the"flesh-eating"bacterium),
for the first time scientists are able to pinpoint the molecular events that contribute to large intercontinental epidemics of disease.
The study was based on sequencing almost 5, 000 group A streptococcus genomes collected over decades.
Researchers from Houston Methodist Research Institute, Houston Methodist Hospital, institutions in Finland and Iceland, and the U s. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases report their discoveries and implications for future studies of epidemic diseases in an upcoming Journal of Clinical Investigation (early online).
According to James M. Musser, M d.,Ph d.,principal investigator of the study and chair of the Department of Pathology and Genomic medicine at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, the collaborative research showed, at the precise nucleotide level,
genetic changes that contributed to large epidemics of group A streptococcus (GAS).""These findings now give us the opportunity to begin to develop new translational medicine tools
and strategies,"said Musser.""We can use this information to develop novel therapeutics, advanced diagnostic techniques and new ways to prevent,
or dampen, epidemics.""According to the World health organization, GAS causes more than 600 million cases of human disease every year.
The majority of cases are group A streptococcus pharyngitis, more commonly known as strep throat. But group A strep is also the major cause of preventable childhood heart disease caused by rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.
On the far end of the infection severity spectrum, group A streptococcus also causes necrotizing fasciitis("flesh-eating"disease), an infection with a high mortality rate.
The collaborating team of international scientists found that group A streptococcus was an excellent model organism to study the molecular basis of epidemic bacterial infections.
Researchers have known for more than a century that this pathogenic bacterium can cause epidemics but no one has been able to fully address the cause.
Now with next generation sequencing, scientists are able to sequence the entire genome of the bacteria,
just as is done in humans. Group A streptococcus was selected as the model organism for study due to the availability of comprehensive strain samples collected over decades,
and its relatively small genome, which allows the genome of thousands of strains to be sequenced completely relatively rapidly.
was that changes in the genetic make-up of the GAS pathogen had underpinned new epidemics. To address this hypothesis
the collaborating international team sequenced the genome of thousands of disease-causing strains, precisely defining every base pair mutation in the strains."
"The surprise was that the changes involved alterations in the genes encoding two potent toxins that contribute to human infections,
who is director for the Center for Molecular and Translational Human Infectious disease Research at Houston Methodist.
The researchers found that in the epidemic form of group A streptococcus, which can manifest as necrotizing fasciitis,
or"flesh-eating"disease, there were two significant and crucial changes within the regulatory region of the epidemic strains.
All three of these SNPS contributed to building a pathogenic organism that is a more virulent machine capable of causing epidemics."
Musser and team are hopeful findings from their model study will allow other infectious disease researchers to use analogous strategies that focus on other pathogens, like Staphylococcus aureus (the leading cause of skin and soft-tissue infections),
and antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumonia or Escherichia coli i
#Device may detect urinary tract infections faster Sepsis is a major killer and accounts for about half of the hospital deaths in the US by some estimates.
Hospital patients often acquire urinary tract infections via infected catheters and so untreated infections are a huge problem faced by healthcare providers around the world.
Early diagnosis could save lives and reduce healthcare costs. With this motivation in mind, a team of researchers in Germany and Ireland set out to speed up the detection process for bacteria that cause urinary tract infections.
Arraytheir medical diagnostics device is designed to harness centrifugal force--akin to the circular swing of A chair-o-Plane"carnival ride
in which a fast rotation creates a force that causes the seats to drift radially away from the ride's center--to capture the tiny bacteria directly from patients'samples of bodily fluidsn this case, urine.
The work involves extremely small sample sizes, on the scale of a small raindrop, so the device needed to be a microfluidic one."
"Our device works by loading a few microliters of a patient's urine sample into a tiny chip,
"explained Ulrich-Christian Schröder, a Ph d. student at the Jena University Hospital and Leibniz Institute of technology in Germany.
"said Ute Neugebauer, group leader at the Jena University Hospital and Leibniz Institute of technology. What exactly does the team's medical device detect?"
"In our pilot study, we were able to identify Escherichia coli (more commonly known as E coli) and Enterococcus faecalis--two species known to cause urinary tract infections--within 70 minutes,
directly from patients'urine samples,"said Schröder. The speedy diagnosis marks a tremendous reduction in the wait time compared to the lengthy lag--often 24 hours
or more--associated with methods routinely used to identify bacteria and diagnose urinary tract infections today, so the team's device shows great potential for improving the future of medical diagnostics.
The team envisions general practitioners, a k a. family doctors using the device to rapidly --while a patient waits--identify the bacteria causing an infection directly within the patient's bodily fluid
so that they can prescribe the appropriate medication and treatment.""Our pilot study brings us a step closer toward realizing this vision,
"said Neugebauer. The team will continue toward its goal of developing an easy-to-use spectroscopy-based point-of-care medical device for fast and reliable diagnostics."
"The next step will involve implementing antibiotic susceptibility testing and automating the sample pre-treatment steps,
"Neugebauer explained.""Our ultimate vision is to apply the concepts behind our device to enable diagnostics devices for use with other bodily fluids. u
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