leaving them more open to illness. Most sleep research focuses on the effects of sleep deprivation
or an overactive response in others, suggesting the altered circadian cycle made them potentially less able to fight illness
facilitate the development of therapeutics that prevent the proliferation of harmful viruses. The scientific paper entitled"Mutational interference mapping experiment (MIME) for studying RNA structure
Many of the most threatening diseases are transmitted by so-called RNA VIRUSES, such as HIV, influenza, and hepatitis C. What they have in common is that the genome does not consist of DNA, but RNA.
Using MIME, scientists can determine how the genetic material of a virus is incorporated into nascent virions at the end of its reproductive cycle.
This has great significance for medical practice: If it was possible to stop this process, e g.,
, by introducing therapeutic (e g. COMPLEMENTARY RNA, the virus could be rendered harmless. Currently, many RNA-based therapies are under investigation worldwide.
The MIME method can make a significant contribution to this research by helping to identify the appropriate RNA segments.
which mutations are tolerated by the virus and which not, a factor that is useful for the design of therapeutic RNA,
complete paralysis has regained enough voluntary control to actively work with a robotic device designed to enhance mobility.
In addition to the robotic device, the man was aided by a novel noninvasive spinal stimulation technique that does not require surgery.
That earlier achievement is believed to be the first time people who are paralyzed completely have been able to relearn voluntary leg movements without surgery.
and suffered a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down. At UCLA, Pollock made substantial progress after receiving a few weeks of physical training without spinal stimulation
The research will be published by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the world's largest society of biomedical engineers."
"It will be difficult to get people with complete paralysis to walk completely independently, but even if they don't accomplish that,
and quality of life,"said V. Reggie Edgerton, senior author of the research and a UCLA distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology, neurobiology and neurosurgery.
"We need to expand the clinical toolbox available for people with spinal cord injury and other diseases."
and we are encouraged by these findings to broaden our understanding of possible treatment options for paralysis,
"Given the complexities of a spinal cord injury, there will be no one-size-fits-all cure but rather a combination of different interventions to achieve functional recovery."
and approaches to remind the spine of its potential even years after an injury, "he said.
"This is a great example of a therapeutic approach that combines two very different modalities--neuromodulation
This multi-device approach, much like multi-drug therapy, may ultimately benefit patients with impaired mobility in a wide variety of rehabilitation settings."
"Neurorecovery Technologies, a medical technology company Edgerton founded, designs and develops devices that help restore movement in patients with paralysis. The company provided the device used to stimulate the spinal cord in combination with the Ekso in this research.
he now believes it is possible to significantly improve quality of life for patients with severe spinal cord injuries,
mobile microscope could significantly improve malaria diagnoses and treatment in developing countries that often lack the resources to address the life-threatening disease,
says a Texas A&m University biomedical engineer who has created the tool. The add-on device, which is similar in look
and feel to a protective phone case, makes use of a smart phone's camera features to produce high-resolution images of objects 10 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair,
accurate diagnosis. While polarized light has been preferred the option for malaria detection due to its increased sensitivity,
"MOPID could represent a significant advancement in the detection methods for malaria, a disease that the World health organization estimates was responsible for 584,000 deaths in 2013,
along with an estimated 198 million new cases in that span of time. Given those numbers, a dire need exists for a low-cost, accurate and portable method of detection, particularly in areas of the world with few resources,
While failure to treat malaria can be fatal the administering of unnecessary malaria medications as a result of misdiagnoses can results in new, drug-resistant strains of the disease in addition to increasing costs for malaria medications, Coté notes.
Coté's solution takes advantage of existing mobile phone technology and networks--something to which a whopping 75 percent of the world has access.
This ever-increasing access to mobile networks and the fact that most mobile phones are equipped with advanced camera features make mobile phones the ideal platform for advanced imaging applications such as MOPID,
and specificity to detect malaria with both ios -and Android-based devices and requires less user expertise than traditional microscopy,
That user friendly aspect, coupled with the system's portability and expected low cost of about $10 per unit, makes it an easily adoptable technology in low-resource areas ravaged by malaria,
complexity and lack of expertly trained technicians can often prohibit the use of a polarized microscopy technique or even traditional laboratory microscopy as the standard of diagnosis,
while being worn on the wrist could bridge the communications gap between the deaf and those who don't know sign language,
Researchers discover a gene variant that provides a delaying mechanism for Alzheimer's disease Medical research has yet to discover an Alzheimer's treatment that effectively slows the disease's progression,
The findings appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. Lead author Matthew Lalli who earned his Ph d. working in UCSB's Kosik Research Group,
These individuals have a rare gene mutation that leads to full-blown disease around age 49. However, in a few outliers, the disease manifests up to a decade later."
"We wanted to study those who got the disease later to see if they had a protective modifier gene,
"said co-author Kenneth S. Kosik, co-director of UCSB's Neuroscience Research Institute and a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental biology."
We hypothesized the existence of gene variant actually pushes the disease onset as much as 10 years later."
the UCSB researchers collaborated with UC San francisco to study 150 individuals affected with Alzheimer's or dementia.
whether blood transfusion from young individuals to older ones confers benefits.""The results of this work may provide additional evidence that eotaxin plays a role in the deleterious effects of aging,
then we can modify the level of eotaxin in individuals to treat the disease. But our results must be replicated
#How anesthesia may fight lung infections: Mouse study The Johns Hopkins and University of Buffalo research team built its experiments on previous research showing that children with upper viral respiratory tract infections who were exposed to the anesthetic halothane during minor surgical procedures had significantly less respiratory symptoms
and a shorter duration of symptoms compared with children who did not receive halothane during surgeries.
Arraythe team discovered that giving the animals volatile anesthetics, such as halothane, led to decreased bacterial burden and lung injury following infection.
The researchers report that the anesthetics augmented the antibacterial immune response after influenza viral infection by blocking chemical signaling that involves type I interferon
a group of proteins that help regulate the activity of the immune system. Using a combination of genetic, molecular,
as if the animals were infected never with a prior influenza virus. Array"Our study is giving us more information about how volatile anesthetics work with respect to the immune system,
suggest that volatile anesthetics may someday be helpful for combatting seasonal and pandemic influenza, particularly when there are flu vaccine shortages or limitations."
"A therapy based on these inhaled drugs may help deal with new viral and bacterial strains that are resistant to conventional vaccines
and treatments and could be a game changer in terms of our preparedness for future pandemics and seasonal flu outbreaks because it's focusing on host immunity,
"says Chakravarthy.""We hope our study opens the door to the development of new drugs
and therapies that could change the infectious disease landscape.""The investigators say they are currently testing an oral small molecule immune modulator in phase 2 clinical trials that acts like volatile anesthetics to help reduce secondary infections after someone becomes sick with the flu u
#Mathematical'Gingko trees'reveal mutations in single cells that characterize diseases A new interactive analysis program called Gingko has been released that reduces the uncertainty of single-cell analysis
and provides a simple way to visualize patterns in copy number mutations across populations of cells.
disease can occur. Such mutations have been linked not only with cancer but a host of other illnesses, including autism and schizophrenia.
Researchers can learn a lot by analyzing CNVS in bulk samples--from a tumor biopsy for example--but they can learn more by investigating CNVS in individual cells."
"You may think that every cell in a tumor would be the same, but that's actually not the case,"says CSHL Associate professor Michael Schatz."
"We're realizing that there can be a lot of changes inside even a single tumor, "says Schatz."
"If you're going to treat cancer, you need to diagnose exactly what subclass of cancer you have."
"Simultaneously employing different drugs to target different cancer subclasses could prevent remission, scientists have proposed. One powerful single-cell analytic technique for exploring CNV is whole genome sequencing.
The challenge is that, before sequencing can be done, the cell's DNA has to be amplified many times over.
This process is rife with errors, with some arbitrary chunks of DNA being amplified more than others. In addition, because many labs use their own software to examine CNVS,
there is little consistency in how researchers analyze their results. To address these two challenges, Schatz and his colleagues created Gingko.
which has documented many well therapeutic benefits.""We like to think our Gingko'trees'will provide benefits as well,
Right now, CNV is not a commonly used diagnostic measurement in the clinic.""We're looking into the best way of collecting samples,
He adds that CSHL has collaborations with many hospitals, notably Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the North Shore-LIJ Health System,
to bring single-cell analysis to the clinic. For Schatz, Gingko represents a culmination of CSHL's efforts over the past decade--spearheaded by CSHL Professor Michael Wigler--to pioneer techniques for studying single cells."
and explore applications from large-scale construction to microscopic structures for biomedical devices or robotics.""All of these ideas apply from the nanoscale
#Study creates cell immunity to parasite that infects 50 million There are two common approaches to protecting humans from infectious disease:
Targeting pathogens and parasites with medicines like antibiotics, or dealing with the conditions that allow transmission.
Adjusting the landscape of the human body to remove the mechanism that allows pathogens to cause disease.
"says Dan Theodorescu, MD, Phd, director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center.""Bill Petri and I had been social friends for years--Christmas parties, that kind of thing.
MD, Phd, chief of the Division of Infectious diseases & International Health at the University of Virginia led to the idea of applying an innovative cancer science technique to the study of infectious disease.
which infects 50 million people and causes 40,000-110,000 deaths via severe diarrhea worldwide.""Chelsea is a fearless experimenter.
She took a library of cells that Dan had developed in his work with bladder cancer
"We do this all the time in cancer research, "Theodorescu says.""Commonly, we're looking for genes that,
"In this case the analogue of chemotherapy was the infectious, dangerous pathogen.""This amoeba is a cluster bomb--a voracious killer.
and at that point there's no plan B. This could be the plan B--targeting the human genes that enable the parasite to cause disease."
what she calls"mini guts"to test therapeutics that may be useful in human patients. And technological advances make this study's general technique more efficient,
"This is a major finding with translational implications for this infection that causes so many deaths worldwide, but also proof that this cancer-science approach can be used to explore genetic mechanisms of resistance in the field of infectious disease,
"Theodorescu says. The field of infectious disease has been focused on the infection, targeting pathogens and their transmission.
This study shows that in addition to characteristics of the parasite, mortality due to disease can be prevented by manipulating characteristics of the host t
#Super-stretchable metallic conductors for flexible electronics Washington state University researchers have discovered how to stretch metal films used in flexible electronics to twice their size without breaking.
The discovery could lead to dramatic improvements and addresses one of the biggest challenges in flexible electronics, an industry still in its infancy with applications such as bendable batteries, robotic skins, wearable monitoring devices and sensors,
#Pancreatic cancer subtypes discovered in largest gene expression analysis of the disease to date Dense surrounding tissue can block drugs from reaching pancreatic cancer tumors,
but it can also help prevent the cancer from spreading. Now a new study by UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers and collaborators helps explain the conflicting role of the surrounding tissue known as stroma.
In the study, the researchers revealed that based on molecular characteristics, there are two subtypes of pancreatic cancer stroma.
researchers reveal findings of both new subtypes of stroma and two subtypes of pancreatic cancer tumors.
The findings could help doctors tailor treatments to individual patients. And the researchers say that could be particularly important for a disease that has only a 7 percent five-year survival rate."
"Right now, we still treat pancreatic cancers as one entity, while for some other cancers, we personalize treatment based on an individual patient's tumor genetics
or other characteristics,"said the study's senior author Jen Jen Yeh, MD, a UNC Lineberger member and an associate professor and the vice chair for research in the UNC School of medicine Department of Surgery."
"We believe these results will set the groundwork for future clinical trials, allow treatments to be assigned based on the subtypes,
and guide the development of new therapies.""The study reveals the most rigorously validated classification system for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma to date.
Previous studies, such as a 2011 study led by Eric A. Collisson, MD, an assistant professor at the UCSF School of medicine, have identified subtypes of pancreatic cancer.
"The issue is that pancreatic cancer is a particularly difficult cancer to analyze because of its confounding stroma,
either promote or be a barrier to tumor spread, "Yeh said.""We are seeing two distinct types of stroma in patients."
"Their analysis also revealed two subtypes of pancreatic cancer tumors. One subtype, called"basal-like is linked to worse outcomes for patients.
Forty-four percent of patients with the basal-like subtype lived one year after surgery,
"Basal-like tumors also trended toward a better response to adjuvant therapy.""If we know that your tumor is aggressive,
then it may be important to treat your whole body first with neoadjuvant therapy, which is given therapy prior to surgery,
as opposed to just trying to remove the tumor with surgery at the outset, "said Yeh, who,
in addition to her role in the Department of Surgery, also has an appointment in the UNC School of medicine Pharmacology Department."
"In addition, the basal-like subtype is very similar to basal breast and bladder cancers, which respond to therapies differently than other tumor subtypes,
so we are interested very in seeing whether or not this is true for pancreatic cancer as well.""Overall, the findings suggest that treatment decisions should be based on both a patient's stroma and tumor subtype.
Yeh said the researchers will be launching clinical trials to investigate how patients with the different subtypes respond to treatment."
"For pancreatic cancer in particular, it's a race against the clock, every therapy counts, so you want your first therapy to work,
"she said.""With this cancer, you don't have a lot of time to try different therapies. If a patient is given a therapy that is unsuccessful, that is time in
which the patient's disease has progressed. So the goal is to start patients on the right therapy from the get-go
#New molecule found to prevent preterm birth Premature births are linked intimately with inflammation of the uterine tissue, a biological response
which induces contractions and preterm labor. In their search for a mean to prevent this phenomenon
and complications related to deliveries occurring before 37 weeks of gestation, researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine and University of Montreal discovered an agent that shows efficacy in inhibiting inflammation
and preventing or delaying uterine contractions and premature delivery in murine models--without adversely affecting the fetus or the mother.
This discovery is a giant step towards preventing prematurity, which is the world's leading cause of infant death and the origin of potentially severe,
which led them to run preclinical trials in which they tested therapeutic agents known to target that messenger
--although they were used traditionally never such an application. However, their effect was found to be negligible on inflammation and contractility of the uterine cells,
Its physiological role is critical in protecting the vulnerable fetus against infections, and ensuring that cells will survive inflammation
scientists have developed another therapeutic agent, which proved much more effective, in addition to being safer than the existing molecules designed for the same target."
Phosphonates are an abundant and diverse class of natural signaling molecules that have already proved useful to medicine and agriculture
and one as an herbicide--and another one is now in clinical trials to treat malaria,
which the team named argolaphos, was found to be most potent against three types of bacteria that cause illness:
or inspiration for, nearly two-thirds of all human medicines, yet research in this area has dwindled in recent years due to, among other reasons, high costs and increasing rates of rediscovery,
#New drug-like compounds may improve odds of men battling prostate cancer, researchers find Researchers at Southern Methodist University,
Dallas, have discovered three new drug-like compounds that could ultimately offer better odds of survival to prostate cancer patients.
and developed into medicines that target a protein in the human body that is responsible for chemotherapy resistance in cancers,
So far there's no approved drug on the market that reverses cancer chemotherapy resistance caused by P-glycoprotein
"The problem when a person has cancer is that the treatment itself is composed of cellular toxins--the chemotherapeutics that prevent the cells from dividing.
Usually upon the first chemo treatment the cancer responds well, and initially goes away. Ideally it doesn't come back,
"Sometimes, however, the cancer returns,"she said.""The reason often is that some of the cancer cells"learn,"after the first rounds of chemotherapy,
"As a result, P-gp causes resistance of the diseased cells to a majority of drugs currently available for the treatment of cancer,
as well as drugs used for treatment of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. Using computer-generated model speeds up the drug discovery process The new drug-like compounds discovered by Vogel
We still have to develop them before they can go in the clinic, "Vogel said.""But what we know now is that they're not toxic--they have low toxicity to noncancerous cells,
so it can eventually be delivered to patients as a therapeutic drug. In the case reported here,
commonly used to treat prostate cancer patients. Also, each was tested on a companion cell line already multi-drug resistant,
they were able to push back the sensitivity of the resistant cancer line to the level of the non-resistant one."
just as if the cancer was seeing the chemotherapy for the first time, "Vogel said. About 14 percent of men will be diagnosed over their lifetime with prostate cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Survival is diagnosed highest if early before it has spread, the institute reports s
#New drug-like compounds may improve odds of men battling prostate cancer, researchers find Researchers at Southern Methodist University,
Dallas, have discovered three new drug-like compounds that could ultimately offer better odds of survival to prostate cancer patients.
The drug-like compounds can be modified and developed into medicines that target a protein in the human body that is responsible for chemotherapy resistance in cancers,
said biochemist Pia D. Vogel, lead author on the scientific paper reporting the discovery. So far there's no approved drug on the market that reverses cancer chemotherapy resistance caused by P-glycoprotein
or P-gp for short, said Vogel, a biochemistry professor at SMU. One potential drug, Tariquidar, is currently in clinical trials,
"The problem when a person has cancer is that the treatment itself is composed of cellular toxins--the chemotherapeutics that prevent the cells from dividing.
Usually upon the first chemo treatment the cancer responds well, and initially goes away. Ideally it doesn't come back,
"Sometimes, however, the cancer returns,"she said.""The reason often is that some of the cancer cells"learn,"after the first rounds of chemotherapy,
"As a result, P-gp causes resistance of the diseased cells to a majority of drugs currently available for the treatment of cancer,
as well as drugs used for treatment of infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. Using computer-generated model speeds up the drug discovery process The new drug-like compounds discovered by Vogel
We still have to develop them before they can go in the clinic, "Vogel said.""But what we know now is that they're not toxic--they have low toxicity to noncancerous cells,
so it can eventually be delivered to patients as a therapeutic drug. In the case reported here,
commonly used to treat prostate cancer patients. Also, each was tested on a companion cell line already multi-drug resistant,
they were able to push back the sensitivity of the resistant cancer line to the level of the non-resistant one."
just as if the cancer was seeing the chemotherapy for the first time, "Vogel said. About 14 percent of men will be diagnosed over their lifetime with prostate cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Survival is diagnosed highest if early before it has spread, the institute reports s
#Nano-dunes with the ion beam Many semiconductor devices in modern technology--from integrated circuits to solar cells and LEDS--are based on nanostructures.
In 2013, invasive MRSA infections were estimated responsible for an 9, 937 deaths in the U s. Although current infection rates are declining, the majority of these deaths, about 8,
150, were associated with inpatient stays in health care facilities, according to the Active Bacterial Core surveillance report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The discovery, published in Medicinal Chemistry Communications, shows that the potential new antibiotics are unlike contemporary antibiotics
because they contain iridium, a silvery-white transition metal. New transition metal complexes do not easily breakdown,
which is important for delivery of antibiotics to where they are needed to fight infections in the body.
Even though these compounds contain iridium, further testing by the researchers shows that they are nontoxic to animals and animal cells.
stating that it"represents a serious threat to public health and the economy.""In March, a National Action Plan outlined critical next steps for key federal agencies and departments.
According to estimates cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antibiotic resistance is a problem that adds around $20 billion annually to health care costs in the U s."The biggest question scientists have to ask to tackle antibiotic resistance is,
how can we stay on top of the bacteria? Fortunately, these new organometallic antibiotics are coming at a time
In both the U s. and Europe, the spread of MRSA is a major threat to people in hospitals and other health care facilities.
the infection can be life-threatening and cause pneumonia and infections in the bloodstream and in surgical wounds, according to the CDC.
Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium commonly found on the skin and nose which is how it spreads into hospitals and other medical facilities."
"Before you go into the hospital for surgery, many hospitals will do a nasal swab, and if you have staph,
they will treat you before surgery because it could be transferred into your body and cause serious infection,
"Falkinham said d
#First realization of an electric circuit with a magnetic insulator using spin waves Researchers at the University of Groningen, Utrecht University,
the Université de Bretagne Occidentale and the FOM Foundation have found that it is possible to make an electric circuit with a magnetic insulator.
This was deemed first impossible. The circuit is realized using spin waves: wavelike perturbations in the magnetic properties of a material.
The detection process is exactly opposite to the spin wave injection: a spin wave collides at the interface between YIG and platinum,
#Lung'filtering'technique can reduce transplant rejection University of Manchester researchers have used a new technique to recondition poorly functioning lungs
and remove donor white blood cells in an attempt to increase the number of lungs available for transplant,
Lung transplantation is often the only option for patients with end stage lung disease, but is limited by a shortage of donor organs.
When waiting list patients are lucky enough to receive a transplant, they need lifelong immunosuppression to prevent their own immune system from destroying the transplanted organ,
This can repair an organ that would normally be turned down for transplant. Given that 80%of donor lungs are used currently not
Dr James Fildes, from the University's Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research and the Transplant Centre at the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, led the study.
"Because the lung is a potential entry route for infection into the body, its immune response is developed highly.
"All of this makes lung transplant recipients particularly susceptible to rejection, so they require continuous immunosuppression,
which then increases the risk of infection and cancer. These immune processes are therefore very important and contribute to the outlook where only five out of ten patients will survive for at least five years."
and transplanted them either using the normal transplant method or after three hours of EVLP,
whereas in the normal transplant method, all the lungs showed signs of severe rejection. EVLP is becoming an established technique,
"EVLP opens up new possibilities in one of the most problematic areas of surgery.""Patricia Moore, 63, from Oswestry was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2011 and received a transplant in 2014.
She said:""The side-effects of immunosuppression are potentially unpleasant and the thought of the associated bronchoscopy terrifies me.
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