or stress levels in soldiers and pilots. In this study, engineers focused on uric acid, which is a marker related to diabetes and to gout.
Currently the only way to monitor the levels of uric acid in a patient is to draw blood.
and non-invasively saliva biomarkers holds considerable promise for many biomedical and fitness applications, said Wang.
Next, they collected saliva from a patient who suffers from hyperuricemia, a condition characterized by an excess of uric acid in the blood.
#Team develops quick way to determine bacteria antibiotic resistance Bacteria ability to become resistant to antibiotics is a growing issue in health care:
Staphylococcus epidermis is increasingly emerging as a cause of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections. The ability to quickly judge whether a bacteria is resistant to antibiotics could make a major difference in a patient's treatment.
Shannon Hilton and Paul Jones Staphylococcus epidermis is increasingly emerging as a cause of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections.
Mark Hayes National summary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that each year in the United states,
at least 2 million people acquire serious infections with antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. At least 23,000 people die as a direct result of these infections,
and many more die from related complications. It is not just humans that are threatened by this growing adaptation.
however, Staphylococcus epidermidis has emerged increasingly as a cause of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections. Immunocompromised patients
indwelling medical devices, and surgically implanted prostheses provide suitable environments for Staphylococcus epidermidis to propagate and form biofilms.
as a collaboration with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Alex Mclaren and his team member and bioengineer Dr. Ryan Mclemore of Banner Good samaritan Medical center, Phoenix,
along with Dr. Mark Spangehl of the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Arizona. By most metrics the antibiotic-resistant and susceptible strains of Staphylococcus epidermidis are phenotypically identical,
and the doctor is getting the right answer right away. By advancing a fundamental area of science,
This separation has significant potential implications for health care, as rapid and early detection will significantly improve therapeutic outcomes.
The current results establish a foundation for biophysical separations as a direct diagnostic tool, potentially improving nearly every figure of merit for diagnostics and antibiotic stewardship o
an assistant professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular engineering at the Georgia Institute of technology. he information we can provide could one day help nutritional epidemiologists
In practice, health professionals in the field would obtain blood samples from persons suspected of having a zinc deficiency.
lycopene and beta-carotene, are produced by genes taken from Pantoea anantis, a plant pathogen. The purple color, violacein, came from a soil bacterium.
#Brain cells get tweaked n the goresearchers from the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology (MRC CDN) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (Ioppn),
and could have implications that go far beyond basic neuroscience from informing education policy to developing new therapies for neurological disorders such as epilepsy.
and the constraints that disease and ageing impose to this multi-modal plasticity has important implications that go beyond fundamental neuroscience, from education policies to brain repair.
when we age, has enormous implications that go beyond fundamental neuroscience, from informing education policies to developing new therapies for neurological disorders such as epilepsy
#Filling a void in stem cell therapy Stem cell therapies are limited often by low survival of transplanted stem cells
and Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber, M d.,Ph d.,who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical school and Boston Children Hospital and Professor of Bioengineering
Stem cell therapies bear tremendous hopes for the repair of many tissues and bone or even the replacement of entire organs.
and function correctly at the site of injury to be useful for clinical regenerative therapies.
To improve the therapeutic ability of transplanted stem cells, Mooney team has drawn inspiration from naturally occurring stem cell iches.
#X-ray vision new method to examine Alzheimer disease brain samples Superman has an x-ray vision we all know that.
and treating such diseases as Alzheimer. It is hard to overrate discoveries like this although it is not easy to explain it to a common public.
and collected data that may resolve several current issues regarding the pathology of Alzheimer disease He also jokingly added hile Superman x-ray vision is only the stuff of comics, our method,
from a genetic mouse model of Alzheimer disease. Then scientists put new technology to its practical application.
There are mysterious iffuseplaques seen in the postmortem brains of Alzheimer disease patients that are typically undetectable using 2d imaging.
but not in later stages of the disease after the plaques have accumulated already. Scientists are certain that Scales have many advantages over current 2d imaging technologies.
it can be used to research other brain diseases as well, not only Alzheimer. It provides that kind of x-ray vision we really needed,
seeking to reach a breakthrough in treating major brain diseases t
#New method for modifying natural polymers could help bring lifesaving medications to market In drug-delivery research,
That means that patients have to ingest more of a drug to get the therapeutic dose increasing the cost, risk of side effects,
Using exosomes to hijack cell-to-cell communication Regenerative medicine using stem cells is an increasingly promising approach to treat many types of injury.
and repair paralysis. A variety of agents have been shown to induce transplanted stem cells to differentiate into neurons.
Tufts University biomedical engineers recently published the first report of a promising new way to induce human mesenchymal stem cells (or hmscs,
The biomedical engineers also showed that the exosomes contain mirnasiny pieces of RNA that regulate cell behavior
Xu work focuses on material science engineering, specifically nanoscience and its biomedical application: the development of new synthetic materials for the delivery of therapeutic proteins and genetic material.
In 2015, he received a Faculty Early Career development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF),
funding research into a new way to deliver protein-based cancer-fighting drugs and other therapeutics directly into cells.
#ab-on-a-Chiptechnology to cut costs of sophisticated tests for diseases and disorders Rutgers engineers have developed a breakthrough device that can significantly reduce the cost of sophisticated lab tests for medical disorders and diseases, such as HIV,
Lyme disease and syphilis. The new device uses miniaturized channels and valves to replace enchtopassays tests that require large samples of blood
or plastic plates with cup-like depressions. he main advantage is cost these assays are done in labs and clinics everywhere,
Until now, animal research on central nervous system disorders, such as spinal cord injury and Parkinson disease, has been limited because researchers could not extract sufficient cerebrospinal fluid to perform conventional assays. ith our technology,
The discovery could also lead to more comprehensive research on autoimmune joint diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis through animal studies.
#Researchers find biomarker for autism that may aid diagnostics By identifying a key signaling defect within a specific membrane structure in all cells, University of California,
they have found both a possible reliable biomarker for diagnosing certain forms of autism and a potential therapeutic target.
Dr. J. Jay Gargus, Ian Parker and colleagues at the UCI Center for Autism Research & Translation examined skin biopsies of patients with three very different genetic types
of the disorder (fragile X syndrome and tuberous sclerosis 1 and 2). They discovered that a cellular calcium signaling process involving the inositol trisphosphate receptor was altered very much.
This IP3R functional defect was located in the endoplasmic reticulum which is specialized among the membrane compartments in cells called organelles,
and possibly digestive and immune problems associated with autism. e believe this finding will be another arrow in the quiver for early and accurate diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders,
said Gargus, director of the Center for Autism Research & Translation and professor of pediatrics and physiology & biophysics. qually exciting,
Study results appear online in Translational Psychiatry, a Nature publication. Autism spectrum disorder is a range of complex neurodevelopmental disorders affecting 2 percent of U s. children.
The social and economic burden of ASD is enormous currently estimated at more than $66 billion per year in the U s. alone.
which impedes diagnosis and, ultimately, drug development. There simply may be too many targets, each with too small an effect.
According to Gargus, diseases of the organelles, such as the ER, are an emerging field in medicine,
with several well-recognized neurological ailments linked to two other ones, the mitochondria and lysosomes.
The IP3R controls the release of calcium from the ER. In the brain, calcium is used to communicate information within and between neurons
To see if IP3R function is altered across the autism spectrum, clinical researchers at The Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders
which is affiliated with the Center for Autism Research & Translation are currently expanding the study
and have begun to examine children with and without typical ASD for the same signaling abnormalities.
In the area of drug discovery, scientists at the Center for Autism Research & Translation continue to probe the IP3R channel,
The brains of people who have autism show signs of hyperexcitability, which is seen also in epilepsy,
a disorder increasingly found to be associated with ASD. Cells from individuals who have depressed autism exhibit levels of calcium signaling
and this might explain why these patients experience this hyperexcitability. By restoring the release of calcium from the IP3R,
More Precise Cancer Therapies UCSFUC San francisco researchers have engineered a molecular n switchthat allows tight control over the actions of T cells,
immune system cells that have shown great potential as therapies for cancer. The innovation lays the groundwork for sharply reducing severe,
and senior author of a new paper on the work. his is the first of a series of ontrol knobsour lab is trying to create so doctors might have additional command over these cells once theye inside the body. ver the past two decades
, scientists pursuing cell therapy, one branch of the burgeoning field of cancer immunotherapy, have been refining cell-surface sensors known as chimeric antigen receptors, or CARS.
Once inserted into T cells, CARS prompt these cells to home in on particular proteins found primarily in tumors,
where they launch a series of cancer-killing immune responses. Dangers of CAR T cell Therapy CAR-equipped T cells have proven to be remarkably successful in the treatment of various forms of chemotherapy-resistant leukemia
But CAR T cell therapy can cause side effects so serious that they may require monitoring in an Intensive care unit several patients have died after receiving CAR T cells
or other forms of engineered T cells. cells are really powerful beasts, said Lim. nd they can be lethal when theye activated.
Wee needed a remote control system that retains the power of these engineered T cells, but allows us to communicate specifically with them
when leukemia cells were implanted into mice. These cancer cells were powerfully and selectively eliminated by the Lim group new CAR T cells,
These combined control capabilities could be employed to manage the various side effects of CAR T therapy.
genetically engineered to carry CARS that target the patient tumor, then reinserted into the bloodstream to exert their effects.
in addition to attacking tumors directly, CAR T cells, like all T cells, release signaling molecules called cytokines, some
of which recruit additional T cells to fight the tumor. Sometimes normal cells express small amounts of a cancer-associated protein targeted by a CAR T cell.
Because CAR T cells placed in the bloodstream pass immediately through the heart and lungs, these tissues can be damaged before the CAR T cells reach their intended target elsewhere in the body.
In tumor lysis syndrome, the body is overwhelmed by toxic substances released when many tumor cells die in rapid succession.
which released cytokines summon numerous T cells to the tumor, then these newly arrived T cells release their own cytokines, and so on.
doctors may be able to precisely manage these side effects to meet individual patientsneeds. Proof of Principlelim stressed that the work reported in the new paper should be considered a proof of principle while useful for experiments,
While successful against blood cancers such as leukemia, CAR T cells have shown so far less efficacy against solid tumors that effect the colon, breast, prostrate, brain and other tissues.
The remote control strategy developed by Lim group may permit researchers to develop more powerful versions of CAR T cells that could attack these solid tumors,
so that the cells will respond to multiple characteristics that are distinctive to an individual patient tumor,
quite powerful effects even if for a subset of patients or for certain types of cancer is really remarkable,
Certain diseases, including cancer, involves changes in DNA methylation patterns, and the ability to document these alterations aid in the development of novel therapies. ethylation is really key in development,
in disease, and in cancer, says Whitehead Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch, who is also a professor of biology at MIT. his reporter is a very important tool.
We believe it will allow us to look in a very detailed way at issues like imprinting during development
and screening for the activation of genes silenced in diseases like cancer. This method will allow us to see which drug will activate a given gene.
An individual cells rely on the same set of genes as instructions for protein production. The differences between a muscle cell and a brain cell are attributable to differences in gene expression;
Stelzer and Shivalila describe their work in this week issue of the journal Cell. harmaceutical companies have been interested in manipulating methylation in disease
For example, they could look for a drug that could change the hypermethylation that has been associated with a specific cancer.
Their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, may aid efforts to build point-of-care devices for quick medical diagnosis of various diseases ranging from cancer, allergies, autoimmune diseases, sexually transmitted diseases (STDS),
when atoms are brought too close together to detect a wide array of protein markers that are linked to various diseases.
and the results sent back to the doctor office. If we can move testing to the point of care,
which would enhance the effectiveness of medical interventions. The key breakthrough underlying this new technology came by chance. hile working on the first generation of these DNA-base tests,
explains that this novel signaling mechanism produces sufficient change in current to be measured using inexpensive electronics similar to those in the home glucose test meter used by diabetics to check their blood sugar.
allowing us to build inexpensive devices that could detect dozens of disease markers in less than five minutes in the doctor office
and easily multiplexed biosensor could significantly improve patient health by providing new point-of-care diagnostics for a wide variety of diseases said Patricia Escoffier, Project Manager at Univalor.
including pathogen detection in food or water and therapeutic drug monitoring at home, a feature which could drastically improve the efficient of various class of drugs and treatments v
#afepay First anti-fraud system to use existing credit card readers From large-scale data breaches such as the 2013 Target case to local schemes that use skimming devices to steal data at the gas pump,
and for the production of advanced therapeutics to combat the disease. Human cells express Interferon Induced Transmembranes (IFITM) proteins that possess antiviral characteristics.
These proteins have been shown to inhibit a number of viruses including influenza A West Nile, Dengue fever and Ebola.
Our research discovered that IFITM proteins can help inhibit the viral cell-to-cell infection
given our previous finding in PLOS Pathogens where we found that this family of proteins generally affects the lipid property of cell membrane
scientists are constantly learning more about virus transmission and host response to viral infections. By understanding and visualizing how some IFITM proteins can inhibit
we are getting closer to finding better therapeutic approaches in the fight against HIV. The study, FITM Proteins Restrict HIV-1 Infection by Antagonizing the Envelope Glycoprotein,
recently was published in Cell Reports. The work was supported in part by NIH grants (AI112381 AI109464, AI105584 and AI107095.
Eric O. Freed, director and a senior investigator of the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program within the National Cancer Institute, Chen Liang, an associate professor at Mcgill University and Benjamin Chen
, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of medicine at Mount sinai, New york contributed to the study o
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.
Their findings may aid efforts to build point-of-care devices for quick medical diagnosis of various diseases ranging from cancer, allergies, autoimmune diseases, sexually transmitted diseases (STDS),
when atoms are brought too close together to detect a wide array of protein markers that are linked to various diseases.
and the results sent back to the doctor office. If we can move testing to the point of care,
which would enhance the effectiveness of medical interventions. The key breakthrough underlying this new technology came by chance. hile working on the first generation of these DNA-base tests,
explains that this novel signaling mechanism produces sufficient change in current to be measured using inexpensive electronics similar to those in the home glucose test meter used by diabetics to check their blood sugar.
allowing us to build inexpensive devices that could detect dozens of disease markers in less than five minutes in the doctor office
and easily multiplexed biosensor could significantly improve patient health by providing new point-of-care diagnostics for a wide variety of diseases said Patricia Escoffier, Project Manager at Univalor.
including pathogen detection in food or water and therapeutic drug monitoring at home, a feature which could drastically improve the efficient of various class of drugs and treatments v
#Self-assembling material that grows and changes shape could lead to artificial arteries Researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have developed a way of assembling organic molecules into complex tubular tissue-like structures without the use of moulds
which would allow scientists to study diseases such as Alzheimer with a high level of similarity to the real tissue,
The technique could also contribute to the creation of better implants, complex tissues, or more effective drug screening methods.
and Other Acute Infections A group of scientists, led by colleagues from the University of California,
and many other known pathogens present in a blood sample from an infected individual. The portable metagenomic test developed by Charles Chiu
and his team can detect the Ebola virus and many other known pathogens in less than an hour.
Detailed in a paper published in Genome Medicine on September 28th this technology could prove highly useful in settings where lab equipment
and medical infrastructure is in short supply. While most other commercially available diagnostic tests target specific pathogens, the method used in the study,
called etagenomics does not require any guesswork, and is capable of analysing all the DNA present in a sample.
regardless of the setup. o our knowledge, this is the first time that nanopore sequencing has been used for real-time metagenomic detection of pathogens in complex clinical samples in the setting of human infections,
claims Chiu. nbiased point-of-care testing for pathogens by rapid metagenomic sequencing has the potential to radically transform infectious disease diagnosis in both clinical and public health settings.
the researchers successfully used their sequencing kit to detect Hepatitis C in the blood of an infected UCSF patient,
but eventually reported having a fever and joint pains a
#First Optical Rectenna Combined Rectifier and Antenna Converts Light to DC Current Using nanometer scale components,
and diabetes in major new study High blood pressure sufferers have an almost 60%greater chance of developing diabetes, according to a major global study.
and diabetes and it could lead to new insights and strategies for treating and reducing the chances of developing diabetes. his is potentially a game changer in the understanding and treatment of diabetes,
Prof Rahimi said. iabetes affects more than 400 million people worldwide, including one million in Australia, and we know that diabetics are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease such as heart attacks,
stroke and heart failure. igh blood pressure affects even more people at least 4. 6 million Australians. onfirming this connection reliably provides new hope for those people
and new avenues for research. e can say for certain that one causes the other, but this study helps to connect the dots,
showing that if you have high blood pressure there is a significantly greater chance of developing diabetes. nderstanding the link will help us better communicate risks to patients
and can provide another motivation for patients and doctors to aim for tight blood pressure control.
Professor Rahimi said that the link between hypertension and fatal heart issues had been documented well, but the connection to diabetes had been less clear. revious smaller studies have varied significantly
or even found no link, but now we have something clear to go on, he said.
which has been published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), looked at the health records of 4. 1 million adults in the UK who were initially free of diabetes and cardiovascular disease and found:
For every 20 mm mercury increase on the measurement gauge, in systolic blood pressure there was a 58%higher risk of developing diabetes.
For every 10 mm mercury increase in systolic blood pressure there was a 52%higher risk of developing diabetes Higher blood pressure was associated also with a higher risk of new onset diabetes in a wide
variety of groups of individuals, including men and women, people of young (30-50), middle (51-70) and old age (71-90) as well as normal weight,
overweight and obese individuals The relative association between blood pressure and diabetes decreased as body mass index (BMI)
Professor Rahimi said the research also pooled together 30 prior studies that examined risk factors for diabetes. here were similar results in this section of the research with a 77%higher chance of getting diabetes for every 20 mm
and diabetes. t a minimum we know for certain that the link exists, but is high blood pressure a cause of diabetes or just a risk factor?
We still don know, he said. n particular researchers can now look at whether lowering blood pressure is an effective treatment
or reduces the risk of getting diabetes. hese are exciting results and I look forward to seeing further developments because of this research. t
#Researchers disguise drugs as platelets to target cancer Researchers have developed for the first time a technique that coats anticancer drugs in membranes made from a patient own platelets,
and attack both primary cancer tumors and the circulating tumor cells that can cause a cancer to metastasize.
not only attack the main tumor site, but are more likely to find and attach themselves to tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream essentially attacking new tumors before they start,
says Quanyin Hu, lead author of the paper and a Ph d. student in the joint biomedical engineering program.
When one of the pseudo-platelets comes into contact with a tumor, three things happen more or less at the same time.
and TRAIL in the pseudo-platelet drug delivery system was significantly more effective against large tumors
and circulating tumor cells than using Dox and TRAIL in a nanogel delivery system without the platelet membrane. e like to do additional preclinical testing on this technique,
Gu says. nd we think it could be used to deliver other drugs, such as those targeting cardiovascular disease, in
which the platelet membrane could help us target relevant sites in the body
#Raising Computers to Be Good Scientists Making sense of the new scientific data published every year including well over a million cancer-related journal articles is a tall order for the contemporary scientist.
Even if a scientist were capable of reading every article and memorizing its content, drawing connections to answer real-world questions would require supernatural cognition.
such as the treatment of cancer patients, is an arduous, uphill battle. But an associate professor in the University of Arizona School of Information
or maybe even doctors, to provide lots of information, such as a patient genome. In turn, it could model how a specific treatment would interact with the patient. heyl be the Microsofts and Googles of biomedicine,
Morrison said. Its potential has mass appeal and big implications: fast, individualized and precise biomedical care. he REACH project is applied to cancer biology,
but we have an even bigger vision than that, although cancer biology is big enough,
Morrison said. If big data is a two-part challenge, Morrison said, then storing it and moving it around is the first part.
the system was able to process 1, 000 papers on RAS-related cancers in a matter of hours,
Secondly, RAS oncogenes are mutated in 33 percent of all human cancers, making them one of the most highly researched classes of oncogenes.
As of now, REACH is already familiar with 30 different species affected by RAS-related cancers.
much as a scientist or a doctor might. would like to see this usher in computers understanding complex things at a level that we just can,
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