#Antimicrobial film for future implants The implantation of medical devices is not without risks. Bacterial or fungal infections can occur
Researchers at Unit 1121"Biomaterials and Bioengineering"(Inserm/Strasbourg university) have succeeded in creating a biofilm with antimicrobial, antifungal and anti-inflammatory properties.
Antibiotics are used currently during surgery or to coat certain implants. However, the emergence of multi-resistant bacteria now restricts their effectiveness.
and Biomaterials"Unit 1121 (Inserm/Strasbourg University) with four laboratories1 have developed a biofilm with antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties.
Embedded antimicrobial peptides on a thin silver coating The film is also unique due to the fact that it embeds natural antimicrobial peptides
This is an alternative to the antibiotics that are used currently. As well as having a significant antimicrobial role,
these peptides are not toxic to the body that they are secreted into. They are capable of killing bacteria by creating holes in their cellular wall
This strategy allows us to extend antimicrobial activity in the long term"explains Philippe Lavalle, Research director at Inserm.
and suggest new drugs to track down and disable its deadly seeds. For the most part, modern cancer drugs ignore differences between primary
Insights could lead to targeted therapies The research team performed a proof of principle experiment to demonstrate how valuable information about metastatic gene expression could be for drug development.
a CDK inhibiting drug known to kill off cells with high MYC levels. Whereas 44 percent of control mice (11 of 25) developed secondary tumors within four weeks, researchers could only find metastatic cells in one drug-treated mouse (4 percent.
Werb emphasized that this test was just a proof of principal and that dinaciclib itself may
or may not prove be the ideal drug to target metastases. The key point, she said,
was that the drug managed to nearly eliminate metastases without shrinking the primary tumor.""If this drug had only been tested on primary tumors,
we would have said it doesn't work, "she said.""This tells us you actually have to look at metastases
which there are no effective antibiotics, says Timothy Lu, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and biological engineering."
Customizable viruses The Food and Drug Administration has approved a handful of bacteriophages for treating food products,
which there are few new antibiotics. This group also includes microbes that can cause respiratory, urinary,
One advantage of the engineered phages is that unlike many antibiotics, they are very specific in their targets."
"Antibiotics can kill off a lot of the good flora in your gut, "Lu says.""We aim to create effective and narrow-spectrum methods for targeting pathogens."
a drug that inhibits the action of tyrosine kinases--enzymes that function as an"on
"Although treatment with VEGFR-targeted drugs has been very effective in the first line of therapy for patients with advanced kidney cancer,
in many cases tumour cells find ways to escape control by these drugs. Cabozantinib is a new drug that targets possible escape mechanisms of tumour cells,
including the tyrosine kinases MET, VEGFR and AXL. The results of the METEOR trial indicate that cabozantinib is able to shrink tumours
and slow down tumour growth much better than current standard treatment in patients who previously received VEGFR-targeted drugs.
The incidence of serious side effects was similar for both drugs and discontinuation of treatment due to side effects occurred in 9. 1%of cabozantinib and 10%of everolimus patients.
In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated it as a breakthrough therapy,
which may allow expedited development of the drug. Professor Peter Naredi, the ECCO scientific co-chair of the Congress,
and development of new medicines by greatly accelerating the computer-aided design of pharmaceutical compounds (and minimizing lengthy trial and error testing);
the most serious being BCG infections that need to be treated with antituberculous drugs. A study on the characteristics of a wide group of mycobacteria begun seven years ago by the Mycobacteria Research Group
and with the group Bacterial Infections and Antimicrobial Therapies led by Dr Eduard Torrents, of the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) I
or get medication to reduce their metabolic syndrome severity and their future risk for disease, "Deboer said d
which--on the basis of a biopsy from a metastasis--can with 85 per cent certainty identify the source of the disease
and on this basis provide a number of possible scenarios for where the cancer may have developed
which can be used to design new personalized drug regimens for SS patients based on their unique genetic makeup.
In preliminary drug-mutation matching studies they found that JAK1-mutated SS cells were sensitive to JAK inhibitors,
drugs that are approved currently for treatment of other hematologic cancers such as polycythemia vera and myelofibrosis."
"We knew nano diamonds were of interest for delivering drugs during chemotherapy because they are largely nontoxic and non-reactive,
We effectively turned a pharmaceutical problem into a physics problem.""Professor Reilly's team turned its attention to hyperpolarising nanodiamonds,
The finding could be used to develop new drugs to treat cancers such as leukaemia, caused by malfunctioning of the Trib1 protein.
which will provide critical clues for developing drugs that target Trib1 to treat cancers.""Lead investigator Dr Mace said Trib1 acted as a scaffold to bring many proteins together,
#Experimental treatment regimen effective against HIV PROTEASE inhibitors are a class of antiviral drugs that are used commonly to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical center designed a new delivery system for these drugs that,
when coupled with a drug developed at the University of Rochester School of medicine and Dentistry, rid immune cells of HIV and kept the virus in check for long periods.
While current HIV treatments involve pills that are taken daily, the new regimens'long-lasting effects suggest that HIV treatment could be administered perhaps once or twice per year.
Nebraska researcher Howard E. Gendelman designed the investigational drug delivery system-a so-called"nanoformulated"protease inhibitor.
The nanoformulation process takes a drug and makes it into a crystal, like an ice cube does to water.
Next, the crystal drug is placed into a fat and protein coat, similar to what is done in making a coated ice-cream bar.
The coating protects the drug from being degraded by the liver and removed by the kidney.
a new drug discovered in the laboratory of UR scientist Harris A.("Handy")Gelbard M d.,Ph d,
URMC-099 boosted the concentration of the nanoformulated drug in immune cells and slowed the rate at
"The chemical marriage between URMC-099 and antiretroviral drug nanoformulations could increase drug longevity, improve patient compliance,
lead study author and professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at Nebraska,
whether the drugs could be administered safely together. Much to Gelbard and Gendelman's surprise, URMC-099 increased the effectiveness of the nanoformulated drug."
"Our ultimate hope is that we're able to create a therapy that could be given much less frequently than the daily therapy that is required today,
"If a drug could be given once every six months or longer that would greatly increase compliance,
because they won't have to think about taking medication every day
#Researchers learn how to steer the heart with light We depend on electrical waves to regulate the rhythm of our heartbeat.
electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop
Development of an antimalarial vaccine is an integral part of an effort to counter the socioeconomic burden of malaria.
and Ear/Harvard Medical school and Boston University have shown successfully neuroprotection in a Parkinson's mouse model using new techniques to deliver drugs across the naturally impenetrable blood-brain barrier.
lend hope to patients around the world with neurological conditions that are difficult to treat due to a barrier mechanism that prevents approximately 98 percent of drugs from reaching the brain and central nervous system."
"We are developing a platform that may eventually be used to deliver a variety of drugs to the brain,
and histological data capture that their delivery method was equivalent to direct injection of GDNF--the current gold standard for delivering this drug in Parkinson's disease despite its traumatic nature and high complication rates--in diffusing drugs to the brain.
Dr. Bleier saw an opportunity to apply these techniques to the widespread clinical dilemma of delivering drugs across the barrier to the brain and central nervous system.
surgeons may create a"screen door"to allow for drug delivery to the brain and central nervous system. The technique has the potential to benefit a large population of patients with neurodegenerative disorders,
Currently, no durable, long-term right ventricular assist device (RVAD) has received Food and Drug Administration approval,
whether they were able to predict which movement the participant was going to perform on the basis of the brain activity measured during the planning phase.
San diego researchers developed a new computational strategy to search for molecules that could be developed into glioblastoma drugs.
"Most drugs target stable pockets within proteins, so when we started out, people thought it would be impossible to inhibit the transient interface between two transcription factors,
and created a new strategy for drug design--one that we expect many other researchers will immediately begin implementing in the development of drugs that target similar proteins, for the treatment of a variety of diseases."
The most effective of these candidate drug molecules, called SKOG102, shrank human glioblastoma tumors grown in mouse models by an average of 50 percent."
"To this end, SKOG102 has been licensed to Curtana Pharmaceuticals, which is currently developing the inhibitor for clinical applications.
and is chair of the scientific advisory board for Curtana Pharmaceuticals. Co-authors Rajesh Mukthavaram, Phd, and Wolfgang Wrasidlo, Phd, also own stock in Curtana Pharmaceuticals s
#Record-setting flexible phototransistor revealed Inspired by mammals'eyes, University of Wisconsin-Madison electrical engineers have created the fastest,
the cells were barely able to take up any of the anticancer drugs.""For a long time, there has indeed been a hypothesis that VRAC plays a decisive role in apoptosis
This has nothing to do with the mechanism of medication uptake.""This novel uptake mechanism could even be confirmed by clinical data in this study.
and cellular resistance to Pt-based anticancer drugs,"has appeared just in the EMBO Journal r
which, Martin notes, has already been approved FDA for drug-delivery applications. They then apply ultralow magnetic fields to individual sections of the composite material--the ceramic fibers immersed in liquid plastic--to align the fibers according to the exacting specifications dictated by the product they are printing."
providing the basic building blocks for other researchers to perform experiments on tissue regeneration and/or for drug screening studies."
they form a biological film over the titanium to protect themselves from antibiotics. Once the implant is colonized by germs,
and during that time they continuously release small quantities of antimicrobial silver ions, which kill bacteria.
the IFAM researchers demonstrated that the Dentaplas coating is not only antimicrobial but also fully biocompatible and sterilizable.
#Simple Test Makes Blood-clot-busting Drug Safer Scientists in China have developed a fluorescent probe to detect both heparin and its major contaminant.
but can lead to severe adverse reactions. 150 deaths between 2004 and 2008 in the US were thought to be a result of drug manufacturers deliberately cutting heparin with OSCS to save money.
could significantly change the multibillion-dollar pain medication manufacturing business, but raises concerns about aggravating the growing problem of opioid abuse.
a key malaria-drug ingredient that was derived previously from trees (see Reuters story of August 12, 2014, http://reut. rs/1j2ovkj).
and allow greater access for most of the global population that currently has insufficient access to pain medication,
Currently, about 4, 400 gallons of bioengineered yeast would be needed to yield a single dose of the medication.
Recognising that silver is an effective antimicrobial, Theresa Dankovich from Carnegie mellon University used the idea to launch the concept of a book that could both encourage proper sanitation practices
The SALT lamp which stands for Sustainable Alternative Lighting IS LED an light that makes use of the science behind the Galvanic cell (the basis for batteries) and changes electrolytes to a nontoxic
#Anyone can help with crowdsourcing future antibiotics Wee seen examples of researchers utilizing crowdsourcing to expand their datasets,
Now a pop-up home lab is harnessing the power of citizen scientists to find future antibiotics in their backyards.
to help find solutions to the growing antibiotics resistance crisis. Post/Biotics is a citizen science platform,
knowledge and science network so anyone can support antibiotic development. Participants can test samples of basically anything they find in natural areas
and if their sample has antibacterial properties, their tool will change color. They can then send results,
An open-source library of potential antimicrobials is established then, and users simultaneously benefit from learning how to conduct microbiology experiments.
Post/Biotics are using the power of an unlimited amount of citizen scientists to increase the research potential of antibiotic discovery.
urologist at UC San diego Health System. his endoscopic procedure is done on an outpatient basis under light sedation with virtually no side effects.
The finding is also significant as currently there is no drug available to prevent the recurrence of tumours in the intestine after the cancerous tumours have been removed by surgery.
since Imatinib is a potentially novel drug for the treatment of tumour formation and cancer progression in patients predisposed to develop colorectal cancer,
#Unusual Chance to Study Patient's Residual Tumor Leads to New Finding Capitalizing on a rare opportunity to thoroughly analyze a tumor from a lung cancer patient who had developed resistance to targeted drug treatment,
In experiments that combined the drug the patient had taken with a second compound that blocks off this newly discovered resistance pathway,
the researchers were able to durably wipe out cancer cells in mice implanted with cells from the drug-resistant tumor. ven in cancers that are responding to targeted therapy by conventional criteria,
medications such as erlotinib (trade name Tarceva), which precisely targets the EGFR and tamps down its activity, have advanced the treatment of EFGR-mutant NSCLC beyond chemotherapy,
As many as 30 percent of patients exhibit so-called primary resistance to EGFR inhibitors, in which the drugs have no detectable effect.
which drug-resistant cells that survive treatment form residual, often lethal, tumors. Understanding the biological basis of acquired resistance has proved difficult,
partly because patients with late-stage lung cancer rarely undergo surgery, leaving scientists with few drug-resistant tumors to use in research.
But as described in the online edition of Cell Reports on Thursday, April 2, 2015, a team of UCSF researchers recently had unusual access to a surgically resected tumor from an EGFR-mutant lung cancer patient who had experienced a substantial,
or any other mutations known to confer drug resistance. These results suggested that the cells were still potentially susceptible to erlotinib,
The drug effectively inhibited EGFR activity, but the researchers also observed a rapid, 10-fold increase in the activity of a pathway known as NF-KAPPA-B,
An experimental drug known as PBS-1086 directly targets the NF-KAPPA-B pathway, and when the researchers coupled this drug with erlotinib,
the implanted tumors shrank significantly, suggesting that combining a compound like PBS-1086 with erlotinib at the outset of therapy may help to prevent acquired drug resistance in EGFR-mutant NSCLC.
Combined drug regimens designed to overcome drug resistance at the outset of therapy are now the norm in treating certain forms of melanoma,
said Bivona, and he believes PBS-1086 as a shotto play a similar role in NSCLC. he NF-KAPPA-B pathway is engaged by cells in response to EGFR inhibitors as a way to survive treatment,
if we block that pathway with a novel drug while simultaneously administering the EGFR inhibitor,
In lung cancer patients treated with these drugs, and that a substantial number of patients, this could be a very powerful companion therapy to minimize
Originally discovered as a natural antiviral system in bacteria researchers have hijacked the system over the past few years
and how it relates to disease or response to drug therapies. Gersbach added, ot only can you start to answer those questions,
he findings from the research clearly show the potential of enhancing the growth of brain cells using deep brain stimulation. round 60 per cent of patients do not respond to regular antidepressant treatments
and the Whitehead Institute have discovered a vulnerability of brain cancer cells that could be exploited to develop more-effective drugs against brain tumors.
who are now seeking potential drug compounds that could do just that t
#In first human study, new antibody therapy shows promise in suppressing HIV infection In the first results to emerge from HIV patient trials of a new generation of so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies,
which serve as viral reservoirs inaccessible to current antiretroviral drugs. Most likely 3bnc117, like other anti-retrovirals,
however by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of recurrent glioblastomas r
#Brain imaging Explains Reason For good and Poor Language Outcomes in ASD Toddlers Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri), University of California,
the heavy lifting is done by the inference algorithm the algorithm that continuously readjusts probabilities on the basis of new pieces of training data.
Moreover, tumors contain a small portion of cancer stem cells that are believed to be responsible for tumor initiation, metastasis and drug resistance.
but there are no drugs available that specifically attack cancer stem cells. A Surprising Discovery Now a research team led by investigators at Harvard Medical school and the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center
A Different Approach Until now, agents that inhibit Pin1 have been developed mainly through rational drug design. Although these inhibitors have proven active against Pin1 in the test tube
200 chemical compounds, including both approved drugs and other known bioactive compounds. To increase screening success,
such as nutrient intake, efflux of waste or drug, and cell signaling, for instance, between nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. o our knowledge, this is the first transport protein designed from scratch that is,
said study co-author Michael Grabe, an associate professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California,
Things like antimicrobial peptides cause cells to lyse or blow open cells by creating holes in their membranes.
They also added two other drugs that temporarily inhibited key biochemical pathways associated with the pluripotent state of the stem cells.
or for transporting lethal drugs into the cancer cells. Since the protein is not found in all of the cells of our body,
including biodegradable plastics, pharmaceutical drugs and even liquid fuels. Scientists with the U s. Department of energy (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have created a hybrid system of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria that mimics
a fuel comparable to gasoline, 25-percent for amorphadiene, a precursor to the antimaleria drug artemisinin,
The discovery is an important advance in the search for new medications to fight obesity,
is the creation of drugs to turn white fat into brown fat through brown fat recruitment. f you think about obesity,
all of the approved anti-obesity medications reduce energy intake by decreasing appetite. They work in the short term,
then it might work synergistically with conventional anti-obesity medications. This would be a novel approach to modulating whole-body energy balance. o
#An electronic micropump to deliver treatments deep within the brain Many potentially efficient drugs have been created to treat neurological disorders,
Drugs constitute the most widely used approach for treating brain disorders. However, many promising drugs failed during clinical testing for several reasons:
they are diluted in potentially toxic solutions, they may themselves be toxic when they reach organs to which they were directed not initially, the blood-brain barrier,
drugs that succeed in penetrating the brain will act in a nonspecific manner, i e. on healthy regions of the brain, altering their functions.
which many drugs could not be commercialised because of their harmful effects, when they might have been effective for treating patients resistant to conventional treatments 1. During an epileptic seizure,
whether these are ions or drugs. When an electrical current is applied to it the flow of electrons generated projects the molecules of interest toward the target area.
in order to activate the pump to inject the drug at just the right moment. It may therefore be possible to control brain activity where
this state-of-the-art technology, combined with existing drugs, offers new opportunities for many brain diseases that remain difficult to treat at this time a
while pain treatment options are limited to opioid-family pharmaceuticals such as morphine. It was while conducting clinical research at the University of California San francisco
A New Direction for Drug Research The startling discovery of TMPRSS2 role in triggering cancer pain may lead to the creation of targeted cancer pain therapies that effectively shut down the expression of this gene
Inhibition of its activity in patients might provide a new form of treatment for cancer pain. ny cancer that is painful before initiating drug treatment we can label the cancer cells for TMPRSS2
#Researchers'"hugely exciting"asthma discovery Cardiff scientists have identified for the first time the potential root cause of asthma and an existing drug that offers a new treatment.
Crucially, the paper highlights the effectiveness of a class of drugs known as calcilytics in manipulating Casr to reverse all symptoms associated with the condition.
Professor Riccardi and her collaborators are now seeking funding to determine the efficacy of calcilytic drugs in treating asthmas that are especially difficult to treat,
and to test these drugs in patients with asthma. Calcilytics were developed first for the treatment of osteoporosis around 15 years ago with the aim of strengthening deteriorating bone by targeting Casr to induce the release of an anabolic hormone.
But this latest breakthrough has provided researchers with the unique opportunity to re-purpose these drugs,
the group aim to be trialling the drugs on humans within two years. f we can prove that calcilytics are administered safe
Antiretroviral drugs can slow the spread of the virus, but it remains hidden dormant in cells and returns when the treatments cease.
but cleaning using disinfectant is no problem, says Brunner. The sensors are stitched either or glued between two layers of fabric,
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 loaworms in a patient,
The achievement was made possible by a new generation of drug-containing coating applied to the inner surface of the vessel.
The team managed to synthesize a thin film made of densely packed aluminum oxide nanorods blended with molecules of a thrombolytic enzyme (urokinase-type plasminogen activator.
The lifetime of such grafts is determined often by the amount of drug stored within the graft
The system, developed by the researchers, is based on the entrapment of the drug inside a porous protective shell,
You just need to take the right kind of drug. For example, after the implantation of an artificial ureter, urease crystals often start to grow inside
It is possible to apply a similar drug-containing coating that dissolves urease. The same approach may be used for kidney or liver surgery
or replacement genes or drugs inside a man-made biodegradable nanoparticle rapperthat patients inhale could penetrate the mucus barrier
patients would experience fewer side effects common to drugs that must be taken regularly over long stretches of time.
Most of the existing drugs for CF help clear infections but do not solve the disease underlying problems.
A couple of recently approved drugs designed to target the underlying cause of CF require daily treatment for the entire lifetime
bacteria could be reprogrammed to convert readily available sources of natural energy into pharmaceuticals, plastics and fuel products. he basic idea is that we want to accelerate evolution to make awesome amounts of valuable chemicals,
or costly pharmaceuticals and give microbes a voice to report on their own efficiency in making these products. e can communicate with cells much more effectively,
which we would rely on biomanufacturing for the clean production of chemical and pharmaceutical commodities, said Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald E. Ingber,
and explore potential drug targets to help cancer patients p
#How chronic inflammation can lead to cancer Chronic inflammation caused by disease or exposure to dangerous chemicals has long been linked to cancer,
Yount lab has begun using experimental drugs to test this flu prevention strategy in mice. Any possibility for human use is still many years away,
says Hubbard, an assistant professor of pharmacology in the University of Alberta Faculty of medicine & Dentistry. ee moving towards a very logical type of treatment for genetic diseases,
and plans to continue his research in the quickly expanding field. hereas traditional pharmaceutical drugs have a transient effect,
A process that had taken a year from farm to pharmaceutical factory now occurs in three to five days in yeast genetically engineered to biosynthesize the active ingredients for opioid painkillers;
Hydrocodone and its chemical relatives such as morphine and oxycodone are opioids members of a family of painkilling drugs sourced from the opium poppy.
It can take more than a year to produce a batch of medicine, starting from the farms in Australia,
processed and shipped to pharmaceutical factories in the United states, where the active drug molecules are extracted
and refined into medicines. hen we started work a decade ago, many experts thought it would be impossible to engineer yeast to replace the entire farm-to-factory process,
or later refined into pills using chemical processes to extract and concentrate their active ingredients. Smolke team is modernizing the process by inserting precisely engineered snippets of DNA into cells, such as yeast,
or no access to pain medications. iotech production could lower costs and, with proper controls against abuse, allow bioreactors to be located where they are needed,
Bio-produced thebaine would still need to be refined through sophisticated processes in pharmaceutical factories, but it would eliminate the time delay of growing poppies. he molecules we produced
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