and have implications for efforts to promote fracture repair. any of the current pharmaceutical protocols are based on using fibrin to promote fracture healing,
He points out that some of the medications developed for cardiovascular medicine to prevent clotting may find new purposes in enhancing tissue repair and regeneration i
In this latest study, led by Michael Karin, Phd, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Pathology, researchers traced the cells responsible for replenishing hepatocytes following chronic liver injury induced by exposure to carbon tetrachloride, a common environmental toxin.
said Patrick Beukema, the lead author and a graduate student in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh (CNUP) and the joint Pitt and CMU Center for the Basis of Neural Cognition (CNBC).
The materials that pharmaceutical companies use to test drugseffects on cells don allow for three-dimensional vascularization, a network of capillaries that carry drugs and other materials throughout the body.
but also aid in drug screening. he microenvironment actually has a significant effect on how the cells respond to a drug,
Grolman said. hese companies might have the next big drug, but they might not know it. he long-term vision would be:
whether they be targeted drug delivery, electrical stimulation or even light-plus-optogenetics through fiber optics, will all be closed loop.
and Emory University to clamp firing at normal levels during the addition of a drug that inhibits neurotransmission.
They could be used for therapeutic drug screening and to help teach researchers how to grow whole human organs.
the paper senior author and an associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF. e can take any cell type we want
and building a model of their tissue to use as a personalized drug screening platform.
or five days as the medication took effect. In the past, the patient would have needed blood draws to monitor levels
and stop his medication. Fabrication and design Wang team created a screen-printed sensor using silver, Prussian blue ink and uricase,
Unfortunately, although the mathematical basis for this method known as squeezing of resonance fluorescence was drawn up in 1981,
#Team develops quick way to determine bacteria antibiotic resistance Bacteria ability to become resistant to antibiotics is a growing issue in health care:
One way to combat this is to determine bacteria antibiotic resistance in a given patient, but that often takes days
ASU scientists have developed a technique that can sort antibiotic-resistant from usceptiblebacteria, and it happens in a matter of minutes.
The ability to quickly judge whether a bacteria is resistant to antibiotics could make a major difference in a patient's treatment.
The ability to quickly judge whether a bacteria is resistant to antibiotics could make a major difference in a patient treatment.
to tell the difference between the two strains (antibiotic-resistant and antibiotic-susceptible) ofstaphylococcus epidermidis.
After a multi-decade ledgehammerapproach, focused on killing all bacteria via soaps, detergents, antibiotics and hand sanitizers,
One type of adaptation is resistance to antibiotics, and this is becoming a huge and worldwide problem.
antibiotic-resistant and susceptible Staphylococcus epidermidis. Their results have recently been published in the journal Analyst. Photo by:
antibiotic-resistant and susceptible Staphylococcus epidermidis. Their results have recently been published in the journal Analyst. Photo by:
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,
Antibiotic-resistance adaptation is a natural phenomenon. When an antibiotic is used bacteria that can resist that antibiotic obviously have a greater chance of survival than those that are susceptible,
and so the resistance passes to the next generation. Some of the most notorious antibiotic-resistant strains and species belong to the genus Staphylococcus.
They are classified typically as pathogenic or non-pathogenic based on production of the enzyme coagulase. Staphylococcus epidermidis does not produce coagulase,
and it is generally less invasive than Staphylococcus aureus. In fact, it is a normal and commensal resident of human skin.
By most metrics the antibiotic-resistant and susceptible strains of Staphylococcus epidermidis are phenotypically identical, and thus present a major challenge to traditional analytical separation techniques.
Current clinical approaches to determination of antibiotic resistance often require two or more days to obtain results.
They typically rely upon treating the bacteria with antibiotics, then observing colony growth patterns. The long turnaround times lead to increased reliance upon broad-spectrum antimicrobials and generally lead to suboptimal outcomes for patients (including increased mortality rates.
Scientists in the Hayes group at ASU Department of chemistry and Biochemistry soon to become the School of Molecular Sciences are enabling a handheld,
and Shannon (Huey) Hilton, has separated extremely similar bacteria Gentamicin (antibiotic) resistant and susceptible bacteria. Their results have recently been published in the journal Analyst. he important thing for the patient
potentially improving nearly every figure of merit for diagnostics and antibiotic stewardship o
#acterial Litmus Testprovides Inexpensive Measurement of Micronutrients A bacterium engineered to produce different pigments in response to varying levels of a micronutrient in blood samples could give health officials an inexpensive way to detect nutritional
#New method for modifying natural polymers could help bring lifesaving medications to market In drug-delivery research,
the drug must also be able to safely reach its target. Xiangtao Meng, a fourth-year graduate student in the College of Natural resources and Environment, has developed a new technique to make that easier.
a natural polymer often used for drug delivery. According to Kevin Edgar, a professor of sustainable biomaterials and Meng doctoral adviser, the new method an get drugs to market,
and to patients, that would otherwise fail. Taking medications orally is typically much more practical for patients than methods like intravenous injections
but the bioavailability of a drug the amount that actually reaches the bloodstream often suffers.
In order to reach the circulatory system, a drug taken orally must dissolve in the digestive tract. But many pharmaceutically active compounds tend to crystallize,
making them less soluble. And some medications aren stable in the harsh environment of the stomach.
That means that patients have to ingest more of a drug to get the therapeutic dose increasing the cost, risk of side effects,
and the likelihood that the patient will simply miss a dose. Suspending the drug in a polymer matrix can help.
Polymers are long chains of repeating units. Many familiar materials are polymers including proteins, DNA,
Dispersing a drug in a polymer matrix protects it and suppresses the formation of insoluble crystals.
and releases the drug, allowing it to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Because medications have broadly diverse chemical structures, properties,
and dosing and delivery requirements, finding the right polymer matrix to work well with most drugs involves making
and testing many different options. Meng chemistry offers a new way to make a wide variety of polymer matrices using cellulose as a starting material.
Cellulose is an attractive material for drug delivery because it nontoxic breaks down into components that are already present in the body,
limiting the number of options for drug delivery. Meng decided to investigate whether he could modify cellulose using a technique called olefin cross-metathesis,
and could be used to make a huge array of potential drug-delivery matrices, but it had never been applied to cellulose.
renewable starting material to develop a wide variety of polymers specifically tuned to carry many different pharmaceutical targets.
which he sends to collaborators in a drug-delivery group at Purdue University. The team is currently targeting HIV drugs,
which have notoriously poor solubility. Meng, an ICTAS doctoral scholar from Shandong Province, China, is now working on incorporating another type of chemical reaction that will allow even more versatility like rowing apples and peaches on the same tree,
like the synthesis of antibacterial hydrogels for wound dressing, he said f
#New way to repair nerves: Using exosomes to hijack cell-to-cell communication Regenerative medicine using stem cells is an increasingly promising approach to treat many types of injury.
funding research into a new way to deliver protein-based cancer-fighting drugs and other therapeutics directly into cells.
who earned his doctorate in biomedical engineering at Rutgers and now works in biopharmaceutical research and development at Glaxosmithkline.
it also presents a target of a molecular class already well-established to be useful for drug discovery.
Drug development has proven problematic due to the limited understanding of the underlying causes of ASD,
as demonstrated by the recent failure of several much anticipated drug trials. There are also no current, reliable diagnostic biomarkers for ASD.
which impedes diagnosis and, ultimately, drug development. There simply may be too many targets, each with too small an effect.
In the area of drug discovery, scientists at the Center for Autism Research & Translation continue to probe the IP3R channel,
and just hope for the best, said Wendell Lim, Phd, professor and chair of UCSF Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology,
unless a specially designed drug has been administered. This controller drug forms a chemical bridge between components inside the CAR T cells
When the drug is no longer present, the T cells revert to an ffposition. The power of the new system is illustrated vividly in videos taken by the researchers through microscopes.
but only after the controller drug had been administered. Controlling Through Drug Dosagethe drug-based remote control system devised by Lim
and colleagues does more than merely switch CAR T cells between nand ffstates. It can also act like a rheostat:
the dosage of the drug precisely regulates the level of the T cellsimmune activity. These combined control capabilities could be employed to manage the various side effects of CAR T therapy.
By ialing inthe level of immune response using appropriate dosages of the controller drug, doctors may be able to precisely manage these side effects to meet individual patientsneeds.
and drug screening. However, many of these microfluidic devices operate at only a few hundred cells per second,
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.
For example, they could look for a drug that could change the hypermethylation that has been associated with a specific cancer.
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,
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
and their antiviral function. e have understood long that IFITM proteins have antiviral functions, but until now we did not know exactly how the proteins specifically inhibited the transmission of HIVLIU said. ee known that HIV-1,
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
or more effective drug screening methods. Alvaro Mata, Director of the Institute of Bioengineering at QMUL and lead author of the paper
#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,
allowing the drugs to last longer in the body and attack both primary cancer tumors and the circulating tumor cells that can cause a cancer to metastasize.
The work was tested successfully in an animal model. here are two key advantages to using platelet membranes to coat anticancer drugs,
the drug carriers aren identified as foreign objects, so last longer in the bloodstream. his combination of features means that the drugs can
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,
which are placed then in a solution with a nanoscale gel containing the anticancer drug doxorubicin (Dox),
so that their surfaces are coated with the anticancer drug TRAIL, which is most effective at attacking the cell membranes of cancer cells.
and TRAIL in the pseudo-platelet drug delivery system was significantly more effective against large tumors
Gu says. nd we think it could be used to deliver other drugs, such as those targeting cardiovascular disease, in
REACH researchers are laying the foundation for interactive software that would allow drug developers, or maybe even doctors, to provide lots of information,
as well as genes that would indicate the pathogen is resistant to treatment with antibiotics or other drugs, said co-author Kristine Wylie, Phd, assistant professor of pediatrics.
In the meantime, the technology can be used by scientists to study viruses in a research setting. Kristine Wylie investigates the viruses that set up residence in and on the human body, collectively known as the virome.
and created a new diagnostic technology based on advanced self learning computer algorithms whichn the basis of a biopsy from a metastasisan with 85 per cent certainty identify the source of the disease
or get medication to reduce their metabolic syndrome severity and their future risk for disease, Deboer said.
whether HIV-positive people are infected with a drug-resistant strain or a non-resistant strain allow patients to get the most effective treatment as quickly as possible.
those pairs that perfectly match the target HIV RNA containing a mutation that causes drug resistance can rapidly become fused together,
quick and accurate HIV drug resistance mutation detection system for use in developing nations. e met soon thereafter
electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop
leading to new drug designs and reducing disease. DNA NANOSTRUCTURES: Conducting nanoscale biomolecular research could lead to low-cost DNA sequencing technologies,
and in turn create targeted drug delivery systems and help explain the molecular causes of disease.
and relapsing multiple sclerosis Three phase three clinical studies using the drug ocrelizumab to treat patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) have yielded positive results for treating two forms of the disease and the first ever positive results
on 732 patients with PPMS, found that those treated with the drug had a reduction in the progression of clinical disability of 24 per cent.
open up the possibility that a single drug designed to target this molecular fault could be developed to treat both diseases.
electrical devices (pacemakers or defibrillators) or drugs (eg beta blockers. However, these methods are relatively crude: they can stop
The findings, published Oct 19 in Nature Immunology, reveal previously unknown weapons in the body antiviral immune arsenal
and provide guidelines for designing drugs that could be effective against a broad range of viruses. The strategy involves enhancing the body interferon signaling system,
long understood to be a vital part of antiviral defenses. ee discovered a new component of the interferon system,
Despite the strong antiviral immune response seen in the new study, Holtzman and his colleagues reported no evidence of autoimmune disease in these mice.
and absence of destructive autoimmunity could be that the researchersstrategy did not involve increasing the amount of interferon, the first step of this important antiviral signaling cascade.
which sets off the rest of the antiviral cascade. It like greasing the wheels. Wee not pushing the system any harder.
and continue their destructive march through the body. his dual mechanism of action is a great guideline for how we would like to build a new antiviral drug,
according to Holtzman, is that a drug with this dual function could be effective against different kinds of viruses that affect a variety of tissues,
drug discovery Mini-kidney organoids have now been grown in a laboratory by using genome editing to re-create human kidney disease in petri dishes.
The work paves the way for personalized drug discovery for kidney disease. The mini-kidney organoids were grown from pluripotent stem cells.
as important for understanding the potential of mini-kidneys for clinical kidney regeneration and drug discovery.
better ways to perform linical trials in a dishto test drugs and therapies that might work in humans.
to model human kidney development and to test for drug toxicity. Now, using gene-editing tools,
better ways of testing out drugs and therapies that might work in humans. g
#Snake venom helps hydrogels stop the bleeding Rice university lab employs clotting powers of viper-derived drug,
even in presence of anticoagulants A nanofiber hydrogel infused with snake venom may be the best material to stop bleeding quickly, according to Rice university scientists.
particularly for patients who take anticoagulant drugs to thin their blood. t interesting that you can take something so deadly
an anticoagulant drug. rom a clinical perspective, that far and away the most important issue here, Hartgerink said. here a lot of different things that can trigger blood coagulation,
as a result of their discovery. bout one-third of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy do not respond to medications.
Over the last five years, UGA College of Pharmacy associate professors Mandi Murph and Shelley Hooks have discovered that a type of protein known as RGS10 impacts the effectiveness of ovarian cancer chemotherapy.
then we could potentially restore sensitivity to drugs, she explained. t would mean a better chance of survival for women with ovarian cancer.
However, chemoresistance to platinum drugs remains a serious challenge to curing ovarian cancer. Murph recommends more research on mtor inhibitors to see how they can be modified to respond to chemotherapy. ive years ago
The discovery has raised hopes that a drug that targets the receptors and stops the cancer will soon be developed.
not just those with hereditary ovarian cancer. ome drugs are showing promise as a treatment for patients with hereditary ovarian cancer,
Researchers believe the Ror amilyof receptor molecules are attractive drug targets for three reasons. First, the receptors are not usually present in normal adult tissues
which means that any drug therapy will likely have few side effects. Second the location of the receptors on the outer surface of cancer cells means they can be accessed easily by drugs.
Third, Ror1 and Ror2 are a specific type of receptor that controls many other genes,
and spread of ovarian cancer. nce we better understand the roles of these receptors we will be in a position to develop a drug to target these receptors and hopefully halt ovarian cancer in its tracks,
Originally discovered as an antiviral system in bacteria, CRISPR/Cas9 is one of the hottest topics in genetic research today.
and change how different people respond to drugs. But only if the CRISPR technique is specific enough.
and how they vary between cell types, during development or in response to drug treatment. urrent methods for controlling gene switches,
including drugs used in clinical trials, change the activity of many switches across the genome simultaneously,
and that could eventually lead to the development of a drug to enhance recovery from strokes n
provides he ability to pick the best heat-transfer profile on an as needed basis, rather than having to pick a single type of nucleation behavior that allows margins for the most extreme heating that is ever expected for a given device. his allows you to pick the optimum rate of heat transfer moment by moment,
and testing the water disinfectant. he goal of Madidrop PBC is to maximize health benefits,
#Bacterial hole puncher could be new broad-spectrum antibiotic Bacteria have many methods of adapting to resist antibiotics,
The antimicrobial agents are dressed for their mission in a positively charged shell that lets them travel in body fluids,
a co-first author of the paper. any antimicrobial agents can only cure one class of bacteria.
We need more broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents. The new antimicrobial polypeptides are designed specially to fold into a rigid spiral resulting in a rodlike structure,
ideal for punching holes in the bacterial membrane. e use a very set mechanism to puncture the bacterial membrane,
Many drugs are targeted very, interacting with a particular protein or interfering with a particular pathway in the bacterial cell.
Bacteria can develop resistance to the antibiotic by circumventing the specific target. Since the spiral structures simply poke holes in the physical structure of the membrane
In addition, the new antimicrobial agents could be coupled with other, targeted drugs to enhance their effectiveness. he polypeptides punch holes in the membrane,
which makes it very easy for other drugs to go through and bypass some of the drug-resistant mechanisms,
Cheng said. ogether, they work even better than a single agent. Because the proteins have a preset design,
Cheng predicts that scaling up production would not present significant challenges. The precursor elements are manufactured already at large scales and available commercially.
the researchers will continue to improve the antimicrobial polypeptides, further decreasing interaction with human cells,
Today, the disease is treated usually with drugs, which can have serious side effects. It can also be treated with a procedure called cardiac ablation that burns away the malfunctioning cells using a high-powered laser that threaded into the heart on a catheter.
The team is also working to devise a method for producing larger quantities of the nanoparticles at pharmaceutical-grade standards.
along with Dr. Samie Jaffrey, professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine. Jun Zhou, a postdoctoral research associate in Qian lab, is the paper first author.
Drugs that flip this switch rapidly reduced obesity and diabetes risk factors in mice fed a high fat diet.
The results suggest that drugs capable of targeting similar molecular pathways in human fat cells could one day become major tools for fighting the growing worldwide epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes, according to senior
Early drugs also had dangerous cardiovascular side effects, which are of particular concern in obese patients.
CK2-blocking drugs boost metabolism prevent weight gain The researchers tested two anti-CK2 drugs for their ability to stimulate the production of new brown fat in mice:
Both drugs succeeded in turning significant amounts of white fat brown and significantly increasing the amount of energy mice burned
The drugs also significantly reduced the negative effects of a high-fat diet in mice, including reducing weight gain and, to the researcherssurprise,
but cautious about the prospects for using these drugs to treat human obesity in the near future. t exciting,
so each monoclonal antibody can also be used as a tiny injector for targeted medication. Until recently, Herr advances with signature molecule tracking were primarily in the area of reproduction.
The difference is that Ovastasis plans to use those protein biomarkers as targets for a novel female birth control medication. he identification of drug targets that are selective to the egg
or to the sperm gives you opportunities to create small-molecule drugs for female and male contraception, contraceptive vaccines,
and opens opportunities for biological drug strategies that selectively target the gametes in the ovary and testis,
Currently approved female birth control medications work by manipulating the female body estrogen and progesterone levels. While effective, these drugs are steroids
and interact with receptors in many organ systems in the body. Unwanted side-effects of these interactions result in high discontinuation rates for the ill.
Like Ovastasis, Neoantigenics is focused on creating a targeted drug that will affect only those cells identified by the correct cell surface biomarkers.
the antibody-drug burrows inside them to release a toxic payload. ou add an antibody with a drug on it
and release the drug payload, triggering changes that result in cell death within a few days.
This unique medication could mean a dramatic reduction of the difficult side-effects of traditional cancer treatments like hair loss, nausea, anemia and neuropathy.
The drug can be used by both women and men but for female cancer patients especially, a treatment that doesn touch their body healthy tissues is a huge breakthrough. e think we have a way
and the company will work with U. Va. labs as it begins testing the cancer medication first in model organisms,
so may find applications in drug toxicity tests, the search for new drugs and cell therapy.
making them useful for applications in drug discovery and toxicology. This study was supported by CREST program of Japan Agency for Medical Research and development,
The goal of some antiviral therapies, therefore, is to buy more and give the immune system a leg up on the virus. A new study led by Bruce Freedman
said Freedman. e could also imagine this type of drug would be part of a cocktail therapy,
and reproduce, the Penn Vet scientists have focused on developing drugs that interfere with the host proteins
The researchers are working with Fox Chase Chemical Diversity Center scientists to develop even more potent ORAI1 inhibitors to improve antiviral activity
They noted that such drugs would only be given for a short duration, lessening the chance of serious side effects.
or drug targeting. The study by researchers Cheulhee Jung, Peter B. Allen and Andrew Ellington, published this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology,
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011