Those results raised concerns about the use of CRISPR technology in studying human diseases. As a potential solution
and potentially treating human diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative conditions and diabetes, which can be driven by mutations in control regions of the genome.
The hope is that overriding one of these switches could uncover and fix the root causes of many diseases.
It could also help researchers understand and change how different people respond to drugs. But only if the CRISPR technique is specific enough.
how those switches differ between individuals and the implications of these insights for human traits and diseases.
first mapped the gene causing North carolina macular dystrophy on chromosome 6 in 1992. The current findings ultimately required an international team of 20 investigators using data from the Human genome Project
and an elaborate computer analysis to identify the actual mutations in INTERGENIC DNA near the PDRM13 gene. ndividuals with this disease have normal eyes except that they fail to form maculas,
Small says. nderstanding how this gene works may help us treat many macular diseases more effectively in the future. cientists already know how to create new retinal cells from a patient skin,
Ltd. s a person who knows firsthand what it is like to lose vision from a rare, inherited eye disease,
which is the leading cause of serious long-term disability in adults. The five-year study, performed in an animal model,
and to RNA in the brain cells of people with other diseases. They found that GDF10 regulates a unique collection of molecules that improves recovery after stroke.
killing pathogens by penetrating cell membranes and disrupting cell division. Extensive testing at UVA labs show that the tablet causes better than a 99.99 percent reduction in such infectious waterborne bacteria as Vibrio cholera
Escherichia coli and other coliform bacteria. The Madidrop also is effective at reducing the infectivity of protozoan pathogens including Giardia lamblia and Cryptosporidium parvum, all of
which cause severe diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration and potential long-term growth and cognition deficiencies. These pathogens are particularly devastating to children and people with AIDS.
Smith said that most of the revenue from sales of Madidrop initially will be fed back into the company to fuel production expansion.
Public service-minded investors will become shareholders and eventually make small profits. Madidrop PBC will provide profit-sharing for employees
the researchers published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. hen you have an infection,
and can lead to heart attack and stroke. The disease affects more than four million Americans and causes over 750,000 hospitalizations and 130,000 deaths per year in the United states alone.
The new treatment uses nanotechnology to precisely target and destroy the cells within the heart that cause cardiac arrhythmia.
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, led by Jérôme Kalifa, M d.,Ph d.,a cardiologist and U-M Medical school assistant professor at the Center for Arrhythmia Research,
Widely used today to treat cancer, the technique requires doctors to mark unwanted cells with a chemical that makes them sensitive to low-level red light.
yet large enough to carry the chemical payload needed to do the job. n our cancer work,
#Cell stress response and fat and obesity gene linked In one fell swoop, Cornell researchers have discovered mechanisms that control the function of a fat
and obesity gene while at the same time answering a longstanding question about how cells respond to stress.
when they have fevers. The genes express heat shock proteins which protect essential cell proteins and remove damaged proteins before they accumulate
disease and cell death. eat shock genes and their heat shock proteins are expressed highly during stress and are very critical to protect cells;
without them cells would quickly die under stress, said Shu-Bing Qian, associate professor of nutritional sciences,
and it is associated also with diabetes, he said. The gene produces an FTO enzyme, which acts as a demethylase,
Many years ago, researchers observed that obese people have poor cellular stress responses. This may be because their heat shock proteins are reduced,
whether FTO enzymes and their effect on heat shock genes and proteins could be promoting obesityand diabetes,
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
He holds a joint appointment in UCSF Diabetes Center and Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research.
white, which stores energy and is linked with diabetes and obesity; and brown, which produces heat by burning energy
which is already in clinical trials as a cancer therapeutic; and a more precise next-generation antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) drug developed in collaboration with Isis pharmaceuticals,
but here wee found that it could help reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, as well.
genetics and disease diagnosis. But carrying out such analyses requires expensive lab equipment, making its application out of reach for many people who live in resource-limited places.
After only a 10-minute run, the device could detect the Hepatitis b virus in blood serum at a level low enough to flag an early-stage acute infection,
a superconducting sphere and a magnetic sheet that had been wound into a cylinder. The metamaterial had just the right properties to cloak a specific magnetic field encased within the sphere,
and now he believes his team has discovered a revolutionary strategy to treat cancer. he focus of my work has always been to define the signature molecules that are on
This vastatinbirth control method would be free of unpleasant side-effects like mood swings, acne and breast tenderness,
and previously unknown, characteristic of cancerous tumors arising from a variety of organs. e discovered membrane proteins that among the normal tissues,
These egg-specific proteins are also found in cancers that arise in a wide range of organs,
For some reason, when many cancers dysregulate, or begin to grow on their own, they revert back and take on features of a developing egg.
Herr and his team are bringing awareness to an aspect of cancer that is fundamental to the disease:
At the same time, theye creating an entirely new field of study into cancer-oocyte neoantigens. athologists have appreciated long that cancer cells may de-differentiate
What we have confirmed now is that cancers from many organs de-differentiate to take on features of the oocyte, the original mother cell from
With this discovery, Herr started his first cancer research company, Neoantigenics. Like Ovastasis, Neoantigenics is focused on creating a targeted drug that will affect only those cells identified by the correct cell surface biomarkers.
Their goal is to create a cancer treatment that will track and kill cells that carry the SAS1B protein,
the biomarker that is found only on growing eggs and tumor cells. The monoclonal antibodies to SAS1B can be thought of as a homing mechanism to guide a miniscule warhead selectively to the surface of cancer cells.
and then after binding on the tumor cell surface, the antibody-drug burrows inside them to release a toxic payload. ou add an antibody with a drug on it
The same biomarkers that will help limit the area of impact for Ovastasis birth control will also help Neoantigenics confine the toxic effects of cancer treatment to growing egg and tumor cells.
This unique medication could mean a dramatic reduction of the difficult side-effects of traditional cancer treatments like hair loss, nausea, anemia and neuropathy.
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
but a way that could become a frontline treatment for women who have cancers of many types
After the cancer treatment is complete those primordial eggs can begin the cycle of normal egg growth and ovulation again.
and the company will work with U. Va. labs as it begins testing the cancer medication first in model organisms,
The course of infection, from exposure to recovery, or death, can take as little as two weeks. That may not leave enough time for the immune system to mount an effective response.
but also Marburg, Lassa and Junin viruses, all sources of deadly infections. The work paves the way toward designing a potential broad-spectrum drug that could serve as a therapy for a number of serious viral infections. ur work is aimed at handicapping the virus
so that the immune system has time to respond, said Freedman. e could also imagine this type of drug would be part of a cocktail therapy,
The research was published in the journal PLOS Pathogens. Freedman and Harty teamed with scientists from Fox Chase Chemical Diversity Center and the United states army Medical Research Institute of Infectious disease on the study.
Because viruses must hijack host cell proteins to complete their life cycle and reproduce, the Penn Vet scientists have focused on developing drugs that interfere with the host proteins
and found that it lowered infection rates in a dose-dependent manner. Finally, they confirmed that ORAI1 inhibition was blocking the ability of viruses to exit the cell,
Future applications of such a DNA walker might include a cancer detector that could roam the human body searching for cancerous cells
constantly computing whether a cancer is present. ore immediate practical applications may include deploying the DNA walker in the body
Although it may be a long march from diagnosing cancer to curing it, ll breakthroughs begin with baby steps.
and smuggle cancer signals their neighbors New research in The FASEB Journal suggests that an in vitro co-culture system robustly quantifies the transfer of fluorescent proteins between cells
Not only does this cast an important light on how cancer metastasizes and recruits cellular material from healthy cells,
especially the mouse model, will be used by academics to isolate healthy cells modified by tumors, and by the pharmaceutical industry in the quest for novel anticancer drugs that block tumor-organ communication,
said Anne Burtey, Ph d.,study author from the Department of Biomedicine, at the University of Bergen in Bergen,
with increased abilities to diffuse within tumors and even reach the healthy cells involved in tumor progression.
To make this discovery, Burtey and colleagues studied the exchange of molecules between cells, by color-coding them with red or blue cellular fluorescent yesor ags.
suggesting that this protein is a key regulator of cell-cell communication in cancer. Live cell imaging confirmed that the transfer is contact-dependent.
#New treatment targets cancers with particular genetic signature Oxford university researchers have found the Achilles heel of certain cancer cells mutations in a gene called SETD2.
Their findings will be presented to the National Cancer Research Institute conference in Liverpool 2nd november, 2015. It is well known that mutations drive cancer cell growth and resistance to treatment.
The Oxford team found that that was the case for cancer cells with mutations in a key cancer gene called SETD2.
utations in SETD2 are frequently found in kidney cancer and some childhood brain tumours, so we were excited
Importantly, the research team, funded by Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council, have developed also a biomarker test to identify SETD2 mutated tumours,
something that can be used immediately in cancer diagnosis. Professor Tim Maughan, Clinical Director of the Cancer Research UK/Medical Research Council Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology, said:
his novel and exciting finding provides a new scientific basis for precision targeting of some cancers
which are currently very difficult to treat, and we are now taking these findings into clinical trials.
the hope is that these findings will help to target other cancers with similar weak points
and provide a step towards personalized cancer therapy i
#Google Project Loon Set to Enmesh the Globe with Internet Balloons by 2016 Project Loon is yet another highly ambitious project of the tech-giant Google,
#Study reveals structure of tuberculosis enzyme, could offer drug target A team of scientists, including several from the U s. Department of energy Argonne National Laboratory,
have determined the structures of several important tuberculosis enzymes, which could lead to new drugs for the disease.
Tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, has proved incredibly stubborn even in the age of powerful antibiotics,
infecting about one third of all people worldwide. Treatment can take up to nine months. It has stealth properties that protect it from antibiotics;
said Andrzej Joachimiak, an Argonne Distinguished Fellow, head of the Structural biology Center, co-principal investigator at the Center for Structural genomics of Infectious diseases and a corresponding author on the new study.
It so essential that virtually all living organisms, including human and bacterial pathogens, have versions of it. hat we discovered earlier this year is that the human and bacterial versions bind molecules differently,
Joachimiak said. his is very important for finding a molecule to build a drug aroundou don want to inhibit a human enzyme, just the pathogen one.
Helena Boshoff at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious diseases performed complementary studies showing that these inhibitors do in fact efficiently block mycobacterium growth l
For the first time, scientists have identified a protein inside blood vessels found at the invasive edge of brain tumours highlighting the area from where cancer is most likely to spread.
Mapping this inflammation gives scientists a more complete picture of the cancer. The scientists have developed a special dye that recognises
and Cancer Research UK scientist at The University of Oxford, said: f we can map the edge of the tumour,
Professor Charlie Swanton, NCRI chair and Cancer Research UK scientist at the Francis Crick Institute, said:
Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK chief executive, said: rain cancers continue to have very poor survival rates,
which is why research into how to treat them is a top priority for Cancer Research UK.
Being able to delineate the edges of brain tumours is an exciting step towards better surgery and radiotherapy for patients.
The holy grail would be to be able to completely remove brain tumours with the help of this new imaging technique reducing recurrence of the disease
They also discovered that SWEETS make plants susceptible to hijacking by pathogens that steal plant energy supplies before they can be transported to the seeds.
One of her daughters has a usually fatal lung condition called pulmonary arterial hypertension. In addition to GM pigs
Genome pioneer Craig Venter led a team that manufactured a genome for a germ that causes pneumonia in cows,
to make a tuberculosis virus with unnatural DNA in it. It would be a real,
saving the lives of people who would otherwise die from heart failure. In the U s. about 2, 400 heart transplant occur each year,
They had severe brain damage but were not brain dead. These patients are usually on mechanical ventilators and some,
#Paralyzed Man Arm Wired to Receive Brain signals Scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio say theye used electronics to get around a paralyzed man spinal injury,
which develops technologies for people with paralysis. The project, described today at the meeting of the Society for neuroscience in Chicago,
Last year, a different Ohio man with partial arm paralysis received a brain implant and was able to mentally open
because the new volunteer has a spinal injury that prevents him from moving his arms at all.
To complete the bridge of the man spinal cord injury, doctors then inserted more than 16 fine wires into the volunteer right arm and hand.
Spritam is an epilepsy medication used to treat seizures in children and adults. It's porous thanks to the 3d printing process,
noted Spritam is designed to help epilepsy patients adhere to their treatment regimen and should help children and seniors in particular.
who has been paralysed for more than a decade after a spinal cord injury, was able to detect with nearly 100 percent accuracy which of his robotic fingers were being touched by researchers.
potentially reducing the risk of injury, or atrial fibrillation. t
#Epilepsy drug is approved first FDA 3d printed pill The first 3d printed pill has been approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA.
Developed by Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, Spritam (levetiracetam) is an oral adjunctive therapy to treat a range of seizures in adults and children with epilepsy.
The drug is fabricated with Aprecia proprietary Zipdose Technology platform, which uses 3d printing to produce a porous,
000mg that disintegrate in the patient in less than 10 seconds. y combining 3d printing technology with a highly-prescribed epilepsy treatment,
such as applying anticancer medications to melanomas or applying growth factors and antibiotics for wound healing, said Jin Di,
the system reportedly has the potential to aid sick or disabled people. eople with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) motor neuron disease,
or high spinal cord injuries face difficulties communicating or using their limbssaid Muller. ecoding what they intend from their brain signals could offer means to communicate
#Tadpole endoscope offers new hope for gastrointestinal cancer detection Hong kong researchers have devised a swimming housing for a capsule endoscopy camera which can be steered around to provide better images inside the stomach
Cancers in this system the oesophagus, stomach, intestines and rectum are major causes of death and difficult to investigate,
it can be difficult to determine precisely where lesions and growths are, because of mismatches between imaging speed and peristalsis,
Identifying with precision the source of that anxiety, and the appropriate focus of action, is rather more challenging.
It is the marketplace of human knowledge, queries, anxieties, ideas, journeys, hopes, sorrows and dreams.
and Android-owning doctors to share images of diseases, injuries and everything in between. Launched in 2013,
#Brain-training game helps'minimise impact of schizophrenia on life'A rain traininggame improves the cognitive function of people with schizophrenia
was tested for four weeks by 22 participants with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Schizophrenia is a long-term mental health condition
which can contribute to behavioural changes, confused thinking, apathy and, in some cases, delusions or hallucinations.
People with schizophrenia may experience cognitive impairments, including poor episodic memory, which affects remembering things such as times and dates,
Wizard aims to improve the cognitive functionality and episodic memory of people with schizophrenia, with in-game tasks including users moving through rooms and identifying items in boxes and character locations.
e need a way of treating the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as problems with episodic memory,
n conjunction with medication and current psychological therapies, Wizard could help people with schizophrenia minimise the impact of their illness on everyday life. eople with schizophrenia often find studying
The employment rate for people with schizophrenia was recorded at 8%,according to a 2013 paper. The Wizard game will be included as a mode within the popular brain-training app, Peak,
who was paralyzed after suffering a spinal cord injury more than a decade ago. An array of electrodes was placed in the volunteer's sensory cortex (part of the brain that identifies touch)
it actually helped mice clear staph infections at a stage when conventional antibiotics normally stop being effective.
This means that it might one day be possible to use this technique to treat people with life-threatening antibiotic-resistant infections.
repeated infections that can be fatal. And to make matters worse, certain strains have become resistant to common antibiotics.
As a result, one type of resistant staph bacteria called MRSA causes over 80,000 infections and 11,285 deaths occur every year.
That's why researchers want to find ways to kill the pathogen when it's located inside cells,
a hideout where antibiotics typically used against staph infections aren't as effective.""Staph can hide inside blood cells for a couple of hours or days,
That's a big problem because drugs that are used normally against staph infections can take over four hours to work far longer than it takes for Staph bacteria to move into new cells,
'Can we tag the bacteria with antibodies armed with really potent antibiotics and kill these pathogens inside the cell?'"
Animals who received the treatment were able to recover from staph infections much sooner and with fewer negative health effects than they would have otherwise,
Genentech manufactured antibodies based on those the immune system makes to combat staph infections. Then, the researchers attached the antibiotics to the antibody by using amino acids as glue.
whether Staph bacteria hidden in cells are repeated responsible for infections, but if that's the case, then this treatment could put a stop to that by clearing the body of bacterial reservoirs.
it's possible that this treatment might one day help people avoid repeated infections, Mariathasan says.
THIS MIGHT HELP PEOPLE AVOID REPEATED INFECTIONS The technique might also prove to be less harsh on the body than common staph treatments.
Still, the act of combining two different weapons antibodies and antibiotics to fight off infections is an intriguing idea.
and too much exposure to mercury can lead to serious health problems for humans and wildlife. There have been ideas for ways to remove mercury pollution,
#Roche diagnostics & SAP Team to Fight Diabetes In 2014, diabetes took 4. 9 million lives worldwide.
That's one death every seven seconds. 52 million Europeans are living with diabetes, and in Germany alone, there are 6 to 8 million documented cases.
and with the severity of diabetes on the forefront of focus, Roche, in partnership with SAP, created new preventative care package.
Even pre-diabetics can benefit from this preventative care app. By using the app to detect the early signs of diabetes,
individuals can make the changes necessary to live a normal life. This Wednesday April 29th, Dr. Oliver Haferbeck, Head of Diabetes Care at Roche diagnostics will be part of a live panel on the Coffee break with Game Changers Radio.
Listen to the discussion titled, MD in the Palm of your Hand-Connected Care, and tune in live at 11 AM EST. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter via#SAPRADIO o
and clinicians in their quests to find cures for cancer, lupus and other diseases. The team used a preexisting next-generation sequencing toolkit,
The American Cancer Society uses cloud-based office and collaboration technology to improve organisational efficiencies.
Eminently preventative in nature, connected care helps health providers stop illness before it starts. Through mobile innovations and sensor technologies, today's doctors can report on key health indicators to prevent illnesses altogether
and can affect brain chemicals, inducing antepartum depression and/or anxiety. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, roughly 14-23 percent of women will struggle with symptoms of depression at some point during their pregnancy.
and proactively identify mothers at risk for such illness and provide them with the necessary resources to treat the depression before it takes effect.
and monitor cancer patients as well as other diseases. By engaging with pregnant women and monitoring their health via this mobile application,
#Germ-slaying robots fight infections Here's the problem: According to the CDC there are about 1. 7 million hospital-acquired infections in the U s. each year,
and complications arising from those infections lead to nearly 100,000 deaths annually. The health care and liability costs associated with infections are astronomical,
and despite increasingly rigid policies and best practices designed to keep hospitals sterile, human workers aren't great at disinfecting the thousands of surfaces in a hospital room where viruses
and bacteria may linger. Enter the robots. An emerging class of robotic technology uses UV LIGHT to fuse the DNA of viruses
The system also tracks infection control data and simultaneously uploads the information to the hospital's web portal,
meaning it integrates well into a new health care paradigm centering around data collection and analysis."With rising issues around health care-associated infections,
but also ensuring that patients aren't being held financially responsible for things like preventable hospital-acquired infections,
they inadvertently drew attention to the problem of hospital-acquired infections. Hospitals are interested in technology that integrate into existing protocols and workflows,
what technology works best and whether their use reduces rates of hospital-acquired infections. As more hospitals adopt the robots,
whose cancers came back even after stem cell transplants. Their cancers were so aggressive they had no treatment options left said the study's senior author Stephan Grupp MD Phd a professor of Pediatrics in Penn's Perelman School of medicine and director of Translational Research in the Center
for Childhood Cancer Research at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The durable responses we have observed with CTL019 therapy are unprecedented.
Shannon Maude MD Phd an assistant professor of Pediatrics and a pediatric oncologist at CHOP and Noelle Frey MD MSCE an assistant professor of Medicine and an oncologist at Penn's Abramson's Cancer Center
are co-first authors of the new study. The research team is led by Carl June MD the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and director of Translational Research in the Abramson Cancer Center
along with David Porter MD the Jodi Fisher Horowitz Professor in Leukemia Care Excellence and director of Blood and Marrow Transplantation in the Abramson Cancer Center.
CTL019 manufacturing begins with a patient's own T cells which are collected via an apheresis process similar to blood donation then reprogrammed in Penn's Clinical Cell
and kill tumor cells. The engineered cells contain an antibody-like protein known as a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)
which is designed to bind to a protein called CD19 found on the surface of B cells including the cancerous B cells that characterize several types of leukemia.
A signaling domain built into the CAR promotes rapid multiplication of the hunter cells building an army of tumor-killing cells that tests reveal can grow to more than 10000 new cells for each single engineered cell patients receive.
whose cancers returned as CD19-negative leukemia that would not have been targeted by the modified cells.
All patients who received the CTL019 hunter cells experienced a cytokine release syndrome (CRS) within a few days after receiving their infusions--a key indicator that the engineered cells have begun proliferating and killing tumor cells in the body.
which included varying degrees of flu-like symptoms with high fevers nausea and muscle pain.
which also express the CD19 protein had been eliminated along with their tumors. The researchers note that persistent absence of normal B cells following CTL019 treatment indicates continued activity of the gene-modified T cells
which are thought to provide long-term vaccine-like activity preventing tumor recurrence. Since B cells play a role in helping fight infection patients typically receive immunoglobulin replacement to maintain healthy immune function.
Our results support that CTL019 can produce long-lasting remissions for certain heavily pre-treated ALL patients without further therapy Frey said.
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