Gas sensors or implantable chips for medical applications which can gather information about blood sugar levels
New method improves single-cell genomics analyses Single-cell RNA-sequencing is a relatively new technology that helps scientists understand how genes are expressed in different types of healthy tissue and in cancers.
Cancer cells differentiation processes and the pathogenesis of various diseases can be explored better and understood when they are based only on known detailed cell profiles.
The ability to perform real-time 3d imaging at cellular resolution in behaving organisms is a new frontier for biomedical
The emergence of fluorescent proteins and transgenic techniques over the past 20 years has transformed biomedical research even delivering neurons that flash as they fire in the living brain.
) and Kimara Targoff (assistant professor of pediatrics Department of Pediatrics) all of whom are starting to use the SCAPE system in their research.
or understand how cancer cells are organized in a metastasizing tumor or how immune cells are configured in an autoimmune attack you have to look at a large piece of tissue with nanoscale precision he says.
or proteins that they want to examine using an antibody that binds to the chosen targets.
This antibody is linked to a fluorescent dye as well as a chemical anchor that can attach the dye to the polyacrylate chain.
While Boyden's team is focused on the brain other possible applications for this technique include studying tumor metastasis
and angiogenesis (growth of blood vessels to nourish a tumor) or visualizing how immune cells attack specific organs during autoimmune disease e
#Gene tied to profound vision loss discovered by scientists An exhaustive hereditary analysis of a large Louisiana family with vision issues has uncovered a new gene tied to an incurable eye disorder called retinitis pigmentosa,
according to an examination led by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHEALTH).
It is a family of eye diseases that affects more than 200,000 in the United states and millions worldwide The retina converts images into electrical signals that can be processed by the brain.
Retinitis pigmentosa damages this film (the retina) and its early symptoms include decreased night vision and peripheral vision.
Once it starts, the loss of vision is relentlessly progressive, often ending in blindness. In the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, UTHEALTH's Stephen P. Daiger, Ph d,
. and his colleagues report their discovery of a new gene tied to retinitis pigmentosa, which brings the total of genes associated with this sight-threatening disease to more than 60.
The gene is called hexokinase 1 (HK1. This information is important because it helps affected families cope with the disorder,
helps explain the biologic basis of these diseases and suggests targets for drug treatments and gene therapy, said Daiger, the report's senior author and holder of the Thomas Stull Matney Ph d. Endowed Professorship in Environmental and Genetic sciences at UTHEALTH School of Public health."
"The challenge now is to block the activity of these mutations and clinical trials are underway to do just that,
"he said.""Dr. Daiger is trying to make a breakthrough in potentially blinding diseases with no known treatments,
"said Richard S. Ruiz, M d.,professor of ophthalmology and holder of the John S. Dunn Distinguished University Chair in Ophthalmology at UTHEALTH."
"Right now, we address the symptoms of the disease and help patients make the most of their existing vision."
"For approximately three decades, Daiger, a member of the Human genetics Center at the UTHEALTH School of Public health, has been following the progress of hundreds of families across the country with retinitis pigmentosa."
"We've found the cause of disease in 80 percent of the families we have studied,
"Daiger said.""Our goal is to find the cause in the remaining 20 percent.""Equipped with the genetic profiles of family members, Daiger's team has identified differences in the genetic makeup of those with the disease.
The researchers also use family histories and DNA tests to glean information about the condition's hereditary nature.
There are different types of retinitis pigmentosa and Daiger's laboratory is focused on the autosomal dominant type.
This means that only one parent needs the mutation in order to pass the disease to a child.
This type accounts for about a third of all cases and many of its disease-causing genes have been discovered
#Environment not genes dictates human immune variation study finds A study of twins conducted by Stanford university School of medicine investigators shows that our environment more than our heredity plays the starring role in determining the state of our immune system the body's primary defense against disease.
if you sequence someone's genome you can tell what diseases they're going have 50 years later said Mark Davis Phd professor of microbiology and immunology and director of Stanford's Institute for Immunity Transplantation and Infection.
But while genomic variation clearly plays a key role in some diseases he said the immune system has to be tremendously adaptable
in order to cope with unpredictable episodes of infection injury and tumor formation. The immune system has to think on its feet said Davis senior author of the new study which will be published Jan 15 in Cell.
But what we found was that in most cases including the reaction to a standard influenza vaccine
. and is now a consulting professor of medicine at Stanford began curating a registry of twins for research purposes.
or toxic exposures vaccinations diet and dental hygiene--trumped heritable ones when it came to accounting for differences within a pair of twins.
Davis and his associates also observed considerable environmental influence over the quantities of antibodies produced in members of twin pairs who had been vaccinated for influenza in a separate Stanford investigation directed by study co-author Cornelia Dekker MD professor of pediatric infectious disease
and medical director of the Stanford-Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Vaccine Program. While many previous studies have suggested a powerful genetic component in vaccine responsiveness Davis noted that those studies typically were performed in very young children who had undergone not yet the decades of environmental exposure that appears to reshape the immune system over time.
In a striking example of the immune system's plasticity the Stanford scientists found that the presence
or absence of a single chronic viral infection could have a massive effect on the system's composition and responsiveness.
A healthy human immune system continually adapts to its encounters with hostile pathogens friendly gut microbes nutritional components
Other Stanford co-authors of the study are Atul Butte MD Phd associate professor of pediatrics (systems medicine) and of genetics;
Holden Maecker Phd associate professor of microbiology and immunology and director of Stanford's Human Immune Monitoring Center;
Information about Stanford's Department of Microbiology and Immunology which also supported the work is available at http://microimmuno. stanford. edu
The authors also found a possible link to cancer. In mice prone to develop benign skin tumors-papillomas-the activation of Fra-2 reduced skin tumor burden.
The authors demonstrate that Fra-2 induces premature differentiation of keratinocytes. An additional novelty is related to the regulation of the transcriptional activity of Fra-2. The work reveals that the activation of this transcription factor depends on chemical protein modifications
whether inhibition of Ezh2 may be a valuable therapeutic strategy for skin diseases related to keratinocyte differentiation defects s
major disease implications"Instead of asking,'How do we study the immune response of the brain?''''Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?'
'now we can approach this mechanistically. Because the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system through meningeal lymphatic vessels,
"said Jonathan Kipnis, Phd, professor in the UVA Department of Neuroscience and director of UVA's Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG)."
Kipnis also saluted the"phenomenal"surgical skills of Igor Smirnov, a research associate in the Kipnis lab whose work was critical to the imaging success of the study.
Arraythe unexpected presence of the lymphatic vessels raises a tremendous number of questions that now need answers, both about the workings of the brain and the diseases that plague it.
take Alzheimer's disease.""In Alzheimer's, there are accumulations of big protein chunks in the brain, "Kipnis said."
And there's an enormous array of other neurological diseases, from autism to multiple sclerosis, that must be reconsidered in light of the presence of something science insisted did not exist t
remove contraceptive implants To address a global health challenge, a team of biomedical engineering undergraduates has developed a kit to teach front-line health care workers in developing countries how to implant contraceptives.
In developing regions where the economy is weak and medical services are limited, global health experts say as many as 200 million women want access to long-term,
reversible contraceptives to avoid unintended pregnancies and to help space out the births of their children.
One of the most convenient and effective options--a tiny implant that can delay conception for three to five years--is inserted into a woman's arm
Sometimes, the cylindrical toothpick-shaped implant may be inserted inadvertently into the woman's fat tissue instead of just under the outer skin layer.
and makes removal of the implant far more difficult. To help prevent such problems, a team of Johns hopkins university biomedical engineering undergraduates has developed a teaching set called the Contraceptive Implant Training Tool kit or CITT Kit, for short.
The medical simulator includes two training models: a stand-alone replica arm and a layered band that can be worn by health workers who act as"patients"during practice sessions."
"We've produced a kit that's designed to effectively teach lower-level health-care providers the proper way to insert
and remove these subdermal contraceptive implants, "said team leader Taylor Lam from Thousand Oaks, Calif,
The CITT Kit's components also feature landmarks that can help the students identify the correct placement site for a cylindrical implant
and easily remove an implant, a procedure that's considered to be more challenging than insertion of the contraceptive.
when they actually perform these procedures in a clinic, "said rising junior Miguel Sobral, a team member from Lisbon, Portugal.
the student inventors were advised by physician Ricky Lu, technical director for reproductive health and family planning at Jhpiego,
"These pods have embedded placebo implants to simulate a range of removal challenges, from easy pop outs to deeply located and adherent implants requiring additional skills to extract them.
This is critical to have in clinical training where removal cases for practice may be limited during a short training course."
Allen also is a lecturer in the School of medicine's Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Working with Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, the students have obtained a provisional patent covering their invention.
which might give an impact on tyrosine kinase-targeted leukemia therapy, was found to be expressed in a leukemia cell line.
The function of the lncrna CCDC26 is understood not fully; however, researchers at Hiroshima University revealed the mechanisms by
The results provide new insights into leukemia recurrence and may help to develop new leukemia therapies.
Recent transcriptomic studies have revealed the existence of numerous RNAS that are relatively long but not translated into proteins.
therefore cause a variety of diseases such as cancer. However, the molecular functions of lncrnas remain to be elucidated fully.
Leukemia cells in which CCDC26 was knocked down showed enhanced survival periods after serum withdrawal. A KIT-specific inhibitor reversed this increased survival of the cells.
These results are published in a Molecular Cancer article titled""Long noncoding RNA, CCDC26, controls myeloid leukemia cell growth through regulation of KIT expression.""
Leukemia characterized by a mutated copy number of CCDC26 might be treated by KIT-targeted therapy"quoted Dr. Hirano o
Researchers at the University of Bonn and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) have discovered two new groups of viruses within the Bunyavirus family in the tropical forest of Ivory coast.
"The most well-known bunyaviruses include, for example, the Rift valley fever virus, which can cause febrile illnesses with severe bleeding in humans,
"says Dr. Sandra Junglen from the Bonn Institute of Virology, also affiliated with the German Center for Infection Research.
In 2011, the"Schmallenberg virus"gained much attention: also a part of the Bunyavirus family and transmitted by gnats,
Agents of human disease have developed from insect viruses"These were two groups of as yet-unknown viruses
They performed infection trials in a large number of cell cultures at different temperature levels. While pathogenic bunyaviruses can multiply at temperatures that include the human body temperature,
"says the researcher from the University of Bonn Hospital. Simplified test to test novel viruses for risk of human infection Triggered by epidemics such as SARS and Ebola,
virologists are now reaching out to discover the plethora of unknown viruses lurking in natural reservoirs such as insects, in an attempt to forecast pandemic risks."
"We hope our temperature test for estimating the risk of vertebrate infection can be useful for assessing other viruses that keep being discovered,
#Intelligent bacteria for detecting disease Another step forward has just been taken in the area of synthetic biology.
in association with Montpellier Regional University Hospital and Stanford university, have transformed bacteria into"secret agents"that can give warning of a disease based solely on the presence of characteristic molecules in the urine or blood.
The bacteria thus programmed detect the abnormal presence of glucose in the urine of diabetic patients.
published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, is the first step in the use of programmable cells for medical diagnosis.
and are considered often to be our enemies, causing many diseases such as tuberculosis or cholera. However, they can also be witnessed allies,
Since the advent of biotechnology, researchers have modified bacteria to produce therapeutic drugs or antibiotics. In this novel study, they have actually become a diagnostic tool.
Medical diagnosis is a major challenge for the early detection and subsequent monitoring of diseases.""In vitro"diagnosis is based on the presence in physiological fluids (blood and urine, for example) of molecules characteristic for a particular disease.
Because of its noninvasiveness and ease of use, in vitro diagnosis is of great interest. However, in vitro tests are sometimes complex,
and require sophisticated technologies that are often available only in hospitals. This is where biological systems come into play.
Living cells are real nanomachines that can detect and process many signals and respond to them.
in association with Professor Eric Renard (Montpellier Regional University Hospital) and Drew Endy (Stanford university), applied this new technology to the detection of disease signals in clinical samples.
The authors used the transcriptor's amplification abilities to detect disease markers, even if present in very small amounts.
and detected the abnormal presence of glucose in the urine of diabetic patients.""We have deposited the genetic components used in this work in the public domain to allow their unrestricted reuse by other public
"Our work is focused presently on the engineering of artificial genetic systems that can be modified on demand to detect different molecular disease markers,
In future, this work might also be applied to engineering the microbial flora in order to treat various diseases, especially intestinal diseases
135 K) which caused the"high-Tc fever"in the world 30 years ago, it obviously exceeds the record of other"high-Tc superconductors"such as fullerene (C60) superconductors (Tc 33 K) and Mgb2 (Tc 39k),
Disruption of the clock has been associated with a variety of health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
According to Carrie Partch a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC Santa cruz and corresponding author of the paper, the connection between clock disruption and cancer is still unclear."
"The clock is disrupted not always in cancer cells, but studies have shown that disrupting circadian rhythms in mice causes tumors to grow faster,
and one of the things the clock does is set restrictions on when cells can divide,
including melanoma, lung cancer, and breast cancer. It belongs to a group of proteins known as"cancer/testis antigens,
"which are expressed normally in the germ line cells that give rise to sperm and eggs, but are also found in some cancer cells.
Cancer researchers have been interested in these proteins as markers for cancer and as potential targets for therapeutic cancer vaccines."
"For very few of these do we understand the roles they might play in driving cancer,
"Understanding how PASD1 is regulating the circadian clock could open the door to developing new therapies.
We could potentially find ways to disrupt it in those cancers in which it is expressed."
"Beyond its role in cancer, Partch is interested also in understanding the normal role of PASD1
causing either advanced sleep syndrome or delayed sleep syndrome. There is also a growing body of evidence showing that environmental changes affecting circadian rhythms
and we have ongoing studies to explore its role in cancer and other human health problems
Because of its accuracy, it could also better distinguish between benign lung tumors that do not pose a threat
and malignant tumors that have the potential to grow and spread. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in both men and women in the United states. However,
the five-year survival rate increases dramatically if the disease is caught and treated early. According to the American Cancer Society,
if NSCLC is caught in its earliest stage, the five-year survival rate is 49 percent.
However, patients who are diagnosed when the disease has metastasized--meaning that it has spread to other organs--have only about a 1 percent chance of achieving survival after five years.
In 2013 the USPSTF recommended annual screening to patients at least 55 years old who had a history of smoking
. associate professor in the Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program at The Wistar Institute and lead author of the study."
we can detect the cancer earlier with a less expensive, less invasive and more accurate blood test.
"In this study, Huang and his colleagues focused on cancer testis antigens (CTAS), since they are often found in tumor cells that circulate in the blood.
After analyzing 116 different CTAS, the researchers identified the protein AKAP4 as a potential biomarker that could effectively distinguish between patients with and without NSCLC.
I diagnosis. The researchers analyzed the effectiveness of the biomarker by looking at the area under the curve (AUC),
a method that calculates the ability of the test to distinguish those with disease from those without it.
and don't have a particular disease. In this study, when the researchers compared all 264 of the NSCLC samples with the 135 control samples,
When the researchers looked at only the 136 samples with known stage I disease, the AUC was 0. 9795.
While the researchers noted that the presence of AKAP4 increased with the stage of the disease
AKAP4 was still detectable in the samples with early stage disease.""The results of this study exceeded our expectations,
Multiple hospitals have agreed to provide blood samples for analysis to Wistar for this next study."
"said Dario C. Altieri, M d.,President and CEO of The Wistar Institute and director of Wistar's Cancer Center."
in order to have a meaningful impact on this devastating disease.""This is the second time Wistar has identified a potential method for creating a blood test to screen for lung cancer.
Researchers at the Institute are also currently analyzing more than 600 blood samples to develop a blood test that identifies a 29-gene"signature"that distinguishes patients with NSCLC from those without the disease.
carboplatin and oxyplatin, have been used to treat cancer for more than 35 years. While they remain among the most prescribed and most potent chemotherapy drugs,
and accumulate at the tumor site. However, tests of these nanodrugs show that only between one and 10 percent of the drugs are delivered to the tumor site
with the majority of the remainder being diverted to the liver and spleen.''The body's immune system, especially the liver and spleen, has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks in developing nanoscale chemotherapy drug delivery systems,
they become less available to treat the cancer, and can also cause toxicity.''In the past few years, Ho and his colleagues were developing cellular nanotags to help detect organ rejection,
when Ho noticed that Intralipid, a fat emulsion that is FDA-approved for use as an intravenous nutrition source,
Consequently, in these organs, the toxic side effects of the nanodrug decreased significantly. Furthermore, the researchers found that Intralipid pre-treatment allowed more of the drug to remain available and active in the body for longer periods of time.
The researchers believe that this increased availability will allow more of the drug to reach the tumor site,
#Early clinical trial success for new rheumatoid arthritis treatment Arrayrheumatoid arthritis is a disease in which the immune system attacks healthy tissues, particularly in the joints, causing inflammation, pain and deformity.
"Current therapies only treat the symptoms and slow the progression of the disease, "Professor Thomas said."
"We have designed a vaccine-style treatment or'immunotherapy'specifically for individuals carrying high-risk rheumatoid arthritis genes and specific rheumatoid arthritis antibodies, called anti-CCP."
"This type of rheumatoid arthritis is called'CCP-positive'and accounts for the majority of cases.""Our immune system is made up of specialised cells that move through blood
and tissue, preventing disease and fighting infection by distinguishing between what is the body's own healthy tissue and
what is foreign.""This treatment teaches the patient's immune system to ignore a naturally occurring peptide that is incorrectly identified as'foreign',resulting in the production of CCP antibodies and causing inflammation."
"A personalised immunotherapy was prepared for each patient by taking a sample of their blood and extracting a particular type of immune cell called dendritic cells."
"Professor Thomas said a single injection of the patient's own immune-modified dendritic cells was found to be safe
clinically-practical vaccine technology that could deliver similar outcomes for patients. Professor Thomas is working on a delivery technology with Dendright Pty Ltd (a Uniquest start-up company) in collaboration Janssen Biotech Inc,
it could also be applied to other autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes s
#Drug-induced tissue regeneration demonstrated by scientists A study led by Ellen Heber-Katz, Phd, of the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR), part of Main line Health (MLH),
shows that a primordial form of energy production that still exists in mammals can be harnessed to achieve spontaneous tissue regeneration in mice, without the need for added stem cells.
The study findings were reported in the June 3, 2015, issue of Science Translational Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Almost 20 years ago, Heber-Katz noticed that the MRL mouse can spontaneously regenerate cartilage and other tissues after injury
of which is increased markedly before and after injury in the MRL mouse. Under normal oxygen conditions, HIF-1a is degraded by prolyl hydroxylases (PHDS.
Next, they selected a non-regenerating strain of mice to see what would happen when they experimentally up-regulated (stabilized) HIF-1a levels after an ear hole punch injury.
The mice received three injections of a PHD inhibitor in a slow-release formulation at 5-day intervals.
the drug-treated mice showed a pattern of molecular changes indistinguishable from that observed in MRL mice during regeneration in response to injury, confirming HIF-1a as a central driver of healthy regeneration of lost
"This remarkable work has vast importance in medicine and surgery and spotlights the diverse and important scientific investigations underway at LIMR,"says George Prendergast, Phd, President and CEO of LIMR."
"We are committed to the quest to discover therapies that make healthy tissue regeneration a possibility in humans
#Planarian regeneration model discovered by artificial intelligence Arrayin order to bioengineer complex organs, scientists need to understand the mechanisms by which those shapes are produced normally by the living organism.
#Your viral infection history in a single drop of blood With Virscan, scientists can run a single test to determine which viruses have infected an individual,
and compare viral infections in large populations. The comprehensive analysis can be performed for about $25 per blood sample.
Stephen Elledge, an HHMI investigator at Brigham and Women's Hospital, led the development of Virscan."
"Arrayvirscan works by screening the blood for antibodies against any of the 206 species of viruses known to infect humans.
The immune system ramps up production of pathogen-specific antibodies when it encounters a virus for the first time,
and it can continue to produce those antibodies for years or decades after it clears an infection.
That means Virscan not only identifies viral infections that the immune system is actively fighting, but also provides a history of an individual's past infections.
To develop the new test, Elledge and his colleagues synthesized more than 93,000 short pieces of DNA encoding different segments of viral proteins.
They introduced those pieces of DNA into bacteria-infecting viruses called bacteriophage. Each bacteriophage manufactured one of the protein segments--known as a peptide
000 known strains of human viruses. Antibodies in the blood find their viral targets by recognizing unique features known as epitopes that are embedded in proteins on the virus surface.
Antiviral antibodies in the blood find and bind to their target epitopes within the displayed peptides.
The scientists then retrieve the antibodies and wash away everything except for the few bacteriophage that cling to them.
they can identify which viral protein pieces were grabbed onto by antibodies in the blood sample. That tells the scientists which viruses a person's immune system has encountered previously,
either through infection or through vaccination. Elledge estimates it would take about 2-3 days to process 100 samples,
including HIV and hepatitis C."It turns out that it works really well,""Elledge says."
"Elledge and his colleagues used Virscan to analyze the antibodies in 569 people from four countries,
examining about 100 million potential antibody/epitope interactions. They found that on average, each person had antibodies to ten different species of viruses. As expected,
antibodies against certain viruses were common among adults but not in children, suggesting that children had not yet been exposed to those viruses. Individuals residing South africa, Peru,
and Thailand, tended to have antibodies against more viruses than people in the United states. The researchers also found that people infected with HIV had antibodies against many more viruses than did people without HIV.
Elledge says the team was surprised to find that antibody responses against specific viruses were surprisingly similar between individuals
with different people's antibodies recognizing identical amino acids in the viral peptides.""In this paper alone we identified more antibody/peptide interactions to viral proteins than had been identified in the previous history of all viral exploration,
"he says. The surprising reproducibility of those interactions allowed the team to refine their analysis
and improve the sensitivity of Virscan, and Elledge says the method will continue to improve as his team analyzes more samples.
Their findings on viral epitopes may also have important implications for vaccine design. Elledge says the approach his team has developed is limited not to antiviral antibodies.
His own lab is also using it to look for antibodies that attack a body's own tissue in certain autoimmune diseases that are associated with cancer.
A similar approach could also be used to screen for antibodies against other types of pathogens s
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