##Single-photon emission enhancement#seen as step toward quantum technologies Researchers have demonstrated a new way to enhance the emission of single photons by using yperbolic metamaterials,
such as materials used for biomedical purposes. This new method of radical polymerization doesn involve heavy metal catalysts like copper.
and for biological applications because of its toxicity to organisms and cells. Read de Alaniz Hawker, and postdoctoral researcher Brett Fors, now with Cornell University, led the study that was inspired initially by a photoreactive Iridium catalyst.
and are embedded by the plastic matrix. e use carbon fibers in those areas where the part undergoes intense mechanical stress;
either or both of these processes could be faulty in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),
#Smart devices track hand-washing in hospitals to help reduce the spread of infection In fact,
Administrators usually just spend a few days a month monitoring health care workers, noting hand-hygiene habits on a WHO checklist.
and Philip Liang SM 6 is using smart devices to monitor hand hygiene among hospital staff
which affected one in 25 U s. hospital patients in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A 2014 study in the Journal of Infection and Public health concluded that compliance with WHO hand-washing rules jumped 25 percent in one month when staff used Medsense in a 16-bed hospital unit at Salmaniya
Currently, the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospital in London is studying the correlation between the Medsense system and reduction in HAIS.
wee trying to be a support system for the hospital. In the atient zone Medsense consists of four smart devices,
and can collect data around the clock. leanstart General Sensing may tackle a serious health care issue, but its core technology started as a novelty item:
When a researcher requested the technology to monitor health care staff, however, the startup decided to get a clean start in the health care industry,
hich they say is recession-proof, Gips says. And after learning about WHO hand-hygiene guidelines, the team developed Medsense as an automated way to help administrators monitor hand-washing among staff.
In 2011, researchers at Queen Mary Hospital in Hong kong published a paper in the journal Biomed Infectious disease that found Medsense was 88 percent accurate in monitoring staff compliance with THE WHO guidelines.
and Medsense has been trialed in 10 hospitals across the United states and Europe, and in Saudi arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar.
as the wearers move through the atient journeythe waiting room, pre-procedure, procedure, and recovery room. General Sensing creates digital floor maps of an area being studied;
Another possible application is real-time location of surplus staff particularly important when there a sudden influx of patients in one area of a hospital,
#Lawrence Livermore technology could help detect diseases in commercial swine industry Agricultural officials who seek to detect diseases affecting the commercial swine industry may gain a new ally a biological detection system developed by Lawrence Livermore
A study by LLNL and Kansas State university scientists found that the Lawrence Livermore Microbial Detection Array (LLMDA) could help identify diseases in the commercial swine industry.
which is published by the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians. Many of the diseases affecting the commercial swine industry involve complex syndromes caused by multiple pathogens
including emerging viruses and bacteria. One pivotal advantage of the Livermore-developed LLMDA over other detection technologies is that it can detect within 24 hours any bacteria
said Raymond obrowland, professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at Kansas State College of Veterinary medicine. t really the future of diagnostics for both humans and animals.
New infectious diseases in animal food production systems can create enormous impacts that can affect domestic consumption and exports
as well as public health in the case of diseases that can move from animals to humans, the paper authors wrote.
Two examples of new diseases introduced into the swine industry include theinfluenza A virus subtype H1n1 and Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus.
Two other foreign diseases, African swine fever and classical swine fever, remain constant threats to the U s. industry. he best assurance for the timely identification of known and unknown threats is to employ techniques
Currently, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays represent one technology widely used for pathogen detection but typically only a handful of microorganisms can be identified in a single test.
Another method of detecting pathogens, DNA sequencing, greatly expands the number of microorganisms that can be identified,
and requires significant expertise. he LLMDA can identify co-infections from a single sample, said LLNL biologist Crystal Jaing,
The array also can identify co-infections faster and cheaper than DNA sequencing. In their paper, the authors noted that as the LLMDA technology cost decreases and throughput increases
it becomes feasible to look at microarrays as everyday tools for use in the diagnostic laboratory. he beauty of the LLMDA is that it lets you identify unknown diseases that the researcher isn looking for,
and polymicrobial. hese multiple bacteria and viruses end up in a disease syndrome. Wee looking at a complex situation
and we need the tools that can give us a comprehensive look at the disease factors involved.
oral fluid and tonsils from pigs that have co-infections of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) and Porcine circovirus-2 (PCV-2). The LLMDA easily identified PRRSV and PCV-2,
Clostridium and Staphylococcus. he use of the microarray technology could help the U s. detect the emergence of foreign animal diseases at their outset to prevent major disease outbreaks,
including clinical medicine, food safety testing, environmental monitoring and biodefense o
#Nature Inspires First Artificial Molecular Pump Using nature for inspiration, a team of Northwestern University scientists is the first to develop an entirely artificial molecular pump, in
#Discovery of a treatment to block the progression of multiple sclerosis A drug that could halt the progression of multiple sclerosis may soon be developed thanks to a discovery by a team at the CHUM Research Centre and the University of Montreal.
and they have shown that blocking this molecule could delay the onset of the disease and significantly slow its progression.
These encouraging results from in vitro tests in humans and in vivo tests in mice were published in the Annals of Neurology. e believe we have identified the first therapy that will impact the quality of life of people with multiple sclerosis by significantly reducing the disability and the disease progression
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease that is characterized by paralysis, numbness, loss of vision, and gait and balance deficits that lead to chronic disability.
There is no effective cure. The disease particularly affects young adults in northern countries. In Canada, nearly 75,000 people have MS. The brain is protected normally from attacks by the blood-brain barrier.
The blood-brain barrier prevents immune cells lymphocytes from entering the central nervous system. In people with MS there is often leakage.
Two types of lymphocytes, CD4 and CD8, find a way to cross this protective barrier. They attack the brain by destroying the myelin sheath that protects neurons,
In 2008, Dr. Prat team identified a cell adhesion molecule, called MCAM (Melanoma Cell adhesion molecule), which plays a crucial role in dysregulation of the immune system observed in multiple sclerosis. ur studies have shown that MCAM is necessary for the migration of CD4 and CD8 across the blood-brain barrier.
If we block the interaction of MCAM with the protein to which it normally binds
we decrease the disease activity, he said. Independently, the biotechnology company Prothena Corporation plc also discovered complementary data regarding MCAM,
The results are extremely positive. e observed a decrease of approximately 50%of the disease in mice with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE),
. What is especially significant is that we can stop the disease from the first symptoms
Later, the diseases progresses and the disability worsens, leading to the use of a cane or wheelchair.
Currently, none of the drugs available on the market affect the disease progression. Prothena has developed a potentially disease-modifying antibody, called PRX003,
which is designed, to inhibit MCAM function and thus prevent migration of destructive lymphocytes into tissue.
Prothena expects to initiate clinical trials of PRX003 in healthy volunteers by the end of June,
and anticipates a study in patients with psoriasis in 2016. Beyond psoriasis, anti-MCAM antibodies may be useful for treating a variety of diseases
including progressive forms of multiple sclerosis. Source: University of Montrea e
#Hydrogen-Powered Hycopter Drone can fly for 4 Hours on a Single Charge This month,
the Singapore-based company Horizon Unmanned Systems (HUS) presented the world first hydrogen-powered, multi-rotor UAV (Unmanned aerial vehicle) that uses its own structural elements to store fuel. e realized that the structures of these drones were hollow inside,
But many of the advances rely on petroleum-based plastics and toxic materials. Yu-Zhong Wang, Fei Song and colleagues wanted to seek a reenerway forward.
San diego School of medicine and Moores Cancer Center and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute created a model that allows them to track cellular behavior during the earliest stages of human development in real-time.
said co-senior author of the study David Cheresh, Phd, Distinguished Professor of Pathology, vice-chair for research and development and associate director for translational research at UC San diego. nd if wee ever going to use stem cells to develop new organ systems,
this new insight on the autonomic nervous system also has implications for rare inherited conditions such as neurofibromatosis,
tuberous sclerosis and Hirschsprung disease. hese observations may help to explain certain human disease syndromes in which abnormalities of the nervous system appear to be associated, for previously unclear reasons,
with vascular abnormalities, said co-senior author Evan Snyder, MD, Phd, professor and director of the Center for Stem Cells and Regenerative medicine at Sanford-Burnham. urthermore, we demonstrate here that modeling human development
and disease in the lab must take into account multiple cell types in order to reflect the actual human condition.
in collaboration with scientists from the Institut Gustave Roussy and CEA, have succeeded in restoring normal activity in cells isolated from patients with the premature aging disease Cockayne syndrome.
This enzyme is overexpressed in Cockayne syndrome patient cells, and leads to mitochondrial defects, which in turn play a crucial role in the appearance of symptoms leading to aging in affected children.
Rare genetic diseases cause accelerated premature aging. To date, there is no treatment for these pathologies. Understanding the causes of premature aging diseases may also help elucidating the process of normal aging.
One such disease, Cockayne syndrome (CS), has an incidence of about 2. 5 per million births and,
in its most severe form, is associated with a life span of less than seven years. Children with Cockayne syndrome show marked signs of premature aging
such as loss of weight, hair, hearing and sight, as well as facial deformation and neurodegeneration. Cockayne syndrome is caused by mutations in
either of two genes involved in the repair of DNA damage induced by ultraviolet (UV) rays.
CS patients are hypersensitive to sunlight and burn easily. For decades it was believed that the premature aging process associated with this disease was caused essentially by DNA repair deficiency.
By comparing cells from CS patients and from patients with another, related syndrome causing only UV hypersensitivity,
the team led by Miria Ricchetti (Institut pasteur) with Laurent Chatre (CNRS, at the Institut pasteur), in collaboration with Alain Sarasin (CNRS, at the Institut Gustave Roussy) and Denis Biard (CEA), discovered that the defects in CS cells are actually due to excessive production of a protease (HTRA3),
and induced by oxidative cell stress. In CS cells, HTRA3 degrades a key component of the machinery responsible for DNA replication in mitochondria (the cellular owerhouses, thereby affecting mitochondrial activity.
Until now, neurodegeneration and aging have largely been attributed to the damage inflicted on cells by mitochondrial free radicals.
The new study shows that free radicals also activate the expression of a protein known as HTRA3
By means of two new therapeutic strategies, using an HTRA3 inhibitor or a broad-spectrum antioxidant to capture free radicals,
This progress both paves the way for new therapeutic approaches, which could soon be tested in patients,
The development of therapeutic strategies targeting premature aging diseases could therefore open new research possibilities in terms of preventive therapies for the pathologies associated with normal aging a
#Blood to feeling: Mcmaster scientists turn blood into neural cells Adult sensory neurons made from human patients blood samplescientists at Mcmaster University have discovered how to make adult sensory neurons from human patients simply by having them roll up their sleeve and providing
was led by Mick Bhatia, director of the Mcmaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Human Stem Cell biology
In extreme conditions, pain or numbness is perceived by the brain using signals sent by these peripheral nerves. he problem is that unlike blood, a skin sample or even a tissue biopsy,
and make the main cell types of neurological systems the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system in a dish that is specialized for each patient,
as routinely performed in a doctor office, and with it we can produce one million sensory neurons,
adding that it allows researchers to start asking questions about understanding disease and improving treatments such as:
Can the neuropathy that diabetic patients experience be mimicked in a dish? It also paves the way for the discovery of new pain drugs that don just numb the perception of pain.
or experiencing neuropathy, the prized pain drug for me would target the peripheral nervous system neurons, but do nothing to the central nervous system,
or neuropathy to run tests on neurons created from blood samples of patients taken in past clinical trials where responses
in that one might be able to look at a patient with Type 2 Diabetes and predict whether they will experience neuropathy by running tests in the lab using their own neural cells derived from their blood sample. his bench to bedside research is very exciting
and will have a major impact on the management of neurological diseases, particularly neuropathic pain, said Akbar Panju, medical director of the Michael G. Degroote Institute for Pain Research and Care,
a clinician and professor of medicine. his research will help us understand the response of cells to different drugs and different stimulation responses,
and allow us to provide individualized or personalized medical therapy for patients suffering with neuropathic pain. ource:
Mcmaster Universit i
#Controlling a robotic arm with a patient intentions Giving himself a drink for the first time in 10 years,
or paralysis to control the movement of a robotic limb one that can be connected either to
In a clinical trial, the Caltech team and colleagues from Keck Medicine of USC have implanted successfully just such a device in a patient with quadriplegia
High spinal cord injuries can cause quadriplegia in some patients because movement signals cannot get from the brain to the arms and legs.
As a solution, earlier neuroprosthetic implants used tiny electrodes to detect and record movement signals at their last stop before reaching the spinal cord:
the Caltech team collaborated with surgeons at Keck Medicine of USC and the rehabilitation team at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.
The surgeons implanted a pair of small electrode arrays in two parts of the PPC of a quadriplegic patient.
After recovering from the surgery, the patient was trained to control the computer cursor and the robotic arm with his mind.
since his injury that he could move a limb and reach out to someone. It was a thrilling moment for all of us,
such as those of the Andersen Lab at Caltech, to human patients, ultimately turning transformative discoveries into effective therapies, says center director Charles Y. Liu, professor of neurological surgery, neurology,
and biomedical engineering at USC, who led the surgical implant procedure and the USC/Rancho Los Amigos team in the collaboration. n taking care of patients with neurological injuries and diseasesnd knowing the significant
Dr. Mindy Aisen, the chief medical officer at Rancho Los Amigos who led the study rehabilitation team,
We have created a unique environment that can seamlessly bring together rehabilitation, medicine, and science as exemplified in this study,
it like going to the dentist and having your mouth numbed. It very hard to speak without somatosensory feedback.
These people accumulate numerous self-inflicted injuries often leading to reduced lifespan. Using detailed genome mapping,
The team looked at nerve biopsies taken from the patients to see what had gone wrong and found that particular pain-sensing neurons were absent.
From these clinical features of the disease, the team predicted that there would be a block to the production of pain-sensing neurons during the development of the embryo they confirmed this using a combination of studies in mouse and frog models,
says Professor Geoff Woods from the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research at the University of Cambridge,
particularly given recent successes with drugs targeting chromatin regulators in human disease, adds Dr Ya-Chun Chen from the University of Cambridge,
as well as disease/drought resistance that also include the bread-quality gene, he said. sing the speed-breeding technology developed by QAAFI Dr Lee Hickey,
portable and economic biosensing device that allows for immediate diagnostic testing of arthritis, cystic fibrosis, acute pancreatitis and other clinical diseases.
clinically relevant biomarkers found in high concentration in many human diseases. he samples were placed on the tablet
The researchers believe that the device has enormous potential for use in point-of-care medical diagnostics,
Goldys believes that we will see rapidly increasing use of smartphone technology in the field of biomedical diagnostics, particularly in resource poor areas.
and lead author and graduate student J. Sherry Wang applied their new molecular tools to 44 DNA samples with known cancer-related single-nucleotide variants.
as a significant step toward advancing personalized medicine. The ability to accurately find mutations that are biomarkers for disease will help clinicians determine treatment paths for patients,
Zhang said. It may also help identify rare mutations and subtypes of infectious diseases as well as drug-resistant strains.
A single-nucleotide variant occurs when one of the four basic components that make up DNA
but mutations can leave the body vulnerable to disease, or even be the root cause.
The ability to accurately find rare single-nucleotide mutations is becoming increasingly important as scientists drill down into genomes to find biomarkers for early cancer detection. ee trying to solve the needle-in-a-haystack problem,
The needle youe looking for might be a cancer-mutation DNA or bacterial-pathogen DNA,
when there not as much cancer DNA floating around, he said
#Nearly Indestructible Virus Yields Tool to Battle Diseases By unlocking the secrets of a bizarre virus that survives in nearly boiling acid,
scientists at the University of Virginia School of medicine have found a blueprint for battling human disease using DNA clad in near-indestructible armor.
Edward H. Egelman with the massive Titan Krios microscope that buried in tons of concrete under Fontaine Research Parkhat interesting and unusual is being able to see how proteins
. But that protective mechanism becomes a major obstacle for doctors seeking to use genes to battle disease.
very horrific diseases that are hard to treat, like anthrax, Egeleman said. o we show in this paper that this virus actually functions in a similar way to some of the proteins present in bacterial spores. pores are formed also by C. difficile,
which now accounts for approximately 30,000 deaths per year in the U s. and has been classified by the Centers for Disease Control
non-biodegradable and potentially toxic materials are discarded at an alarming rate in consumerspursuit of the next best electronic gadget.
However, gallium arsenide can be environmentally toxic, particularly in the massive quantities of discarded wireless electronics.
and potentially toxic material. e made 1, 500 gallium arsenide transistors in a 5-by-6 millimeter chip.
It is the first time that a phase III trial of viral immunotherapy has shown definitively benefit for patients with cancer.
The trial was led in the UK by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London,
inoperable malignant melanoma to receive either an injection of the viral therapy, called Talimogene Laherparepvec, or a control immunotherapy.
a mark oncologists often use as a proxy for cure in immunotherapy. Importantly, responses to treatment were pronounced most in patients with less advanced cancers (stage IIIB, IIIC,
IVM1A) and those who had yet to receive any treatment underlining the potential benefits of T-VEC as a first-line treatment for metastatic melanoma
which cannot be removed surgically. Patients with stage III and early stage IV melanoma treated with T-VEC a total of 163 people lived an average of 41 months.
This compared with an average survival of 21.5 months in the 66 earlier-stage patients who received the control immunotherapy.
and is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. T-VEC is modified a form of herpes simplex virus type-1
T-VEC is one of a new wave of virus-based drugs to show benefits in cancer trials,
because their infection defences are compromised by genetic errors. UK trial leader Professor Kevin Harrington, Professor of Biological Cancer Therapies at The Institute of Cancer Research, London,
here is increasing excitement over the use of viral treatments like T-VEC for cancer,
or some of the other new immunotherapies. ur study showed that T-VEC can deliver a significant, durable benefit for people with melanoma.
It is encouraging that the treatment had such a clear benefit for patients with less advanced cancers ongoing studies are evaluating
if it can become a first-line treatment for more aggressive melanomas and advanced disease. rofessor Paul Workman,
Chief executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: e may normally think of viruses as the enemies of mankind,
and kill human cells that can make them such promising cancer treatments. In this case we are harnessing the ability of an engineered virus to kill cancer cells
and there is hope that therapies like this could be even more effective when combined with targeted cancer drugs to achieve long term control
#A novel source of multipotent stem cells for the treatment of autologous reproductive tract injury The utility of human fallopian tube mucosa as a novel source of multipotent stem cells for the treatment
and we also compared multipotent stem cells derived from fallopian tubes and fallopian tube mucosa according to their biological characteristics and therapeutic potential for treatment of autologous reproductive tract injury.
which make them a better source of stem cells for the treatment of autologous reproductive tract injury.
what causes immune cell migration to wounds Immune cells play an important role in the upkeep
and repair of our bodies, helping us to defend against infection and disease. Until now, how these cells detect a wounded
could help scientists design therapies to manipulate the cell repair process and direct immune cells away from sites where they are doing damage,
ingest and degrade debris, dying cells and invading pathogens. After dissecting the signaling occurring in immune cells responding to wound induced (H2o2),
, in Bristol School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and the study lead author, said: hile inflammation is critical to prevent infection,
too much of a response by immune cells can cause or worsen a wide range of human diseases
and conditions including autoimmunity, atherosclerosis, cancer and chronic inflammation. his research is therefore critical for improving human health as it enables us to discover novel points of intervention to manipulate immune cell behaviour
and allow us to design therapies to direct immune cells away from sites where they are doing damage
and send them into places where they are needed. y
#First successful study of virus attack on cancer It a new weapon in the arsenal of cancer fighting treatments:
utilizing genetically modified viruses to invade cancer cells and destroy them from the inside. University of Louisville researcher Jason Chesney, M d.,Ph d.,deputy director of the James Graham Brown Cancer Center (JGBCC),
and a team of international scientists found that stage IIIB to IV melanoma patients treated with a modified cold sore (herpes virus had improved survival.
The results of the findings were published recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Uofl was one of the major sites for the phase III clinical trial involving 436 patients who received the viral immunotherapy, talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC.
Scientists genetically engineered the herpes simplex I virus to be non-pathogenic, cancer-killing and immune-stimulating.
The modified herpes virus does not harm healthy cells, but replicates when injected into lesions or tumors,
and then stimulates the body immune system to fight the cancer. he results from this study are said amazing,
Chesney. atients given T-VEC at an early stage survived about 20 months longer than patients given a different type of treatment.
For some, the therapy has lengthened their survival by years. hari Wells from Ashland, Kentucky is one of those patients.
or metastatic, melanoma. Before entering the T-VEC trial, she had been through numerous procedures and major surgeries.
Dr. Chesney and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center saved my life. ells drove to Louisville every two weeks for about two
and a half years to receive injections in each of the more than 60 lesions on her leg.
The lesions eventually began to fade and finally disappeared. She has been in remission for almost three years. want everyone to know they should never give up hope.
The U s. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are considering findings from the trial to make the treatments available to more patients with advanced melanoma.
More Researchthe Journal of Clinical Oncology report comes on the heels of Chesney findings from another study published this month in the New england Journal of Medicine.
The article describes an immunotherapy for melanoma utilizing the checkpoint inhibitors, ipilimumab and nivolumab. In cell biology
The study found that injection of the two inhibitors shrunk tumors in the majority of patients with advanced melanoma.
and find that ipilimumab combined with nivolumab resulted in the highest anticancer efficacy ever observed after treatment with a cancer immunotherapy.
and other sites in hopes of accelerating cancer immunity and curing patients. e finally understand how to activate the human immune system to clear cancer cells,
having developed new classes of immunotherapies that dramatically improve the survival of cancer patients, Chesney said. believe T-VEC combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors will not only reduce cancer-related mortality in melanoma but in all cancer types,
and we are moving quickly to develop these methods. ource: Uof e
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