Synopsis: Health:

but hopefully it will lead to medical applications. This gives us new opportunities to look at cell structures

and whether there any degradation of those structures in diseases. Many diseases are caused either by an invading pathogen or degradation of a cell internal structure.

Alzheimer, for example, may be related to degradation of the cytoskeleton inside neurons. he cytoskeleton system is comprised of a host of interacting subcellular structures and proteins,

#Scientists visualize critical part of basal ganglia pathways Breakthrough could help see pathways that degenerate with Parkinson and Huntingdon disease Certain diseases,

like Parkinson and Huntingdon disease, are associated with damage to the pathways between the brain basal ganglia regions.

which could potentially lead to technologies to help track disease progression for Parkinson and Huntington disease and other neurological disorders. linically,

and completed cutting-edge work in understanding the genetics of autism. Building on its strengths in biology

so that the diagnosis of heart conditions such as coronary heart disease or arrhythmia can be improved greatly. In the future, a special shield room for detecting the bio-magnetic field would be unnecessary

The device is expected to make a difference in medical treatments, preventive health care and sports p

#New synthetic tumor environments make cancer research more realistic Tumors are notoriously difficult to study in their natural habitat body tissues

but a new synthetic tissue environment may give cancer researchers the next-best look at tumor growth and behavior.

and grow into a tumor. They were able to observe how differently cells act in the three-dimensional

and expensive mouse avatars that are created by injecting human tumor cells into mice. his is really the first time that it been demonstrated that you can use a rapid methodology like this to spatially define cancer cells and macrophages,

Can therapeutics be used to disrupt that communication? What sets the team model apart from mouse avatars

and finds out theye been diagnosed with some sort of solid tumor, Kilian said. ou take a biopsy of those cells,

you put it into this device, grow them and see how they respond to different treatments. h

the optoclamp could facilitate research into new therapies for epilepsy, Parkinson disease, chronic pain and even depression. ur work establishes a versatile test bed for creating the responsive neurotherapeutic tools of the future,

said Steve Potter, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. eural modulation therapies of the future,

said Newman. his is potentially a very big deal in terms of developing therapies for aberrant forms of synaptic plasticity.

Potential applications include chronic pain, epilepsy, tinnitus, phantom limb syndrome and other nervous systems disorders where the brain has overreacted to the loss of normal inputs.

That work, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, was a collaboration with Emory University Professor Pete Wenner and former graduate student Ming-fai Fong,

#Scientists discover the mechanism behind the innate immunological memory There can be no argument it is extremely important to understand how immunity works.

Better knowledge about immunity would help scientists to come up with new, more effective ways to prevent outbreaks of diseases.

However, at this moment science is needed lacking knowledge about human immunity. For example, for a long time it was believed that acquired immunity type of immunity mediated by T-and B-cellsad memory,

whereas innate immunityhich is mediated by macrophages and other types of cells that react to certain molecules typically associated with pathogensid not.

But now scientists know things are not so simple. This was not hard to figure out

as plants and insects have innate immunity only, but seem to have immunological memory. Furthermore, scientists observed that herpes virus infection increases the resistance against bacteria in vertebrates,

which suggests that innate immunity also has memory, even though researchers have struggled to understand the mechanism behind it.

However, now scientists from the RIKEN Molecular genetics Laboratory have revealed the mechanism underlying the memory of innate immunity.

It turns out there are epigenomic changes induced by pathogen infections mediated by a transcription factor called ATF7.

Although it seems to be complicated extremely phenomenon, in the future this discovery may help everyone, including those, who struggle to understand the mechanisms behind the memory of innate immunity.

At first, research team discovered that in ATF7 knockout mice, macrophages appear similar to wild-type macrophages that have been activated by exposure to molecules that occur commonly in infections.

Even before that scientists knew heat shock or psychological stress induced epigenomic changes were mediated by ATF7-related transcription factors.

After exposure to that stress, changes remained for a long duration of time. This made researchers think that pathogen infections could induce epigenomic changes in macrophages via ATF7.

Scientists found that ATF7 transcription factor simply binds itself to a group of innate immune genes and silences their expression

which makes cells less responsive to infections. Scientists managed to make ATF7 inactive, by using a molecule found in the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria,

called a lipopolysaccharidel. It made ATF7 phosphorylated and immune-related genes in mice models were silenced no longer.

First of all, it may increase our understanding of the ygiene hypothesis It is the concept saying that pathogen infection

and unhygienic environment during infancy reduces the risk of allergy later in life. ygiene hypothesisis used to explain why in more developed countries with better hygiene habits the incidence of allergies

and asthma is increasing. Now scientists say that since they can explain that the pathogen-induced epigenomic changes mediated by ATF7 maintain for a long period of time,

they have a better explanation about how the changes are induced. Secondly, these new findings may be very helpful developing vaccines with more effective adjuvants.

Adjuvants are used compounds in vaccines that activate innate immunity they are necessary ingredient of efficient vaccines.

For a long time scientists thought that the effect of adjuvant can be maintained a several days only. But this new research shows that it is not necessarily true.

which would make for much more effective vaccines. As much as human immune system still remains not completely clear for science

this new research provides better understanding about how our immune system remembers appropriate reactions to stress.

Knowing how to form these memories may hide the key to creating better, more effective and long-lasting vaccines a

even though there will always be a hole in your visual field. he neuroscientists at UQ School of Psychology may have opened the way to new treatments for the developed world leading cause of blindness,

but this has proved sufficient to bring about a 10 per cent reduction in functional blindness,

suggesting that the improvement wasn simply a matter of practising the task. e did not confidently expect to see much reduction in functional blindness,

it might prove similarly effective in other cases of blindness or be used to assist developing technologies,

such as the bionic eye or retinal stem cell therapy. c

#DNA-Guided 3-D Printing of Human Tissue Is unveiled A UCSF-led team has developed a technique to build tiny models of human tissues, called organoids,

or go awry in cancer. They could be used for therapeutic drug screening and to help teach researchers how to grow whole human organs.

The new technique called DNA Programmed Assembly of Cells (DPAC) and reported in the journal Nature Methods on Aug 31 allows researchers to create arrays of thousands of custom-designed organoids,

we could be taking samples of different components of a cancer patient mammary gland and building a model of their tissue to use as a personalized drug screening platform.

But in diseases such as breast cancer, the breakdown of this order has been associated with the rapid growth and spread of tumors. ells aren lonely little automatons,

Gartner said. hey communicate through networks to make group decisions. As in any complex organization, you really need to get the group structure right to be failed successful,

it sets the stage for cancer. ut studying how the cells of complex tissues like the mammary gland self-organize,

and break down in disease has been a challenge to researchers. The living organism is often too complex to identify the specific causes of a particular cellular behavior.

but also to experiment with specifically adding in a single cell with a known cancer mutation to different parts of the organoid to observe its effects.

or more cells expressing low levels of the cancer gene Rasg12v affected the cells around them.

or structural changes in mammary glands can lead to the breakdown of tissue architecture associated with tumors that metastasize,

or stress levels in soldiers and pilots. In this study, engineers focused on uric acid, which is a marker related to diabetes and to gout.

Currently the only way to monitor the levels of uric acid in a patient is to draw blood.

and non-invasively saliva biomarkers holds considerable promise for many biomedical and fitness applications, said Wang.

Next, they collected saliva from a patient who suffers from hyperuricemia, a condition characterized by an excess of uric acid in the blood.

#Team develops quick way to determine bacteria antibiotic resistance Bacteria ability to become resistant to antibiotics is a growing issue in health care:

Staphylococcus epidermis is increasingly emerging as a cause of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections. The ability to quickly judge whether a bacteria is resistant to antibiotics could make a major difference in a patient's treatment.

Shannon Hilton and Paul Jones Staphylococcus epidermis is increasingly emerging as a cause of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections.

Mark Hayes National summary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that each year in the United states,

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,

and many more die from related complications. It is not just humans that are threatened by this growing adaptation.

however, Staphylococcus epidermidis has emerged increasingly as a cause of multi-resistant hospital-acquired infections. Immunocompromised patients

indwelling medical devices, and surgically implanted prostheses provide suitable environments for Staphylococcus epidermidis to propagate and form biofilms.

as a collaboration with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Alex Mclaren and his team member and bioengineer Dr. Ryan Mclemore of Banner Good samaritan Medical center, Phoenix,

along with Dr. Mark Spangehl of the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Arizona. By most metrics the antibiotic-resistant and susceptible strains of Staphylococcus epidermidis are phenotypically identical,

and the doctor is getting the right answer right away. By advancing a fundamental area of science,

This separation has significant potential implications for health care, as rapid and early detection will significantly improve therapeutic outcomes.

The current results establish a foundation for biophysical separations as a direct diagnostic tool, potentially improving nearly every figure of merit for diagnostics and antibiotic stewardship o

an assistant professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular engineering at the Georgia Institute of technology. he information we can provide could one day help nutritional epidemiologists

In practice, health professionals in the field would obtain blood samples from persons suspected of having a zinc deficiency.

lycopene and beta-carotene, are produced by genes taken from Pantoea anantis, a plant pathogen. The purple color, violacein, came from a soil bacterium.

One of the challenges was to avoid producing amounts of pigment that might be toxic to the bacterium

#Brain cells get tweaked n the goresearchers from the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology (MRC CDN) at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (Ioppn),

and could have implications that go far beyond basic neuroscience from informing education policy to developing new therapies for neurological disorders such as epilepsy.

and the constraints that disease and ageing impose to this multi-modal plasticity has important implications that go beyond fundamental neuroscience, from education policies to brain repair.

when we age, has enormous implications that go beyond fundamental neuroscience, from informing education policies to developing new therapies for neurological disorders such as epilepsy

#Filling a void in stem cell therapy Stem cell therapies are limited often by low survival of transplanted stem cells

and Wyss Institute Founding Director Donald Ingber, M d.,Ph d.,who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical school and Boston Children Hospital and Professor of Bioengineering

Stem cell therapies bear tremendous hopes for the repair of many tissues and bone or even the replacement of entire organs.

and function correctly at the site of injury to be useful for clinical regenerative therapies.

To improve the therapeutic ability of transplanted stem cells, Mooney team has drawn inspiration from naturally occurring stem cell iches.

#X-ray vision new method to examine Alzheimer disease brain samples Superman has an x-ray vision we all know that.

and treating such diseases as Alzheimer. It is hard to overrate discoveries like this although it is not easy to explain it to a common public.

and collected data that may resolve several current issues regarding the pathology of Alzheimer disease He also jokingly added hile Superman x-ray vision is only the stuff of comics, our method,

from a genetic mouse model of Alzheimer disease. Then scientists put new technology to its practical application.

There are mysterious iffuseplaques seen in the postmortem brains of Alzheimer disease patients that are typically undetectable using 2d imaging.

but not in later stages of the disease after the plaques have accumulated already. Scientists are certain that Scales have many advantages over current 2d imaging technologies.

it can be used to research other brain diseases as well, not only Alzheimer. It provides that kind of x-ray vision we really needed,

seeking to reach a breakthrough in treating major brain diseases t

#New method for modifying natural polymers could help bring lifesaving medications to market In drug-delivery research,

That means that patients have to ingest more of a drug to get the therapeutic dose increasing the cost, risk of side effects,

Using exosomes to hijack cell-to-cell communication Regenerative medicine using stem cells is an increasingly promising approach to treat many types of injury.

and repair paralysis. A variety of agents have been shown to induce transplanted stem cells to differentiate into neurons.

Tufts University biomedical engineers recently published the first report of a promising new way to induce human mesenchymal stem cells (or hmscs,

The biomedical engineers also showed that the exosomes contain mirnasiny pieces of RNA that regulate cell behavior

Xu work focuses on material science engineering, specifically nanoscience and its biomedical application: the development of new synthetic materials for the delivery of therapeutic proteins and genetic material.

In 2015, he received a Faculty Early Career development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF),

funding research into a new way to deliver protein-based cancer-fighting drugs and other therapeutics directly into cells.

#ab-on-a-Chiptechnology to cut costs of sophisticated tests for diseases and disorders Rutgers engineers have developed a breakthrough device that can significantly reduce the cost of sophisticated lab tests for medical disorders and diseases, such as HIV,

Lyme disease and syphilis. The new device uses miniaturized channels and valves to replace enchtopassays tests that require large samples of blood

or plastic plates with cup-like depressions. he main advantage is cost these assays are done in labs and clinics everywhere,

Until now, animal research on central nervous system disorders, such as spinal cord injury and Parkinson disease, has been limited because researchers could not extract sufficient cerebrospinal fluid to perform conventional assays. ith our technology,

The discovery could also lead to more comprehensive research on autoimmune joint diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis through animal studies.

#Researchers find biomarker for autism that may aid diagnostics By identifying a key signaling defect within a specific membrane structure in all cells, University of California,

they have found both a possible reliable biomarker for diagnosing certain forms of autism and a potential therapeutic target.

Dr. J. Jay Gargus, Ian Parker and colleagues at the UCI Center for Autism Research & Translation examined skin biopsies of patients with three very different genetic types

of the disorder (fragile X syndrome and tuberous sclerosis 1 and 2). They discovered that a cellular calcium signaling process involving the inositol trisphosphate receptor was altered very much.

This IP3R functional defect was located in the endoplasmic reticulum which is specialized among the membrane compartments in cells called organelles,

and possibly digestive and immune problems associated with autism. e believe this finding will be another arrow in the quiver for early and accurate diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders,

said Gargus, director of the Center for Autism Research & Translation and professor of pediatrics and physiology & biophysics. qually exciting,

Study results appear online in Translational Psychiatry, a Nature publication. Autism spectrum disorder is a range of complex neurodevelopmental disorders affecting 2 percent of U s. children.

The social and economic burden of ASD is enormous currently estimated at more than $66 billion per year in the U s. alone.

which impedes diagnosis and, ultimately, drug development. There simply may be too many targets, each with too small an effect.

According to Gargus, diseases of the organelles, such as the ER, are an emerging field in medicine,

with several well-recognized neurological ailments linked to two other ones, the mitochondria and lysosomes.

The IP3R controls the release of calcium from the ER. In the brain, calcium is used to communicate information within and between neurons

To see if IP3R function is altered across the autism spectrum, clinical researchers at The Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders

which is affiliated with the Center for Autism Research & Translation are currently expanding the study

and have begun to examine children with and without typical ASD for the same signaling abnormalities.

In the area of drug discovery, scientists at the Center for Autism Research & Translation continue to probe the IP3R channel,

The brains of people who have autism show signs of hyperexcitability, which is seen also in epilepsy,

a disorder increasingly found to be associated with ASD. Cells from individuals who have depressed autism exhibit levels of calcium signaling

and this might explain why these patients experience this hyperexcitability. By restoring the release of calcium from the IP3R,

More Precise Cancer Therapies UCSFUC San francisco researchers have engineered a molecular n switchthat allows tight control over the actions of T cells,

immune system cells that have shown great potential as therapies for cancer. The innovation lays the groundwork for sharply reducing severe,

and senior author of a new paper on the work. his is the first of a series of ontrol knobsour lab is trying to create so doctors might have additional command over these cells once theye inside the body. ver the past two decades

, scientists pursuing cell therapy, one branch of the burgeoning field of cancer immunotherapy, have been refining cell-surface sensors known as chimeric antigen receptors, or CARS.

Once inserted into T cells, CARS prompt these cells to home in on particular proteins found primarily in tumors,

where they launch a series of cancer-killing immune responses. Dangers of CAR T cell Therapy CAR-equipped T cells have proven to be remarkably successful in the treatment of various forms of chemotherapy-resistant leukemia

But CAR T cell therapy can cause side effects so serious that they may require monitoring in an Intensive care unit several patients have died after receiving CAR T cells

or other forms of engineered T cells. cells are really powerful beasts, said Lim. nd they can be lethal when theye activated.

Wee needed a remote control system that retains the power of these engineered T cells, but allows us to communicate specifically with them

and manage them while theye in the body. ome scientists have grappled with these problems by developing uicide switchesthat kill off CAR T cells

when leukemia cells were implanted into mice. These cancer cells were powerfully and selectively eliminated by the Lim group new CAR T cells,

These combined control capabilities could be employed to manage the various side effects of CAR T therapy.

genetically engineered to carry CARS that target the patient tumor, then reinserted into the bloodstream to exert their effects.

in addition to attacking tumors directly, CAR T cells, like all T cells, release signaling molecules called cytokines, some

of which recruit additional T cells to fight the tumor. Sometimes normal cells express small amounts of a cancer-associated protein targeted by a CAR T cell.

Because CAR T cells placed in the bloodstream pass immediately through the heart and lungs, these tissues can be damaged before the CAR T cells reach their intended target elsewhere in the body.

In tumor lysis syndrome, the body is overwhelmed by toxic substances released when many tumor cells die in rapid succession.

which released cytokines summon numerous T cells to the tumor, then these newly arrived T cells release their own cytokines, and so on.

doctors may be able to precisely manage these side effects to meet individual patientsneeds. Proof of Principlelim stressed that the work reported in the new paper should be considered a proof of principle while useful for experiments,

While successful against blood cancers such as leukemia, CAR T cells have shown so far less efficacy against solid tumors that effect the colon, breast, prostrate, brain and other tissues.

The remote control strategy developed by Lim group may permit researchers to develop more powerful versions of CAR T cells that could attack these solid tumors,

so that the cells will respond to multiple characteristics that are distinctive to an individual patient tumor,

quite powerful effects even if for a subset of patients or for certain types of cancer is really remarkable,

Microfluidic cell sorting is revolutionary for the fields of cell biology and immunology as well as other fields in biology, in concomitantly overcoming all of these obstacles.

Certain diseases, including cancer, involves changes in DNA methylation patterns, and the ability to document these alterations aid in the development of novel therapies. ethylation is really key in development,

in disease, and in cancer, says Whitehead Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch, who is also a professor of biology at MIT. his reporter is a very important tool.

We believe it will allow us to look in a very detailed way at issues like imprinting during development

and screening for the activation of genes silenced in diseases like cancer. 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. The differences between a muscle cell and a brain cell are attributable to differences in gene expression;

Stelzer and Shivalila describe their work in this week issue of the journal Cell. harmaceutical companies have been interested in manipulating methylation in disease

For example, they could look for a drug that could change the hypermethylation that has been associated with a specific cancer.

Their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, may aid efforts to build point-of-care devices for quick medical diagnosis of various diseases ranging from cancer, allergies, autoimmune diseases, sexually transmitted diseases (STDS),

when atoms are brought too close together to detect a wide array of protein markers that are linked to various diseases.

and the results sent back to the doctor office. If we can move testing to the point of care,

which would enhance the effectiveness of medical interventions. The key breakthrough underlying this new technology came by chance. hile working on the first generation of these DNA-base tests,

explains that this novel signaling mechanism produces sufficient change in current to be measured using inexpensive electronics similar to those in the home glucose test meter used by diabetics to check their blood sugar.

allowing us to build inexpensive devices that could detect dozens of disease markers in less than five minutes in the doctor office

and easily multiplexed biosensor could significantly improve patient health by providing new point-of-care diagnostics for a wide variety of diseases said Patricia Escoffier, Project Manager at Univalor.

including pathogen detection in food 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,

and for the production of advanced therapeutics to combat the disease. 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 West Nile, Dengue fever and Ebola.

In his study, Shan-Lu Liu, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in the School of medicine and an investigator in the Bond Life sciences Center at MU, targeted IFITM proteins

Our research discovered that IFITM proteins can help inhibit the viral cell-to-cell infection

given our previous finding in PLOS Pathogens where we found that this family of proteins generally affects the lipid property of cell membrane

scientists are constantly learning more about virus transmission and host response to viral infections. By understanding and visualizing how some IFITM proteins can inhibit

we are getting closer to finding better therapeutic approaches in the fight against HIV. The study, FITM Proteins Restrict HIV-1 Infection by Antagonizing the Envelope Glycoprotein,

recently was published in Cell Reports. The work was supported in part by NIH grants (AI112381 AI109464, AI105584 and AI107095.

Eric O. Freed, director and a senior investigator of the HIV Dynamics and Replication Program within the National Cancer Institute, Chen Liang, an associate professor at Mcgill University and Benjamin Chen

, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of medicine at Mount sinai, New york contributed to the study o

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