The newly described Cpf1 system differs in several important ways from the previously described Cas9, with significant implications for research and therapeutics,
including in cancer research, says Levi Garraway, an institute member of the Broad Institute, and the inaugural director of the Joint Center for Cancer Precision Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women Hospital,
and the Broad Institute. Garraway was involved not in the research. An open approach to empower research Zhang,
These groups plan to offer licenses that best support rapid and safe development for appropriate and important therapeutic uses. e are committed to making the CRISPR-Cpf1 technology widely accessible,
Zhang says. ur goal is to develop tools that can accelerate research and eventually lead to new therapeutic applications.
Their findings 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
#Self-assembling material that grows and changes shape could lead to artificial arteries Researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have developed a way of assembling organic molecules into complex tubular tissue-like structures without the use of moulds
which would allow scientists to study diseases such as Alzheimer with a high level of similarity to the real tissue,
The technique could also contribute to the creation of better implants, complex tissues, or more effective drug screening methods.
and Other Acute Infections A group of scientists, led by colleagues from the University of California,
and many other known pathogens present in a blood sample from an infected individual. The portable metagenomic test developed by Charles Chiu
and his team can detect the Ebola virus and many other known pathogens in less than an hour.
Detailed in a paper published in Genome Medicine on September 28th this technology could prove highly useful in settings where lab equipment
and medical infrastructure is in short supply. While most other commercially available diagnostic tests target specific pathogens, the method used in the study,
called etagenomics does not require any guesswork, and is capable of analysing all the DNA present in a sample.
regardless of the setup. o our knowledge, this is the first time that nanopore sequencing has been used for real-time metagenomic detection of pathogens in complex clinical samples in the setting of human infections,
claims Chiu. nbiased point-of-care testing for pathogens by rapid metagenomic sequencing has the potential to radically transform infectious disease diagnosis in both clinical and public health settings.
the researchers successfully used their sequencing kit to detect Hepatitis C in the blood of an infected UCSF patient,
but eventually reported having a fever and joint pains a
#First Optical Rectenna Combined Rectifier and Antenna Converts Light to DC Current Using nanometer scale components,
and diabetes in major new study High blood pressure sufferers have an almost 60%greater chance of developing diabetes, according to a major global study.
and diabetes and it could lead to new insights and strategies for treating and reducing the chances of developing diabetes. his is potentially a game changer in the understanding and treatment of diabetes,
Prof Rahimi said. iabetes affects more than 400 million people worldwide, including one million in Australia, and we know that diabetics are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease such as heart attacks,
stroke and heart failure. igh blood pressure affects even more people at least 4. 6 million Australians. onfirming this connection reliably provides new hope for those people
and new avenues for research. e can say for certain that one causes the other, but this study helps to connect the dots,
showing that if you have high blood pressure there is a significantly greater chance of developing diabetes. nderstanding the link will help us better communicate risks to patients
and can provide another motivation for patients and doctors to aim for tight blood pressure control.
Professor Rahimi said that the link between hypertension and fatal heart issues had been documented well, but the connection to diabetes had been less clear. revious smaller studies have varied significantly
or even found no link, but now we have something clear to go on, he said.
which has been published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), looked at the health records of 4. 1 million adults in the UK who were initially free of diabetes and cardiovascular disease and found:
For every 20 mm mercury increase on the measurement gauge, in systolic blood pressure there was a 58%higher risk of developing diabetes.
For every 10 mm mercury increase in systolic blood pressure there was a 52%higher risk of developing diabetes Higher blood pressure was associated also with a higher risk of new onset diabetes in a wide
variety of groups of individuals, including men and women, people of young (30-50), middle (51-70) and old age (71-90) as well as normal weight,
overweight and obese individuals The relative association between blood pressure and diabetes decreased as body mass index (BMI)
Professor Rahimi said the research also pooled together 30 prior studies that examined risk factors for diabetes. here were similar results in this section of the research with a 77%higher chance of getting diabetes for every 20 mm
and diabetes. t a minimum we know for certain that the link exists, but is high blood pressure a cause of diabetes or just a risk factor?
We still don know, he said. n particular researchers can now look at whether lowering blood pressure is an effective treatment
or reduces the risk of getting diabetes. hese are exciting results and I look forward to seeing further developments because of this research. t
#Researchers disguise drugs as platelets to target cancer Researchers have developed for the first time a technique that coats anticancer drugs in membranes made from a patient own platelets,
and attack both primary cancer tumors and the circulating tumor cells that can cause a cancer to metastasize.
not only attack the main tumor site, but are more likely to find and attach themselves to tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream essentially attacking new tumors before they start,
says Quanyin Hu, lead author of the paper and a Ph d. student in the joint biomedical engineering program.
When one of the pseudo-platelets comes into contact with a tumor, three things happen more or less at the same time.
and TRAIL in the pseudo-platelet drug delivery system was significantly more effective against large tumors
and circulating tumor cells than using Dox and TRAIL in a nanogel delivery system without the platelet membrane. e like to do additional preclinical testing on this technique,
Gu says. nd we think it could be used to deliver other drugs, such as those targeting cardiovascular disease, in
which the platelet membrane could help us target relevant sites in the body
#Raising Computers to Be Good Scientists Making sense of the new scientific data published every year including well over a million cancer-related journal articles is a tall order for the contemporary scientist.
Even if a scientist were capable of reading every article and memorizing its content, drawing connections to answer real-world questions would require supernatural cognition.
such as the treatment of cancer patients, is an arduous, uphill battle. But an associate professor in the University of Arizona School of Information
or maybe even doctors, to provide lots of information, such as a patient genome. In turn, it could model how a specific treatment would interact with the patient. heyl be the Microsofts and Googles of biomedicine,
Morrison said. Its potential has mass appeal and big implications: fast, individualized and precise biomedical care. he REACH project is applied to cancer biology,
but we have an even bigger vision than that, although cancer biology is big enough,
Morrison said. If big data is a two-part challenge, Morrison said, then storing it and moving it around is the first part.
the system was able to process 1, 000 papers on RAS-related cancers in a matter of hours,
Secondly, RAS oncogenes are mutated in 33 percent of all human cancers, making them one of the most highly researched classes of oncogenes.
As of now, REACH is already familiar with 30 different species affected by RAS-related cancers.
much as a scientist or a doctor might. would like to see this usher in computers understanding complex things at a level that we just can,
Many thousands of viruses are known to cause illness in people and animals, and making a diagnosis can be an exhaustive exercise,
at times requiring a battery of different tests. That because current tests aren sensitive enough to detect low levels of viral bugs
or are limited to detecting only those viruses suspected of being responsible for a patient illness. ith this test,
the Ruth L. Siteman Professor of Pediatrics. t casts a broad net and can efficiently detect viruses that are present at very low levels.
We think the test will be especially useful in situations where a diagnosis remains elusive after standard testing or in situations in
which the cause of a disease outbreak is unknown. Results published online in September in the journal Genome Research demonstrate that in patient samples the new test called Virocap can detect viruses not found by standard testing based on genome sequencing.
Marburg and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), as well as more routine viruses, including rotavirus and norovirus, both of which cause severe gastrointestinal infections.
Developed in collaboration with the university Mcdonnell Genome Institute, the test sequences and detects viruses in patient samples
The researchers evaluated the new test in two sets of biological samples for example, from blood, stool and nasal secretions from patients at St louis Children Hospital.
influenza B, a cause of seasonal flu; parechovirus, a mild gastrointestinal and respiratory virus; herpes virus 1, responsible for cold sores in the mouth;
which causes chickenpox. In a second group of children with unexplained fevers, standard testing had detected 11 viruses in the eight children evaluated.
But the new test found another seven, including a respiratory virus called human adenovirus B type 3a,
but can cause severe infections in some patients. In all the number of viruses detected in the two patient groups jumped to 32 from 21,
an instructor of pediatrics. light genetic variations among viruses often can be distinguished by currently available tests
while standard testing identified a virus as influenza A, which causes seasonal flu, the new test indicated that the virus was a particularly harsh subtype called H3n2.
so that it could be used to detect pathogens other than viruses, including bacteria, fungi and other microbes,
as well as genes that would indicate the pathogen is resistant to treatment with antibiotics or other drugs, said co-author Kristine Wylie, Phd, assistant professor of pediatrics.
In the meantime, the technology can be used by scientists to study viruses in a research setting. Kristine Wylie investigates the viruses that set up residence in and on the human body, collectively known as the virome.
#Ground-breaking computer program diagnoses cancer in two days In the vast majority of cancer cases, the doctor can quickly identify the source of the disease, for example cancer of the liver, lungs, etc.
However, in about one in 20 cases, the doctor can confirm that the patient has cancerut cannot find the source.
and attempts to locate the origin of the cancer before starting any treatment. Now, researchers at DTU Systems Biology have combined genetics with computer science
and created a new diagnostic technology based on advanced self learning computer algorithms whichn the basis of a biopsy from a metastasisan with 85 per cent certainty identify the source of the disease
Each year, about 35,000 people are diagnosed with cancer in Denmark, and many of them face the prospect of a long wait until the cancer has been diagnosed and its source located.
However, even after very extensive tests, there will still be 2-3 per cent of patients where it has not been possible to find the origin of the cancer.
In such cases, the patient will be treated with a cocktail of chemotherapy instead of a more appropriately targeted treatment,
are based on analyses of DNA mutations in cancer tissue samples from patients with metastasized cancer,
i e. cancer which has spread. The pattern of mutations is analysed in a computer program which has been trained to find possible primary tumour localizations.
whether an individual cancer patient will benefit from a specific type of medicine. This is a very effective method
and it is becoming increasingly common to conduct such sequencing for cancer patients. Associate professor Aron Eklund from DTU Systems Biology explains:
e are pleased very that we can now use the same sequencing data together with our new algorithms to provide a much faster diagnosis for cancer cases that are difficult to diagnose,
and to provide a useful diagnosis in cases which are currently impossible to diagnose. At the moment, it takes researchers two days to obtain a biopsy result,
but we expect this time to be reduced as it becomes possible to do the sequencing increasingly faster.
And it will be straightforward to integrate the method with the methods already being used by doctors.
and thus also as an effective and easy way of monitoring people who are at risk of developing cancer.
#Scientists test new gene therapy for vision loss from a mitochondrial disease NIH-funded study shows success in targeting MITOCHONDRIAL DNA in mice Researchers funded by the National institutes of health have developed a novel mouse model for the vision disorder
Leber hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON), and found that they can use gene therapy to improve visual function in the mice.
LHON is one of many diseases tied to gene mutations that damage the tiny energy factories that power our cells,
and in efforts toward an effective therapy. But the implications are even broader because the approaches that the investigators used could aid therapy development for a vast array of other mitochondrial diseases,
said Maryann Redford, D d. S m. P. H.,a program director in Collaborative Clinical Research at NIH National Eye Institute,
as well as a host of other diseases. But the unique nature of mtdna has presented challenges for developing
and testing potential therapies for such diseases. Until now here was no efficient way to get DNA into mitochondria,
said John Guy, M d.,professor of ophthalmology and director of the ocular gene therapy laboratory at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, University of Miami Miller School of medicine.
#Medical device Breakthrough: UV LIGHT enabled catheter fixes holes in the heart without invasive surgery Researchers from Boston Children Hospital, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard university,
Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) and the Karp Lab at Brigham and Women Hospital have designed jointly a specialized catheter for fixing holes in the heart using a biodegradable adhesive and patch.
As the team reports in Science Translational Medicine, the catheter has been used successfully in animal studies to facilitate hole closure without the need for open heart surgery.
Pedro delnido, MD Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Boston Children and contributing author on the study, says the device represents a radical change in the way these kinds of cardiac defects are repaired. n addition to avoiding open heart surgery,
this method avoids suturing into the heart tissue, because wee just gluing something to it. atheterizations are preferable to open heart surgery
because they don require stopping the heart, putting the patient on bypass, and cutting into the heart.
the unique adhesive patch was published in Science Translational Medicine. This represented a large step forward in the quest to reduce complications associated with heart defect repair.
While medical devices that remain in the body may be jostled out of place or fail to cover the hole as the body grows,
however, the Boston Children/Wyss/SEAS/Brigham and Women research team sought a way to deliver the patch without open heart surgery.
As the glue cures, pressure from the positioning balloons on either side of the patch help secure it in place.
when it is needed no longer. his really is a completely new platform for closing wounds or holes anywhere in the body,
Jeff Karp, Ph d.,a bioengineer at Brigham and Women Hospital and a cofounder of Gecko Biomedical, developed the glue product in his lab at Brigham and Women Hospital.
Gecko Biomedical will be testing the glue product in humans later this year. ur collaboration across hospitals
thanks to findings published today by Professor Gilbert Bernier of the University of Montreal and its affiliated Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital.
The transplanted photoreceptors migrated naturally within the retina of their host. one transplant represents a therapeutic solution for retinal pathologies caused by the degeneration of photoreceptor cells,
offering hope that treatments may be developed for currently non-curable degenerative diseases, like Stargardt disease and ARMD. esearchers have been trying to achieve this kind of trial for years,
he said. hanks to our simple and effective approach, any laboratory in the world will now be able to create masses of photoreceptors.
ARMD is in fact the greatest cause of blindness amongst people over the age of 50
But in order to undertake a complete therapy, we need neuronal tissue that links all RPE cells to the cones.
In 2001, he launched his laboratory at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital and immediately isolated the molecule.
Beyond the clinical applications, Professor Bernier findings could enable the modelling of human retinal degenerative diseases through the use of induced pluripotent stem cells,
offering the possibility of directly testing potential avenues for therapy on the patient own tissues e
lack of link to autism New research finds no evidence that thimerosal-containing vaccines cause negative behaviors or result in neuropathology in infant primates,
In the study, infant rhesus macaques received several pediatric vaccines containing thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative,
Other animals received just the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, which does not contain thimerosal,
or an expanded vaccine schedule similar to that recommended for U s. infants today. Control animals received a saline injection.
Regardless of vaccination status all animals developed normal social behaviors; the administration of vaccines to rhesus macaques did not result in neuropathological abnormalities or aberrant behaviors such as those often observed in autism.
Cellular analysis of the cerebellum, amygdala and hippocampus three brain regions known to be altered in autism was vaccinated similar in
and unvaccinated animals. his comprehensive study included many physiological measures and behavioral measures. Fundamentally the vaccines had no ill effects,
said Gene Sackett, UW professor emeritus of psychology and director of the lab work at the Washington National Primate Research center. o the extent that macaques mirror human physiology,
I think this bears out what most people have known: These vaccines are safe. n
#New technology enables people to take own blood samples at home A world-first prototype for taking accurate blood samples at home has been developed by a Tasmanian-led research partnership.
The hemapen is a prototype blood collection and storage device which enables users to take blood samples at home in a safe and portable application.
and placement of blood samples usually undertaken by health professionals. The hemapen was developed by ASTECH; the $5. 2 million Australian Research Council Training Centre for Portable Analytical Separation Technologies based at the University of Tasmania,
and in partnership with Trajan Scientific and Medical and the Federal government. ASTECH Training Centre Researcher Professor Michael Breadmore said the design
people who regularly require blood tests have to access the services of health professionals, Professor Breadmore said. his is often time-consuming and costly for both the individual and health care systems.
The device is designed by ASTECH Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Florian Lapierre who has undertaken industry placement at Trajan where he researched
#New Test Predicts Teensfuture Risk of Heart disease Risk for cardiovascular disease, currently running rampant in the United states,
thanks to a new diagnostic test developed by a University of Virginia Children Hospital pediatrician and his collaborators.
The test accounts for many risk factors for the deadly disease and has the potential to be adapted by physicians nationwide to assess teenagersfuture risk
Approximately 610,000 people die from heart disease every year in the United states oughly one of every four deaths
according to the Centers for Disease Control. Cardiovascular disease has predominantly modifiable risk factors, meaning that the disease is entirely preventable.
These risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, physical inactivity, diabetes, unhealthy diets and smoking.
The only risk factor unable to be changed is genetic predisposition. A team led by Dr. Mark Deboer of the U. Va. Department of Pediatrics
and Matthew Gurka of West virginia University School of Public health developed the new diagnostic test. The test relies on an evaluation of metabolic syndrome,
a conglomeration of conditions including increased blood pressure, high levels of blood sugar, excessive body fat around the abdomen and waist,
and abnormal cholesterol levels that together increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. It takes into account variables specific both to race
and gender. he way that we normally diagnose metabolic syndrome appears to have some racial discrepancies,
where African-american individuals are diagnosed not with metabolic syndrome at a very high rate and yet they are at very high risk for developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease,
so Dr. Gurka and I formulated a metabolic syndrome severity score that is specific to sex and ethnicity,
Deboer said. In creating the test, Deboer and Gurka examined metabolic severity scores from children in the 1970s that assessed body mass index, systolic blood pressure, fasting triglycerides, HDL cholesterol (the so-called oodcholesterol) and fasting glucose.
The children were followed up as recently as 2014, at an average age of 49.6 years. he current study was targeted at using that metabolic syndrome severity score on data from individuals who were children in the 0s to see
if it correlated with their risk on developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes later in life,
and we found that there was a high correlation between the metabolic severity score for those children and for their later development of cardiovascular disease and diabetes,
Deboer explained. The test is innovative in that it is able to assess changes in metabolic syndrome severity in a person over time
and creates a specific number predicting risk. Previous diagnostic tests have been merely positive or negative, stating that a person either has
or does not have metabolic syndrome, but the new test is able to create a scale,
delineating the precise degree to which a youth is at risk. e are hopeful that this score can be used to assess the baseline risk for adolescents regarding metabolic syndrome
and their risk for future disease and use it as a motivator for individuals to try to change their risk
so that they may have a healthier diet, engage in more physical activity or get medication to reduce their metabolic syndrome severity and their future risk for disease,
Deboer said. The research has been described in articles in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and the journal Diabetologia.
The research team included U. Va. Deboer, West virginia Gurka and Jessica Woo and John A. Morrison, both of Cincinnati Children Hospital.
There is also a website available for calculating a child metabolic syndrome severity score using clinical measures e
#New microscopy technology augments surgeon view for greater accuracy Researchers at the University of Arizona (UA) have developed a prototype of a new microscope technology that could help surgeons work with a greater degree
of accuracy. The new technology, call augmented microscopy, overlays images depicting diagnostic information such as blood flow and cancerous tissue over real images of blood vessels and other tissues
and Surgery was published today in the Journal of Biomedical Optics, published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
Surgical microscopes are specialized highly stereomicroscopes installed on articulated mounts and provide a long working distance and functional enhancements,
and are used widely in certain delicate operations, notably neurosurgery. Within the last decade, surgical microscopes have been combined with near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence imaging, in
which contrast agents are injected into tissue and their fluorescence detected in NIR scans. The scans may reveal patterns of blood flow,
For example, some microscopes used in complex vascular surgeries switch between two different views: the fully optical bright-field (real) view and the computer-processed projection of NIR fluorescence.
and on its own lacks the spatial cues that would help the surgeon identify anatomical points of reference.
So the surgeon must visualize how the fluorescence in the NIR image lines up with the respective anatomical structures shown in the bright-field view.
Real-time overlay of bright-field and near-infrared fluorescence imagesdescribes their prototype of an augmented stereomicroscope that presents a simultaneous view of real objects in the surgical field and computer-processed images
By displaying information through the surgical scope itself, the surgeon then sees the information with his or her own eyes.
Pogue said he sees the work being important in advancing the translation of research into clinical practice. here are very few papers on this idea of augmenting the surgical field of view that the surgeon sees,
yet this is a high-interest topic, he said. his article presents a very practical idea and innovative implementation
It also retains the imaging environment familiar to surgeons, including key features of surgical microscopes such as real-time magnification and focus adjustments, camera mounting,
and multiuser access. One possible application for this augmented microscope is laser surgery. In the past, surgeons could not see the laser beam through the standard stereomicroscope, nor anatomical details in the NIR images.
The researchers also suggest that this technology will be useful in the surgical treatment of brain tumors.
Surgeons aggressively removing a tumor run the risk of damaging normal brain tissue and impairing the patient brain functions;
on the other hand, incomplete removal of a tumor results in immediate relapse in 90%of patients. Being able to simultaneously see the surgical field
and the contrast agent identifying cancerous tissue within the augmented microscope may allow surgeons to remove these challenging tumors more accurately
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