Synopsis: Health:

For example, the damage from a major heart attack could cost you around five billion heart cells. Future stem cell treatments will require this number

professor of biomedical surfaces at University of Nottingham. hat we are doing here is paving the way for the manufacture of stem cells in large numbers

when those therapies are proved to be safe and effective. sing a high throughput materials discovery approach,

#Pair of compounds could hockhiv Highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) has helped millions of people survive HIV.

The study appears in PLOS Pathogens. e are excited to have identified an outstanding candidate for HIV reactivation

says lead author Satya Dandekar, who chairs the department of medical microbiology and immunology at University of California,

Davis. his molecule has great potential to advance into translational and clinical studies. hile HAART has been quite successfuleducing HIV infection in newborns,

and lowering viral loads to virtually undetectable levelshese therapies cannot cure the disease alone. Once treatment is discontinued,

and the infection comes roaring back. As a result, patients must remain on treatment indefinitely,

posing the risk of long-term toxicity. ee made great progress, but at the end of the day you still have more than 30 million people walking around with HIV,

and showed low toxicity. However, HIV is complicated a virus and, as clinicians have discovered with HAART,

which will go a long way toward clearing the virus. She also believes HIV vaccines in development could give patients an extra edge.

Even a vaccine that isn 100 percent effective at preventing transmission could boost a patient ability to destroy reactivated virus. However,

When disease-causing bacteria invade disease-resistant rice, a small protein produced by the bacteria betrays the invader.

and mounts an immune response to fend off infection, researchers report. Identification of the tiny protein, called Raxx, holds promise for developing more disease-resistant crop varieties and therapeutic treatments for blocking microbial infections in both plants and animals, say the researchers,

who found particular satisfaction in this discovery, two years after retracting the announcement of a similar find.

Disease protection for our food In this new study researchers discovered that the Raxx protein was present in at least eight species of the disease-causing Xanthamonas bacteria that are known to attack ricehe staple food for half of the world populations well as maize, cassava, sugar cane, tomatoes, peppers

, wheat, alfalfa, onions, banana, and citrus. ur research team is delighted to announce the discovery of the Raxx protein,

Ronald notes that her laboratory is currently investigating the role of Raxx during bacterial infection of rice in the absence of the immune receptor.

In the long term, the researchers hope to use this information to develop new strategies to prevent infection in various crops.

and disease resistance for more than two decades and in 1995 announced that a gene called Xa21 confers resistance to the bacterial blight pathogen.

and sparked further research into other key parts of the disease-resistance puzzle. Researchers were confident that

#Rare case uncovers missing clue to Fragile X Fragile X syndrome may not only be a problem of receivers in the brain letting in too much information.

In patients with fragile Xhe most common cause of inherited intellectual disability key gene is disabled completely

which eliminates a protein that regulates electrical signals in the brain and causes a host of behavioral, neurological,

GENE NEW ROLE In contrast, the patient in the new study has only a single error in the gene and exhibits only two classic traits of fragile Xntellectual disability and seizures.

GENETIC ERROR Fragile X syndrome results from an inherited genetic error in a gene called FMR1.

so the syndrome affects males more often and more severely than females, who may be able to compensate for the genetic error

One of the mysteries of the syndrome is how loss of a single gene can lead to such a variety of effects in different patients.

anxiety, and impulsive behavior. Typical physical symptoms include enlarged heads, flat feet and distinctive facial features.

Almost one-third of patients with fragile X also show symptoms of autism spectrum disorders.

the researchers genetic sequencing data from more than 900 males with intellectual disabilities but without classic fragile X syndrome.

although this individual has intellectual disability and seizures, his physical features are not typical of the syndrome,

and he is not autistic. To see what effect this mutation might have, geneticist Stephen T. Warren and colleagues at Emory University replicated it in mouse brain cells

who is also an associate professor of biomedical engineering. his patient presents a case of partial fragile X syndrome associated with mutated, rather than absent, FMRP.

researchers were able to verify the same effect from just the mutation and link it to human disease.

#Bacteria build#coat#for medical implants Artificial implants, like pacemakers, can spark the body defenses and cause complications, even rejection.

or coat medical implants in 3d micro-structures, which can make the implants more biocompatible.

Researchers had discovered already that cells interact better with rough or structured surfaces than with smooth ones and can cling to them more effectively.

Until now, however, it hasn been possible to apply these surface structures to one of the most promising materials in the field of medicine:

Skin cells could grow over a wound more effectively if they moved in accordance with structured cellulose.

but also help to minimize the body rejection reaction to an artificial implant. In studies using mice

and can cause complications. ur aim is for artificial implants to be accepted by the patient body without inflammation

which could make it easier to pinpoint the causes of cancer. In many cases, genetic mutations that cause cancer involve chemical changes to individual building blocks of DNAREATING DNA ADDUCTS."

"Natural products can be a source of effective cancer drugs, and several are being used for treating a variety of cancers,

"Gavin Robertson says.""Over 60 percent of anticancer agents are derived from plants, animals, marine sources, or microorganisms.

a professor of food and nutrition toxicology at ETH Zurich, has succeeded for the first time in amplifying gene samples containing DNA ADDUCTS

it may therefore be possible to expand DNA sequencing from the four basic DNA building blocks to include adducts. he scientific community would have an important tool for making a detailed analysis of the molecular mechanisms involved in the initiation of cancer

#Donor tissue for joint repair stays fresh for 60 days Currently doctors have to throw away more than 80 percent of donated tissue used for joint replacements

a professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Missouri School of medicine. he benefit to patients is that more graft material will be available

This will allow us as surgeons to provide a more natural joint repair option for our patients.

donated tissues are stored within a medical-grade refrigeration unit in sealed bags filled with a standard preservation solution.

says study coauthor James Cook, director of the Comparative Orthopedic Laboratory and the Missouri Orthopedic Institute Division of Research. ith the traditional preservation approach,

schedule surgery and get the graft to the surgeon for implantation. METAL IMPLANTS VS. TISSUE GRAFTS Stannard says that patients with metal and plastic implants often are forced to give up many of the activities they previously enjoyed

in order to extend the life of their new mechanical joints . or patients with joint problems caused by degenerative conditions,

metal and plastic implants are still a very good option, Stannard adds. hen the end of a bone that forms a joint is destroyed over time,

the damage is often too extensive to use tissue grafts. owever, for patients who experience trauma to a joint that was otherwise healthy before the injury,

previous activity levels needn be altered drastically if we can replace the damaged area with living tissue.

However, the method of preserving the grafts themselves has limited the amounts of quality donor tissue available to surgeons. 100%USABLE AT 60 DAYS Additionally, because of testing requirements and logistics,

Anopheles gambiae, a major malaria vector, is isolated interbreeding with pockets of another malaria mosquito, A. coluzzii. Entomologists initially considered them as the

says medical entomologist Gregory Lanzaro, professor in the pathology, microbiology and immunology department at University of California,

The World health organization World Malaria Report indicates that deaths from malaria worldwide have decreased by 47 percent since 2000.

Now there n urgent need to develop new and effective malaria vector control strategies, Lanzaro says.

#High-res MRI links cerebellum to bipolar disorder A different type of MRI has given researchers an unprecedented look at previously unrecognized differences in the brains of people with bipolar disorder, a new study reports.

The cerebellar differences were not present in patients taking lithium, the most commonly used treatment for bipolar disorder.

professor of psychiatry at University of Iowa. o it really providing a new picture and new insight into the composition and function of the brain in bipolar disease.

Despite being relatively commonipolar disorder affects about one percent of the populationcientists don have a good understanding of what causes bipolar disorder,

Researchers examined 15 patients with bipolar disorder and 25 control subjects matched for age and gender.

ELEVATED MRI SIGNAL Compared to the brains of people without bipolar disorder, the MRI signal was elevated in the cerebral white matter

and the cerebellar region of patients affected by bipolar disorder. The elevated signal may be due to either a reduction in ph or a reduction in glucose concentrationoth factors influenced by cell metabolism.

Previous research has suggested that abnormal cell metabolism may play a role in bipolar disorder. However, investigating metabolic abnormalities in the brain has been hindered by lack of a good imaging tools.

Available methods are slow low-resolution, and require researchers to identify the region of interest at the beginning of the study.

The study is the first time this MRI technique has been used to investigate a psychiatric disease. One reason researchers didn know that the cerebellum might be important in bipolar disorder,

is because no one chose to look there, says Casey Johnson, postdoctoral researcher and first author on the study that is published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. ur study was essentially exploratory.

We didn know what we would find. The majority of bipolar disorder research has found differences in the frontal region of the brain.

We found focal differences in the cerebellum, which is a region that hasn really been highlighted in the bipolar literature before."

and go to a doctor, aggregation already has a stronghold in their brains, "says Lisa Lapidus,

and other diseases that involve neurotoxic aggregation. MRI probe detects Alzheimer's at earliest stage Spurred on by the finding,

the researchers conducted an extensive search of the scientific literature on bipolar disorder and began to find pieces of evidence that suggested that the cerebellum may function abnormally in bipolar disorder

and that lithium might potentially target the cerebellum and alter glucose levels in this brain region. ur paper,

The researchers hope that the new insights provided by the T1 rho imaging might help refine understanding of the abnormalities that underlie bipolar disease

While lithium can be an effective mood stabilizer for people with bipolar disorder, it causes numerous unpleasant side effects for patients. f lithium effect on the cerebellum is the key to its effectiveness as a mood stabilizer,

then a more targeted treatment that causes the same change in the cerebellum without affecting other systems might be a better treatment for patients with bipolar disorder,

and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression provided funding for the study.

Scientists have created ellular backpacksthat could carry therapeutic agents to the site of inflammation and then release them.

Inflammation is a normal way for the body to respond to injury or infection. The swelling, heat,

or even tissue death. any diseases result in inflammation, says Samir Mitragotri, professor of chemical engineering at University of California, Santa barbara,

Whether inflammation is a byproduct of the disease or the inflammation is the disease, it is a common indicator of a problem with the system. f we could target the common denominator,

whether the inflammation is coming from cancer or arthritis, we could deliver the drug there,

says Mitragotri, who specializes in targeted drug delivery. By taking advantage of natural body processes, researchers at UC Santa barbara and MIT have developed a method of targeting inflamed tissues

hold therapeutic agents that can be released at the site of the inflammation. These polymeric discs are coated on one side with a single layer of an antibody that can bind to receptors on the monocyte surface.

To prevent the cellular backpack from being engulfed and devoured by the very cell that is transporting it,

you and your doctor can make a plan on how to reverse it through diet, supplements,

or other therapies,"says Adam Murphy. Low Vitamin d linked to aggressive prostate cancer The development of effective cellular backpacks has broad potential,

say the researchers. asically the main benefit is that you can deliver the drug in a more effective dose,

which often has a narrow therapeutic range: too little and the treatment is not effective, too much and it can be lethal.

Not only can targeted therapy ensure other body systems remain unaffected, Mitragotri explains, but it could also allow for higher doses of drug to the site,

if your brain didn#t cycle A study with mice shows how the mammalian brain is able to maintain a constant state of up and downhile under anesthesia, during slow-wave sleep,

in a deal that expands the buyer gastrointestinal (GI) disorders and rare-disease portfolios, as well as its global footprint.

a parathyroid hormone (rhpth 1-84) that if approved would be the first bioengineered hormone replacement therapy for hypoparathyroidism (HPT.

an injection drug indicated for long-term treatment of adults with short bowel syndrome (SBS) who need parenteral support.

would complement Shire existing stable of drugs for gastrointestinal diseases.""The acquisition of NPS Pharma is a significant step in advancing Shire's strategy to become a leading biotechnology company, Shire CEO Flemming Ornskov, M d,

The NPS Pharma organization will be a welcome addition to Shire as we continue to help transform the lives of patients with rare diseases."

and ensure we continue to transform the lives of patients with short bowel syndrome, hypoparathyroidism,

and a new indication for teduglutide, pediatric SBS. NPS Pharma is now conducting a global study for teduglutide in pediatric patients with SBS who are dependent on parenteral support.

NPS has licensed several of its products through partnerships with several biopharma giants. Amgen markets cinacalcet HCL as Sensipar in the U s. and as Mimpara in the EU;

and we believe it has great therapeutic potential.""Dr. Xue is the lead author in a paper (lysine-rich motif in the phosphatidylserine receptorpsr-1 mediates recognition

and hopefully move toward solving injuries,"said Dr. Hilliard. In the future, neurosurgery may be combined with molecular biology to deliver positive clinical outcomes

and perhaps treat conditions like spinal cord or nerve injuries, he said. During programmed cell death,

apoptotic cells flag themselves for elimination by moving a specific cell membrane component known as phosphatidylserine (PS) from the inner membrane to the cell surface,

"While biomedical researchers have had some successes in repairing peripheral nerves and nerve clusters outside the brain and spinal cord in humans,

Such nerve damage can cause partial or total paralysis. Xue, who first identified the PSR-1 receptor in 2003,

According to Dr. Xue, C. elegans is an ideal organism to use in the hunt for new therapeutics to treat nerve damage because of its relatively small,

but we feel these findings offer promise in seeking new and effective therapeutics. c

#Small Molecule Successfully Targets Telomerase to Destroy Cancer cells Scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical center report that they have targeted telomeres with a small molecule called 6-thiodg that takes advantage of the cell's biological clock to kill cancer cells

and shrink tumor growth. Jerry W. Shay, Ph d.,professor and vice chairman of cell biology at UT Southwestern,

and colleague, Woodring E. Wright, M d.,Ph d.,professor of cell biology and internal medicine, found that 6-thio-2'-deoxyguanosine could stop the growth of cancer cells in culture and decrease the growth of tumors in mice.

Drs. Shay and Wright are co-senior authors of the study nduction of Telomere Dysfunction Mediated by the Telomerase Substrate Precursor 6-Thio-2deoxyguanosineappearing in Cancer Discovery. reatment with 6-thio

-dg resulted in rapid cell death for the vast majority of the cancer cell lines tested,

6-thio-dg caused a decrease in the tumor growth rate superior to that observed with 6-thioguanine treatment.

In addition, 6-thio-dg increased telomere dysfunction in tumor cells in vivo. These results indicate that 6-thio-dg may provide a new telomere-addressed telomerase-dependent anticancer approach."

as well as tumor burden shrinkage in mice,"noted Dr. Shay, who is also associate director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Cancer cells are protected from apoptosis by telomerase, which ensures that telomeres do not shorten with every division.

Telomerase has therefore been the subject of intense research as a target for cancer therapy.

but these drugs have to be administered for long periods of time to successfully trigger cell death and shrink tumors,

leading to considerable toxicities. This outcome is partially because cells in any one tumor have chromosomes with different telomere lengths

and any one cell's telomeres must be shortened critically to induce death. 6-thiodg is used preferentially as a substrate by telomerase

Telomerase is an almost universal oncology target, yet there are few telomerase-directed therapies in human clinical trials,

researchers noted.""Using telomerase to incorporate toxic products into telomeres is remarkably encouraging at this point,

"said Dr. Wright. Importantly, unlike many other telomerase-inhibiting compounds, the researchers did not observe serious side effects in the blood,

"Since telomerase is expressed in almost all human cancers, this work represents a potentially innovative approach to targeting telomerase-expressing cancer cells with minimal side effects on normal cells,"continued Dr. Shay."

"We believe this small molecule will address an unmet cancer need in an underexplored area that will be rapidly applicable to the clinic

#Ultra-Fast Software Developed to Scan the Human genome Researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital say they have developed an analysis pipeline that cuts the time it takes to search a person's genome for disease-causing variations from weeks to hours.

and $3 billion to sequence the first human genome,"notes Peter White, Ph d.,principal investigator and director of the biomedical genomics core at Nationwide Children's and the study's senior author."

%"At Nationwide Children's we have a strategic goal to introduce genomic medicine into multiple domains of pediatric research and healthcare.

Rapid diagnosis of monogenic disease can be critical in newborns, so our initial focus was to create an analysis pipeline that was extremely fast,

and Mental health (CAMH) in Toronto have found a possible link between inflammation in the brain and clinical depression.

and standard of care for mental health issues. The results from this study, published today in JAMA Psychiatry in an article entitled ole of Translocator Protein Density,

a Marker of Neuroinflammation in the Brain During Major depressive episodes showed that there was a 30%increase in inflammation among patients experiencing a major clinical episode."

"This finding provides the most compelling evidence to date of brain inflammation during a major depressive episode,

"says Jeffrey Meyer, M d.,Ph d.,of CAMH's Campbell Family Mental health Research Institute and senior author of the study."

Currently, there are no therapies that address inflammation as part of regimen to treat depression and the CAMH team believes that using anti-inflammatories as a treatment option needs to be explored further. his finding provides the most compelling evidence to date of brain inflammation,

because it implies that therapeutics that reduce microglial activation should be promising for MDE, the paper concludes c

and placental barriers act as critical ramparts to infections from microbial pathogens, yet some have evolved mechanisms to breach the cellular obstacles that lie in their path.

Unlocking the underlying mechanisms of host barrier permissiveness to microbes is critical to understanding the etiology of many infectious diseases.

The common foodborne bacteria Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) can survive and proliferate within the intestinal lumen of the host,

causing meningitis and encephalitis, as well as the placental barrier, resulting in severe neonatal infection or miscarriage.

Researchers at the Pasteur institute in Paris have discovered the protein pathways that are responsible for allowing Listeria to circumvent host barriers.

The results from this study were published today in the Journal of Experimental Medicine within an article entitled I3-kinase activation is critical for host barrier permissiveness to Listeria monocytogenes Listeria relies on two surface proteins called

Marc Lecuit, M d.,Ph d.,Head of the Biology of Infections Unit at the Pasteur institute and senior author on the study,

results illustrate how microbial pathogens have evolved to invade mammalian tissues, taking advantage of both similarities and differences of host barriers.

They also suggest that the absence of placental constitutive PI3-K activity may reinforce its barrier function toward pathogens

funded by the Movember Foundation and conducted by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London,

in addition to uncovering a gene that may aid tumors in promoting resistance to existing drug therapies.

According to the authors, this is the first study of its kind to use whole-exome sequencing to probe testicular germ cell tumors,

and reveals some potentially important clues as to how the disease could be treated more effectively, stated Paul Workman, Ph d.,chief executive of ICR.

examined tumor samples from 42 patients with testicular cancer. They report previously unidentified chromosome duplications and confirmed data from earlier findings that associated these tumors with the KIT gene,

which has been linked to an array of other cancerous tissues.""Our study is the largest comprehensive sequencing study of testicular tumors published to date,

describing their mutational profile in greater detail than has been possible using previous technologies, says Clare Turnbull, Ph d.,senior author and team leader in predisposition and translational genetics at ICR.

Their preliminary finding of a link between XRCC2 and platinum drug resistance was validated once they sequenced a sample from an additional platinum-resistant tumor. e have identified new potential driver mutations for this type of cancer

whose cancer progresses in spite of the best available treatments,"said Dr. Turnbull Despite the fact that testicular cancer responds well to chemotherapy,

This study provides essential general knowledge concerning testicular germ line cell tumor development but more importantly, valuable insight into the genetic underpinnings as to why certain patients develop resistance to chemotherapy h

The goal of the new procedure is to avoid the transmission of mitochondrial diseases. Under the decision, the embryo would receive nuclear DNA from its mother and father along with healthy MITOCHONDRIAL DNA from a female donor.

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University estimate that about 2, 500 women of childbearing age in Britain carry mitochondrial disease.

We have great sympathy for families affected by mitochondrial disease and are opposed not in principle to mitochondrial replacement.

A committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) yesterday called for the sharing of supporting data for clinical trials results within six months after publication, with a full analyzable data set shared no later than 18 months

Also yesterday, Johnson & johnson (J&j) joined the Yale Open data Access (YODA) Project in agreeing to share data from clinical trials for medical devices and diagnostics.

or deny requests from investigators for de-identified patient data associated with the pharmaceutical, medical device,

professor of medicine and leader of the YODA Project. e hope this action serves as a catalyst to others to join the momentum on open science.

The European Medicines Agency in October issued a more expansive data sharing policy last October, though not the full open-access sought by advocates.

or otherwise harm public health? whether through inadvertent errors in data analysis or, in the U s.,the prospect of monetary gain through qui tam lawsuits, the report stated.

and therapies and that sustains patientswillingness to participate in them, said committee chair Bernard Lo, president of the Greenwall Foundation,

a funder of bioethics research. ur recommendations attempt to balance the interests of different stakeholders with the public interest in having the best information possible regarding the effectiveness and safety of therapies.

as well as disease-focused patient advocacy groups, regulators, and overseers such as institutional review boards, research ethics committees, investigators, their research institutions or universities, journals,

#New Microchip Design Captures Circulating Tumor Cells Circulating tumor cells (CTCS) represent the metastatic seed that can break away from the primary tumor site,

and spread to other parts of the bodyften causing more pathological symptoms than the primary cancer from which the CTCS were derived.

which could yield important new insights into how different cancers spread.""Very little is known about CTC clusters and their role in the progression and metastasis of cancer.

This unique technology presents an exciting opportunity to capture these exceptionally rare groups of cells for further analysis in a way that is minimally-invasive,

. director at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Engineering who helped find the current study."

"This is the kind of breakthrough technology that could have a very large impact on cancer research."

"The findings from this study were published recently in Nature Methods through an article entitled"A microfluidic device for label-free, physical capture of circulating tumor cell clusters."

and melanoma cancers. The researchers observed CTC clusters ranging from 2-19 cells among 300%of the patients."

"said senior author Mehmet Toner, Ph d.,professor of surgery and health sciences and technology at Harvard Medical school,

Massachusetts General Hospital. he fact that we saw clusters in this many patients is really a remarkable finding."

Dr. Toner and his colleagues went on to test the technique in a small trial of 60 patients with metastatic cancer.

31%of prostate and 30%of melanoma patientsuggestive of a greater role for CTC clusters in metastatic cancers than previously thought.

Interestingly, the data from this small study also showed a rare presence of non-tumor derived immune cells within clusters,

"Given the increasing number of cancer therapies that engage the immune system, the ability to monitor tumor-immune cell interactions via the blood could be of great value."

"Dr. Toner and his colleagues anticipate that the Cluster-Chip will have an increasingly important role in stimulating new research on CTC cluster biology,

and to develop even better technologies to understand their biology in cancer metastasis. t

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