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Cancer Cells Can Be Killed by Blood-Dwelling Jellyfish

11/15/2012

Tentacles versus blood cells

Microbiology is really turning into the answer to pretty much every health problem. Even promising cancer cures are being based on it.

What can be seen in that photo above isn't a cure per se, though. Instead, it is more of an agent that can eliminate cancer cells.

Basically, it is a microfluidic chip coated with long strands of DNA which, like a jellyfish scoops grub in the ocean, uses the strands to dangle into the bloodstream and pluck cancerous proteins out.

Designers from Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital are behind the creation of this chip. They believe that the “jellyfish” can both diagnose and treat the disease. Human testing is the only step left before establishing whether or not the method is worthwhile.

It might be too much to hope for, but it really was about time someone found out how cancer can finally be cured completely.

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Drug Found to Shrink Brain Tumors in Tuberous Sclerosis Complex Patients

11/15/2012

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Drug used to prevent organ rejection can be used to shrink TSC-related tumors

According to a new study only recently made public, a drug (i.e. everolimus) that was initially designed to keep an individual's body from rejecting transplanted organs can also be used to shrink the brain tumors developed by patients suffering with the Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC).

Dr. Franz, presently working with the TSC Clinic at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, explains that, after just 42 weeks of being administered this drug, 35% of the patients who took part in this research witnessed their brain tumors being reduced to nearly half of their original size.

“Every patient in this study experienced a decrease in size of their tumors, and no patient required surgery for their tumors after treatment with everolimus,” Dr. Franz said.

Prior to this drug's being made available as a treatment alternative, most of the children and adolescents who developed said type of brain tumors had to undergo surgery in order to gain a better quality of life.

However, thanks to this drug's being supported by the US Food and Drug Administration, “Children and teens may not only avoid surgery but they also may see improvement in other aspects of this disease,” Dr. Franz believes.

In other words, the presence of everolimus in one's body inhibits and/or slows the cell growth typically associated with TSC.

As well as this, it was found to prevent or eliminate altogether the buildup of fluid inside the skulls of patients who develop this type of brain tumors.

Interestingly enough, there are some who claim that, because TSC and medical conditions such as Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and autism share the mTOR pathway, everolimus could successfully be used to treat these other disorders as well, simply because it acts as an mTOR inhibitor.

Given the fact that, for the time being, about 50,000 people in the US and 1 million individuals worldwide are suffering with TSC, this comes as good news indeed.

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How the Brain Falls Prey to Alzheimer’s Disease

7/15/2012

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First-ever timeline details the evolution of Alzheimer's disease over the years

Scientists with the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network (DIAN) international research partnership say that they were recently able to develop the first clear timeline detailing how the brain develops Alzheimer’s disease.

The new dataset will come in handy for researchers who are working hard towards finding ways of addressing the condition. Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative form of dementia that currently has no cure. Its primary mode of action is by damaging neurons and attacking cognitive capabilities.

Since it primarily manifests itself in the elderly, and the general population of the developed world is growing, the condition is expected to put huge strains on national healthcare systems over the coming decades, PsychCentral reports.

While the therapies experts managed to propose thus far have largely proven ineffectively at treating the condition, some have argued that this is because the dementia starts manifesting clear symptoms only after it has already taken a hold of the brain.

But the team behind the new dataset, which also included scientists from the University of Washington in St. Louis (WUSL) School of Medicine (WUSM), suggests that the earliest signs of the condition set in as many as 25 years before the first discernible symptoms appear.

In order to compare the new timeline, the investigators looked at a series of markers for Alzheimer’s disease that appear long before the condition sets in. This was made possible by surveying 128 test subjects who came from families whose genetic history predisposed them to developing the disease.

“A series of changes begins in the brain decades before the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease are noticed by patients or families, and this cascade of events may provide a timeline for symptomatic onset,” WUSM expert and lead study author, Randall Bateman, MD, says.

“Family members without the Alzheimer’s mutations have no detected change in the markers we tested. It’s striking how normal the Alzheimer’s markers are in family members without a mutation,” he goes on to say.

The research was made possible by funds provided through the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Details of the work were published in the latest issue of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

“As we learn more about the origins of Alzheimer’s to plan preventive treatments, this Alzheimer’s timeline will be invaluable for successful drug trials,” Bateman concludes.

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New Cell Delivery Technologies in the Works

7/15/2012

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This image shows microbeads developed by SpherIngenics for cell delivery within the human body

A startup from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) has recently secured funding from the US Department of Defense (DOD), for the development of new technologies related to delivering cells to any location within the human body.

Cell delivery is a critical step in the process of repairing damaged tissues. However, the main issue with putting new cells in the body is that the environment they encounter once they reach the bloodstream is extremely hostile.

Any new structures inserted into the body are immediately attacked and disintegrated by the immune system. This leads to significant inflammation, a condition that poses its own set of problems. If the therapeutic cells are not destroyed by this response, they are at least scattered in all directions.

This means that the impact they were supposed to have on a particular area will be severely diminished. In most cases, the cell injections end up having no effect, but producing multiple side-effects. The new startup, called SpherIngenics, was created as a method of preventing this from happening.

In order to do this, the company is using technology developed in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech, and at the Emory University. Their method is safe, reliable, yields no significant side-effects, and is entirely repeatable.

In addition to protecting the newly introduced cells from an untimely death, they also prevent them from migrating to other locations in the body, increasing the efficiency of cell delivery therapies by a wide margin. SpherIngenics hopes to capitalize on this approach by creating new protective capsules.

Its efforts are being supported by a two-year, $730,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the DOD. The company was funded by Coulter Department professors Franklin Bost (also the company's CEO), Barbara Boyan and Zvi Schwartz.

“When damaged tissue is being repaired by a cell-based therapy, our microbead technology ensures that cells travel to and remain in the targeted area while maintaining continued viability,” Bost explains.

“This technology has the potential to reduce the cost of treatment by eliminating the need for multiple therapeutic procedures,” the expert goes on to say. SphereIngenics was founded back in 2007.

“For the Phase II SBIR grant, we’re going to examine whether delivering microbeads full of stem cells can enhance cartilage repair and regeneration of craniofacial defects in an animal model,” Boyan adds.

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Environment Affects How Superbugs Move Around

1/15/2012

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People moving in and out of an area help superbugs receive fresh biological material that enables them to resist antibiotics.

In a new investigation on the spread and infection patterns displayed by antibiotic resistant bacteria – commonly known as superbugs – researchers discovered that their prevalence was higher in villages located along roads than in settlements that were out of reach, or difficult to get to.

This appears to suggest that roads played a never-before-considered role in helping superbugs such as antibiotic-resistant Escherichia Coli (E. coli) spread throughout the general population. The new findings confirm previous studies that roads favor the spread of diseases.

However, what the other researches did not evidence was a connection between proximity to a road and the chances a person has of being exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This study was carried out by researchers at the University of Michigan(U-M) School of Public Health.

Details of the new work were published in a paper called “In-roads to the spread of antibiotic resistance: regional patterns of microbial transmission in northern coastal Ecuador,” which is published in this month's issue of the Journal of the Royal Society, Interface.

U-M professor Hoe Eisenberg was the leader of the research team, which also included colleagues from the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and Trinity College. He is also a coauthor of the new study.

The study took experts in the northwestern regions of Ecuador. Over a period of five years, the team carried out tests on available strains of antibiotic-resistant E. coli, using a combination of ampicillin and sulfamethoxazole as treatments.

“Our results show it's not just the individual's antibiotic use that affects antibiotic resistance,” the U-M investigator explains. He says that roads provide two factors that tip the scales in the bacteria's favor.

“Important factors that affect the spread of antibiotic resistance are the rates at which people introduce new strains due to movement in and out of the region, as well as poor water quality and sanitation that allow for the transmission of antibiotic resistant strains,” he explains.

This is one of the few studies conducted to date that also takes into account the broader environmental and social context governing the development of resistance to antibiotics in bacteria. Thus far, a lot of emphasis was placed on the individual, and the way in which they consume antibiotics.

“If we want to think about how we deal with antibiotic resistance we have got to think about the broader environmental forces that cause the spread of antibiotic resistance, in addition to how doctors prescribe antibiotics to individuals,” Eisenberg explains.

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High Blood Pressure Linked to Benign Endocrine Tumors

2/25/2011

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An international team of scientists has recently determined that about 5 percent of people who have high blood pressure exhibit this condition because thy have benign, hormone-producing tumors on the adrenal cortex.

These are glands located on top of the kidneys, whose role is to regulate the emission of stress-related hormones. They produce chemicals such as cortisol (the stress hormone) and epinephrine, better known as adrenaline.

The adrenal (suprarenal) glands also play a role in regulating the functions of the kidneys, via a hormone called aldosterone. This chemicals regulates the osmolarity of plasma in these vital organs.

When the adrenal cortex becomes host to tumors, these forms of cancer can develop in such a way that they influence the hormonal balance of the body. High blood pressure is a consequence of this.

In the new investigation, researchers from the Uppsala University, in Sweden, and the Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven, Connecticut, managed to determine the genetic cause that triggers the formation of these hormone-producing tumors.

Details of the new investigation and its conclusions appear in the February 11 issue of the top journal Science. The main mechanism through which adrenal tumors influence blood pressure is the elevated production of aldosterone.

The condition is called aldosteronism, and its primary manifestation is elevated blood pressure. While this is established knowledge, scientists did not know why the tumors developed in the first place.

But investigators from the UU Endocrine Surgery Unit, and their American colleagues, were able to discover the causal mechanism in the new study. The investigation was conducting via a new scientific imaging method, called exome sequencing.

Investigators took sample of both tumor and normal tissue, and then applies exome sequencing to a number of genes in the two types of cells. A specific potassium channel, called KCNJ5, was discovered to play a critical role in tumor growth and development.

The channel usually regulates the passage of various molecules through the cellular membrane, in and out of the cells. When it malfunctions, tumors appear, and the production of aldosterone spikes.

“The discovery may help to improve diagnostics in connection with primary aldosteronism and cases of severe blood pressure elevation,” explains UU Department of Surgical Sciences researcher Peyman Björklund.

“The mutated potassium channel also represents a potential target molecule for treatment of the tumors in question,” he concludes.

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Detecting Signs of 'Stealth' Heart Attacks

2/25/2011

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Though it may seem counter intuitively at first, not all heart attacks are felt as they occur. In fact, it is estimated that roughly 30 percent of all such attacks go unnoticed, and without symptoms. Researchers are now working on ways of using blood to determine when such a heart event occurred.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, say that the bloodstream holds telltale indications that a heart attack has occurred for several days after the actual event.

Working in collaboration with colleagues from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cardiovascular Research Center, the MIT experts have recently developed a new implantable device, that can be used to detect the signs left behind by “stealth” heart attacks.

The new device functions fairly simple. It is capable of monitoring the blood levels of three very important proteins, which are produced in larger quantities than average during a heart attack.

In a set of experiments the investigators conducted on unsuspecting lab mice, they showed that the implants are very effective at detecting when levels of the three proteins spike in the bloodstream.

While these devices are not for everybody, they could prove to be very useful for people who are known to have an elevated risk of experiencing a heart attack. If this happens, then doctors would know a lot faster than they do today.

They could then start administering treatments earlier than is possible today, which could contribute to increasing patients' overall chances of survival. This would also prevent more severe heart disease from developing.

Details of the new device, and the associated investigation, were published in the February 13 issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature Biotechnology. The study was led by MIT professor of materials science and engineering Michael Cima, also the senior author of the research paper.

“If you go to the ER thinking you’ve had a heart attack, they take a blood sample and analyze it for these specific proteins. If you think about cancer, there aren’t generally agreed-upon markers,” Cima explains.

What's so interesting about this study is that the new device was constructed so that it can bind to and detect three biomarkers at the same time.

“This shows how generalizable this technique is,” says MGH Center for Molecular Imaging Research associate professor Lee Josephson, who was not a part of the research team.

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