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Our brains are mysterious organs. And fast. Too fast, it turns out, to be fully observed using the current gold standard: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
So researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Institute of Technology and Advanced Biomedical Imaging at the University of Chieti in Italy are turning to faster technology called magnetoencephalography (MEG) to sample neural activity every 50 milliseconds.
In doing so, they've been afforded novel insights into the inner-workings of neural networks in resting and active brains. As the researchers report in the journal Neuron, these new insights could help us better understand how brain networks function and, in turn, better diagnose and treat brain injuries.
Scientists identify key protein that modulates organismal agingScientists at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have identified a key factor that regulates the autophagy process, a kind of cleansing mechanism for cells in which waste material and cellular debris is gobbled up to protect cells from damage, and in turn, modulates aging. The findings, published in Nature Communications today, could lead to the development of new therapies for age-related disorders that are characterized by a breakdown in this process.
A scientific breakthrough by researchers at the University of Kent has revealed how vitamin B12/antipernicious anaemia factor is made – a challenge often referred to as ‘the Mount Everest of biosynthetic problems’.
Vitamin B12 is pieced together as an elaborate molecular jigsaw involving around 30 individual components. It is unique amongst the vitamins in that it is only made by certain bacteria. In the early 1990’s it was realised that there were two pathways to allow its construction – one that requires oxygen and one that occurs in the absence of oxygen. It is this so-called anaerobic pathway, which is the more common pathway, that proved so elusive as the components of the pathway are very unstable and rapidly degrade.
A malaria vaccine has shown promising results in early stage clinical trials, a study suggests.
Researchers found the vaccine, which is being developed in the US, protected 12 out of 15 patients from the disease, when given in high doses.
The method is unusual because it involves injecting live but weakened malaria-causing parasites directly into patients to trigger immunity.
Scientists To Make Deadlier Versions Of H7N9 Bird Flu In Lab | Popular ScienceA team of virus researchers is set to perform studies on H7N9 that may make the bird flu more resistant to drugs and more easily transmitted between humans. The scientists announced their plans today in two major science journals, Nature and Science.
H7N9 first arose in eastern China this spring. Since then, it has killed 43 people and sickened 90 more. The outbreak is now under control, but the research team says the virus could gain traction again this winter flu season, so they want to do so-called gain-of-function studies to learn more about the virus quickly.
A partnership between scientists at the University of Wollongong and St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne has led to a breakthrough in tissue engineering, with researchers growing cartilage from stem cells to treat cancers, osteoarthritis and traumatic injury.
In work led by Associate Professor Damian Myers of St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne – a node of the UOW-headquartered Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) – scaffolds fabricated on 3D printing equipment were used to grow cartilage over a 28-day period from stem cells that were extracted from tissue under the knee cap.
A team of chemists in SU's College of Arts and Scientists has used a temperature-sensitive polymer to regulate DNA interactions in both a DNA-mediated assembly system and a DNA-encoded drug-delivery system.
Their findings, led by Associate Professor Mathew M. Maye and graduate students Kristen Hamner and Colleen Alexander, may improve how nanomaterials self-assemble into functional devices and how anticancer drugs, including doxorubicin, are delivered into the body. More information is available in a July 30 article in ACS Nano, published by the American Chemical Society.
Blood clots could be sucked out of the brain by a robotic deviceIntracerebral hemorrhaging is what occurs when a blood vessel in the brain bursts, and the blood which subsequently leaks out of that vessel forms a clot that places pressure on the surrounding brain tissue. It’s not that uncommon of an occurrence, it’s difficult to treat, and is fatal in about 40 percent of cases. Help may be on the way, however. A team from Nashville’s Vanderbilt University has created a robotic device that is designed to remove those clots, in a safe and minimally-invasive fashion.
As things currently stand, surgery is a risky approach to removing the clots. An access hole has to be drilled in the skull, and unless the clot is right on the outside of the brain, healthy brain tissue must be disturbed and damaged in order to reach it. The amount of damage caused by the surgery may even outweigh the benefits of removing the clot, which is why physicians often instead choose to administer anti-inflammatory drugs and hope for the best.
A malaria vaccine has become the first to provide 100% protection against the disease, confounding critics and far surpassing any other experimental malaria vaccine tested. It will now be tested further in clinical trials in Africa.
The results are important because they demonstrate for the first time the concept that a malaria vaccine can provide a high level of protection, says Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, adding that the findings are cause for "cautious optimism".
No effective malaria vaccine is available at present. The World Health Organization has set a target to develop a malaria vaccine with 80% efficacy by 2025, but until now, says Fauci, "we have not even gotten anywhere near that level of efficacy."
Read more: High blood sugar levels linked to increased risk of dementia | Science RecorderResearchers reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine have discovered that high blood sugar levels are linked to an increased risk of dementia. According to the researchers, this holds true even among people who do not have diabetes.
The Alzheimer’s Association notes that dementia is a general term used to describe a decline in mental ability significant enough to impact daily life. Memory less is an excellent example. The most common type of dementia is Alzheimer’s. According to the association, Alzheimer’s disease accounts for up to 80 percent of dementia cases. Vascular dementia, which takes place following a stroke, is the second most common type of dementia.
The researchers found that in people with diabetes, whose blood sugar levels are predominantly higher, dementia risk was 40 percent higher for people with an average glucose level of 190 mg/dl compared to those with an average glucose level of 160 mg/dl. This report looked at more than 2,000 Group Health Patients age 65 and older in the Adult Changes in Thought study.
For the first time, scientists have directly observed events that lead to the formation of a chromosome abnormality that is often found in cancer cells. The abnormality, called a translocation, occurs when part of a chromosome breaks off and becomes attached to another chromosome. The results of this study, conducted by scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, appeared Aug. 9, 2013, in the journal Science.
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“These observations have allowed us to formulate a time and space framework for elucidating the mechanisms involved in the formation of chromosome translocations,” said Vassilis Roukos, Ph.D., NCI, and lead scientist of the study.
“We can now finally begin to really probe how these fundamental features of cancer cells form,” Misteli added.
Medtronic, Inc. has announced the first implant of a novel deep brain stimulation (DBS) system that – for the first time – enables the sensing and recording of select brain activity while simultaneously providing targeted DBS therapy. This will initiate research on how the brain responds to the therapy and could yield major insights that significantly change the way people with devastating neurological and psychological disorders are treated.
The Activa PC+S DBS system delivers proven Medtronic DBS therapy, while at the same time sensing and recording electrical activity in key areas of the brain, using sensing technology and an adjustable algorithm, which enable the system to gather brain signals at various moments as selected by a physician. Initially, this new technology will be made available to a select group of physicians worldwide for use in clinical studies. These physicians will use the system to map the brain’s responses to Medtronic DBS therapy and explore applications for the treatment across a range of neurological and psychological conditions.
The Activa PC+S system was implanted for the first time at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, in a person with Parkinson’s disease. This patient will be treated by a team that includes the neurologist Kai Bötzel and neurosurgeon Jan Mehrkens. Dr. Bötzel will be the first to use data gathered by the Activa PC+S system to gain unprecedented insight into how the brain responds.
Read more at: Researchers mass produce reprogrammed T cells that target cancer cells(Phys.org) —A team of researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has developed a method for mass producing T cells that have been reprogrammed using stem cell technology to target and destroy cancerous tumors. In their paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the team describes how they collected isolated T cells, reprogrammed them into stem cells, added a gene marker, than reprogrammed them back into T cells that are able to target cells in cancerous tumors.
Rice University researchers are making strides toward a set of rules to custom-design Lego-like viral capsid proteins for gene therapy. A new paper by Rice scientists Junghae Suh and Jonathan Silberg and their students details their use of computational and bioengineering methods to combine pieces of very different adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) to create new, benign viruses that can deliver DNA payloads to specific cells.
The research appears this month in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Synthetic Biology.
Experimental drugs already used to treat breast cancer may also fight lung cancer, research reveals.
Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the commonest type of lung cancer, is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Few drug treatments exist.
Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research in London discovered breast cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors worked in up to half of NSCLC tumours.
Using human pluripotent stem cells and DNA-cutting protein from meningitis bacteria, researchers from the Morgridge Institute for Research and Northwestern University have created an efficient way to target and repair defective genes.
Writing today (Monday, Aug. 12, 2013) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reports that the novel technique is much simpler than previous methods and establishes the groundwork for major advances in regenerative medicine, drug screening and biomedical research.
Researchers Use Non-Replicating Virus Particles to Kill Leukemia Cells | Medicine | Sci-News.com“Our research indicated that a replicating virus might not be the safest or most effective approach for treating leukemia, so we decided to investigate whether we could make virus-derived particles that no longer replicate but still kill cancer,” said Dr David Conrad, who is a senior author of a study published in the Blood Cancer Journal.
“We were delighted to see that this novel therapy was very safe at high doses, and worked extremely well in our laboratory leukemia models. We hope to test this in patients in the near future.”
Stroke is the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. Approximately 16 million first-ever strokes occur each year, leading to nearly 6 million deaths. Nevertheless, currently, very few therapeutic options are available. Cell therapies have been applied successfully in different hematological diseases, and are currently being investigated for treating ischemic heart disease, with promising results. Recent preclinical studies have indicated that cell therapies may provide structural and functional benefits after stroke. However, the effects of these treatments are not yet fully understood and are the subject of continuing investigation. Meanwhile, different clinical trials for stroke, the majority of them small, nonrandomized, and uncontrolled, have been reported, and their results indicate that cell therapy seems safe and feasible in these conditions. In the last 2 years, the number of published and registered trials has dramatically increased. Here, we review the main findings available in the field, with emphasis on the clinical results. Moreover, we address some of the questions that have been raised to date, to improve future studies.
Bones are rigid organs that serve various functions in the human body. Damaged bone can be replaced with bone from other parts of the body (autografts), from cadavers (allograft), or with various ceramics or metallic alloys. The use of autografts limits how much bone is available, while the other options can result in rejection by the human body.
According to Japanese media, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine announced that it can now create artificial bones using 3D printing technology and has transplanted the bones into four patients with cervical spine (cervical) disc herniation. After the transplants, their symptoms such as gait disturbance and hand numbness were improved.
Microelectronic engineers in Singapore have developed and tested sensor technology that can detect and measure a chemical signature of bladder cancer. The light-based sensor could eventually be used for the early diagnosis and subsequent tracking of the progression and treatment of many different tumors, according to Yong Shin at the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics, who led the research. After further testing of the technology, Shin and co-workers are planning to develop a lab-on-a-chip device incorporating the sensor that can process fluid samples within about five minutes.
Coming fresh on the heels of the news that scientists are successfully 3D printing live, working, mini human kidneys, a new report in Nature is giving another burst of hope to the future of organ transplants. For the very first time, a research team has been able to grow human heart tissue that beats totally autonomously in its petri dish home.
