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AIDS vaccine candidate appears to completely clear virus from the bodyAn HIV/AIDS vaccine candidate developed by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University appears to have the ability to completely clear an AIDS-causing virus from the body. The promising vaccine candidate is being developed at OHSU's Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute. It is being tested through the use of a non-human primate form of HIV, called simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV, which causes AIDS in monkeys. Following further development, it is hoped an HIV-form of the vaccine candidate can soon be tested in humans. These research results were published online today by the journal Nature. The results will also appear in a future print version of the publication.
Scientists have created stem cells within the body of laboratory mice for the first time in a landmark study showing that it may be possible one day to repair damaged human organs in situ without the need for transplant operations.
Until now stem cells created by a new genetic engineering technique have only been created in vitro in the laboratory, but the researchers were able to perform gene therapy on living mice to generate the stem cells in vivo.
If the work can be transferred safely to humans it raises the possibility of generating stem cells at the site of a diseased organ, such as heart or pancreas, so that a person’s own stem cells could be generated to repair any damaged tissue.
Scientists transplant photoreceptors from retina grown ?in a dish?UCL scientists have carried out the first successful transplant of light-sensitive photoreceptor cells extracted from a synthetic retina, grown ‘in a dish’ from embryonic stem cells.
When transplanted into night-blind mice these cells appeared to develop normally, integrating into the existing retina and forming the nerve connections needed to transmit visual information to the brain.
The study, funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and published today in Nature Biotechnology, suggests that embryonic stem cells could in future provide a potentially unlimited supply of healthy photoreceptors for retinal cell transplantations to treat blindness in humans.
The loss of photoreceptors – light sensitive nerve cells that line the back of the eye – is a leading cause of sight loss in degenerative eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and diabetes-related blindness.
BBC News - Stem cells: Living adult tissue transformed back into embryo stateThe living tissue inside an animal has been regressed back into an embryonic state for the first time, Spanish researchers say.
They believe it could lead to new ways of repairing the body, for example after a heart attack.
However, the study published in the journal Nature, showed the technique led to tumours forming in mice.
Stem cell experts said it was a "cool" study, but would need to be much more controlled before leading to therapies.
When an egg is first fertilised, it has the potential to develop into every tissue in the human body, from brain cells to skin.
That flexibility is lost as an embryo develops. However, transforming adult tissues back into an embryonic-like state may lead to treatments that can regenerate a weakened heart, or the light-sensing cells in the eye or even the brain after a stroke
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/13/business/panel-backs-drug-for-early-stage-breast-cancer.html?_r=0A federal advisory committee cleared the way on Thursday for the first approval of a cancer drug that would be used to treat patients before surgery to remove their tumors.
The advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration voted 13 to 0, with one abstention, that Perjeta, a Genentech drug approved last year for late-stage breast cancer, could also be used at the disease’s earliest stage.
BBC News - 'Body on a chip' uses 3D printed organs to test vaccinesMiniature human organs developed with a modified 3D printer are being used to test new vaccines in a lab in the US.
The "body on a chip" project replicates human cells to print structures which mimic the functions of the heart, liver, lung and blood vessels.
The organs are then placed on a microchip and connected with a blood substitute, allowing scientists to closely monitor specific treatments.
The US Department of Defense has backed the new technology with $24m (£15m).
Bioprinting, a form of 3D printing which, in effect, creates human tissue, is not new. Nor is the idea of culturing 3D human tissue on a microchip.
BBC News - Alzheimer's brain scan detects tau proteinPioneering brain imaging that can detect the build-up of destructive proteins linked to Alzheimer's has been developed by Japanese scientists.
It could lead to new ways of diagnosing the condition and of testing the effectiveness of new drugs.
The technology, reported in the journal Neuron, can identify inside a living brain clumps of a protein called tau that is closely linked to the disease.
Alzheimer's Research UK said it was promising work.
Alzheimer's disease is a problem for researchers trying to come up with a cure. The brain starts to die years before any symptoms are detected, which means drugs are probably given too late.
A diagnosis of Alzheimer's cannot be made with absolute certainty until a patient has died and their brain is examined. It is also not 100% clear what is the cause of the dementia and what are just symptoms.
Stem cells made with near-perfect efficiency : Nature News & CommentResearchers have for the first time converted cultured skin cells into stem cells with near-perfect efficiency.
By removing a single protein, called Mbd3, a team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, was able to increase the conversion rate to almost 100% — ten times that normally achieved. The discovery could clear the way for scientists to produce large volumes of stem cells on demand, hastening the development of new treatments
A drug that was used to treat a skin disorder has shown signs of being able to treat aspects of type 1 diabetes.
A small trial on US patients suggests that alefacept helps the body produce its own insulin, which is key for people with type 1 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes affects around 400,000 people in the UK.
A team of researchers at Yale University has completed a molecular model for Alzheimer's disease by identifying a protein that plays a key role in its onset. Promisingly, the study showed that when the activity of this protein is blocked by an existing drug, mice engineered as models for human AD recover their memories.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a scourge of modern life, subjecting patients, families, and society to costs whose magnitude and nature are arguably unlike those of any other common disease. Often described as the progressive loss of self, more than 10 percent of those over 80 years in age are affected, a number projected to grow to about 100 million worldwide by 2050.
Scientists say they have made a significant leap towards creating a vaccine that would protect against every form of flu.
The influenza virus is a constantly shifting target so seasonal flu vaccines rapidly become useless and new ones are needed each year.
A team at Imperial College London say they have made a "blueprint" for a universal flu vaccine.
Their discovery is published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Influenza is able to change the proteins that protrude from the surface of the virus as readily as people change outfits.
Sixty years ago scientists could electrically stimulate a region of a mouse's brain causing the mouse to eat, whether hungry or not. Now researchers from UNC School of Medicine have pinpointed the precise cellular connections responsible for triggering that behavior. The finding, published September 27 in the journal Science, lends insight into a cause for obesity and could lead to treatments for anorexia, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder—the most prevalent eating disorder in the United States.
BBC News - Hip replacement death rates show 'dramatic fall'Death rates following hip replacement surgery fell by half in England and Wales between 2003 and 2011, a study in The Lancet has found.
Although death within 90 days of surgery is rare, mortality decreased from 0.56% to 0.29% in an analysis of more than 400,000 patients.
The researchers said that fitter patients and better physiotherapy could be behind the decrease.
They added that simple treatment options would reduce the risk further.
Read more at: Researchers develop new type of fluorescent camera for blood diagnostics, brain mappingPhys.org) —Fluorescence imaging is the most widely used method for analyzing the molecular composition of biological specimens. Target molecules, when they are present, can be "tagged" with a fluorescent label and made visible.
(Phys.org) —Genes in mitochondria, the "powerhouses" that turn sugar into energy in human cells, shape each person's risk for heart disease and diabetes, according to a study published recently by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the Biochemical Journal. The findings may further explain why some people get sick and others do not despite their having the same traditional risk factors like aging, obesity and smoking.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its first "artificial pancreas" to automatically control the insulin levels of diabetics. (You know, before the shutdown furloughed almost half of its staff.)
The hormone insulin controls blood sugar levels and is normally produced in the body by the pancreas. But in Type 1 diabetics (and sometimes Type 2), the pancreas just doesn't make insulin, meaning diabetics' bodies can't regulate blood sugar levels. This system, designed by Minneapolis-based medical tech company Medtronic, is a wearable little gadget that stops insulin delivery automatically when glucose levels get too low, hopefully keeping the wearer from going into a diabetic coma.
With a traditional pump, the device can keep delivering insulin even when the your blood sugar is too low, lowering levels even further and sometimes causing loss of consciousness. This is especially dangerous during sleep, when you can't exactly gauge your own blood sugar. Medtronic's MiniMed 530G system can detect up to 93 percent of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) episodes, and will sound an alarm to wake you up if your blood sugar gets too low. If you don't respond, the system will shut off insulin delivery for two hours, hopefully staving off dangerously low blood sugar levels.
Hope of malaria vaccine by 2015 after successful trials - The Guardian - Science | e! Science NewsVaccine that nearly halved cases among children aged between five and seven months could save millions in worst-hit countriesA vaccine against malaria could be introduced in the world's worst-hit countries in 2015, after the latest trial of a treatment produced by Britain's biggest drug company reduced the number of cases of the disease experienced by babies.The results of trials published on Tuesday in Durban, South Africa, showed that the RTS,S vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline nearly halved the cases of malaria experienced by children aged between five and seven months and cut the number of cases in babies aged 6 to 12 weeks by a quarter.The treatment's protection lasted for 18 months, although it waned slightly over time, and while that is not the sort of efficacy that parents in Europe or the US are used to getting in the vaccines given to their children, the malaria vaccine would make a...
Blind man sees with help from tooth-implanted lens(Medical Xpress)—In 1998, Ian Tibbets lost vision in his right eye, some time after he severely injured the cornea with a piece of scrap metal. Later on he also lost vision in his left eye. Tibbets was eventually referred to Christopher Liu, a surgeon at the Sussex Eye Hospital, and was qualified for a radical procedure known as osteo-odonto-keratoprothsesis (OOKP). The procedure sounds a little strange, and it is, but for Tibbets and the five other patients who have undergone the procedure, it worked.
Google reportedly investing hundreds of millions into its new life extension company, Calico | The VergeIn September of this year, Google announced its newest project, Calico, which promised to take on the illness known as aging which effects us as human beings.
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It was one of the company's classic moonshots, but unlike driverless cars or wearable computers, it wasn't going to be incubated out of the company's special projects lab, Google X. In fact, it was unclear exactly how Calico would be funded and to what degree it would be attached to Google's main business.
The discovery of the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in a neurodegenerative disease has been hailed as the "turning point" in the fight against Alzheimer's disease.
More work is needed to develop a drug that could be taken by patients.
But scientists say a resulting medicine could treat Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's and other diseases.
