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IBM microfluidics tech designed to improve cancer diagnosis | Cutting Edge - CNET NewsA technique to pump tiny amounts of marker fluids onto a test sample could enable many more tests during a biopsy and therefore a better understanding of a person's cancer.
ZURICH -- Researchers accustomed to designing tiny features on microprocessors have taken up a new tiny-technology challenge: improving the diagnostic tests used to spot cancer.
Using a procedure called a biopsy, pathologists today closely examine cells to try to determine if a person has cancer and if so, details about what type. Such tests use chemical markers that can spotlight a variety of problems, including different types of cancer, but the tiny slice that constitutes a biopsy sample isn't big enough for a multitude of tests.
IBM's approach, which University Hospital Zurich plans to test in the coming months, uses a chip technology called microfluidics to shrink the area required for such tests to a square patch just 100 micrometers wide -- about the same as a human hair. It pumps the marker chemical down one tiny channel into the biopsy sample, then slurps it back up with a second channel to keep the marker from spreading beyond the confines of its designated patch, and a pathologist watches on a microscope to see the response.
A 3-year-old Mississippi child born with HIV and treated with a combination of antiviral drugs unusually early continues to do well and remains free of active infection 18 months after all treatment ceased, according to an updated case report published Oct. 23 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Early findings of the case were presented in March 2013 during a scientific meeting in Atlanta, but the newly published report adds detail and confirms what researchers say is the first documented case of HIV remission in a child.
(Phys.org) —Bioengineers from the University of California, San Diego have created a new method for analyzing RNA transcripts from samples of 50 to 100 cells. The approach could be used to develop inexpensive and rapid methods for diagnosing cancers at early stages, as well as better tools for forensics, drug discovery and developmental biology.
The protocols, which were published in April 2013 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, are now being applied to a wide range of biological and medical research questions from brain cancer, to liver function and stem cell biology.
The approach from the UC San Diego bioengineers is called Designed Primer-based RNA sequencing or "DP-seq." It's a new tool for generating comprehensive snapshots of RNA—the "transcriptome"—collected from as little as 50 picograms of RNA. Analysis of the transcriptome provides insights into what biological processes are occurring at a specific moment in time. RNA transcripts serve as a proxy for which genes are being expressed and at what levels.
Child born with HIV still in remission after 18 months off treatment, experts report
A 3-year-old Mississippi child born with HIV and treated with a combination of antiviral drugs unusually early continues to do well and remains free of active infection 18 months after all treatment ceased, according to an updated case report published Oct. 23 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Early findings of the case were presented in March 2013 during a scientific meeting in Atlanta, but the newly published report adds detail and confirms what researchers say is the first documented case of HIV remission in a child.
Child born with HIV still in remission after 18 months off treatment, experts report | e! Science News
BBC News - Slow metabolism 'obesity excuse' trueThe mocked "obesity excuse" of being born with a slow metabolism is actually true for some people, say researchers.
A team at the University of Cambridge has found the first proof that mutated DNA does indeed slow metabolism.
The researchers say fewer than one in 100 people are affected and are often severely obese by early childhood.
The findings, published in the journal Cell, may lead to new obesity treatments even for people without the mutation.
Scientists at the Institute of Metabolic Science, in Cambridge, knew that mice born without a section of DNA, a gene called KSR2, gained weight more easily.
Read more: A cure for skin cancer: Doctors announce historic breakthrough as 'spectacular' drugs bring hope to thousands | Mail OnlineScientists have developed breakthrough drugs that cure skin cancer.
The treatment is already having ‘spectacular’ effects in seriously ill melanoma patients – and could soon be used to defeat other types of cancer.
One scientist said it was ‘amazing’ that researchers could talk of ‘using the C-word – cure’ for the first time, while another said trials among kidney and lung cancer patients are ‘very exciting’.
The first is ipilimumab – or ‘ipi’. According to research presented to the European congress in Amsterdam yesterday, 17 per cent of patients are cured by this drug alone.
But many more – perhaps more than half – could be ‘clinically cured’ by combining them with even newer drugs called anti-PD1s which break down cancer cells’ defences.
Professor Alexander Eggermont of the Institut Gustave Roussy in France said: ‘[Advanced] melanoma could become a curable disease for perhaps more than 50 per cent of patients within five to 10 years.’
He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘If I’d made this bizarre prediction five years ago, people would have said I was mad. But it now looks like we are going to have control of advanced melanoma for years, in a substantial proportion of patients.’
Each year almost 13,000 people in Britain are diagnosed with melanoma, including two people aged 15 to 34 every day. It kills 2,200 a year, accounting for four in five skin cancer deaths. The number of cases has quadrupled in 30 years, due in part to our fondness for foreign holidays to sunny destinations.
If caught early enough, malignant moles can be cut out before the cancer spreads, but if it is missed and the cancer turns ‘metastatic’ – spreading to other organs – chances of long term survival plummet.
At that stage patients are usually told they have just months to live. Currently, less than a quarter survive a year or more.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/health/433201/Scientists-hail-amazing-cure-for-skin-cancerA CURE for skin cancer has been *developed in a historic breakthrough that will save thousands of lives.
A drug has had “spectacular” effects on seriously ill melanoma patients with one in six already being cured, a European health conference was told.
If the success rate continues, more than half of advanced skin cancer sufferers – who usually die within months of being diagnosed – will be saved.
Now doctors hope to use the drug on other types of cancer. Scientists said it was “amazing” to talk of a cure for the first time, as researchers described “very exciting” results of trials among kidney and lung cancer patients.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...gs-can-cure-skin-cancer-scientists-claim.htmlSkin cancer sufferers could be cured of the disease with new breakthrough drugs, experts claimed, as they hailed the "beginning of a new era".
A study on rats finds that a removable silicone intestinal barrier tube works similarly to far more invasive bariatric surgeries. But will it work in humans?
Bariatric surgery is primarily performed on people who are at least 100 pounds above their ideal weight and haven't been able to lose weight via diet, exercise, or medication. The aim is to restrict the amount of food people can digest by disrupting their digestive process. It's both invasive and irreversible -- essentially a last-ditch effort.
So a new study on rats out of the University of Cincinnati is worth a look considering the upside if it works on people as well as it did on the trial rats. (At this point, that's still a big if, though co-lead author Kirk Habegger said he expects these results to carry over to humans.)
A clearer picture of what causes Alzheimer's disease is emerging after the largest ever analysis of patients' DNA.
A massive international collaboration has now doubled the number of genes linked to the dementia to 21.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Genetics, indicate a strong role for the immune system.
Alzheimer's Research UK said the findings could "significantly enhance" understanding of the disease.
The number of people developing Alzheimer's is growing around the world as people live longer.
However, major questions around what causes the dementia, how brain cells die, how to treat it or even diagnose it remain unanswered.
"It is really difficult to treat a disease when you do not understand what causes it," one of the lead researchers, Prof Julie Williams from Cardiff University, said.
Dendrites, the branch-like projections of neurons, were once thought to be passive wiring in the brain. But now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that these dendrites do more than relay information from one neuron to the next. They actively process information, multiplying the brain's computing power.
"Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought," said Spencer Smith, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine.
His team's findings, published October 27 in the journal Nature, could change the way scientists think about long-standing scientific models of how neural circuitry functions in the brain, while also helping researchers better understand neurological disorders.
"Imagine you're reverse engineering a piece of alien technology, and what you thought was simple wiring turns out to be transistors that compute information," Smith said. "That's what this finding is like. The implications are exciting to think about."
Read more at: Unique nano carrier targets drug delivery to cancer cellsA unique nanostructure developed by a team of international researchers, including those at the University of Cincinnati, promises improved all-in-one detection, diagnoses and drug-delivery treatment of cancer cells.
The first-of-its-kind nanostructure is unusual because it can carry a variety of cancer-fighting materials on its double-sided (Janus) surface and within its porous interior. Because of its unique structure, the nano carrier can do all of the following:
•Transport cancer-specific detection nanoparticles and biomarkers to a site within the body, e.g., the breast or the prostate. This promises earlier diagnosis than is possible with today's tools.
•Attach fluorescent marker materials to illuminate specific cancer cells, so that they are easier to locate and find for treatment, whether drug delivery or surgery.
•Deliver anti-cancer drugs for pinpoint targeted treatment of cancer cells, which should result in few drug side effects. Currently, a cancer treatment like chemotherapy affects not only cancer cells but healthy cells as well, leading to serious and often debilitating side effects.
(HealthDay)—Using a specially designed chamber, an international research team has transplanted islet cells into a patient with type 1 diabetes.
The new technique avoided having to use immune-suppressing medications, while still allowing the islet cells to function and make insulin. In theory, the chamber "hid" the transplanted islet cells from the patient's immune system, the researchers explained.
Islet cells are normally found in the human pancreas. One critical function of these cells is producing insulin—a hormone crucial for metabolizing the carbohydrates in food. In people with type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease, the islet cells have been destroyed by the body's own immune system.
"In order to transplant replacement cells, heretofore, the immune response to the foreign cells has had to be controlled with immunosuppression," explained study co-author Dr. Norman Block.
Now, he said, senior study author Dr. Stefan Bornstein "has found a way to implant foreign cells and protect them without using immunosuppression"—drugs to dampen the immune system.
Medications used to suppress the immune system can come with significant risks and side effects.
The study was released online Oct. 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Because their bodies lack working islet cells, people with type 1 diabetes no longer produce enough insulin to survive. They must take daily insulin injections or receive their insulin through a small catheter underneath the skin that's attached to an insulin pump.
Scientists from the Center for Innovations in Medicine in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have developed a comprehensive, microchip-based technology, called immunosignature diagnosis, which can rapidly and comprehensively measure an individual's vaccine response, promising to take much of the initial guesswork out of predicting effective vaccines.
Professor Stephen Albert Johnston and Joseph Barten Legutki, used a mouse model of influenza infection to determine how the immunosignature of a natural infection can be used to discriminate between a protective and non-protective vaccine. The study appears in the October 28 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Johnston is driven by the quest to develop disruptive technology that could make health care more effective and affordable. Despite 17 percent of the U.S. GDP tied to health care costs and growing, the U.S. does not get as much value per dollar as other countries (spending the most per capita yet ranking last in efficiency). He believes innovative diagnostic technologies that could determine whether or not an individual would get sick before symptoms appear, as well as the early identification of microbial culprits of infections has high potential for transforming medicine.
The ability to shrink laboratory-scale processes to automated chip-sized systems would revolutionize biotechnology and medicine. For example, inexpensive and highly portable devices that process blood samples to detect biological agents such as anthrax are needed by the U.S. military and for homeland security efforts. One of the challenges of "lab-on-a-chip" technology is the need for miniaturized pumps to move solutions through micro-channels. Electroosmotic pumps (EOPs), devices in which fluids appear to magically move through porous media in the presence of an electric field, are ideal because they can be readily miniaturized. EOPs however, require bulky, external power sources, which defeats the concept of portability. But a super-thin silicon membrane developed at the University of Rochester could now make it possible to drastically shrink the power source, paving the way for diagnostic devices the size of a credit card.
A prostate cancer drug trial led by Oregon Health & Science University shows unequivocally significant improvement in survival.
The results were so positive that the trial has been halted early and participants on a placebo will switch to the actual drug. The FDA still needs to approve the use of Enzalutamide in men who have not undergone chemotherapy for the disease.
“This is what you hope for, to have a result like this,” said Dr. Tomasz Beer, professor of medicine and deputy director of OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute and co-principal investigator of the study. “To take a drug from where it doesn’t exist to a study proving it can extend life. Professionally, this is the best day of my life.”
The Enzalutamide trial encompassed 1,700 men with metastatic prostate cancer. Beer said the treatment isn’t curative, but it does cause a reduction or shrinking of the cancer — a 30 percent reduction in the risk of death and 81 percent reduction in the risk of radiographic progression or death.
In contrast to chemotheraphy, which is administered through an IV and has unpleasant side effects, Enzalutamide comes in a pill and carries few side effects. It would also preclude or delay the need for chemotherapy.
“It’s a very well tolerated drug, easy to take and allows people to get treatment at home,” Beer said.
.A test that identifies seven classes of breast cancer could be available within two years, say UK scientists.
Writing in the British Journal of Cancer, the Nottingham researchers say it could help doctors tailor treatment better and boost survival rates.
Currently, two biomarkers are routinely screened for in breast tumours.
Last year researchers revealed that breast cancer can be divided into 10 different forms of the disease based on a patient's genetic make-up
The portable Bluetooth-enabled blood glucose monitor, coming out Wednesday, syncs readings automatically to a designated iOS or Android device for future tracking and sharing.
Blood glucose monitors are growing up, and it's about time. With some 26 million diabetics in the U.S. alone, (that's almost 1 in 10 Americans), and hundreds of millions globally, according to the American Diabetes Association, glucose monitoring has become one of the largest patient-generated data sets in the world -- and yet much of that data is being uploaded manually onto desktops or written by hand into little log books.
In 2013, that just isn't good enough. So iHealth Lab out of Mountain View, Calif., is announcing Wednesday the release of its FDA-approved Wireless Smart Gluco-Monitoring System -- a portable Bluetooth-enabled blood glucose monitor that allows people to take a reading and have the results sync automatically to their iOS or Android device and stored in the cloud. From there they can track their measurements and share the results with their health care providers. (The device was unveiled at CES in January but recently received approval from the FDA.)
Warning: Some may find the pictures distressing
A teenage girl who was left horrifically disfigured in a fire has had a new face grown on her BREAST by doctors.
The move follows a similar operation in which another group of Chinese doctors managed to give a car accident victim a new nose by growing it first on his forehead.
In the latest operation 17-year-old Xu Jianmei woke up after the operation this week to find that she once again had a chin, eyelids and an ear.
But she said best of all she could smile properly for the first time in 12 years since the fire that left her horrifically disfigured when she was just five.
The parents had been able to afford plastic surgery to improve her life in any way but that changed when doctors working on the pioneering new technology offered her the chance to have surgery for free.
A team of researchers of the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, a city in NW Romania, has created a recipe for artificial blood whose preliminary tests have proven encouraging. The team led by professor Radu Silaghi-Dumitrescu, who is only 39 years old, has been doing research to create the artificial blood for six years and their discovery could prove crucial given the lack of blood doctors need in cases of severe accidents and major surgeries. The blood is made of water, salt, albumin and a protein – hemerythrin -extracted from marine worms which makes the artificial blood stress resistant.
(Phys.org) —In the ongoing quest to devise faster, lower-cost methods for sequencing the human genome, scientists at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign have developed a novel approach: DNA molecules are sensed by passing them through a layer of constricted graphene embedded in a solid-state membrane containing a nanopore (a small hole with a roughly 1 nm internal diameter), located in a graphene nanoribbon (GNR). A critical feature of the new paradigm is that graphene's electrical properties allow the layer to be tuned in several distinct ways – namely, altering the shape of its edge, carrier concentration and nanopore location – thereby modulating both electrical conductance and external charge sensitivity. The researchers found that their novel technique can detect the DNA strand's rotational and positional conformation, and demonstrated that a graphene membrane with quantum point contact geometry exhibits greater electrical sensitivity than on with so-called uniform armchair geometry. The team has proposed a graphene-based field-effect transistor-like device for DNA sensing.
An experimental vaccine to protect against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a leading cause of illness and hospitalization among very young children, elicited high levels of RSV-specific antibodies when tested in animals, according to a report in the journal Science.
Early-stage human clinical trials of the candidate vaccine are planned. Scientists from the Vaccine Research Center (VRC), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, built on their previous findings about the structure of a critical viral protein to design the vaccine. The team was led by Peter D. Kwong, Ph.D., and Barney S. Graham, M.D., Ph.D.
In the United States, RSV infection is the most common cause of bronchiolitis (inflammation of small airways in the lungs) and pneumonia in children less than one year old and the most common cause for hospitalization in children under five. Worldwide, it is estimated that RSV is responsible for nearly 7 percent of deaths in babies aged 1 month to 1 year; only malaria kills more children in this age group. Others at risk for severe disease following RSV infection include adults over age 65 and those with compromised immune systems.
The Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) and IBM Research (IBM) have developed a new non-toxic hydrogel that is capable of shrinking breast cancer tumors more rapidly than existing therapies. As described in their publication in Advanced Functional Materials, the Vitamin E-incorporated hydrogel can be easily injected under the skin without causing any inflammatory response, and releases anti-cancer drugs in a sustained manner over several weeks. This reduces the need for frequent drug administration, paving the way for the tumors to be eradicated in fewer treatments.
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have a new model for how the kidney repairs itself, a model that adds to a growing body of evidence that mature cells are far more plastic than had previously been imagined.
After injury, mature kidney cells dedifferentiate into more primordial versions of themselves, and then differentiate into the cell types needing replacement in the damaged tissue. This finding conflicts with a previously held theory that the kidney has scattered stem cell populations that respond to injury. The research appears online in PNAS Early Edition.
