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Purdue Univ. researchers have successfully eliminated the native infection preferences of a Sindbis virus engineered to target and kill cancer cells, a milestone in the manipulation of this promising viral vector.
"This virus had been known to be a good vector for delivering therapeutic cargo, however it naturally infected all kinds of cells, and these diversions would compete with what we were instructing it to target," said Richard Kuhn, the Gerald and Edna Mann Director of Purdue's Bindley Biosciences Center. "We have now overcome a major challenge by not only inserting a targeting molecule of our choice, but also successfully stripping the virus of its native entry preferences. This was a big step in unlocking the potential of developing this virus into a platform for both targeted drug delivery, where it would sneak drugs inside cancer cells, and oncolytic virotherapy, where the virus itself destroys cancer cells."
The achievement also demonstrates the ability to use methods of manipulation previously only applied to proteins. The team combined the methods of rational design, in which certain portions of the virus were strategically altered based on known information about their structure and function, and directed evolution, in which random mutations were introduced to millions of copies of the virus and the results are then screened for the desired traits, he said.
Foundation Medicine Joins Coalition Aiming to Shake Up Cancer Drug Trials | MIT Technology ReviewClinical trials are slow and inefficient and represent the largest expense in developing a new drug.
A novel kind of clinical trial is set to test several new lung cancer drugs based on the molecular profiles of each participating patient’s tumor.
If successful, the trial could help bring cancer-genome-targeted medicines to patients more quickly than has been possible to date. Trials often only test one new drug at a time, and in cases when researchers do use genomic profiling to match a patient to a new treatment, they may struggle to find suitable candidates.
UNMC research on diabetes complications finds new fix for organ failures
OMAHA, Neb. — A pantheon of chronic system failures await nearly everyone with diabetes. Kidney dialysis, cataracts, high blood pressure, heart failure and lower limb amputation are just a few.
Any combination of diabetic complication is a virtual certainty.
Far less certain, however, is how so many different systems could be affected by diabetes, which partly explains why most modern treatments only help manage the disease.
Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Scientists from Northwestern Medicine have brought new hope to patients with lupus. A new nontoxic therapy that suppresses lupus in blood samples was designed and successfully tested on patients with the autoimmune disease.
There is hope this treatment will replace the use of toxic drugs that carry nasty side effects with a vaccine like therapy. This new treatment could keep lupus in remission in the body.
Lupus is a debilitating autoimmune disease where the body creates auto-antibodies that attack its own healthy tissue. This causes severe pain, inflammation and destruction to many vital organs in the body. The Lupus Foundation of America has estimated that some form of the disease affects 5 million people throughout the world.
Previous studies at Northwestern have showed that a nontoxic therapy using small pieces of proteins known as peptides can block lupus in mice prone to contracting the disease. The peptides produce special regulatory T cells that are vital to suppressing the disease.
This new study was comprised of 30 lupus patients, ten of whom were active and twenty who were in remission, along with fifteen healthy patients. Each person had a blood sample cultured with low doses of the peptide.
Senior study author Syamal Datta, professor of medicine-rheumatology and microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said, “We found that the peptides could not only generate regulatory T cells, but also that they block and reduce autoantibody production to almost baseline levels in the blood cultures from people with active Lupus.”
There could be hope for diabetics who are tired of giving themselves insulin injections on a daily basis. Researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are developing a system in which a single injection of nanoparticles could deliver insulin internally for days at a time – with a little help from pulses of ultrasound.
The biocompatible and biodegradable nanoparticles are made of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid), and contain a payload of insulin. Each particle has either a positively-charged chitosan coating, or a negatively-charged alginate coating. When the two types of particles are mixed together, these oppositely-charged coatings cause them to be drawn to each other by electrostatic force.
Nov. 24, 2013 — Eight of 16 patients participating in a study of an experimental immune system therapy directed against the most aggressive malignant brain tumors -- glioblastoma multiforme -- survived longer than five years after diagnosis, according to Cedars-Sinai researchers, who presented findings Nov. 23 at the Fourth Quadrennial Meeting of the World Federation of Neuro-Oncology.
For more than 30 years, researchers have tried to develop a drug to inhibit K-Ras, the most commonly mutated oncogene in human cancers.
HHMI researchers have now identified a “pocket,” or binding site, and designed a chemical compound that fits inside this pocket and inhibits the normal activity of mutant K-Ras.
The research may lead to new drug designs that inhibit this common cancer mutation.
TVAX Immunotherapy is a unique personalized combination of cancer cell vaccination and “killer” T cell treatment – two separate approaches that have each demonstrated limited therapeutic potential, though neither has the efficacy to be a viable standalone treatment. This treatment has demonstrated the potential to effectively treat numerous cancers without many of the undesirable side effects associated with radiation and chemotherapy. The key distinction between TVAX and other cancer immunotherapy companies is that TVAX uses both cancer vaccination and activated "killer" T cell treatment in one treatment platform
No one likes to get vaccines, much less the kind that require repeated shots. Children (and pets) often suffer from needing a long series of booster shots at a very early age. What if we could take pain out of the equation? What if we could take the entire series of injections away and replace it with one procedure? That’s exactly what scientists at the University of Minnesota are working on: a vaccine implant that will deliver all vaccines on a time-released basis, no shots required.
The ability to create a 3D printed organ and transplant it into a patient who needs it is something straight out of sci-fi. Someday, patients will be able to lie down on a massive 3D printer and have their new organs and tissues printed right into them. In order to complete a 3D printed surgery, however, each wound will have to be sealed with a new layer of 3D printed skin. Right now, that would mean a generic hue of flesh that doesn't really blend with anyone's natural skin.
Evidence is growing that Alzheimer's could actually be a late stage of type 2 diabetes – if it is, we all have another big reason to live healthier lives
JUST over 100 years ago, German pathologist Alois Alzheimer dissected the brain of a 57-year-old woman who had died, demented, in a hospital in Kassel. He found tangles of strange fibrous deposits that seemed to have destroyed her brain from within.
Today, the disease that bears his name is a bogeyman stalking our ageing societies. About 35 million people have Alzheimer's; most of them require expensive, exhausting care. By 2050 that number is expected to triple. We still don't really know what causes the disease or how it destroys the brain. There is no way to prevent it and no cure. Dealing with the epidemic will cost trillions.
Most of us would swallow a pill before being poked by a needle, yet sufferers of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and cancer are regularly required to administer their medicine intravenously. A team of researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) has developed a new type of nanoparticle that could afford patients the choice – potentially making uncomfortable injections a thing of the past in the treatment of a range of chronic diseases.
Nanoparticles carrying drugs or short interfering RNA have shown great potential for the treatment of a variety of diseases, including cancer. If taken orally, however, they need to cross the intestinal lining into the bloodstream. This lining consists of a layer of epithelial cells that come together to form a barrier that is impenetrable to the nanoparticles, thereby necessitating the use of injections to be an effective form of treatment.
Scientists have found that Alzheimer's - a neurodegenerative disorder - may actually be a late stage of Type 2 diabetes.
The findings also suggest that losing weight and exercising may ward off Alzheimer's, at least in the very early stages, researchers said.
The extra insulin produced by those with Type 2 diabetes also gets into the brain, disrupting its chemistry, which can lead to the formation of toxic clumps of amyloid proteins that poison brain cells, researchers said.
New Computer-Designed 'Drug' Prevents AIDS From ReplicatingEuropean researchers have used a computer to design small synthetic molecules capable of attacking the deadly AIDS virus where it hurts the most: its ability to produce the genetic material required for replication. It's the first time in history this has ever been done.
To date, HIV/AIDS has killed more than 28 million people worldwide. While a new HIV vaccine shows promise, this is of little consolation to the 34 million people currently living with the virus. In an effort to treat ongoing infections, pharmaceutical companies typically focus on medicines that act on target proteins, but the HIV protein has long been considered one of the most difficult targets in all of structural biology, mostly on account of the wildly complex way its receptors are made from RNA.
For the first time, scientists have succeeded in transforming human stem cells into functional lung and airway cells. The advance, reported by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, has significant potential for modeling lung disease, screening drugs, studying human lung development, and, ultimately, generating lung tissue for transplantation. The study was published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
First use of retrograde gene therapy on a human heart | KurzweilAIA new procedure designed to deliver stem cells to the heart to repair damaged muscle and arteries in the most minimally invasive way possible has been performed for the first time by Amit Patel, M.D., director of Clinical Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering and an associate professor in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
Patel started investigating cell and gene-based therapies for the treatment of heart disease 12 years ago, but only recently received FDA approval to try the therapy on Lively, who was the first of several patients anxious to receive the treatment.
More than 6 million people are currently living with heart failure. As the condition progresses, patients’ options are usually limited to a heart transplant or assist devices, such as an artificial heart. Patel wanted to find a way to intervene in the progression of heart failure before a patient advanced to the point of needing a heart transplant or device
PHILADELPHIA — A new brain connectivity study from Penn Medicine published today in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences found striking differences in the neural wiring of men and women that’s lending credence to some commonly-held beliefs about their behavior.
In one of the largest studies looking at the “connectomes” of the sexes, Ragini Verma, PhD, an associate professor in the department of Radiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues found greater neural connectivity from front to back and within one hemisphere in males, suggesting their brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action. In contrast, in females, the wiring goes between the left and right hemispheres, suggesting that they facilitate communication between the analytical and intuition.
“These maps show us a stark difference--and complementarity--in the architecture of the human brain that helps provide a potential neural basis as to why men excel at certain tasks, and women at others,” said Verma.
A "potentially revolutionary development" to help women during childbirth has come from an unlikely source - a car mechanic from Argentina, who based the idea on a party trick.
The Odon device - named after its inventor Jorge Odon - is a low-cost, simple piece of equipment that the World Health Organization (WHO) believes can help mothers during prolonged labour, especially in countries without the facilities or staff to perform a Caesarean section.
If approved, it will be the first new tool for assisted delivery since forceps and vacuum extractors were introduced centuries ago.
Mr Odon's inspiration came in 2005 after his garage employees showed him how to extract a cork from inside an empty bottle without breaking it.
It's relatively easy to imagine a new medicine, a better cure for some disease. The hard part, though, is testing it, and that can delay promising new cures for years. In this well-explained talk, Geraldine Hamilton shows how her lab creates organs and body parts on a chip, simple structures with all the pieces essential to testing new medications -- even custom cures for one specific person. (Filmed at TEDxBoston)
Researchers at University of Colorado School of Medicine may have figured out what causes Meniere's disease and how to attack it. According to Carol Foster, MD, from the department of otolaryngology and Robert Breeze, MD, a neurosurgeon, there is a strong association between Meniere's disease and conditions involving temporary low blood flow in the brain such as migraine headaches.
