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FDA approves faster, easier treatment for hepatitis CNew drug is part of a revolution in treatment for a virus widespread among Baby Boomers, experts say.
A new medication for chronic hepatitis C that can be paired with other drugs to make treatment of the liver-damaging disease faster, easier and more effective got approval from the Food and Drug Administration Friday.
The new medication, called sofosbuvir and made by Gilead Sciences Inc., is part of a "revolution in treatment," says Douglas Dieterich, a specialist in liver disease at Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York. Dieterich is a consultant to Gilead and other drug companies.
Simple tasks, like plucking the stem off a cherry, are still monumental challenges for artificial hands. With a bill of materials perhaps a few hundred components long, it is not surprising that their functionality is low compared with one assembled from trillions of components. A new prosthetic bionic hand, designed and built by researchers at Case Western University is now capable of using measurements from 20 sensor points to control the grip force of its digits. Incredibly, the sensor data is linked directly to the sensory nerves in the patient’s forearm. The control for the grip closure is then extracted myoelectrically from the normal biological return loop to the muscles in the forearm.
(CNN) -- Nick Wilkins was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 4 years old, and when the cancer kept bouncing back, impervious to all the different treatments the doctors tried, his father sat him down for a talk.
John Wilkins explained to Nick, who was by then 14, that doctors had tried chemotherapy, radiation, even a bone marrow transplant from his sister.
"I explained to him that we're running out of options," Wilkins remembers telling his son.
There was one possible treatment they could try: an experimental therapy at the University of Pennsylvania.
He asked his son if he understood what it would mean if this treatment didn't work.
Gene therapy scores big wins against blood cancersIn one of the biggest advances against leukemia and other blood cancers in many years, doctors are reporting unprecedented success by using gene therapy to transform patients' blood cells into soldiers that seek and destroy cancer.
A few patients with one type of leukemia were given this one-time, experimental therapy several years ago and some remain cancer-free today. Now, at least six research groups have treated more than 120 patients with many types of blood and bone marrow cancers, with stunning results.
Zinc, an essential nutrient, is found in every tissue in the body. The vast majority of the metal ion is tightly bound to proteins, helping them to perform biological reactions. Tiny amounts of zinc, however, are only loosely bound, or "mobile," and thought to be critical for proper function in organs such as the brain, pancreas, and prostate gland. Yet the exact roles the ion plays in biological systems are unknown.
(Nanowerk News) In an important scientific breakthrough in regenerative medicine, researchers at A*STAR’s Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have successfully converted human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) cultured in the laboratory to a state that is closer to the cells found in the human blastocyst[1]. This means that scientists are one step closer to cultivating stem cells for research and potential therapeutic purposes, as well as understanding the processes of early human development. These findings are published in the current issue of the prestigious science journal Cell Stem Cell
NEW ORLEANS -- A next generation genetic therapy appeared to restore the immune system of patients with "bubble boy disease," but without leading to leukemia as a side effect, researchers reported here.
Among nine children, ages 3.9 to 10.5 months, diagnosed with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) who received a self-inactivating (SIN) gammaretroviral vector, seven were "alive and well" at 3 years' post-treatment, reported Sun-Yun Pai, MD, of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Boston's Children's Hospital, and colleagues.
X-ray machines are all large devices that can only image hard structures such as bone, unless a contrast-enhancing solution such as barium is present in the patient ... right? Well, no, not all of them. A new system developed by researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital is small enough to be considered portable, doesn't expose patients to as much radiation, and can image soft tissues in minute detail.
Ordinarily, X-ray machines emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from a single source. The experimental new machine, however, utilizes "a nanostructured surface with an array of tiny tips," each one of those micron-sized tips emitting its own beam of electrons. Those beams pass through a microstructured plate, and are converted into X-rays.
The resulting wider, more even spread of beams is what makes it possible for the machine to image soft tissues, without the need for contrast agents – such solutions take time to inject or administer orally, and some of them can be potentially harmful to the patient.
Rice University bioengineers have developed a hydrogel scaffold for craniofacial bone tissue regeneration that starts as a liquid, solidifies into a gel in the body and liquefies again for removal.
The material developed in the Rice lab of bioengineer Antonios Mikos is a soluble liquid at room temperature that can be injected to the point of need. At body temperature, the material turns instantly into a gel to help direct the formation of new bone to replace that damaged by injury or disease.
The gel conforms to irregular three-dimensional spaces and provides a platform for functional and aesthetic tissue regeneration. It is intended as an alternative to prefabricated implantable scaffolds.
Johns Hopkins researchers have identified a new way to predict which heart failure patients are likely to see their condition get worse and which ones have a better prognosis. Their study is one of the first to show that energy metabolism within the heart, measured using a noninvasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test, is a significant predictor of clinical outcomes, independent of a patient's symptoms or the strength of the heart's ability to pump blood, known as the ejection fraction.
A team led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has identified variations in a gene that doubles a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease later in life.
The research is published online Dec. 11 in the journal Nature.
Over the past two decades, scientists have discovered a number of common genetic variants linked to early-onset (which strikes before age 65) and the more common late-onset forms of Alzheimer's disease. But those variants account for only a fraction of Alzheimer's cases.
A drug not yet available on the NHS has been found to be better at preventing breast cancer than those approved for use, leading to urgent calls for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to make it accessible immediately.
The drug anastrozole has been found to halve the likelihood of high-risk women developing the disease and to have fewer side-effects, according to a study published on Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The Ibis-II study, funded by Cancer Research UK and led by Queen Mary University of London, tracked almost 4,000 postmenopausal women at high risk of breast cancer and found that those who took anastrozole for five years were 53% less likely to develop the disease than women who took a placebo.
Nice took the historic step this year of giving all women over 30 in England and Wales judged to be at moderate or high risk of breast cancer access to one of two drugs: tamoxifen or raloxifene. But the study suggests that neither is as effective as anastrozole and both had more side-effects.
New research in simple animals suggests that combining mutants can lead to radical lifespan extension. Scientists at the Buck Institute combined mutations in two pathways well-known for lifespan extension and report a synergistic five-fold extension of longevity in the nematode C. elegans. The research, done at the Buck Institute and published online in Cell Reports on December 12, 2013, introduces the possibility of combination therapy for aging and the maladies associated with it.
100% plus 30% equals 500% life extension because of synergies
The mutations inhibited key molecules involved in insulin signaling (IIS) and the nutrient signaling pathway Target of Rapamycin (TOR). Lead scientist and Buck faculty Pankaj Kapahi, PhD, said single mutations in TOR (in this case RSKS-1) usually result in a 30 percent lifespan extension, while mutations in IIS (Daf-2) often result in a doubling of lifespan in the worms – added together they would be expected to extend longevity by 130 percent. “Instead, what we have here is a synergistic five-fold increase in lifespan,” Kapahi said. “The two mutations set off a positive feedback loop in specific tissues that amplified lifespan. Basically these worms lived to the human equivalent of 400 to 500 years.”
See more at: Liquid to gel to bone– (Dec. 11, 2013) – Rice University bioengineers have developed a hydrogel scaffold for craniofacial bone tissue regeneration that starts as a liquid, solidifies into a gel in the body and liquefies again for removal. The material developed in the Rice lab of bioengineer Antonios Mikos is a soluble liquid at room temperature that can be injected to the point of need. At body temperature, the material turns instantly into a gel to help direct the formation of new bone to replace that damaged by injury or disease. The gel conforms to irregular three-dimensional spaces and provides a platform for functional and aesthetic tissue regeneration. It is intended as an alternative to prefabricated implantable scaffolds. The invention is the subject of a new paper that appeared online this week in the American Chemical Society journal Biomacromolecules. Lead author Tiffany Vo, a fourth-year doctoral graduate student in the Mikos lab, earned a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research for her work on the project. -
(Nanowerk News) The team of Johannes Zuber at the IMP in Vienna, Austria, managed to overcome remaining key limitations of RNA interference (RNAi) - a unique method to specifically shut off genes. By using an optimized design, the scientists were able to inhibit genes with greatly enhanced efficiency and accuracy. The new method facilitates the search for drug targets and improves the interpretation of experimental results. The IMP will make this „RNAi toolkit“ available to researchers. Results of the study are published in the current issue of Cell Reports
Tiny ticker: A new pacemaker is small enough to fit inside the heart and can be implanted through a patient’s veins.
Pacemaker surgery typically requires a doctor to make an incision above a patient’s heart, dig a cavity into which they can implant the heartbeat-regulating device, and then connect the pulse generator to wires delivered through a vein near the collarbone. Such surgery could soon be completely unnecessary. Instead, doctors could employ miniaturized wireless pacemakers that can be delivered into the heart through a major vein in the thigh.
On Monday, doctors in Austria implanted one such device into a patient—the first participant in a human trial of what device-manufacturer Medtronic says is the smallest pacemaker in the world. The device is 24 millimeters long and 0.75 cubic centimeters in volume—a tenth the size of a conventional pacemaker. Earlier this year, another device manufacturer, St. Jude Medical, bought a startup called Nanostim that makes another tiny pacemaker, and St. Jude is offering it to patients in Europe. This device is 41 millimeters long and one cubic centimeter in volume.
Doctors can implant such pacemakers into the heart through blood vessels, via an incision in the thigh. They use steerable, flexible tubes called catheters to push the pacemakers through a large vein.
Even after 40 years of service, X-ray computed tomography (better known as CT scans) can be a challenge to capture. If the patient moves even a nudge, the image will come out blurry. But with GE's new Revolution CT, doctors will be able to image the entirety of your innards in the span of a single heartbeat. Literally.
The Revolution leverages a high resolution camera paired with a motion correcting system—the medical equivalent of your camera's image stabilizer—to quickly and easily capture previously-uncooperative organs like a beating human heart.
"Revolution CT is able to scan even the most challenging patients, day in and day out, with remarkably clear images," Steve Gray, leader of Molecular Imaging & Computed Tomography at GE Healthcare said in a press statement. "This will be the first CT scanner that's right for everybody in every clinical specialty."
Researchers in Australia have successfully grown a human kidney from stem cells
During self-organization, different types of cells arrange themselves with respect to each other to create the complex structures that exist within an organ, in this case, the kidney, Professor Melissa Little of University of Queenslands Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), who led the study, said in a statement. The fact that such stem cell populations can undergo self-organization in the laboratory bodes well for the future of tissue bioengineering to replace damaged and diseased organs and tissues.
Scientists at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) and the NYU College of Dentistry (NYUCD) report the development of a carrier that is five times more efficient in delivering DNA into cells than today's commercial reagent vector delivery methods. The new system is a peptide-polymer hybrid, assembled from two separate, less effective vectors that are used to carry DNA into cells.
Results of their study, “Long Term Efficient Gene Delivery Using Polyethylenimine with Modified Tat Peptide,” were published in Biomaterials. The findings were the result of a collaborative research project conducted by Seiichi Yamano, Ph.D., at NYUCD and Jin Montclare, Ph.D., at NYU-Poly. The outcome of the study could help researchers better understand gene function and ultimately improve gene therapy, according to Drs. Yamano and Montclare.
(Medical Xpress)—Scientists have confirmed that variations in a particular gene play a key role in the autism spectrum condition known as Asperger Syndrome. They have also found that variations in the same gene are also linked to differences in empathy levels in the general population.
