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Can the process of aging be delayed or even reversed? Research has shown that, in human cell lines at least, it can. They also found that the regulation of two genes involved with the production of glycine, the smallest and simplest amino acid, is partly responsible for some of the characteristics of aging.
Many animals can survive prolonged periods of exposure to freezing temperatures. To do this, they run a sophisticated ‘freeze’ program on the way into the frozen state, and another ‘thaw’ program on the way out. Although there have been advances in freezing and thawing animals that lack these built-in cold survival responses, it hasn’t been made clear whether important higher-level functions, like memory, would emerge unscathed. Two researchers, Natasha Vita-More and Daniel Barranco, have now proven for the first time that cryogenically-suspended worms retain specific acquired memories after reanimation.
To do this, the researchers first trained the worms to move to specific areas when they smelled benzaldehyde (a component of almond oil). After mastering this new task, the worms were bathed in a glycerol-based cryoprotectant solution and put into to a deep freeze. When the worms were thawed, they remembered their job and moved to the right spot when benzaldehyde wafted in. The researchers compared two different methods of cooling: The first one was based on the old-fashioned way to freeze cells or organs — a low concentration of cryoprotectant and a slow cool/thaw cycle. The second way was a more aggressive procedure known as vitrification.
A lung cancer therapy can more than double life expectancy in some patients, a "milestone" trial shows.
Nivolumab stops cancerous cells hiding from the body's own defences, leaving the cancer vulnerable to attack.
The results from 582 people, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, were described as "giving real hope to patients".
Lung cancer is the most deadly type of cancer, killing nearly 1.6 million people every year.
It is hard to treat as it is often diagnosed late and many people with smoking-related diseases are unsuitable for surgery.
The results of new cancer drugs trials have been hailed as spectacular, with one expert claiming the potential for a cure for the disease is "definitely there".
Immunotherapy, which uses the body's immune system to attack cancerous cells, proved so effective that in one British-led trial, more than half of patients with advanced melanoma saw tumours shrink or brought under control, according to researchers.
The trials, a number of which have been presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual conference in Chicago, could herald a "new era" for cancer treatments.
Professor Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Centre, described some of the findings as "spectacular", and said immunotherapy could replace chemotherapy as the standard cancer treatment within the next five years, according to reports.
He told reporters: "I think we are seeing a paradigm shift in the way oncology is being treated.
New technology developed by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers makes it possible to test for current and past infections with any known human virus by analyzing a single drop of a person's blood. The method, called VirScan, is an efficient alternative to existing diagnostics that test for specific viruses one at a time.
What causes us to lose muscle strength as we age and how exercise can prevent it from happening has never been thoroughly understood, but McMaster University researchers have discovered a key protein required to maintain muscle mass and muscle strength during aging.
This important finding means new and existing drugs targeting the protein may potentially be used to preserve muscle function during aging.
"We found that the body's fuel gauge, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), is vital to slow muscle wasting with aging," said Gregory Steinberg, the study's senior author and professor of medicine at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. He is also co-director of MAC-Obesity, the Metabolism and Childhood Obesity Research Program at McMaster.
Despite the importance of maintaining muscle function and strength as we age, there is currently no treatment besides exercise. With an aging population, age-related muscle wasting and loss of muscle strength is a growing issue that shortens lives and creates a significant financial burden on the Canadian health care system.
"We know we can turn on the AMPK pathway with intense exercise and commonly-used Type 2 diabetes medications," said Steinberg. "By knowing that AMPK is vital for maintaining muscle mass with aging, we can now try to adapt exercise regimes and existing drugs to switch on AMPK in muscle more effectively. The development of new selective activators of the AMPK pathway in muscle may also be effective to prevent muscle loss with aging."
The destruction of the pancreatic cells that leads to type 1 diabetes arises when the body's own immune cells identify them as foreign targets and begin to attack them. But a new technique using tiny particles to mimic the form and function of the pancreatic cells is showing promise in halting the onset of the condition.
Several neurodegenerative disorders are caused by aggregates of a single protein known as alpha-synuclein. In collaboration with CNRS and the University of Antwerp, KU Leuven neurobiologists have discovered that the shape of these aggregates - 'cylinders' or 'ribbons' - determines whether a patient develops Parkinson's disease or Multiple System Atrophy, respectively.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-06-blood-cancer-biomarkers-electrochemical-clamp.html#jCp(Phys.org)—Researchers have found an innovative way to detect cancer biomarkers in a person's blood. Nucleic acids, the components of DNA and RNA, are typically located within the cell. However, sometimes these nucleic acids can be found circulating in the blood. Cancer patients tend to have more of these cell-free nucleic acids in their blood. A small portion of these cell-free nucleic can contain mutations associated with certain cancers.
A team of IBM researchers in Zurich, Switzerland with support from colleagues in Yorktown Heights, New York has developed a relatively simple, robust and versatile process for growing crystals made from compound semiconductor materials. The new method will allow the materials to be integrated onto silicon wafers — an important step toward making future computer chips that will allow integrated circuits to continue shrinking in size and cost, even as they increase in performance.
Appearing this week on the cover of the journal Applied Physics Letters in an open-access article, the finding may allow for an extension to Moore’s Law. “We need better performing transistors as we continue down-scaling, and transistors based on silicon won’t give us improvements anymore,” said Heinz Schmid, a researcher with IBM Research GmbH at Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland and the lead author on the paper.
For consumers, extending Moore’s Law will mean continuing the trend of new computer devices having increasing speed and bandwidth at reduced power consumption and cost. The new technique may also impact photonics on silicon, with active photonic components integrated seamlessly with electronics for greater functionality.
Researchers from Lehigh University, Japan, and Canada have advanced a step closer to the dream of all-optical data transmission by building and demonstrating what they call the “world’s first fully functioning single-crystal waveguide in glass.”
In an open-access article published in Scientific Reports, a Nature publication, the group said it had employed ultrafast femtosecond lasers to produce a three-dimensional single crystal capable of guiding light waves through glass with little loss of light.
The group says its achievement will boost ongoing efforts to develop photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that are smaller, cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable than current networks that use bulky discrete optoelectronic components — waveguides, splitters, modulators, filters, amplifiers —- to transport optical signals.
“A major trend in optics,” the researchers write, “has been a drive toward … replacing systems of large discrete components that provide individual functions with compact and multifunctional PICs, in much the same way that integration of electronics has driven the impressive advances of modern computer systems.”
Nantero is coming out of stealth mode and announcing a round of financing because it believes its proprietary NRAM is ready to take its place as a storage class memory and replacement for flash and DRAM.
The company has raised $31.5 million from both new investors and existing investors, which it will use to accelerate development of its NRAM (non-volatile random access memory, sometimes known as Nano-RAM) for use in both enterprise and consumer applications.
NRAM is based on carbon nanotubes, cylinders made out of carbon atoms, explained said Nantero CEO Greg Schmergel in a telephone interview with EE Times. Stronger than steel, these nanotubes have a diameter of one to two nanometers, and are better conductors of electricity than other known materials used in chips.
Although Nantero was founded in 2001, it is still very much in a startup phase. EE Times named Nantero one of 10 top startups to watch in 2013. Schmergel said progress working with systems and device companies prompted Nantero to come out of stealth mode. He said NRAM is ready for commercialization and high-volume production, and that the company is sampling 4Mb high-yield memory chips, with the NRAM process installed in in seven production CMOS fabs.
With a pivotal role in fending off infections and disease, white blood cells are the engine room of the body's immune system. But little was known about what happens exactly when these cells reach the end of their life cycles. Scientists have now captured the death of white blood cells on camera for the first time, showing that they eject much of their contents while decomposing. One reason for this could be to warn neighboring cells of dangerous pathogens in the area. The researchers say learning more about their expiration could help bring about improved health treatments in the future.
The findings, which were published today in the journal Nature Methods, provide proof of concept for the technology and the methods lay the groundwork for using it to sequence genomes in increasingly more complex organisms, eventually including humans, said Dr. Jared Simpson, Principal Investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and a lead author on the study.
"The amazing thing about this device is that it is many times smaller than a normal sequencer -- you just attach it to a laptop using a USB cable," said Simpson. "And while our work is a demonstration of the capabilities of the technology, the most significant advance is in the methods. We were able to mathematically model nanopore sequencing and develop ways to reconstruct complete genomes off this tiny sequencer."
Researchers at Dundee University have discovered a new compound which could treat malaria while protecting people from the disease and preventing its spread, all in a single dose.
The compound, DDD107498, was developed by the university's Drug Discovery Unit and the Medicines for Malaria Venture.
Scientists said the "exciting" new drug could work well against parasites resistant to current treatments.
Details of the discovery have been published in the journal Nature.
The World Health Organisation reported 200 million clinical cases of malaria in 2013, with 584,000 people dying from the mosquito-borne disease, most of them pregnant women or children under five.
Concerns have been growing about strains of malaria which are resistant to current treatments, which have already appeared on the border between Myanmar and India.
Doctors and scientists want drug regulators and research funding agencies to consider medicines that delay ageing-related disease as legitimate drugs. Such treatments have a physiological basis, researchers say, and could extend a person’s healthy years by slowing down the processes that underlie common diseases of ageing — making them worthy...
Doctors and scientists want drug regulators and research funding agencies to consider medicines that delay ageing-related disease as legitimate drugs. Such treatments have a physiological basis, researchers say, and could extend a person’s healthy years by slowing down the processes that underlie common diseases of ageing — making them worthy of government approval. On 24 June, researchers will meet with regulators from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make the case for a clinical trial designed to show the validity of the approach.
Current treatments for diseases related to ageing “just exchange one disease for another”, says physician Nir Barzilai of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. That is because people treated for one age-related disease often go on to die from another relatively soon thereafter. “What we want to show is that if we delay ageing, that’s the best way to delay disease.”
A simple genetic tweak can turn colorectal cancer cells in mice back into healthy tissue in a matter of days, essentially reversing tumour growth, new research has revealed.
The scientists are now looking for ways they can use the same approach to develop more effective and less toxic cancer treatments in humans.
According to a press release put out by the journal Cell, where the research was published: “The findings provide proof of principle that restoring the function of a single tumour suppressor gene can cause tumour regression and suggest future avenues for developing effective cancer treatments.”
Most of the drugs we use to fight cancer are designed to kill cancerous cells. While this can be effective, colorectal tumours often come back just weeks after treatment, and the side effects can be intense.
“Treatment regimes for advanced colorectal cancer involve combination chemotherapies that are toxic and largely ineffective, yet have remained the backbone of therapy over the last decade," said senior researcher Scott Lowe from the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.
