Latest advances in medical research thread

[ScienceRocks]

Hydrogel boosts uptake of stem cells in repairing damaged hearts

• Nick Lavars
• September 24, 2015

With their ability to help repair damaged muscle, stem cells have shown promise as tools for rebuilding the body's organs, but their potential is yet to be fully realized – especially when it comes to the heart. Part of this is because only a small percentage of stem cells injected actually survive the process, but a newly developed liquid could make life a little easier for freshly transplanted cells. Researchers have found that encapsulating them in a sticky hydrogel gives them the ability to not only survive, but multiply and improve the injured heart's ability to pump blood.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Different Proteins can be used for CRISPR gene editing which will get around legal issues on CRISPR-Cas9

The cutting protein Cas9 can be replaced by a different protein, Cpf1, which Feng Zhang, a researcher at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard says will also work as a versatile editing tool. The background for the Broad announcement is a bruising patent fight with the University of California, Berkeley, over who invented the first CRISPR...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Whale protein puts researchers on path to developing synthetic blood

• David Szondy
• September 27, 2015
• 2 PICTURES

Researchers at Rice University have discovered that a protein found in whale meat may hold the key to developing synthetic blood. The protein, called myoglobin, allows marine mammals to remain submerged at great depths for up to two hours and has an ultra-stable structure that could one day allow for the manufacturing of a blood substitute using bacteria as biofactories.

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[ScienceRocks]

Regular aspirin use found to double survival rates for gastrointestinal cancer patients

• Nick Lavars
• September 28, 2015

A study involving almost 14,000 cancer patients has linked increased survival rates with regular aspirin use. The research involved sufferers of various forms of gastrointestinal tumors and found that patients who starting to use aspirin after they had been diagnosed doubled their chances of survival.

 

[waltky]

New sepsis treatment could save millions...

New Deadly Septic Shock Treatment Could Save Millions
September 28, 2015 - Sepsis is a leading cause of death worldwide. But many people have never heard of it. In the United States, one million people develop sepsis annually, and up to half of them die from it. And in the developing world, it is responsible for up to 80 percent of deaths each year, with women and children hit especially hard.

Sepsis can be triggered by pneumonia, surgery, even childbirth. Symptoms include fever, increased breathing, and confusion. The body’s defense system goes out of control, causing widespread inflammation, organ failure and septic shock, where blood pressure drops to a dangerously low level. But now a new, innovative treatment for sepsis may save many lives.

Scientists at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute are working on a new dialysis system that cleans the blood of poisonous pathogens before they trigger that deadly inflammatory response. "The current standard of therapy is to give antibiotics and fluids,” said senior scientist, Mike Super. “But what we are talking about here is treatment for sepsis.” The researchers are filtering blood through a tube with tiny mesh fibers coated with an engineered protein called fcMBL. "They bind to the cell wall of bacteria, of fungi, of many viruses and many parasites and they bind to toxins as well,” Super explained.

He further described the procedure saying: "We’re coating the inside of the tubes with that protein and we are running the infected blood from the patient through that, through the filter and binding, absorbing, capturing the pathogens that are in that blood, so that the blood that is going back to the patient after the dialysis is cleansed.” In a trial phase using rats, the dialysis treatment was more than 99 percent effective in filtering out deadly bacteria. The research team anticipates beginning human trials soon, in hopes of saving millions of lives around the world.

VIDEO

 

[ScienceRocks]

BioViva USA, Inc. has become the first company to treat a person with gene therapy to reverse biological aging, using a combination of two therapies developed and applied outside the United States of America. Testing and research on these therapies is continuing in BioViva's affiliated labs worldwide. BioViva CEO Elizabeth Parrish announced that the subject is doing well and has resumed regular activities. Preliminary results will be evaluated at 5 and 8 months with full outcome expected at 12 months. The patient will then be monitored every year for 8 years.

https://www.fightagi...-activation.php


WAHOOOO!!!! Pray for success!

 

[ScienceRocks]

Tiny particles propel themselves upstream to stop severe internal bleeding

• Nick Lavars
• October 5, 2015

Though materials have been developed that clot blood in order to slow bleeding, when the bleeding is internal things get a little more complicated. The flow of blood makes it difficult to deliver these agents upstream to the site of the injury, but now a team of Canadian researchers says it may have a solution. It has developed a micro-sized particle that produces gas to propel itself against the tide.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Studies suggest new ways to inhibit oncogenes, enhance tumor-suppressor activity

Two new studies by cancer scientists at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) suggest new approaches for treating ..

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[ScienceRocks]

Genentech announces favorable results for MS drug ocrelizumab

Swiss pharmaceutical company Genentech a member of the Roche Group, has released (at the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis meeting) findings from Phase III clinical trials for its multiple

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Chemistry nobel DNA research lays foundation for new ways to fight cancer

Our cells are up against a daily onslaught of damage to the DNA that encodes our genes. It takes constant effort to keep up with the DNA disrepair – and if our cells didn't bother to try to fix it, we might not survive. ...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Key to longevity? Blocking over 200 genes boosts lifespan by 60%, study reveals
Key to longevity? Blocking over 200 genes boosts lifespan by 60%, study reveals

Once a bucket of genes linked to aging is removed, the lifespan of cells increases significantly, American scientists discovered during ten years of meticulous research, stressing that the results could be applied to humans.
An “exhaustive, ten-year effort” allowed scientists at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the University of Washington to identify some 238 genes which could be targeted to improve human health and possibly extend life spans by 60 percent. The paper was published on Thursday in the journal Cell Metabolism.

The study was carried out on nearly 4,700 yeast strains, but a series of experiments involving roundworms allowed scientists to say that its results could be applied to humans, as well.

“This study looks at aging in the context of the whole genome and gives us a more complete picture of what aging is,” said lead author Brian Kennedy, Buck Institute’s president and CEO, in the press release. “It also sets up a framework to define the entire network that influences aging in this organism.”


The researchers had to count yeast cells one by one, tracing the consequences of a single gene deletion with the help of several microscopes. The indication of success was a number of daughter cells produced before a mother cell stopped dividing.

The most “stunning” gene has turned out to be LOS1, which is in part responsible for building proteins, but also is linked to mTOR, which regulates cell growth, and Gcn4gene, which helps to manage DNA damage. The deletion of this gene was demonstrated to “robustly extended lifespan.”

 

[ScienceRocks]

Study stops vision loss in late-stage canine X-linked retinitis pigmentosa

Three years ago, a team from the University of Pennsylvania announced that they had cured X-linked retinitis pigmentosa, a blinding retinal disease, in dogs. Now they've shown that they can cure the canine disease over the .

First comprehensive profile of non-protein-coding RNAs in human cancers

Growing insights about a significant, yet poorly understood, part of the genome - the "dark matter of DNA"—have fundamentally changed the way scientists approach the study of diseases. The human genome contains about 20,000 ..

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[ScienceRocks]

One person show Bioviva - tests antiaging gene therapy on herself

Elizabeth Parrish, the 44-year-old CEO of a biotechnology startup called BioViva, says she underwent a gene therapy at an undisclosed location overseas last month, a first step in what she says is a plan to develop treatments for ravages of old age like Alzheimer’s and muscle loss. Parrish says she had received two forms of gene therapy produced under contract with a commercial laboratory, which she did not identify, outside...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Destructive disease shows potential as a cancer treatment
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151013135548.htm
Date:
October 13, 2015
Source:
University of British Columbia
Summary:
Scientists have discovered a protein from malaria that could one day help stop cancer in its tracks. This new approach, which halted the growth of various tumours in mice, was based on a discovery made while exploring why pregnant women are particularly susceptible to malaria.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Scientists achieve a breakthrough in finding a general cure for cancer by attaching malaria proteins to cancer cells, which appears effective on 90% of cancer types. Human trials are expected to begin within four years.



http://www.scienceda...51013135546.htm

Danish scientists from the University of Copenhagen and the University of British Columbia (UBC) face a possible breakthrough in the fight against cancer, which may result in a genuine medical treatment for the dreaded disease. The hunt for a weapon to fight malaria in pregnant women has revealed that, expressed in popular terms, armed malaria proteins can kill cancer. The researchers behind the discovery hope to be able to conduct tests on humans within four years.

In collaboration with cancer researcher Mads Daugaard from the University of British Columbia in Canada, malaria researcher Professor Ali Salanti from the Faculty of Medical Health and Sciences, UCPH, has revealed that the carbohydrate that the malaria parasite attaches itself to in the placenta in pregnant women is identical to a carbohydrate found in cancer cells.

In the laboratory, scientists have created the protein hat the malaria parasite uses to adhere to the placenta and added a toxin. This combination of malaria protein and toxin seeks out the cancer cells, is absorbed, the toxin released inside, and then the cancer cells die. This process has been witnessed in cell cultures and in mice with cancer. The discovery has only just been described in an article in the scientific journal Cancer Cell.

In collaboration, the two university research groups have tested thousands of samples from brain tumors to leukemia's and a general picture emerges to indicate that the malaria protein is able attack more than 90% of all types of tumors. The drug has been tested on mice that were implanted with three types of human tumours. With non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the treated mice's tumours were about a quarter the size of the tumours in the control group. With prostate cancer, the tumours disappeared in two of the six treated mice a month after receiving the first dose. With metastatic bone cancer, five out of six of the treated mice were alive after almost eight weeks, compared to none of the mice in a control group. "We have separated the malaria protein, which attaches itself to the carbohydrate and then added a toxin. By conducting tests on mice, we have been able to show that the combination of protein and toxin kill the cancer cells," Mads Daugaard explains.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Scientists create a pumping artificial heart – using foam

• Ben Coxworth
• October 16, 2015

Perhaps you sleep on a memory foam mattress. Well, in the future, a similar material could be used to create artificial body parts. Researchers at Cornell University recently used their new "elastomer foam" to build a functioning fluid pump that looks and works like a human heart.

 

[longknife]

Peppermint rubbed on forehead and back of the neck can help ease migraines @ The popular candy flavor that may offer migraine relief

 

[ScienceRocks]

An extra-muscular beagle has been created through myostatin inhibited genome engineering

Scientists in China say they are the first to use gene editing to produce customized dogs. They created a beagle with double the amount of muscle mass by deleting a gene called myostatin. The dogs have “more muscles and are expected to have stronger running ability, which is good for hunting, police (military) applications,” Liangxue Lai,...

This is awesome news!!! This shows that we can do great things with gene editing!!!!! We can remove cancer, heart disease, and possibly increase intelligence.

I think it is wonderful.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Genetically engineered virus called talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) has been approved by the FDA to treat advanced melanoma

Nature reports that the First cancer-fighting virus has been approved. An engineered herpesvirus that provokes an immune response against cancer has become the first treatment of its kind to be approved for use in the United States, paving the way for a long-awaited class of therapies. On 27 October, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...

 

[ScienceRocks]

Antiaging protein is the real deal, Harvard team claims

Back in the 1950s in a weird, vampiric experiment, scientists first showed that connecting the circulatory systems of old and young mice seems to rejuvenate the more elderly animals. A handful of labs have recently been racing to find factors in young blood that may explain this effect. Now, a Harvard University group that claims to have found one such antiaging protein has published a study countering critics who dismissed the work on the molecule as flawed.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Gene-edited immune cells treat 1-year-old's 'incurable' leukemia

A new treatment that uses ‘molecular scissors’ to edit genes and create designer immune cells programmed to hunt out and kill drug resistant leukaemia has been used at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). The treatment, previously only tested in the laboratory, was used in one-year-old, Layla, who had relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia...