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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,418

New method mass-produces antitumor cells to treat blood diseases and cancer

A Purdue University chemical engineer has improved upon traditional methods to produce off-the-shelf human immune cells that show strong antitumor activity, according to a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Reports.

Xiaoping Bao, a Purdue University assistant professor from the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering, said CAR-neutrophils, or chimeric antigen receptor neutrophils, and engraftable HSCs, or , are effective types of therapies for blood diseases and cancer. Neutrophils are the most abundant white cell blood type and effectively cross physiological barriers to infiltrate solid tumors. HSCs are specific progenitor that will replenish all blood lineages, including neutrophils, throughout life.

“These cells are not readily available for broad clinical or research use because of the difficulty to expand ex vivo to a sufficient number required for infusion after isolation from donors,” Bao said. “Primary neutrophils especially are resistant to genetic modification and have a short half-life.”

Yale-developed technology restores cell, organ function in pigs after death

Within minutes of the final heartbeat, a cascade of biochemical events triggered by a lack of blood flow, oxygen, and nutrients begins to destroy a body’s cells and organs. But a team of Yale scientists has found that massive and permanent cellular failure doesn’t have to happen so quickly.

The researchers stressed that additional studies are necessary to understand the apparently restored motor functions in the animals, and that rigorous ethical review from other scientists and bioethicists is required.

The experimental protocols for the latest study were approved by Yale’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and guided by an external advisory and ethics committee.

The OrganEx technology could eventually have several potential applications, the authors said. For instance, it could extend the life of organs in human patients and expand the availability of donor organs for transplant. It might also be able to help treat organs or tissue damaged by ischemia during heart attacks or strokes.

Prenatal environmental stressors impair postnatal microglia function and adult behavior in males

Block et al. show that combined exposure to air pollution and maternal stress during pregnancy activates the maternal immune system and induces male-specific impairments in social behavior and circuit connectivity in offspring. Cellularly, prenatal stressors diminish microglia phagocytic function,…

The serotonin hypothesis of depression is still influential. We aimed to synthesise and evaluate evidence on whether depression is associated with lowered serotonin concentration or activity in a systematic umbrella review of the principal relevant areas of research. PubMed, EMBASE and PsycINFO were searched using terms appropriate to each area of research, from their inception until December 2020. Systematic reviews, meta-analyses and large data-set analyses in the following areas were identified: serotonin and serotonin metabolite, 5-HIAA, concentrations in body fluids; serotonin 5-HT1A receptor binding; serotonin transporter (SERT) levels measured by imaging or at post-mortem; tryptophan depletion studies; SERT gene associations and SERT gene-environment interactions. Studies of depression associated with physical conditions and specific subtypes of depression (e.g.

Highly Antibiotic-Resistant Superbug Strain Discovered To Be Able To Infect Humans

According to recent research, pig farming’s extensive use of antibiotics has likely contributed to the emergence of a highly antibiotic-resistant strain of the superbug MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, in livestock during the last 50 years.

Over the last fifty years, the strain, known as CC398, has overtaken other MRSA strains in animals across Europe. It is also a rising source of MRSA infections in humans.

According to the study, CC398 has remained resistant to antibiotics in pigs and other animals for many years. Furthermore, it can quickly adapt to human hosts while still preserving its antibiotic resistance.

Finally, an answer to the question: AI — what is it good for?

Got a protein? This AI will tell you what it looks like.

AlphaFold was recognized by the journal Science as 2021’s Breakthrough of the Year, beating out candidates like Covid-19 antiviral pills and the application of CRISPR gene editing in the human body. One expert even wondered if AlphaFold would become the first AI to win a Nobel Prize.

The breakthroughs have kept coming.

Last week, DeepMind announced that researchers from around the world have used AlphaFold to predict the structures of some 200 million proteins from 1 million species, covering just about every protein known to human beings. All of that data is being made freely available on a database set up by DeepMind and its partner, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute.

Recently Discovered Lipid Can Prevent Your Cells From Dying

An organism uses programmed cell death as a critical tool to maintain its health. Various stress responses are triggered when a cell does not operate as it should. These responses aim to bring back the original cell function.

One example is the process known as autophagy, in which a cell partly digests itself in order to acquire energy that it can utilize for its own repair. Should these efforts fail, the cell dies. This enables the body to combat conditions including infections, diabetes, cancer, and neurodegeneration.

A ‘nano-robot’ built entirely from DNA to explore cell processes

Constructing a tiny robot from DNA and using it to study cell processes invisible to the naked eye… You would be forgiven for thinking it is science fiction, but it is in fact the subject of serious research by scientists from Inserm, CNRS and Université de Montpellier at the Structural Biology Center in Montpellier. This highly innovative “nano-robot” should enable closer study of the mechanical forces applied at microscopic levels, which are crucial for many biological and pathological processes. It is described in a new study published in Nature Communications.

Our are subject to exerted on a microscopic scale, triggering biological signals essential to many involved in the normal functioning of our body or in the development of diseases.

For example, the feeling of touch is partly conditional on the application of mechanical forces on specific cell receptors (the discovery of which was this year rewarded by the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine). In addition to touch, these receptors that are sensitive to mechanical forces (known as mechanoreceptors) enable the regulation of other key biological processes such as blood vessel constriction, pain perception, breathing or even the detection of sound waves in the ear, etc.

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