Summary
In this Machine Learning project, we develop a hypo Thyroid Disease detection using the Decision Tree and KNN Classifier. We hope you have learned something new from this project.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 144
Immunotherapy has changed the way physicians treat patients and has improved standard of care for many different tumors. Unfortunately, solid tumors are still treated with limited efficacy. In many cases, solid tumors are not recognized by the immune system and progress throughout the body. Tumor growth unnoticed by the immune system is due to immune suppressive mechanisms that the cancer controls. These mechanisms dysregulate immune cells from functioning properly. Various tumors escape immune cell detection and by the time it is clinically detected, the cancer has moved to an advanced stage.
Although there are many solid tumors that rapidly progress, one in particular includes glioblastoma. Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain tumor that extends into the spinal cord and results in poor prognosis. It arises from glial cells which support nerves and aids in brain damage repair. Unfortunately, scientists are still unsure on how glioblastoma occurs. Symptoms can vary based on location of tumor in the brain, but common features include headaches, nausea, seizures, vision changes, difficulty speaking, and change in personality. Currently, there is no cure for glioblastoma and the treatments are limited based on the aggressive stage at diagnosis. Scientists are working to improve quality of life and prolong survival through different immunotherapies, which redirect immune cells toward the tumor.
There are various ways to study therapy in a laboratory including the use of animal models and cells in a dish. However, a more recent form of model has emerged in the last few decades that can help scientists better mimic a human tumor. This new technology are cells cultured in a dish that are produced to form a 3D tumor. These cell cultures are referred to as ‘organoids’ and they are designed to grow and act like a tumor within the body. A group at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) is using this model to test tumor response to novel immunotherapies.
Vaccines have advanced the field of health and medicine throughout the last century. They are commonly given before a disease can occur to expose individuals to invading pathogens. Vaccines given as a preventative treatment helps the immune system build an immune response against disease that the person may encounter in the future. When an individual gets a shot at the doctor’s office they are injecting an attenuated version of the disease. The body will then recognize this pathogen as foreign and build an immune response against it. This is why many times a person feels sick after a few days from a vaccination – the body is activating the immune system to eliminate the disease.
Many types of vaccines exist and are developed to optimize delivery of attenuated pathogen. Arguably, the most well-known type of vaccine uses messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). These vaccines work by delivering mRNA of a virus, which allows human cells to produce viral protein. The immune system responds strongly to the viral proteins and targets them with different immune cells, while also generating antibodies against it. Once the body has built this response, the immune system can more easily target the same virus in the future. This recognition of specific infections is referred to as immunological memory. Currently, the only mRNA vaccines Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved are for COVID-19. However, the efficient use of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 have scientists wondering if this format can be used in other disease settings, including cancer.
A recent article in Nature Communications, by Dr. Damya Laoui and others introduce a novel therapeutic approach in which mRNA is integrated into nanoparticles to overcome tumor progression. Laoui is a group leader at Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB) in Brussels, Belgium. Her work focuses on immune cell activation through specific immune cells known as macrophages and dendritic cells. Laoui also works on developing novel personalized immunotherapies for patients with hard-to-treat cancers.
Researchers think certain common viruses may trigger some autoimmune conditions—alone or in concert with other factors. A recent Office of Autoimmune Disease Research (OADR)-Office of Research on Women’s Health Science Talks series focused on understanding the triggers of autoimmunity and advancing research.
Almost 80 percent of people living with an autoimmune disease are women. It’s estimated there are 80–120 autoimmune diseases. These chronic and often debilitating diseases have no known cures. Some combination of genetics, immune regulation and the environment work together to form an “endotype” for each autoimmune disease patient, explained Dr. Judith James of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
Her presentation focused on lupus, or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), which disproportionately affects women. Nine women are diagnosed with SLE for every male. In SLE, the immune system attacks healthy tissue, causing inflammation and occasionally permanent damage.
If you looked at two snapshots of the same maple tree taken in July and December, you’d see a dramatic change from summer’s full green crown to winter’s bare branches. What those two photos don’t show you, however, is how the change occurred—gradually or all at once? In truth, deciduous trees tend to hold out for an environmental signal—a change in light or temperature—and then shed all their leaves within just a week or two.
When it comes to aging, we may be more like these trees than we realized.
According to new work from Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Single-Cell Genomics and Population Dynamics, mammals follow a similar aging trajectory at the cellular level. As described in a new paper in Science, lab head Junyue Cao and his colleagues used single-cell sequencing to simultaneously scan more than 21 million cells from every major mouse organ across five stages of life. This enormous collection is now the world’s largest cellular atlas within a single study.
Scientists have used a pair of lasers and a supersonic sheet of gas to accelerate electrons to high energies in less than a foot. The development marks a major step forward in laser-plasma acceleration, a promising method for making compact, high-energy particle accelerators that could have applications in particle physics, medicine, and materials science.
In a new study soon to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters, a team of researchers successfully accelerated high-quality beams of electrons to more than 10 billion electronvolts (10 gigaelectronvolts, or GeV) in 30 centimeters. The preprint can be found in the online repository arXiv.
The work was led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), with collaborators at the University of Maryland. The research took place at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator Center (BELLA), which set a world record of 8-GeV electrons in 20 centimeters in 2019. The new experiment not only increases the beam energy, but also produces high-quality beam at this energy level for the first time, paving the way for future high-efficiency machines.
Recent research from the S: CORT team has identified key biomarkers and treatment strategies that predict and enhance effectiveness of radiotherapy in rectal cancer treatment.
Patients with advanced rectal cancer often receive radiotherapy before surgery. However, despite this being standard practice, this treatment only results in complete disappearance (complete response) prior to surgery in 15% of patients.
Currently, there are no reliable biomarkers (a biological molecule found in blood, other body fluids, or tissues that is a sign of a normal or abnormal process, or of a condition or disease) to predict which colorectal patients will benefit from radiotherapy, meaning that many patients are unnecessarily exposed to significant side effects.
Researchers have discovered new connections between the gut and brain that hold promise for more targeted treatments for depression and anxiety, and could help prevent digestive issues in children by limiting the transmission of antidepressants during pregnancy.
The study, published in the journal Gastroenterology, shows that increasing serotonin in the gut epithelium—the thin layer of cells lining the small and large intestines—improves symptoms of anxiety and depression in animal studies. The researchers also found that, in humans, antidepressant use during pregnancy increases the risk of babies developing constipation in the first year of life.
“Our findings suggest that there may be an advantage to targeting antidepressants selectively to the gut epithelium, as systemic treatment may not be necessary for eliciting the drugs’ benefits but may be contributing to digestive issues in children exposed during pregnancy,” said Kara Margolis, director of the NYU Pain Research Center and associate professor of molecular pathobiology at NYU College of Dentistry, who co-led the study with Mark Ansorge, associate professor of clinical neurobiology at Columbia University.
More and more people under 50 have been diagnosed with bowel cancer in different parts of the world over the past few decades.
By Grace Wade
HighlyCitedPapers.
📝 — Schulze, et al.
The present work reviews the strategies and technical approaches used to overcome the multilayered problems associated with large bone defect healing in long bones, with emphasis on research rooted in scaffold-guided tissue regeneration.
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Bone generally displays a high intrinsic capacity to regenerate. Nonetheless, large osseous defects sometimes fail to heal. The treatment of such large segmental defects still represents a considerable clinical challenge. The regeneration of large bone defects often proves difficult, since it relies on the formation of large amounts of bone within an environment impedimental to osteogenesis, characterized by soft tissue damage and hampered vascularization. Consequently, research efforts have concentrated on tissue engineering and regenerative medical strategies to resolve this multifaceted challenge. In this review, we summarize, critically evaluate, and discuss present approaches in light of their clinical relevance; we also present future advanced techniques for bone tissue engineering, outlining the steps to realize for their translation from bench to bedside.