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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,524

Engineered Probiotic Bacteria Colonize Tumors, Attract CAR-T Cells

Researchers at Columbia University have developed a probiotic-guided chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T platform that uses engineered bacteria to infiltrate and produce synthetic antigen targets, enabling CAR-T cells to find, identify, and destroy tumor cells in situ. The results of in vivo preclinical tests suggest that the combined ProCAR cell therapy platform could expand the scope of CAR-T cell therapy to include difficult-to-target solid tumors.

Tal Danino, PhD, and Rosa L. Vincent, PhD, at Columbia University’s department of biomedical engineering, and colleagues, reported on their developments in Science, in a paper titled “Probiotic-guided CAR-T cells for solid tumor targeting,” in which they concluded, “These findings highlight the potential of the ProCAR platform to address the roadblock of identifying suitable CAR targets by providing an antigen that is orthogonal to both healthy tissue and tumor genetics … Overall, combining the advantages of tumor-homing bacteria and CAR-T cells provides a new strategy for tumor recognition and, in turn, builds the foundation for engineered communities of living therapies.”

Immunotherapies using CAR-T cells have proven successful in treating some types of blood cancers, but their efficacy against solid tumors remains elusive. A key challenge facing tumor-antigen targeting immunotherapies like CAR-T is the identification of suitable targets that are specifically and uniformly expressed on solid tumors, the authors noted. “A key challenge of antigen-targeted cell therapies relates to the expression patterns of the antigen itself, which makes the identification of optimal targets for solid tumor cell therapies an obstacle for the development of new CARs.” Solid tumors express heterogeneous and nonspecific antigens and are poorly infiltrated by T cells. As a result, the approach carries a high risk of fatal on-target, off-tumor toxicity, wherein CAR-T cells attack the targeted antigen on healthy vital tissues with potentially fatal effects.

Will Artificial Intelligence become the Stethoscope of the 21st Century?

In the realm of healthcare, change has always been met with resistance. It took considerable time for the medical community to accept the stethoscope as a valuable tool in patient care. Similarly, it will take a while for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be recognized as a full-fledged health tool, despite its immense potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry. However, when A.I. eventually takes its rightful place in healthcare, it will displace the stethoscope as its symbol. Let’s dive into how AI is poised to transform the way we approach healthcare.

A Novel Stem-Cell Derived In Vitro Model of Intestinal Inflammation

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a major global health concern, with an estimated 1.6 million cases in the US alone. While there are many treatments available, they are often ineffective and can cause harmful side effects. A major reason clinically successful IBD therapies remain elusive is because current model systems cannot replicate key mechanistic aspects of the epithelial inflammatory response in humans.

In this webinar brought to you by Altis Biosystems, Bryan McQueen will describe the development of a new stem-cell derived intestinal epithelium model system for testing IBD therapeutic efficacy. Using this model system, researchers developed a suite of assays to probe epithelial barrier disruption, cytotoxicity, and pro-inflammatory cytokine release in response to the activation of prototypical IBD-associated cellular pathways.

Researchers pinpoint nongenetic mechanisms in lung cancer resistance to one commonly used therapy

In a recent study led by Ravi Salgia, M.D., Ph.D., the Arthur & Rosalie Kaplan Chair in Medical Oncology, a team of researchers from City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, and other institutions found that nongenetic mechanisms are important in lung cancer patients who develop a resistance to one cancer therapy. Their findings were published in the October 13 issue of the journal Science Advances.

The team’s study explored resistance to the anti-cancer medication sotorasib in patients with (NSCLC). Sotorasib inhibits a specific mutation of a protein, KRAS G12C, that causes unchecked cell growth.

The researchers’ findings suggest that, initially, most tumor cells are sensitive to sotorasib. But some cells can become tolerant to without resorting to or alterations by manipulating the KRAS-sotorasib interaction network. Furthermore, they found that if sotorasib treatment is withheld, the revert to becoming sensitive again, implying that the phenomenon is reversible and thus is driven by nongenetic mechanisms.

Researchers Tested AI Watermarks—and Broke All of Them

Feizi and his coauthors looked at how easy it is for bad actors to evade watermarking attempts. (He calls it “washing out” the watermark.) In addition to demonstrating how attackers might remove watermarks, the study shows how it’s possible to add watermarks to human-generated images, triggering false positives. Released online this week, the preprint paper has yet to be peer-reviewed, but Feizi has been a leading figure in AI detection, so it’s worth paying attention to, even at this early stage.

It’s timely research. Watermarking has emerged as one of the more promising strategies to identify AI-generated images and text. Just as physical watermarks are embedded on paper money and stamps to prove authenticity, digital watermarks are meant to trace the origins of images and text online, helping people spot deepfaked videos and bot-authored books. With the US presidential elections on the horizon in 2024, concerns over manipulated media are high—and some people are already getting fooled. Former US president Donald Trump, for instance, shared a fake video of Anderson Cooper on his Truth Social platform; Cooper’s voice had been AI-cloned.

This summer, OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and several other major AI players pledged to develop watermarking technology to combat misinformation. In late August, Google’s DeepMind released a beta version of its new watermarking tool, SynthID. The hope is that these tools will flag AI content as it’s being generated, in the same way that physical watermarking authenticates dollars as they’re being printed.

‘Ridiculous,’ says Chinese scientist accused of being pandemic’s patient zero

According to this information covid 19 sars is a chimeric virus that evolves with other genetic material which gives us clues for a proper antidote. Also it shows why it is so dangerous.

Ben Hu denies he was sick in late 2019, or that his coronavirus work led to COVID-19, and newly declassified U.S. intelligence doesn’t substantiate allegations against him.

First magnetoelectric material solves nerve signal problems

A study finds a material that is 120 times faster than similar ones, demonstrating its precision in remotely stimulating neurons and repairing severed sciatic nerves in rats.

A new study is paving the way for alternative approaches to treating brain and nerve problems gently without the need for major surgery by introducing a magnetoelectric material.

Despite challenges such as nerve cells not responding well to the signals made by these materials, Researchers wanted to find a way to make these signals easier for our nerves to understand.

This AI tool can predict virus mutations before they occur

It can be used in the development of vaccines and treatments.

Now, scientists at Harvard Medical School and the University of Oxford have produced an AI tool that can achieve that called EVEscape.

What if we could predict virus mutations before they actually took place? We could prepare for their arrival and perhaps even conceive of vaccines in time to protect populations.

This is according to a press release by the institutions published on Wednesday.

Collaborative work creates detailed cellular map of the brain

The vast set of information has been detailed in a series of 21 papers.

The majority of our actions are initiated by the brain, which plays a pivotal role in processing sensory information, making decisions, coordinating movements, and regulating bodily functions.

Overall, the human brain is an incredibly complex organ. It contains over 86 billion neurons – perhaps around the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Novel membrane could reduce energy expenditure in separating molecules for desalination, drug development

Separating molecules is critical to producing many essential products. For example, in petroleum refining, the hydrocarbons—chemical compounds composed of hydrogens and carbons—in crude oil are separated into gasoline, diesel and lubricants by sorting them based on their molecular size, shape and weight. In the pharmaceutical industry, the active ingredients in medications are purified by separating drug molecules from the enzymes, solutions and other components used to make them.

These separation processes take a substantial amount of energy, accounting for roughly half of U.S. industrial energy use. Traditionally, molecular separations have relied on methods that require intensive heating and cooling that make them very energy inefficient.

We are chemical and biological engineers. In our newly published research in Science, we designed a new type of membrane with nanopores that can quickly and precisely separate a diverse range of molecules under harsh industrial conditions.

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