Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers of the Hubrecht Institute (KNAW) in Utrecht, The Netherlands, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom, have discovered a new way in which the human body repairs DNA damage caused by a degradation product of alcohol. That knowledge underlines the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. The research groups of Puck Knipscheer and Ketan J. Patel worked together on this study and published the results in the scientific journal Nature on the 4th of March.

Our DNA is a daily target for a barrage of damage caused by radiation or toxic substances such as alcohol. When alcohol is metabolized, acetaldehyde is formed. Acetaldehyde causes a dangerous kind of DNA damage—the interstrand crosslink (ICL)—that sticks together the two strands of the DNA. As a result, it obstructs cell division and protein production. Ultimately, an accumulation of ICL damage may lead to cell death and cancer.

WUHAN (China Daily/ANN): With the public eagerly anticipating effective drugs to cure the novel coronavirus pneumonia, a medical ethics committee at the forefront of fighting the outbreak in Wuhan has quickened the pace of approving clinical trials.

Several programmes related to the diagnosis and treatment of the disease have gained ethical approval from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and are being carried out by the university, including two drugs that are under clinical trials, said Chen Jianguo, vice-president of the university.

The two drugs are remdesivir, a drug being developed by US-based pharmaceutical company Gilead, and chloroquine phosphate, which is available on the market to treat malaria.

Rutgers engineers have created a tabletop device that combines a robot, artificial intelligence and near-infrared and ultrasound imaging to draw blood or insert catheters to deliver fluids and drugs.

Their most recent research results, published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, suggest that autonomous systems like the image-guided robotic device could outperform people on some complex medical tasks.

Medical robots could reduce injuries and improve the efficiency and outcomes of procedures, as well as carry out tasks with minimal supervision when resources are limited. This would allow health care professionals to focus more on other critical aspects of medical care and enable emergency medical providers to bring advanced interventions and resuscitation efforts to remote and resource-limited areas.

These types of therapies are used when there are no other alternatives available for diseases that can be very serious or even fatal.

A treatment that has already been used by several hospitals in Wuhan, although experts consider that ‘the evidence on its effectiveness is scarce.’

Continue reading “HIV drug successfully treats coronavirus patient in medical first in Spain’s Andalucia” »

China’s biotech companies have been gearing up to repurpose existing drugs, approved in the West for other viruses, as treatments for the coronavirus outbreak originating in Wuhan.

Last month, Hangzhou-based Ascletis Pharma applied to the Chinese authorities to test two HIV protease inhibitors (ritonavir and ASC09) in clinical trials to treat COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus (Table 1). And Suzhou-based BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology announced in early February that it would begin to manufacture Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir (GS-5734), a broad-spectrum investigational antiviral, as a treatment for coronavirus infection.

Existing antivirals and knowledge gained from the SARS and MERS outbreaks gain traction as the fastest route to fight the current coronavirus epidemic.

Scientists at Uppsala University have proposed an addition to the theory of evolution that can explain how and why genes move on chromosomes. The hypothesis, called the SNAP Hypothesis, is presented in the scientific journal PLOS Genet ics.

Life originated on Earth almost 4 billion years ago and diversified into a vast array of species. How did this diversification occur? The Theory of Evolution, together with the discovery of DNA and how it replicates, provide an answer and a mechanism. Mutations in DNA occur from generation to generation, and can be selected if they help individuals to adapt better to their environment. Over time, this has led to the separation of organisms into the different species that now inhabit all ecosystems.

Current theory holds that evolution involves mistakes made when replicating a gene. This explains how genes can mutate over time and acquire new functions. However, a mystery in biology is that the relative locations of genes on chromosomes also change over time. This is obvious in bacteria, as different species often have the same genes in very different relative locations. Since the origin of life, genes have apparently been changing location. The questions are, how and why do genes move their relative locations?

Random outbreak at research center points to tilapia variants that can resist the deadly virus.

An international team of researchers that pooled genetic samples from developmentally disabled patients from around the world has identified dozens of new mutations in a single gene that appears to be critical for brain development.

“This is important because there are a handful of genes that are recognized as ‘hot spots’ for mutations causing neurodevelopmental disorders,” said lead author Debra Silver, an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Duke School of Medicine. “This gene, DDX3X, is going to be added to that list now.”

An analysis led by the Elliott Sherr lab at the University of California-San Francisco found that half of the DDX3X mutations in the 107 children studied caused a loss of function that made the gene stop working altogether, but the other half caused changes predicted to disrupt the function of the gene.

This month, K.L. became one of the first patients to receive a new experimental gene therapy for children with a severe form of inherited vision loss. The treatment, currently not yet named, targets young men who are susceptible to a particularly vicious genetic disorder that gradually destroys the light-sensing portion of their eyes.

Within a month following a single injection, “my vision was beginning to return in the treated eye. The sharpness and depth of colors I was slowly beginning to see were so clear and attractive,” said K.L.

The trial, a first-in-human case for X-linked Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), was led by Dr. Robert MacLaren at the University of Oxford but spanned multiple centers including the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, which previously championed Luxterna, the first FDA-approved gene therapy for a type of inherited blindness. The results are some of the first targeting a particularly difficult gene prone to mutation in humans. Amazingly, despite some inflammation in early stages, the therapy provided massive improvements in eyesight as early as two weeks following treatment.