A new therapy called CINDELA (Cancer-Specific InDel Attacker) is reported by scientists in South Korea, which uses CRISPR-Cas9 to kill cancer cells without harming normal tissues.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,957
Risks of mental health outcomes in people with covid-19: cohort study
Objective To estimate the risks of incident mental health disorders in survivors of the acute phase of covid-19.
Design Cohort study.
Setting US department of veterans affairs.
Participants Cohort comprising 153 848 people who survived the first 30 days of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and two control groups: a contemporary group (n=5 637 840) with no evidence of SARS-CoV-2, and a historical control group (n=5 859 251) that predated the covid-19 pandemic.
Chernnobyl fungus feeds on nuclear radiation
😀 😍 circa 2018.
You know Chernobyl, right? The place of the biggest nuclear accident in the world? The are is so radioactive nobody lives in the vicinity anymore, and nearby plants are suffering major amounts of radiation. However, not everybody is sad about this event; a type of fungi (mushrooms) possess an ability beyond imagination: they can take the lethal radiation and use it as a source of energy to feed and grow. Researchers have called them radiotrophic fungus.
For some 500 million years, fungi have been inhabiting this planet, feeding on whatever they could finding, filling every biological niche they could find. But who could have actually guessed that they could feed on nuclear radiation? Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AEC) had a hunch, and they investigated it to test. They first got the idea after reading that samples brought from Chernobyl were filled with some black fungi growing on it.
Decentralized Manufacturing of Advanced Therapies
Medcalf: Because you’re moving away from the economics of scale to closer to the clinic, the batches are smaller and some of the traditional paradigms for quality assurance, such as proof of sterility, are harder to arrange. Thus, you need to have a manufacturing system that includes quality assurance within the system itself.
Automation is often presented as a way to remove the single largest source of infective risk, i.e. the human operator. For example, the self-sterilizing reusable units being developed at the University of Osaka under Professor Masahiro Kino-oka allow small-scale production with a high degree of confidence in the aseptic management of the environment.
Another challenge is defining a product that has variable characteristics. The main reason for decentralizing is to allow customization to a patient, which means you need to have a hierarchy of levels of specification. For example, with bioprinting, which also produces a customized product, you need to define bulk properties, but you also need to set constraints around how it’s anchored or implanted into the patient.
MIT Chemists Discover Structure of Protein That Pumps Toxic Molecules Out of Bacterial Cells
MIT chemists have discovered how the structure of the EmrE transporter changes as a compound moves through it. At left is the transporter structure at high pH. As the pH drops (right), the helices begin to tilt so that the channel is more open toward the outside of the cell, guiding the compound out. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers.
A new study sheds light on how a protein pumps toxic molecules out of bacterial cells.
MIT chemists have discovered the structure of a protein that can pump toxic molecules out of bacterial cells. Proteins similar to this one, which is found in E. coli, are believed to help bacteria become resistant to multiple antibiotics.
Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease Share Common Genetic Roots
Epidemiological data have long linked depression with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive dementia that affects nearly 6 million Americans. Now, a new study identifies common genetic factors in both depression and AD. Importantly, the researchers found that depression played a causal role in AD development, and those with worse depression experienced a faster decline in memory. The study appears in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier.
Co-senior author Aliza Wingo, MD, of Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, USA, said of the work, “It raises the possibility that there are genes that contribute to both illnesses. While the shared genetic basis is small, the findings suggest a potential causal role of depression on dementia.”
The authors performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS), a technique that scans the entire genome for areas of commonality associated with particular conditions. The GWAS identified 28 brain proteins and 75 transcripts – the messages that encode proteins – that were associated with depression. Among those, 46 transcripts and 7 proteins were also associated with symptoms of AD. The data suggest a shared genetic basis for the two diseases, which may drive the increased risk for AD associated with depression.
3D micromesh-based hybrid printing for microtissue engineering
Bioprinting is widely applicable to develop tissue engineering scaffolds and form tissue models in the lab. Materials scientists use this method to construct complex 3D structures based on different polymers and hydrogels; however, relatively low resolution and long fabrication times can result in limited procedures for cell-based applications.
In a new report now available in Nature Asia Materials, Byungjun Lee and a team of scientists in mechanical engineering at Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, presented a 3D hybrid-micromesh assisted bioprinting method (Hy-MAP) to combine digital light projection, 3D printed micromesh scaffold sutures, together with sequential hydrogel patterning. The new method of bioprinting offered rapid cell co-culture via several methods including injection, dipping and draining. The work can promote the construction of mesoscale complex 3D hydrogel structures across 2D microfluidic channels to 3D channel networks.
Lee et al. established the design rules for Hy-MAP printing via analytical and experimental investigations. The new method can provide an alternative technique to develop mesoscale implantable tissue engineering constructs for organ-on-a-chip applications.
The first controlled study of caloric restriction in humans
Decades of research has shown that limits on calorie intake by flies, worms, and mice can enhance lifespan in laboratory conditions. But whether such calorie restriction can do the same for humans has remained unclear. Now a new study led by researchers at Yale University, Connecticut, confirms the health benefits of moderate calorie restrictions in humans – and identifies a key protein that could be harnessed to extend health in humans.
The researchers used data from the Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy (CALERIE) clinical trial, the first controlled study of calorie restriction in healthy humans. For the trial, they established a baseline calorie intake among more than 200 study participants. They then asked a share of those participants to reduce their calorie intake by 14% while the rest continued to eat as usual, and analysed the long-term health effects of calorie restriction over the next two years.
Vishwa Dixit, Professor of Pathology, Immunobiology, and Comparative Medicine, and senior author of the study, said that his team wanted to better understand what calorie restriction does to the body specifically that leads to improved health. Building on previous studies in mice, he and his colleagues set out to determine how it might be linked to inflammation and the immune response.
A Spinal Cord Implant Allowed Paralyzed People to Walk in Just One Day
After five months “performance improved dramatically,” the authors said. All three people were able to sustain their own weight, standing independently in their daily lives. With the help of a walker, they could easily stroll for six minutes without any other assistance. Michel was even able to climb up stairs with minimum support.
The trio celebrated their newfound freedom. With the stimulator helping with their trunk position—aka “core strength” and posture—they were able to enjoy everyday life. Standing while sipping a drink at a bar. Paddling a kayak on a lake. Taking a lap in the pool.
The stimulation further helped with muscle recovery. All three men found a boost in their leg and trunk muscle mass, and two were eventually able to control some muscle function even without stimulation.