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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,109

Stem Cell Therapy for Cerebral Palsy

Circa 2019

Cerebral palsy is a condition that results from injuries or abnormalities of the brain, usually in the womb but occurring any time during 2 years after birth. It affects brain and nervous system functions such as thinking, seeing, hearing, learning and movement.

Common causes are hypoxia (low oxygen levels), head injury, maternal infections such as rubella, brain bleeding, brain infection, and severe jaundice. Types of CP include: ataxic, hypotonic, spastic, dyskinetic, and mixed.

Mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord are considered to be universal donor cells because they are not immediately recognized as foreign. The cells home to damaged tissue and are known to secrete molecules called trophic factors.

Regulation Too Often Shackles the Hands of Innovators

After biomedical scientists demonstrated that they could make dangerous viruses like influenza even more dangerous, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implemented a three-year moratorium on funding such research. But a couple of months ago, in December, the moratorium was lifted, and a tight set of rules were put in its place, such as a mandate for oversight panels.

The prospect of engineering a deadly pandemic virus in a laboratory suggests that only a fool would wish away government regulation entirely.

However, as a whole, regulation has done more harm than good in the arena of scientific innovation. The reason is that the sort of person who thinks like a bureaucratic regulator isn’t the sort of person who thinks like a scientist. The sad fact of the matter is that those most interested in the regulatory process tend to be motivated by politics and ideology rather than scientific inquiry and technological progress.

Details released of a huge offshore wind turbine that can power 18,000 homes per year

As technology has developed over the last few years, the size of wind turbines has increased.

Last December, for example, Dutch utility Eneco started to purchase power produced by the prototype of GE Renewable Energy’s Haliade-X 12 MW wind turbine. That turbine has a capacity of 12 MW, a height of 260 meters and a blade length of 107 meters.

The announcement of Siemens Gamesa’s new turbine plans comes against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which is impacting renewable energy companies around the world.

An artificial intelligence system reveals liquiritin inhibits SARS-CoV-2

The pandemic COVID-19 has spread to all over the world and greatly threatens safety and health of people. COVID-19 is highly infectious and with high mortality rate. As no effective antiviral treatment is currently available, new drugs are urgently needed. We employed transcriptional analysis to uncover potential antiviral drugs from natural products or FDA approved drugs. We found liquiritin significantly inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 in Vero E6 cells with EC50 = 2.39 μM. Mechanistically, we found liquiritin exerts anti-viral function by mimicking type I interferon. Upregulated genes induced by liquiritin are enriched in GO categories including type I interferon signaling pathway, negative regulation of viral genome replication and etc. In toxicity experiment, no death was observed when treated at dose of 300 mg/kg for a week in ICR mice. All the organ indexes but liver and serum biochemical indexes were normal after treatment. Liquiritin is abundant in licorice tablet (~0.2% by mass), a traditional Chinese medicine. Together, we recommend liquiritin as a competitive candidate for treating COVID-19. We also expect liquiritin to have a broad and potent antiviral function to other viral pathogens, like HBV, HIV and etc.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Forget Exercise—These Mice Got Ripped With Gene Therapy

A gene therapy trial performed on mice may foreshadow yet another way to hack fitness. In a study done by a team at Washington University in St. Louis’ medical school, mice quickly built muscle mass and reduced obesity after receiving the therapy, even while eating a diet high in fat and not exercising. The results were published last week in a paper in Science Advances.

The gene targeted was FST, which is responsible for making a protein called follistatin. In humans and most other mammals, follistatin helps grow muscle and control metabolism by blocking a protein called myostatin, which acts to restrain muscle growth and ensure muscles don’t get too big.

The researchers injected eight-week-old mice with a virus carrying a healthy FST gene (gene therapy involves adding healthy copies of a gene to cells, usually using a virus as a deliveryman).

Over a period of 18 weeks, or about 4 months, the team observed that the muscle mass of the treated mice more than doubled, as did their strength level. They also experienced reduced damage related to osteoarthritis, less inflammation in their joints, and had healthier hearts and blood vessels than mice that didn’t receive the gene therapy —even though all the mice ate the same high-fat diet and did the same amount of exercise.

Scientists enlist cattle to create potential COVID-19 drug

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — First is was monkeys, then dogs.

Now, researchers are turning to cows in hopes of developing a treatment for the coronavirus.

Scientists at SAb Biotherapeutics in South Dakota created an embryo via genetic engineering that contains human chromosomes. The embryo was then implanted into cattle. The cows gave birth to calves that internally function similarly to a person, specifically with regards to the human immune system.

Stem cells to replace or regenerate the diabetic pancreas: Huge potential & existing hurdles

Various stem cell sources are being explored to treat diabetes since the proof-of-concept for cell therapy was laid down by transplanting cadaveric islets as a part of Edmonton protocol in 2000. Human embryonic stem (hES) cells derived pancreatic progenitors have got US-FDA approval to be used in clinical trials to treat type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). However, these progenitors more closely resemble their foetal counterparts and thus whether they will provide long-term regeneration of adult human pancreas remains to be demonstrated. In addition to lifestyle changes and administration of insulin sensitizers, regeneration of islets from endogenous pancreatic stem cells may benefit T2DM patients. The true identity of pancreatic stem cells, whether these exist or not, whether regeneration involves reduplication of existing islets or ductal epithelial cells transdifferentiate, remains a highly controversial area. We have recently demonstrated that a novel population of very small embryonic-like stem cells (VSELs) is involved during regeneration of adult mouse pancreas after partial-pancreatectomy. VSELs (pluripotent stem cells in adult organs) should be appreciated as an alternative for regenerative medicine as these are autologous (thus immune rejection issues do not exist) with no associated risk of teratoma formation. T2DM is a result of VSELs dysfunction with age and uncontrolled proliferation of VSELs possibly results in pancreatic cancer. Extensive brainstorming and financial support are required to exploit the potential of endogenous VSELs to regenerate the pancreas in a patient with diabetes.

Diabetes is one of the major non-communicable diseases in the world with majority of patients belonging to India, China and USA. Along with associated complications like heart disease and stroke, diabetes results in increased morbidity and mortality and it is expected that by the year 2025, India alone will have more than 70 million diabetics1,2. Diabetes is a metabolic disorder associated with progressive loss or dysfunction of β-cells of pancreas. Onset of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) occurs when the β-cell mass is reduced to less than 20 per cent due to autoimmune effect, whereas the declining β-cell mass is unable to meet the age-related increased insulin demands of the body in type 2 (T2DM) as a result of insulin resistance and in due course the β-cells are lost by apoptosis. Thus, in both T1 and T2DM, restoration of a functional β-cell mass constitutes the central goal of diabetes therapy.

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