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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,257

Scientists in Amsterdam Destroyed Breast Cancer Tumors in 11 Days Without Chemo

HER2-positive breast cancer is a type of aggressive cancer marked by uncontrolled production of breast cells. About 20% of women and men diagnosed with breast cancer have HER2-positive cancer, specifically.

Currently, oncologists treat HER2-positive breast cancer patients with surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or targeted treatments like Herceptin (trastuzumab), Kadcyla (Ado-trastuzumab-emtansine), Perjeta (Pertuzumab), and Tykerb (Lapatinib).

These targeted treatments work by interfering with the protein that signals breast cell production, and they’re often used in conjunction with chemotherapy, which undoubtedly, can be a very arduous treatment process.

3D Printed Human Corneas To Cure Blindness Are Here

Scientists at Newcastle University, in the United Kingdom, have 3D printed the world’s first real human corneas. This is unbelievable news since today, there is a significant shortage of corneas available for transplant. In the future, this printing technique could be used to ensure an unlimited supply of corneas.

The cornea is the outermost layer of the human eye and it has an important role in focusing vision. Statistics show that there are currently 10 million people worldwide requiring surgery to prevent corneal blindness as a result of diseases such as trachoma, an infectious eye disorder. On top of that, there are an additional 5 million people who suffer total blindness due to corneal scarring caused by burns, lacerations, abrasion or disease.

Scientists race to develop vaccine for new coronavirus

Scientists from the United States to Australia are using new technology in an ambitious, multi-million-dollar drive to develop a vaccine in record time to tackle China’s coronavirus outbreak.

The has spread rapidly since emerging late last year in China, killing more than 800 people in the mainland and infecting over 37,000. Cases have been reported in two dozen other countries.

Coming up with any vaccine typically takes years, and involves a lengthy process of testing on animals, on humans and regulatory approvals.

Study identifies brain stiffness as crucial for neurogenesis

A research team has shown that a key difference between neurogenic and non-neurogenic tissues is cross-linking proteins causing stiffness, a discovery that could be used to create new brain injury therapies.

Researchers compared the proteomes of regions in the brain that are neurogenic (neural stem cell niches) and those that are not (cerebral cortex). The scientists hope that by establishing how these tissues are different, future therapies for brain injury may be able to activate tissues to produce new neurons to repair the brain.

Researchers Finally Sequence Giant Squid’s Entire Genome

For the first time, scientists have sequenced the entire genetic code of a giant squid.

Because the massive creature has never been captured alive, biologists have largely been left in the dark as to how the giant squid grows and behaves. After sequencing its genes, University of Copenhagen and Marine Biological Laboratory researchers found several oddities in the giant squid’s DNA — genes that are rarely found in other invertebrates, for instance — giving scientists new tools with which understand the bizarre animals.

UCSC Genome Browser posts the coronavirus genome

Santa Cruz, CA February 7, 2020 —Research into the novel Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus, the deadly “coronavirus” that has forced the Chinese government to quarantine more than 50 million people in the country’s dense industrial heartland, will be facilitated by the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute. The Genomics Institute’s Genome Browser team has posted the complete biomolecular code of the virus for researchers all over the world to use.

“When we display coronavirus data in the UCSC Genome Browser, it lets researchers look at the virus’ structure and more importantly work with it so they can research how they want to attack it,” said UCSC Genome Browser Engineer Hiram Clawson.

Samples of the virus have been processed in labs all over the world, and the raw information about its genetic code has been sent to the worldwide repository of genomic information at the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Bioinformatics (NCBI) in Bethesda, Maryland.

Human clinical trial suggests CRISPR feasible for fighting cancer

The results are in from a human clinical trial using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system to treat cancer. The study involved editing the immune cells of three cancer patients to better fight tumors, and the results show that the treated cells persist in the body for long periods and didn’t trigger any dangerous side effects.

CRISPR allows scientists to make precise edits to the genes in living cells, removing harmful genes and introducing new beneficial ones. Animal tests of the technique have shown great promise in treating a range of diseases, such as cervical cancer, muscular dystrophy and HIV.

Human tests have begun in recent years, as scientists targeted lung cancer and rare blood diseases with promising results. But there have still been concerns that CRISPR may not be completely safe, as the possibility of unintended mutations looms. It was also questioned whether edited cells would stick around in the body long enough to be very effective.

Expansion of known ssRNA phage genomes: From tens to over a thousand

O.o!

The first sequenced genome was that of the 3569-nucleotide single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) bacteriophage MS2. Despite the recent accumulation of vast amounts of DNA and RNA sequence data, only 12 representative ssRNA phage genome sequences are available from the NCBI Genome database (June 2019). The difficulty in detecting RNA phages in metagenomic datasets raises questions as to their abundance, taxonomic structure, and ecological importance. In this study, we iteratively applied profile hidden Markov models to detect conserved ssRNA phage proteins in 82 publicly available metatranscriptomic datasets generated from activated sludge and aquatic environments. We identified 15,611 nonredundant ssRNA phage sequences, including 1015 near-complete genomes. This expansion in the number of known sequences enabled us to complete a phylogenetic assessment of both sequences identified in this study and known ssRNA phage genomes. Our expansion of these viruses from two environments suggests that they have been overlooked within microbiome studies.

Viruses, particularly bacteriophages targeting prokaryotes, are the most diverse biological entities in the biosphere (1, 2). Currently, there are 11,489 genome sequences available in the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) Viral RefSeq database (version 94). The vast majority of known phage have a double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) genome (3, 4). Recent metagenomic analysis of 145 marine virome sampling sites identified 195,728 DNA viral populations, highlighting that only a fraction of Earth’s viral diversity has been characterized (5). An additional expansion of known phage populations by Roux et al. (6) revealed that not only dsDNA phages but also single-stranded DNA Inoviridae are far more diverse than previously considered. The rapid expansion in viral discovery through metagenomics is enabling a greater understanding of their roles within environments and their evolutionary relationships, which is subsequently causing a revolution in phage taxonomy (7).

Despite the identification of single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) phages over 50 years ago (8), there are few representative sequences available. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has currently categorized approximately 5500 viruses (9). Yet, their classification only applies to 25 ssRNA phage sequences (complete or partial) across two genera, Levivirus and Allolevivirus, and an additional 32 sequences unclassified below a family taxonomic rank (10). Historically, methods for classifying Leviviridae depended on molecular weight, density, sedimentation, and serological cross-reactivity (11). A subsequent classification method separated the two genera, with the Alloleviviruses containing a fourth unique gene predicted to encode a lysin (12). Recently, an analysis of the evolution origin of all currently known RNA viruses by Wolf et al. (13) suggested that ssRNA phages may actually be two distinct lineages, which they termed Leviviridae and “Levi-like” viruses.

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