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Category: biotech/medical – Page 227

A trio of research papers from Stanford Medicine researchers and their international collaborators transforms scientists’ understanding of how small DNA circles — until recently dismissed as inconsequential — are major drivers of many types of human cancers.

The papers, published simultaneously in Nature on Nov. 6, detail the prevalence and prognostic impact of the circles, called ecDNA for extrachromosomal DNA, in nearly 15,000 human cancers; highlight a novel mode of inheritance that overthrows a fundamental law of genetics; and describe an anti-cancer therapy targeting the circles that is already in clinical trials.

The team, jointly known as eDyNAmiC, are a group of international experts led by professor of pathology Paul Mischel, MD. In 2022, Mischel and the eDyNAmiC team were awarded a $25 million grant from the Cancer Grand Challenges initiative to learn more about the circles. Cancer Grand Challenges, a research initiative co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the United States, supports a global community of interdisciplinary, world-class research teams to take on cancer’s toughest challenges.

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New research indicates that people who contracted COVID-19 early in the pandemic faced a significantly elevated risk of heart attack, stroke, and death for up to three years post-infection.

Those with severe cases saw nearly quadruple the risk, especially in individuals with A, B, or AB blood types, while blood type O was associated with lower risk. This finding highlights long-term cardiovascular threats for COVID-19 patients and suggests that severe cases may need to be considered as a new cardiovascular risk factor. However, further studies on more diverse populations and vaccinated individuals are needed to validate these results.

Long-term cardiovascular risks linked to COVID-19 infection.

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Adolescents see a greater remission of type 2 diabetes compared to adults.

What

Young people with severe obesity who underwent weight-loss surgery at age 19 or younger continued to see sustained weight loss and resolution of common obesity-related comorbidities 10 years later, according to results from a large clinical study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-associated death for women worldwide. While chemotherapy is the mainstream treatment for breast cancer, more than 50% of women undergoing chemotherapy will experience at least one chemotherapy-related adverse side effect. Sometimes, the side effects could be so severe that patients need to terminate treatment early or doctors have to reduce the chemo dosage, and this could worsen their disease. Prolonged exposure to high doses of chemotherapeutic agents could also result in resistance to chemotherapy.

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) is pioneering a novel magnetic therapy — delivered using the OncoFTX System — that serves as an effective companion therapy to chemotherapy to enhance treatment outcome for breast cancer.

Our magnetic technology stimulates cellular oxygen respiration to produce energy. In certain cancers with elevated respiratory rates — such as breast tumors — the magnetic pulses cause the cancer cells to ‘hyperventilate’ and die. Fortunately, the healthy tissues near the cancer are able to tolerate the increased respiratory rate, without ill consequences. Therefore, the OncoFTX System is more selective for cancer than conventional chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Importantly, this therapy is localized, non-invasive and painless.

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The technology is designed to treat the condition atrial fibrillation, or irregular heart rhythm. This is in a way that carries a lower risk of complications and shorter anaesthesia time (when compared to traditional treatment).

The new technology took eighteen years to develop. In recent months, pulsed field ablation has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the acceptance marks a milestone in heart treatment.

The process involves the use of microsecond-scale, high-voltage electrical fields to cause irreversible electroporation and destabilization of cell membranes, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

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Magnetotherapy has been receiving increased attention as an attractive strategy for modulating cell physiology directly at the site of injury, thereby providing the medical community with a safe and non-invasive therapy.

Pesqueira, T., Costa-Almeida, R. & Gomes, M.E. Sci Rep 7, 10,948 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11253-6

Download citation.

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The world is full of unusual unicellular organisms and microbes, many of which have not been discovered yet. In 2017, scientists identified a single-celled marine organism called Chromosphaera perkinsii in sediments collected from Hawaii. This species is estimated to be over a billion years old, making it older than the world’s most ancient animals. Researchers determined that this species has significant similarities to some animal embryos, though it is typically unicellular. The findings, which have been reported in Nature, suggested that some of the genetic mechanisms underlying complex life are present in C. perkinsii, or that it has evolved those characteristics independently.

The investigators noted that this study seems to answer the question of whether the chicken came before the egg; it was apparently the egg, since the genetic tools for making eggs existed prior to the emergence of chickens.

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MIT researchers have developed a miniature, chip-based “tractor beam,” like the one that captures the Millennium Falcon in the film “Star Wars,” that could someday help biologists and clinicians study DNA, classify cells, and investigate the mechanisms of disease.

Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the device uses a beam of light emitted by a silicon-photonics chip to manipulate particles millimeters away from the chip surface. The light can penetrate the glass cover slips that protect samples used in biological experiments, enabling cells to remain in a sterile environment.

Traditional optical tweezers, which trap and manipulate particles using light, usually require bulky microscope setups, but chip-based optical tweezers could offer a more compact, mass-manufacturable, broadly accessible, and high-throughput solution for optical manipulation in biological experiments.

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Shaking hands with a character from the Fortnite video game. Visualizing a patient’s heart in 3D—and “feeling” it beat. Touching the walls of the Roman Coliseum—from your sofa in Los Angeles. What if we could touch and interact with things that aren’t physically in front of us? This reality might be closer than we think, thanks to an emerging technology: the holodeck.

The name might sound familiar. In Star Trek’s Next Generation, a holodeck was an advanced 3D virtual reality world that created the illusion of solid objects. Now, immersive technology researchers at USC and beyond are taking us one step closer to making this science fiction concept a science fact.

On Dec. 15, USC hosted the first International Conference on Holodecks. Organized by Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, a USC associate professor of computer science, the conference featured keynotes, papers and presentations from researchers at USC, Brown University, UCLA, University of Colorado, Stanford University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, UC-Riverside, and haptic technology company UltraLeap.

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