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Category: biotech/medical – Page 3,071

Nanoparticles may help treat blood cancer

Nano-particles to treat Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.

A new therapeutic strategy for treating Acute Myeloid Leukaemia could involve using nano-particles to deliver a genetic molecule to fight the disease.

The nanoparticles carrying microRNA miR-22, (a small non-coding RNA molecule that regulates gene expression), showed therapeutic potential in mouse models of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

AML is a form of cancer of the blood cells which, despite intensive chemotherapy, is often fatal within one or two years from diagnosis.

Minimally invasive colitis screening using infrared technology could offer fast, simple test

Could we use this for colon scopes? I know many who would like to stop drining the speciality milk shake from their local drug stores prior to the date with the GI.

A minimally invasive screening for ulcerative colitis, a debilitating gastrointestinal tract disorder, using emerging infrared technology could be a rapid and cost-effective method for detecting disease that eliminates the need for biopsies and intrusive testing of the human body, according to researchers at Georgia State University.

The technique involves testing serum, the clear liquid that can be separated from clotted blood, for the increased presence of mannose, a sugar that is a marker for , using Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy. This technology is sensitive to vibrations in the chemical bonds of the serum sample’s molecules and requires minimal sample preparation, making it a rapid diagnostic alternative.

The findings are published in the Journal of Biophotonics.

Low levels of vitamin D, methylation in black teens may increase cancer risk

Lesson in Vitamin D.

Low levels of vitamin D in black teens correlates with low activity of a major mechanism for controlling gene expression that may increase their risk of cancer and other disease, researchers report.

Their study measured vitamin D levels as well as levels of global DNA methylation in 454 healthy individuals age 14–18. In this group, 99 percent of the white teens had adequate vitamin D levels, 66 percent of the black teens were vitamin D-deficient and all the black teens had lower levels of methylation compared to their white peers, said Dr. Haidong Zhu, molecular geneticist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

When they looked at another group of 58 young black individuals also with low vitamin D and methylation levels who received varying doses of vitamin D supplements for 16 weeks, they found a dose response: the more vitamin D received, the higher the methylation activity, said Zhu, corresponding author of the study in the journal PLOS ONE.

Sister offers warning about an increasing kind of cancer

After today’s news from India about HPV; I did some research online about Cold Sores and HPV possible tie and came across the following article that seems to highlight a possible tie. Granted more research is needed; however, one doctor seems to believe there is a tie.

Sister Mary Ryan thought she had a simple, but painful, canker sore in her mouth that would not heal when she went to her dentist in 1998.

She was surprised to find out it was a cancerous tumor under her tongue, and even more surprised at how quickly it had developed.

Having just been to the dentist that January, she had no idea when she returned for an appointment in May that an oral surgeon would be called in immediately to examine her mouth.

Researchers use light to battle cancer

BOSTON: In an intriguing approach to the fight against cancer, researchers for the first time have used light to prevent and reverse tumors using a technique called optogenetics to manipulate electrical signaling in cells.

Scientists at Tufts University performed optogenetics experiments on frogs, often used in basic research into cancer because of the biological similarities in their tumors to those in mammals, to test whether this method already used in brain and nervous system research could be applied to cancer.

“We call this whole research program cracking the bioelectric code,” said biologist Michael Levin, who heads the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology.

Kids’ cancer risk might be tied to where mom was born

Hmmm; I do know for many there is a set of genetic mutations that seem to sit dormat and eventually triggered by environment conditions.

(Reuters Health) — The risk of some childhood cancers might vary depending on where a child’s mother was born, a new study suggests.

For example, some brain and kidney cancers occurred less often in children whose Hispanic mothers were born outside the U.S. than in youngsters whose Hispanic or white mothers were born in the U.S., researchers found.

However, the Hispanic children had a higher risk of certain blood cancers regardless of where their mothers were born.

New genomic classification approach strengthens early cancer trial design

Very promising.

The explosion of sequencing technologies such as next generation sequencing (NGS) means it is now possible to tailor individual cancer therapies based on patients’ genetic make-up and tumour molecular profiling. The challenge lies in determining which genetic alterations are important in driving disease, so called ‘actionable mutations’.

Sequencing the entire genome or even a limited region reveals large numbers of alterations. Most are harmless, normal changes that do not promote the transformation of a normal cell to a cancer cell. Being able to sort out which changes are drivers in a cancer is a significant, but critical challenge in being able to guide therapy in clinical trials.

Our scientists at AstraZeneca are taking a leading position, defining a genetic classification strategy for how patients can be characterised at the molecular level, integrating knowledge from the drug’s mechanism of action combined with disease biology to help guide cancer therapy in early stage exploratory clinical trials. The article published in the May 2016 issue of Nature Reviews Cancer describes approaches taken by external groups alongside our own efforts to tackle this problem.

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