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Category: biotech/medical – Page 3,300

Precision radiation helps ward off first-time mom’s brain tumor

Another exampme of how precision works.

While pregnant with her first child, Rhea Birusingh started experiencing blurry vision that her OB-GYN dismissed as an expected pregnancy-related change, but three months later, she went to her ophthalmologist, who discovered an inoperable 2-centimeter benign brain tumor behind her right eye. Now, nearly four months later, Birusingh’s son is healthy and her vision is normal, thanks to a powerful, precise radiation treatment.

“When you’re a pathologist and your eyes are a money maker, you start to get a little bit worried,” Birusingh, 37, of Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida, told FoxNews.com.

Doctors at UF Health Cancer Center – Orlando Health decided to use the treatment, called proton beam therapy, because Birusingh’s tumor was adjacent to her hippocampus, which is critical for short- and long-term memory and learning. Proton beam therapy works differently from conventional radiation treatments, which rely on X-rays. Birusingh was the first patient to undergo the treatment— which uses a three-story, 200,000 pound machine— at the hospital.

Immune cells thought to trigger dementia actually PROTECT against it

A specific type of immune cell, called microglia (green) can help contain amyloid plaques (magenta), the key hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, thus limiting their damage to surrounding brain cells.

But, Dr Jaime Grutzendler, associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Yale, said that is no longer thought to be the case, and should signal a new.

He said: ‘It suggests we should be enhancing the function of these immune cells, not trying to suppress it.’

Here’s How to Prevent Half of Cancer Deaths

Harvard you’re wrong. Why? Harvard needs to explain to all the families with genetic mutations tied to various types of cancer, cancer survivors who carry a genetic mutation, or the workers who were exposed at work to radiation or carcinogens how their smoking caused their cancer when they never smoked in their entire life. However, how do you explain that to the countless million patients, survivors, and loved ones who lost someone to cancer that never smoked or were exposed to smoking.

As many as 40 percent of cancer cases, and half of cancer deaths, come down to things people could easily change, researchers said Thursday.

While Americans often worry about whether chemicals, pollution or other factors out of their control cause cancer, the new analysis shows otherwise: People are firmly in charge of much of their own risk of cancer.

Gene helps prevent heart attack, stroke — and may offer way to block effects of aging

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., May 17, 2016 — A gene that scientific dogma insists is inactive in adults actually plays a vital role in preventing the underlying cause of most heart attacks and strokes, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined. The discovery opens a new avenue for battling those deadly conditions, and it raises the tantalizing prospect that doctors could use the gene to prevent or delay at least some of the effects of aging.

“Finding a way to augment the expression of this gene in adult cells may have profound implications for promoting health and possibly reversing some of the detrimental effects with aging,” said researcher Gary K. Owens, PhD, director of UVA’s Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center.

Unexpected Protective Effect

Size of Brain Region May Impact How Well Exposure Therapy Works for PTSD

Interesting read on PTSD. Wonder how much this plays into DARPA’s own research around memory removal on PTSD patients. hmmm.

New research suggests that PTSD patients with a larger region of the brain that helps distinguish between safety and threat are more likely to respond to exposure-based therapy.

The study expands upon prior research that discovered having a smaller hippocampus is associated with increased risk of PTSD.

In the current study, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), examined the relationship between hippocampus volume, and response to treatment in 50 participants with PTSD and 36 trauma-exposed healthy controls.

How nanotechnology could detect and treat cancer

The crew of the Proteus has one desperate chance to save a man’s life. Shrunk to the size of a large bacterium, the submarine contains a team of scientists and physicians racing to destroy a blood clot in the brain of a Soviet defector. The group journeys through the body, evading giant white blood cells and tiny antibodies while traveling through the heart, the inner ear and the brain to reach and destroy the blockage.

Although events in the film Fantastic Voyage were far-fetched when it was released in 1966, they’re now being realized every day in labs around the world, particularly in cancer treatment. A growing field called nanotechnology is allowing researchers to manipulate molecules and structures much smaller than a single cell to enhance our ability to see, monitor and destroy cancer cells in the body.

Tens of thousands of patients have already received chemotherapy drugs delivered by nanoparticles called liposomes, and dozens of other approaches are currently in clinical trials. Within the next five to 10 years, our bodies’ biggest defenders may be tinier than we could have ever imagined.

Illustration of scientists using nanotechnology on the body

The bionic skin that can feel a tumor

Nice!

Our skin is our largest organ. A gateway between our brain and the rest of the world.

Imagine then a scene where skin could communicate what’s going on inside a human body. It could inform surgeons, provide alerts when our body is about to fall ill, or even diagnose diseases inside another human being, simply through the sense of touch.

University of Tokyo scientist Takao Someya is making that scene a reality.

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