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Category: biotech/medical – Page 386

A blood test for colon cancer performed well in a study published Wednesday, offering a new kind of screening for a leading cause of cancer deaths.

The test looks for DNA fragments shed by tumor cells and precancerous growths. It’s already for sale in the U.S. for $895, but has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and most insurers do not cover it. The maker of the test, Guardant Health, anticipates an FDA decision this year.

In the study, the test caught 83% of the cancers but very few of the precancerous growths found by colonoscopy, the gold standard for colon cancer screening. Besides spotting tumors, colonoscopies can prevent the disease by removing precancerous growths called polyps.

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A newly developed “GPS nanoparticle” injected intravenously can home in on cancer cells to deliver a genetic punch to the protein implicated in tumor growth and spread, according to researchers from Penn State. They tested their approach in human cell lines and in mice to effectively knock down a cancer-causing gene, reporting that the technique may potentially offer a more precise and effective treatment for notoriously hard-to-treat basal-like breast cancers.

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To combine two low-energy photons into one high-energy photon efficiently, the energy must be able to hop freely, but not too quickly, between randomly oriented molecules of a solid. This Kobe University discovery provides a much-needed design guideline for developing materials for more efficient PV cells, displays, or even anti-cancer therapies.

Light of different colors has different energies and is therefore useful for very different things. For the development of more efficient PV cells, OLED displays, or anti-cancer therapies, it is desirable to be able to upcycle two low-energy photons into a high-energy , and many researchers worldwide are working on materials for this up-conversion.

During this process, light is absorbed by the material, and its energy is handed around among the material’s as a so-called “triplet exciton.” However, it was unclear what allows two triplet excitons to efficiently combine their energies into a different excited state of a single molecule that then emits a high-energy photon, and this knowledge gap has been a serious bottleneck in the development of such materials.

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Researchers have found a way to stop active cancer cells in their tracks – meaning they can then be eliminated by new drug treatments.

A collaborative research project between the University of Dundee’s Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) and Queen Mary University of London, has identified chemical compounds, called tool molecules, that can halt active cancer cells.

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A 78-year-old man who had been living inside an iron lung since surviving polio in the 1950s has passed away.

As CBS News reports, Paul “Polio Paul” Alexander garnered a huge following on social media, getting millions of views on TikTok as he answered questions about his unusual life.

The medical device didn’t stop Alexander from becoming a lawyer and opening his own successful practice. He also published a book about his life.

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ABOVE: Blackiston and his colleagues dovetailed biology and robotics to generate biobots derived from frog stem cells. These biobots can move due to cilia, small hairlike structures that cover their surfaces. Douglas Blackiston and Sam Kriegman, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Douglas Blackiston, a developmental biologist at Tufts University, has always been fascinated by transformation. Using uncommon model organisms, from caterpillars and butterflies to tadpoles and frogs, he investigates how biology is adaptive. In one of his favorite projects, Blackiston transplanted eyes into the tails of blind tadpoles, restoring their vision in a striking display of tissue plasticity. This led him to an unusual spin-off project, where his work in biology dovetailed with robotics. In this work, Blackiston and his colleagues repurposed frog stem cells into programmable synthetic organisms to explore the design space of cells and their interactions.

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Researchers from Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California (UC) San Diego have discovered thousands of previously unknown bile acids, a type of molecule used by our gut microbiome to communicate with the rest of the body. The findings can build a better understanding of our gut microbiome and may lead to the development of therapeutics for diseases that are related to the gut microbiome such as type 2 diabetes, intestinal bowel diseases, and more.

The findings are published in Cell in an article titled, “The underappreciated diversity of bile acid modifications.”

“The repertoire of modifications to bile acids and related steroidal lipids by host and microbial metabolism remains incompletely characterized,” the researchers wrote. “To address this knowledge gap, we created a reusable resource of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) spectra by filtering 1.2 billion publicly available MS/MS spectra for bile-acid-selective ion patterns.”

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A was assessed in a recent phase 2 trial.

The optimal first-line chemotherapy for advanced pancreatic cancer, validated in phase 3 trials, is the triplet combination of infusional 5-FU, oxaliplatin, and either irinotecan or nanoliposome-encapsulated irinotecan (FOLFIRINOX or NALIRIFOX). Now, in an industry-supported, randomized, phase 2 trial involving patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, investigators compared the combination of gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel to a novel sequenced regimen of gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel followed by mFOLFOX-6 on a 6-week cycle.

Of 157 patients, the median age was 66, 94% had metastatic disease, only 18% had undergone prior surgery, and 4% had received prior chemotherapy. The primary endpoint of 12-month overall survival (OS) was higher with the sequenced regimen compared with gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel alone (55.3% vs. 35.4%, P =0.02); median OS was also higher (13.2 vs. 9.7 months; hazard ratio, 0.68). Median progression-free survival was higher with the sequenced regimen (7.0 vs 5.2 months; HR, 0.52) as was the response rate (39.7% vs. 20.3%). Adverse events and rates of grade 3/4 neurologic toxicity were similar between the two treatment arms.

This small phase 2 trial indicates potential superiority for the sequencing of mFOLFOX6 with gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel compared with gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel alone. However, this sequencing regimen offers no clear advantage over the two approved triplet regimens, FOLFIRINOX and NALIRIFOX, and any statement about superiority compared with standard triplet therapy would require proof in a phase 3 trial.

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A surgery team in the UK successfully utilized the recently-released Apple Vision Pro to assist spinal surgery — a fascinating use case for the augmented reality (AR) headsets that goes far beyond movie-watching, productivity-hacking, or distracted driving.

As Business Insider reports, the expensive “spatial computing” device was used to execute two microspinal procedures at London’s Cromwell Hospital. To be clear, it wasn’t the surgeons themselves who were wearing bunky AR headsets. The device was instead donned by an assisting surgical scrub nurse, who according to a press release used headset-integrated software called eXeX to access things like “surgical setup and the procedural guides from within the sterile field of the operating theatre,” in addition to any needed data or surgical visualizations.

So, in short: coupled with the eXeX software, the headset offered the folks in the operating room hands-free access to documents and other information related to the procedure and its workflow. Pretty cool!

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