𧏠Benjamin Arya interviews me about my research on gene therapy delivery systems, about my first startup company Cathedral Therapeutics (see link to website and a bit about my newer venture towards solving the brain delivery problem.
âPutting an AAV inside of a protein vault shields the AAV from the preexisting antibodies that humans produce.â
When most people think about Alzheimerâs disease, memory loss is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Forgetting a loved oneâs name, missing appointments or repeatedly misplacing everyday items are often considered early warning signs.
But what if the disease begins affecting the brain long before memory problems become noticeable? New research suggests that another change in brain function may appear even earlier: difficulty adapting when circumstances change.
In a recent study, researchers found that animal models with Alzheimerâs-related brain changes developed problems with cognitive flexibility months before they showed signs of memory impairment. Cognitive flexibility refers to the brainâs ability to adjust behavior, learn new rules and adapt when situations change.
Infections caused by dengue virus (DENV) result in significant morbidity and mortality. A proportion of infected individuals develop dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) characterized by circulatory collapse and multiorgan failure. Early detection of individuals likely to develop DHF could lead to improved outcomes for patients and help us use healthcare resources more efficiently. We identified proteins that are differentially regulated during early disease in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients who subsequently developed DHF. Four dengue fever (DF), four DHF and two healthy control PBMCs were subjected to tandem mass tag mass spectrometry. Differentially regulated proteins were used to identify up- or down-regulated Gene Ontology pathways. One hundred and sixty proteins were differentially expressed in DENV-infected samples compared to healthy controls. PBMCs from DHF patients differentially expressed 90 proteins compared to DF; these were involved in down-regulation of platelet activation and aggregation, cell adhesion, and cytoskeleton arrangement pathways. Proteins involved in oxidative stress and p38 MAPK signalling were upregulated in DHF samples during early infection compared to DF. This study has identified 90 proteins differentially regulated in PBMCs that could potentially serve as biomarkers to identify patients at risk of developing DHF at an early disease stage.
The presence of certain bacteria in the gut microbiota, and fluctuations in a personâs metabolism, can be seen in people who go on to develop type 2 diabetes years later. This has been shown in a large Swedish study led by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology. The study is published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.
The discovery paves the way for identifying people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes at an early stage, enabling preventive measures to be introduced.
âOur study was able to show changes in the gut microbiota several years before the disease developed. This could indicate that the composition of the microbiome plays a role in the development of diabetes, and not the other way around,â says GaĂ«l Toubon, a postdoctoral researcher in food science at Chalmersâ Department of Life Sciences.
People with Down syndrome (DS) show reduced saliva flow and high periodontal disease burden. In Dp16 mice, a model of DS, Son et al. show that deficient calcium signaling in salivary glands underlies hyposalivation and is associated with oral and gut microbial dysbiosis and altered succinate levels.
Dr. jeff jones, MD â chief medical officer cullinan therapeutics.
For decades weâve treated autoimmune diseases by suppressing the immune system â but what if weâve been approaching the problem all wrong? What if, instead of lifelong immunosuppression, we could selectively eliminate the immune cells causing disease and allow the immune system to rebuild itself? Today weâre exploring one of the hottest areas in biotechnology: T-cell engagers and the possibility of an \.
In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from Technion and Tel Aviv University present BetaDescribe, an AI system that translates protein sequences into natural-language descriptions, opening a new path toward understanding protein functions and accelerating drug development and material design.
Protein analysis is essential in medicine and biotechnology, as demonstrated by breakthroughs such as Ozempic, a drug whose development was inspired by a peptide found in the saliva of a rare desert lizard and is used to treat obesity, diabetes and other conditions. However, experimental protein characterization remains a lengthy and expensive process, and even large language models (LLMs) have had limited success in performing this task.
This challenge inspired the development of BetaDescribe, an AI system that converts protein sequences into detailed textual descriptions of their functions and other characteristics. In doing so, the system helps bridge the vast gap between the hundreds of thousands of proteins characterized in the lab and the billions or even trillions that actually exist in nature.