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Category: biotech/medical – Page 994

Turning Your Smartphone into a Quantum Sensor: The Power of OLEDs

UNSW Sydney researchers have developed a chip-scale method using OLEDs to image magnetic fields, potentially transforming smartphones into portable quantum sensors. The technique is more scalable and doesn’t require laser input, making the device smaller and mass-producible. The technology could be used in remote medical diagnostics and material defect identification.

Smartphones could one day become portable quantum sensors thanks to a new chip-scale approach that uses organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) to image magnetic fields.

Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science at UNSW Sydney have demonstrated that OLEDs, a type of semiconductor material commonly found in flat-screen televisions, smartphone screens, and other digital displays, can be used to map magnetic fields using magnetic resonance.

Researchers Slow Aging in Cells

Scientists are still determining whether humans will reach a maximum possible age or if we can extend lifespan indefinitely. One thing we know is that the aging we see and feel in our bodies is connected to aging that individual cells experience. Yeast is a common model in molecular biology that is often used to study aging. In 2020, scientists found that yeast cells could go down one of two aging paths; in one, structures called nucleoli were degraded and ribosomal DNA experienced less silencing; in the other, mitochondria were affected and heme accumulation was reduced. The researchers suggested that these were two distinct types of terminal aging.

In follow-up work, the research team has manipulated the genetics of those pathways, and have extended the lifespan of cells by doing so. The work has been reported in Science. The investigators applied a solution to the cells that altered gene circuits to stop the cells from deteriorating.

The impact of technology on drug discovery

This is the latest episode of the free DDW narrated podcast, “The impact of technology on drug discovery”. It covers two articles written for Volume 23, Issue 2 – Spring 2022 of DDW. They are called “Talking Tech” and “Rejuvenation biotech: Can this company make age a thing of the past?”

With Covid-19 taking so much of the drug discovery and development’s focus over the last two years, it has been easy to overlook other areas within the sector that deserve our attention. So in the first article, Lu Rahman highlights the technology that will play a valuable role in the industry.

Kizoo Technology Capital has a clear aim – to develop drugs that abate or cure age-related diseases. In the second article, Lu Rahman spoke to owner, Michael Greve, to find out more about this exciting work that aims to make age-related therapies affordable for everyone.

Pfizer, Astellas Pharma‘ Xtandi combo therapy cuts risk of metastasis, death by 58 percent in prostate cancer

“There are patients with localized prostate cancer who undergo prostatectomy or radiation therapy in an attempt to cure their disease, but, unfortunately, some patients will develop BCR,” said Neal Shore, M.D., F.A.C.S., U.S. Chief Medical Officer of Urology and Surgical Oncology, GenesisCare, Director, Carolina Urologic Research Center, and Primary Investigator for the EMBARK study. “Importantly, some patients with BCR are at very high risk for developing metastatic disease, which can lead to a cascade of therapeutic interventions. The clinical goal of BCR therapy is to delay cancer progression and avoid metastatic disease. The MFS results from the EMBARK study demonstrate that this intervention with XTANDI plus leuprolide was statistically significant for patients with high-risk BCR.”

“The EMBARK study is a Phase 3 trial exploring the potential of enzalutamide in patients with non-metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer with high-risk BCR,” said Stephen J. Freedland, M.D., Director of the Center for Integrated Research in Cancer and Lifestyle and the Warschaw Robertson Law Families Chair in Prostate Cancer at Cedars-Sinai Cancer and Co-Principal Investigator of the Clinical Trial. “If approved, we hope to bring a new option to men earlier in the course of their disease.”

Consistent with the study’s primary endpoint, statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements were also observed in the trial’s key secondary endpoints in both the XTANDI combination and monotherapy arms. Specifically, the XTANDI monotherapy arm demonstrated that treatment with XTANDI reduced the risk of metastasis or death by 37% versus leuprolide plus placebo (HR: 0.63; 95% CI, 0.46–0.87; P=0.0049), meeting its MFS endpoint. Treatment with XTANDI plus leuprolide and XTANDI monotherapy reduced the risk of PSA progression by 93% (HR: 0.07; 95% CI, 0.03–0.14; P0.0001) and 67% (HR: 0.33; 95% CI, 0.23–0.49; P0.0001), respectively, versus placebo plus leuprolide. The progression risk in starting a new antineoplastic therapy was reduced by 64% in those treated with XTANDI plus leuprolide (HR: 0.36; 95% CI, 0.26–0.49; P0.0001) and 46% in those treated with XTANDI monotherapy (HR: 0.54; 95% CI, 0.41–0.71; P0.0001) versus placebo plus leuprolide.

Cannabinoid Agonist Receptor May Have Potential Therapeutic Uses for Rare Autoimmune Disorder

A study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology suggested that using a cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2) agonist called lenabasum may lessen the discomfort caused by amyopathic dermatomyositis. Dermatomyositis is a rare systemic autoimmune disease with distinctive cutaneous features frequently accompanied by muscle inflammation, interstitial lung disease, and malignancy. This phase 2 trial examined the potential benefits of activating the endocannabinoid system to reduce the inflammation causing the symptoms.

Study participants included twenty-two adults diagnosed with moderate to severe skin disease caused by dermatomyositis. They received 20 mg daily of lenabasum or a placebo for 28 days, then 20 mg twice daily for 56 days. Their Cutaneous Dermatomyositis Disease Area and Severity Index (CDASI) levels were evaluated relative to baseline as well as secondary outcomes such as quality of life (measured with the Skindex-29) and specific biomarkers.

More than 40% of the patients taking lenabasum demonstrated significant improvements. The study showed that the CB2 agonist lenabasum improved the skin of amyopathic dermatomyositis patients. The researchers noted that lenabasum was well-tolerated and effective. More than 40% of the patients in the study taking lenabasum demonstrated significant improvements on the CDASI, a validated disease-severity scale. Results showed a trend for the change from baseline CDASI to be greater in lenabasum versus placebo starting at Day 43, two weeks after a dose increase. On Day 113 there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups. The researchers noted that the drug was well tolerated.

Machine learning model finds genetic factors for heart disease

To get an inside look at the heart, cardiologists often use electrocardiograms (ECGs) to trace its electrical activity and magnetic resonance images (MRIs) to map its structure. Because the two types of data reveal different details about the heart, physicians typically study them separately to diagnose heart conditions.

Now, in a paper published in Nature Communications, scientists in the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a that can learn patterns from ECGs and MRIs simultaneously, and based on those patterns, predict characteristics of a patient’s . Such a tool, with further development, could one day help doctors better detect and diagnose heart conditions from routine tests such as ECGs.

The researchers also showed that they could analyze ECG recordings, which are easy and cheap to acquire, and generate MRI movies of the same heart, which are much more expensive to capture. And their method could even be used to find new genetic markers of heart disease that existing approaches that look at individual data modalities might miss.

AI chatbot outperforms human doctors in responding to patient questions

An artificial intelligence chatbot was able to outperform human doctors in responding to patient questions posted online, according to evaluators in a new study.

Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Internal Medicine found that a chatbot’s responses to patient questions, pulled from a social media platform, were rated “significantly higher for both quality and empathy.”

Researchers uncover new clues to origins of the most common pediatric kidney cancer

While Wilms tumor—also known as nephroblastoma—is rare, it is the most prevalent childhood kidney cancer. Researchers at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have now pinpointed a disruption in early kidney progenitor cell development that can be linked to the formation of Wilms tumor.

In a study published in Advanced Science, researchers at the GOFARR Laboratory in Urology compared kidney progenitor cells from a with from a healthy kidney. Normally, these precursor cells mature into kidney cells, but when their early development is dysregulated, they behave like .

While most children with Wilms tumor are successfully treated, current therapies are aggressive. A minority of these patients have unfavorable prognoses or relapses; for these children, there is no existing therapy. “By achieving a more precise understanding of how Wilms tumors develop, our goal is to find new treatments for all types of Wilms tumor,” says Laura Perin, Ph.D., Co-Director of the GOFARR laboratory and senior study co-author with Stefano Da Sacco, Ph.D., another researcher at the GOFARR Laboratory.