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Category: health – Page 320

New imaging analysis pipeline could aid in drug and vaccine development

From testing drugs to developing vaccines, the close study of the immune system is key to improving real-world health outcomes. T-cells are integral to this research, as these white blood cells help tailor the body’s immune response to specific pathogens.

With lattice light-sheet microscopy (LLSM), scientists have been able to closely examine , such as T-cells, in 4D. But with limited data points, there wasn’t an effective way to analyze the LLSM data.

A new paper by researchers from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago, published May 20 in the journal Cell Systems, introduces a solution—a pipeline for lattice light-sheet microscopy multi-dimensional analyses (LaMDA).

Regulation Too Often Shackles the Hands of Innovators

After biomedical scientists demonstrated that they could make dangerous viruses like influenza even more dangerous, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implemented a three-year moratorium on funding such research. But a couple of months ago, in December, the moratorium was lifted, and a tight set of rules were put in its place, such as a mandate for oversight panels.

The prospect of engineering a deadly pandemic virus in a laboratory suggests that only a fool would wish away government regulation entirely.

However, as a whole, regulation has done more harm than good in the arena of scientific innovation. The reason is that the sort of person who thinks like a bureaucratic regulator isn’t the sort of person who thinks like a scientist. The sad fact of the matter is that those most interested in the regulatory process tend to be motivated by politics and ideology rather than scientific inquiry and technological progress.

An artificial intelligence system reveals liquiritin inhibits SARS-CoV-2

The pandemic COVID-19 has spread to all over the world and greatly threatens safety and health of people. COVID-19 is highly infectious and with high mortality rate. As no effective antiviral treatment is currently available, new drugs are urgently needed. We employed transcriptional analysis to uncover potential antiviral drugs from natural products or FDA approved drugs. We found liquiritin significantly inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 in Vero E6 cells with EC50 = 2.39 μM. Mechanistically, we found liquiritin exerts anti-viral function by mimicking type I interferon. Upregulated genes induced by liquiritin are enriched in GO categories including type I interferon signaling pathway, negative regulation of viral genome replication and etc. In toxicity experiment, no death was observed when treated at dose of 300 mg/kg for a week in ICR mice. All the organ indexes but liver and serum biochemical indexes were normal after treatment. Liquiritin is abundant in licorice tablet (~0.2% by mass), a traditional Chinese medicine. Together, we recommend liquiritin as a competitive candidate for treating COVID-19. We also expect liquiritin to have a broad and potent antiviral function to other viral pathogens, like HBV, HIV and etc.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Forget Exercise—These Mice Got Ripped With Gene Therapy

A gene therapy trial performed on mice may foreshadow yet another way to hack fitness. In a study done by a team at Washington University in St. Louis’ medical school, mice quickly built muscle mass and reduced obesity after receiving the therapy, even while eating a diet high in fat and not exercising. The results were published last week in a paper in Science Advances.

The gene targeted was FST, which is responsible for making a protein called follistatin. In humans and most other mammals, follistatin helps grow muscle and control metabolism by blocking a protein called myostatin, which acts to restrain muscle growth and ensure muscles don’t get too big.

The researchers injected eight-week-old mice with a virus carrying a healthy FST gene (gene therapy involves adding healthy copies of a gene to cells, usually using a virus as a deliveryman).

Over a period of 18 weeks, or about 4 months, the team observed that the muscle mass of the treated mice more than doubled, as did their strength level. They also experienced reduced damage related to osteoarthritis, less inflammation in their joints, and had healthier hearts and blood vessels than mice that didn’t receive the gene therapy —even though all the mice ate the same high-fat diet and did the same amount of exercise.

Technology In A Time Of Crisis: How DARPA And AI Are Shaping The Future

Then there is the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), a multi-institutional initiative that includes The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Allen Institute for AI, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), Microsoft, and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The goal of this initiative is to create new natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to scour scientific and medical literature to help researchers prioritize potential therapies to evaluate for further study. AI is also being used to automate screening at checkpoints by evaluating temperature via thermal cameras, as well as modulations in sweat and skin discoloration. What’s more, AI-powered robots have even been used to monitor and treat patients. In Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, an entire field hospital was transitioned into a “smart hospital” fully staffed by AI robotics.

Any time of great challenge is a time of great change. The waves of technological innovation that are occurring now will echo throughout eternity. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics are experiencing a call to mobilization that will forever alter the fabric of discovery in the fields of bioengineering, biomimicry and artificial intelligence. The promise of tomorrow will be perpetuated by the pangs of today. It is the symbiosis of all these fields that will power future innovations.

Galactic cosmic rays now available for study on Earth, thanks to NASA

Every once in a while I have a contentious discussion with someone about traveling to Mars, and the risks involved. One of the hardest risks to describe is the threat from galactic cosmic rays. Here is a short article about a new facility investigating the effects of galactic cosmic rays.

The very important point here is that we are not discussing electromagnetic radiation. These ions have been shown to sometimes penetrate spacecraft and inflict damage on astronauts brains. Earthlings do not have to worry about these as much because we have a magnetosphere that shields us from ions.

To better understand and mitigate the health risks faced by astronauts from exposure to space radiation, we ideally need to be able to test the effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) here on Earth under laboratory conditions. An article publishing on May 19, 2020 in the open access journal PLOS Biology from Lisa Simonsen and colleagues at the NASA Langley Research Center, USA, describes how NASA has developed a ground-based GCR Simulator at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL), located at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Galactic cosmic rays comprise a mixture of highly energetic protons, , and higher charge and energy ions ranging from lithium to iron, and they are extremely difficult to shield against. These ions interact with spacecraft materials and to create a complex mixed field of primary and secondary particles.

The from these heavy ions and mixtures of ions are poorly understood. Using recently developed fast beam switching and controls systems technology, NSRL demonstrated the ability to rapidly and repeatedly switch between multiple ion-energy beam combinations within a short period of time, while accurately controlling the extremely small daily doses delivered by the heavier ions.

Brazil’s Nurses Are Dying as Covid-19 Overwhelms Hospitals

The coronavirus is spreading rapidly throughout Brazil, overwhelming a health care system that is ill prepared to handle a pandemic of this magnitude and proving especially deadly for the medical workers on the front lines.

At least 116 nurses have died in this country of 210 million from Covid-19, according to Brazil’s Federal Nursing Council—the highest toll anywhere. That is more than the 107 nurses who have died in the U.S., where the total death count of people succumbing to the pandemic is about six times more than in Brazil. In Italy, which has about twice as many total deaths as Brazil, 39 nurses have died, according to Italy’s National Federation of Nurses, or Fnopi.

Xi Vows China Will Share Vaccine and Gives WHO Full Backing

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to make any coronavirus vaccine universally available once it’s developed, part of an effort to defuse criticism of his government’s response to a pandemic that has killed more than 315,000 people around the world.

In a speech on Monday to the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the Geneva-based World Health Organization, Xi called for greater international cooperation in fighting the pandemic. He also said China will provide $2 billion over two years to support the fight. Taiwan dropped a request to be included in the gathering after objections from Beijing.

Chinese Official Confirms That China Ordered Labs To Destroy Coronavirus Samples

A senior Chinese government official confirmed Friday that authorities ordered laboratories to destroy samples of coronavirus in early January.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had accused Chinese officials of ordering the samples’ destruction as part of the regime’s cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak in its early stages.

Pompeo said on April 22 that China “censored those who tried to warn the world, it ordered a halt to testing of new samples, and it destroyed existing samples.” He offered more specificity on May 6, stating that China’s National Health Commission [NHC] ordered virus samples destroyed on Jan. 3.

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