Latest advances in medical research thread

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No need to prepare: New method to directly sequence small genomes without library preparation

(Phys.org)—For the first time, researchers sequenced DNA molecules without the need for the standard pre-sequencing workflow known as library preparation.
Using this approach, the researchers generated sequence data using considerably less DNA than is required using standard methods, even down to less than one nanogram of DNA; 500 times less DNA than is needed by standard practices.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news...ibrary.html#jCp

This is pretty big...

 

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Souped-up immune cells force leukaemia into remission


Augmented immune cells have made an impressive impact on the survival of people with leukaemia.
Souped-up immune cells force leukaemia into remission - health - 11 December 2012 - New Scientist

Thirteen people with a form of the cancer called multiple myeloma were treated with genetically engineered T-cells, and all improved. "The fact we got a response in all 13, you can't get better than that," says James Noble, CEO of Adaptimmune in Abingdon, UK, which developed the treatment.

Cancers often develop because T-cells have lost their ability to target tumour cells, which they normally destroy. To retune that targeting, a team led by Aaron Rapoport at the University of Maryland in Baltimore engineered T-cell genes that coded for a receptor on the cell's surface. They extracted T-cells from each person, then inserted the engineered genes into these cells and re-injected them.

 

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Battle wound foam secures Pentagon funding

Researchers working on a foam designed to limit internal bleeding of soldiers injured on the battlefield have received $15.5m (£9.6m) from the US military to continue their work.

The foam is formed by two liquids, injected into the body, which mix, expand and harden to create an internal dressing.

Arsenal Medical's product is funded by the Pentagon's Darpa research unit.

One UK surgeon said it could help those far away from a medical facility.

The technology is still in early pre-clinical stages, but has already been tested on pigs.

The firm hopes that the polyurethane polymer foam will help control internal bleeding for at least an hour, increasing the survival chances of troops wounded on the battlefield.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-20693705

 

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Fast DNA origami opens way for nanoscale machines
Fast DNA origami opens way for nanoscale machines : Nature News & Comment

Molecules can now be folded into shapes in minutes, not days.
Katharine Sanderson

13 December 2012

DNA strands can be coaxed to fold up into shapes in a matter of minutes, reveals a study. The finding could radically speed up progress in the field of DNA origami.

Biotechnologists are itching to be able to use DNA to make nanoscale machines, but so far they have made only simple forms — tubes, boxes, triangles — and the process has been laborious and time-consuming (see 'What to make with DNA origami').

The technique involves using short DNA strands to hold a longer, folded strand in place at certain points, like sticky tape. Until now, assembling the shape has involved heating the DNA and allowing it to cool slowly for up to a week.

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Biologists engineer algae to make complex anti-cancer ‘designer’ drug

December 13, 2012
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http://www.kurzweilai.net/biologist...paign=e8f193ad0b-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email

Biologists at UC San Diego have succeeded in genetically engineering algae to produce what has been a complex and expensive human therapeutic drug used to treat cancer.

Their achievement opens the door for making these and other “designer” proteins in larger quantities and much more cheaply than can now be made from mammalian cells.

“Because we can make the exact same drug in algae, we have the opportunity to drive down the price down dramatically,” said Stephen Mayfield, a professor of biology at UC San Diego and director of the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology (SD-CAB), a consortium of research institutions that is also working to develop new biofuels from algae.

Their method could even be used to make novel complex designer drugs that could be used to treat cancer or other human diseases in new ways.

“You can’t make these drugs in bacteria, because bacteria are incapable of folding these proteins into these complex, three-dimensional shapes,” said Mayfield. “And you can’t make these proteins in mammalian cells because the toxin would kill them.”

The advance is the culmination of seven years of work in Mayfield’s laboratory to demonstrate that Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a green alga used widely in biology laboratories as a genetic model organism, can produce a wide range of human therapeutic proteins in greater quantity and more cheaply than bacteria or mammalian cells.

 

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Repair damaged eyes with stem cell discs
Futurity ^ | December 11, 2012 | Amy Stone-Sheffield

Futurity.org – Repair damaged eyes with stem cell discs

U. SHEFFIELD (UK) — Engineers have developed a new technique to graft a biodegradable disc loaded with stem cells onto damaged eyes.

The team at the University of Sheffield describes the method, which involves producing membranes to assist with grafting, in the journal Acta Biomaterialia. The goal is to treat damage to the cornea, the transparent layer on the front of the eye, which is one of the major causes of blindness in the world.

Using a combination of techniques known as microstereolithography and electrospinning, the researchers made a disc of biodegradable material that can be fixed over the cornea. The disc is loaded with stem cells that multiply, allowing the body to heal the eye naturally.
Straight from the Source

Read the original study

DOI: 10.1016/j.actbio.2012.10.039

“The disc has an outer ring containing pockets into which stem cells taken from the patient’s healthy eye can be placed,” explains Ílida Ortega Asencio. “The material across the center of the disc is thinner than the ring, so it will biodegrade more quickly allowing the stem cells to proliferate across the surface of the eye to repair the cornea.”

A key feature of the disc is that it contains niches or pockets to house and protect the stem cells, mirroring niches found around the rim of a healthy cornea.

Standard treatments for corneal blindness are corneal transplants or grafting stem cells onto the eye using donor human amniotic membrane as a temporary carrier to deliver these cells to the eye. For some patients, the treatment can fail after a few years as the repaired eyes do not retain these stem cells, which are required to carry out on-going repair of the cornea.

Without this constant repair, thick white scar tissue forms across the cornea causing partial or complete sight loss. The researchers designed the small pockets built into the membrane to help cells group together and act as a useful reservoir of daughter cells so that a healthy population of stem cells can be retained in the eye.

“One advantage of our design is that we have made the disc from materials already in use as biodegradable sutures in the eye, so we know they won’t cause a problem in the body,” says Sheila MacNeil.

 

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Wearable computers to monitor health

Dr. Roozbeh Jafari, assistant professor of electrical engineering at UT Dallas, is developing wearable wireless computers that are about the size of a button. At that size, the system can be easily worn on the body, opening possibilities to improved health monitoring for the elderly and assistance in determining changes in medication dosage needs.

Read more at: Wearable computers to monitor health

 

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Virus rebuilds heart's own pacemaker in animal tests

Health and science reporter, BBC News

Researchers created a new pacemaker inside the heart

A new pacemaker has been built inside a heart by converting beating muscle into cells which can organise the organ's rhythm, US researchers report.

The heartbeat is controlled by electrical signals and if these go awry the consequences can be fatal.

Scientists injected a genetically-modified virus into guinea pigs to turn part of their heart into a new, working pacemaker.

The study was published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

A human heart is made up of billions of cells, but researchers say fewer than 10,000 are responsible for controlling the heartbeat.

Age and disease can lead to problems such as the heart pumping too fast or too slow - and it can even stop completely, in what is known as a cardiac arrest.

The solution is an implanted battery-powered pacemaker which will jolt the heart to keep it in line.
Dr Cho added: "Electronic devices are limited to their finite battery life, requiring battery changes.

"Complications such as displacement, breakage, entanglement of the leads are not uncommon and could be catastrophic, the incidence of devices with bacterial infection keeps going up and, for paediatric patients, the device does not 'grow' with the patients.

BBC News - Virus rebuilds heart's own pacemaker in animal tests

 

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http://www.news24.co...Jaa8hY.facebook



Gene turns heart cells into 'pacemaker'
2012-12-16 22:22

Paris - A gene inserted into ordinary heart cells transformed them into rare "pacemaker" cells that regulate cardiac rhythm, according to experiments carried out on lab rodents.
The research is a step toward the goal of a biological fix for irregular heartbeat, which at present is tackled by drugs or electronic pacemakers, its investigators said.
The heart has 10 billion cells but fewer than 10 000 of them are pacemaker cells, which generate electrical activity that spreads to other cardiac cells, making the organ contract rhythmically and pump blood.
The work, reported in the journal Nature Biotechology on Sunday, uses a virus to deliver a human gene called Tbx18, whose normal role is to coax immature cells into becoming pacemaker cells.
Ordinary cells "infected" by the harmless Trojan horse were reprogrammed by Tbx 18 and became these important specialised cells.
"The new cells generated electrical impulses spontaneously and were indistinguishable from native pacemaker cells," said Hee Cheol Cho at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, California.
The promising technique builds on decade-long research into biological pacemakers. So it has so far been tested on guinea pigs and rats.
"We expect this to work in humans. It would be two to three years from now until the first clinical trial, the first target patients being the ones with pacemaker device infection," Cho said in an email to AFP.

A biological pace maker that doesn't poison you and doesn't demand a new battery.

 

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Nanotechnology allows scientists to capture and preserve cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream
December 17, 2012

A new-generation nano-platform capable of capturing circulating tumor cells and releasing them at reduced temperature. Credit: RIKEN Scientists from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Japan and University of California Los Angeles report a new nanoscale Velcro-like device that captures and releases tumor cells that have broken away from primary tumors and are circulating in the bloodstream. This new nanotechnology could be used for cancer diagnosis and give insight into the mechanisms of how cancer spreads throughout the body.

The device provides a convenient and non-invasive alternative to biopsy, the current method for diagnosis of metastatic cancer. It could enable doctors to detect tumor cells that circulate in cancer patients' blood well before they subsequently colonize as tumors in other organs. The device also enables researchers to keep the tumor cells alive and subsequently study them.

Read more at: Nanotechnology allows scientists to capture and preserve cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream


The things that we will be able to do with Nano tech is pretty cool within the next 20 years.

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Nanoparticles amplify tumor signals, making them much easier to detect in the urine

Finding ways to diagnose cancer earlier could greatly improve the chances of survival for many patients. One way to do this is to look for specific proteins secreted by cancer cells, which circulate in the bloodstream. However, the quantity of these biomarkers is so low that detecting them has proven difficult.

A new technology developed at MIT may help to make biomarker detection much easier. The researchers, led by Sangeeta Bhatia, have developed nanoparticles that can home to a tumor and interact with cancer proteins to produce thousands of biomarkers, which can then be easily detected in the patient's urine. This biomarker amplification system could also be used to monitor disease progression and track how tumors respond to treatment, says Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-nanoparticles-amplify-tumor-easier-urine.html#jCp

 

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Hybrid tunnel may help guide severed nerves back to health


Hybrid tunnel may help guide severed nerves back to health | News | R&D Magazine

A design that incorporates a soft hydrogel external wall and a conducting polymer as a supporting internal wall may serve as a tunnel to reconnect severed nerves. Image: Mohammad Reza AbdianBuilding a tunnel made up of both hard and soft materials to guide the reconnection of severed nerve endings may be the first step toward helping patients who have suffered extensive nerve trauma regain feeling and movement, according to a team of biomedical engineers.

"Nerve injury in both central nervous system and peripheral nervous system is a major health problem," says Mohammad Reza Abidian, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, Penn State University. "According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, there are approximately 290,000 individuals in the U.S. who suffer from spinal cord injuries with about 12,000 new injuries occurring each year."

 

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Research proves bacteria to blame for obesity
Updated: 2012-12-19 07:59
By Wang Hongyi in Shanghai ( China Daily)

The battle of the bulge can be frustrating, with small victories overshadowed by major losses.

But research may bring some comfort. Bacteria, and not just gluttony or laziness, may be to blame. The bacteria can actually make genes generate fat.

Scientists have believed that microscopic living organisms in the gut, microbiota, might play a crucial role in gaining weight but were never able to prove it.

Groundbreaking research by a Chinese scientist has revealed a precise link.

Research proves bacteria to blame for obesity[1]|chinadaily.com.cn


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Are bacteria making you hungry?
December 19, 2012

Over the last half decade, it has become increasingly clear that the normal gastrointestinal (GI) bacteria play a variety of very important roles in the biology of human and animals. Now Vic Norris of the University of Rouen, France, and coauthors propose yet another role for GI bacteria: that they exert some control over their hosts' appetites. Their review was published online ahead of print in the Journal of Bacteriology.

http://phys.org/news/2012-12-bacteria-hungry.html

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Scientists develop new compound that reverses fatty liver disease
December 19, 2012

(Phys.org)—Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed the first synthetic compound that can reverse the effects of a serious metabolic condition known as fatty liver disease. True to its name, the disease involves an abnormal buildup of fat in the liver.

The compound—known as SR9238—is the first to effectively suppress lipid or fat production in the liver, eliminating inflammation and reversing fat accumulation in animal models of fatty liver disease. The new compound also significantly lowered total cholesterol levels, although precisely how that occurred remains something of a mystery.

"We've been working on a pair of natural proteins called LXRα and LXRβ that stimulate fat production in the liver, and we thought our compound might be able to successfully suppress this process," said Thomas Burris, a professor at TSRI who led the study, which was recent published in an online edition of the journal ACS Chemical Biology. "Once the animals were put on the drug, we were able to reverse the disease after a single month with no adverse side effects—while they ate a high-fat diet."

Fatty liver, which often accompanies obesity and type 2 diabetes, frequently leads to more serious conditions including cirrhosis and liver cancer. The condition affects some 10 to 24 percent of the general population, according to a 2003 study in GUT, an international journal of gastroenterology and hepatology.

http://phys.org/news/2012-12-scientists-compound-reverses-fatty-liver.html

 

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Cell Division May Prevent Cancer

By Staff Reporter | Dec 18, 2012 05:11 AM EST

Cell Division May Prevent Cancer : news : NatureWorldNews

A new type of cell division that could help scientists prevent cancer has been found, researchers at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center have revealed in a study.

The study findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco Monday, suggest that the new form of cell division, named klerokinesis, acts as a natural mechanism against uncontrolled cell division that causes cancer.

Researchers found the new cell division while studying human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells to establish the age-old hypothesis of German cell biology pioneer Theodor Boveri that aneuploidy, a condition of abnormal number of chromosomes in a cell, would lead to out-of-control cell division, causing cancer.

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Toward a pill to enable celiac patients to eat foods containing gluten
December 19, 2012

Scientists are reporting an advance toward development of a pill that could become celiac disease's counterpart to the lactase pills that people with lactose intolerance can take to eat dairy products without risking digestive upsets. They describe the approach, which involves an enzyme that breaks down the gluten that causes celiac symptoms, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

http://phys.org/news/2012-12-pill-enable-celiac-patients-foods.html

 

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Scientists develop potential anti-aging formula (for mice)

Whether we call it the fountain of youth, or just a beauty potion, humanity has long been on the hunt for a magic elixir to ward off the effects of aging. Now a research team in China has reportedly come up with what they believe could in fact be a real anti-aging formula.

Presented by scientists at the University of Hong Kong, this new formula was developed during research designed to explore the effects of progeria, a genetic disease that gives infants an aged appearance due to stunted growth, hair loss, a reduction in body fat, and other complications. The researchers identified a mutation in the Lamin A protein as the primary culprit in the body's process of repairing cells in a normal fashion, leading to rapid aging. In experiments on mice with progeria, the researchers found that binding
Lamin A and SIRT1 (the gene associated with longevity) along with resveratrol (a compound found in red wine and believed to have antioxidant properties) allowed them to extend the lives of the mice by up to 30 percent.

Scientists develop potential anti-aging formula (for mice) | DVICE

 

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Ultrasound method could lead to non-invasive surgical knife

20 December 2012

A carbon-nanotube-coated lens that converts light to sound can focus high-pressure sound waves to finer points than ever before, claim researchers in the US.

Michigan University engineering researchers who developed the new therapeutic ultrasound approach said in a statement that it could lead to an invisible knife for non-invasive surgery.

Ultrasound technology enables far more than glimpses into the womb as doctors routinely use focused sound waves to destroy kidney stones and prostate tumours.

Read more: Ultrasound method could lead to non-invasive surgical knife | News | The Engineer

 

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Trojan-horse therapy 'completely eliminates' cancer in mice
By James Gallagher

An experimental "Trojan-horse" cancer therapy has completely eliminated prostate cancer in experiments on mice, according to UK researchers.

The team hid cancer killing viruses inside the immune system in order to sneak them into a tumour.

Once inside, a study in the journal Cancer Research showed, tens of thousands of viruses were released to kill the cancerous cells.

Experts labelled the study "exciting," but human tests are still needed.

BBC News - Trojan-horse therapy 'completely eliminates' cancer in mice


Sure, seems to be a lot of good news on this front. Thank god!

 

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Wearable touchscreen lets doctors monitor patients remotel

Some of the coolest sci-fi medical scenes show an injured person being monitored via some sort of slick visual interface controlled by a handheld device. Now a new product brings us a huge step closer towards that reality by delivering a wearable health monitor that doctors can check from their smartphones.

Developed by Sotera Wireless, the ViSi Mobile Monitor is a small health monitor with a colorful touchscreen display that can be strapped to a patient's arm to monitor their vitals in real-time. The device keeps an eye on blood pressure, heart and pulse rate, respiration rate, and skin temperature and includes the patient's name on the display as well as a dynamic graphic showing their current health status at a glance. The ViSi's wireless operation and small size means that it isn't limited to use in a hospital or an ambulance, and the patient can move around independently while health data continues to be collected by the device, which is also waterproof.

According to the developers, doctors can check the patient's vital signs remotely on standard PC, tablet, or smartphone, although the company hasn't announced which operating systems it supports. Nevertheless, Sotera recently received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell the device to hospitals, which means we'll probably start seeing this amazing technology in the wild very soon.

Wearable touchscreen lets doctors monitor patients remotely | DVICE

 

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Simple eye scan can reveal extent of Multiple Sclerosi
BBC ^ | 24 Dec 2012

BBC News - Simple eye scan can reveal extent of Multiple Sclerosis

A simple eye test may offer a fast and easy way to monitor patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), medical experts say in the journal Neurology.

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a scan that measures the thickness of the lining at the back of the eye - the retina.

It takes a few minutes per eye and can be performed in a doctor's surgery.

In a trial involving 164 people with MS, those with thinning of their retina had earlier and more active MS.

The team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine say larger trials with a long follow up are needed to judge how useful the test might be in everyday practice.

The latest study tracked the patients' disease progression over a two-year period...

 

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LifeBot 5 – The Portable Emergency Room

In emergency care every second counts. LifeBot, the telemedicine unit that connects ambulances to hospitals with patient data and live video feeds, has just got even more mobile. No longer confined to the ambulance, the new version, LifeBot 5, is a lightweight portable unit that can go anywhere critical care is needed.

LifeBot originally served to relay realtime data between ambulance EMTs and emergency physicians at the hospital. EMTs could receive remote instructions and the hospital could get a head start on preparations for the inbound patient. Two cameras captured both the LifeBot operator and the patient and enabled webcam communication. LifeBot 5 adds to the original system to deliver a more complete monitoring system.

LifeBot’s Interceptor is a medical electronics module that enables full physiological monitoring of the patient. In addition to voice and video transmission, the Interceptor has leads for ECG, monitors heart rate and blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and body temperature. And to complement the movement toward medical record digitization, LifeBot 5 is equipped with Electronic Patient Call Report (ePCR), a web browser interface that provides access to Electronic Health Record systems. Its communication system, Disaster Relief and Emergency Medical Services, or DREAMS, has been field tested aboard five ambulances in Liberty County Texas for over six years now.

And the best part is that the new unit weighs just 15 pounds and has been ruggedized so it can be taken anywhere.

LifeBot 5

 

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A new way to build collagen scaffolds

Tufts University School of Engineering researchers have developed a novel method for fabricating collagen structures that maintains the collagen's natural strength and fiber structure, making it useful for a number of biomedical applications.

Collagen, the most abundant protein in the body, is widely used to build scaffolds for tissue engineering because it is biocompatible and biodegradable. Collagen is, however, hard to work with in its natural form because it is largely insoluble in water, and common processing techniques reduce its strength and disrupt its fibrous structure.

The Tufts engineers' new technique, called bioskiving, creates collagen structures from thin sheets of decellularized tendon stacked with alternating fiber directions that maintain much of collagen's natural strength.

Bioskiving does not dilute collagen's natural properties, says Qiaobing Xu, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and inventor of the new technique. "Our method leverages collagen's native attributes to take advantage of the well-organized micro/nanostructures that nature already provides," he says.

Xu and Kyle Alberti, a PhD student in Xu's laboratory, describe their technology in the paper "Slicing, Stacking and Rolling: Fabrication of Nanostructured Collagen Constructs from Tendon Sections" published online in Advanced Healthcare Materials.

A new way to build collagen scaffolds | News | R&D Magazine

 

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Panda blood compound 6x more powerful than current antibiotics

In what could be either very good news or very bad news for our fluffy black and white friends, it's been discovered that panda blood contains an antibiotic compound that's vastly more powerful than anything we've got right now.

Researchers at the Life Sciences College of Nanjing Agricultural University in China have extracted a compound called cathelicidin-AM from the blood of giant pandas. Cathelicidin-AM is what's called a gene-encoded antimicrobial peptide, a natural antibiotic that's produced by a panda's immune cells. Testing has shown that cathelicidin-AM can kill even drug resistant strains of bacteria and fungi, and it can do in one hour what conventional antibiotics can barely do in six, without causing nearly as much resistance.

Panda blood compound 6x more powerful than current antibiotics | DVICE

Maybe we could clone some of this blood?