The Hidden Talents of the Lowly Sea Cucumber | Popular Science

 

A recent study shows that a gene in the sea cucumber blocks transmission of the parasite that causes malaria. Passed to humans by mosquitoes, malaria threatens around 40 percent of the world's population and is blamed for up to a million deaths a year. The idea is to incorporate the gene into mosquitoes, causing them to produce the protein lectin, which is poisonous to the malaria parasite early in development. The new, genetically modified mosquitoes would be released into the wild in hopes that they reproduce and spread the new gene to future generations and tamp out the spread of malaria.

The Hidden Talents of the Lowly Sea Cucumber | Popular Science

 

Technorati Tags: malaria,sea cucumber,genetics,genetic switch,lectin

Cancer Risk Linked To Gum Disease

This looks like another indicator of inflammation risk.

 

The researchers found that after adjusting for details about the history of smoking, dietary factors, and other known risk factors, participants with a history of gum disease were 14% more likely to develop any type of cancer compared to those without history of gum disease.

Cancer Risk Linked To Gum Disease

Technorati Tags: cancer,inflammation

AFP: Sedentary life accelerates aging: study

 

AFP: Sedentary life accelerates aging: study

Printable Robots - OhmyNews International

 

Consider recent advances in inkjet printing. The same basic technology in a $100 home printer has been used by researchers at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina for the printing of "bio-ink" skin tissue as potential grafts for burn victims. It may also provide the basis for the printing of complete artificial organs such as kidneys and livers.

Printable Robots - OhmyNews International

Technorati Tags: Inkjet robot,robot,printable organ

The Race to Read Genomes on a Shoestring, Relatively Speaking - New York Times

 

A person wanting to know his or her complete genetic blueprint can already have it done — for $350,000.

But whether a personal genome readout becomes affordable to the rest of us could depend on efforts like the one taking place secretly in a nondescript Silicon Valley industrial park. There, Pacific Biosciences has been developing a DNA sequencing machine that within a few years might be able to unravel an individual’s entire genome in minutes, for less than $1,000. The company plans to make its first public presentation about the technology on Saturday.

The Race to Read Genomes on a Shoestring, Relatively Speaking - New York Times

Technorati Tags: DNA,Genomes

Pigs raise hopes for blindness cure - Telegraph

 

"The results are really encouraging," says Prof Coffey. "We plan to do the first patient within three years."

Using surgical instruments introduced through three one millimetre holes in the eye, the team goes under the retina, a translucent layer, then inflate it so it separates from the underlying cells.

The human eye cells derived from embryonic cells were then introduced on a rolled up patch and injected through a one millimetre hole, where the patch of human cells unfolded under the retina.

"I was over the moon when I got the results because it is a proof of concept," says Prof Coffey. "We really can do it."

Although the implanted human cells are black, the same as the surrounding pig cells, they can be distinguished when light of a given colour is shone into the eye. The human cells glowed when viewed this way under the gaze of an instrument called a scanning laser opthalmoscope. "That indicates good function," says Prof Coffey.

The operation on three sighted pigs took only 30 minutes, suggesting the stem cell implants could eventually become a routine outpatient operation, they told an event backed by the company Mostra at the Globe Theatre to promote the London Project to Cure Blindness - a scientific initiative between UCL, Moorfields and The University of Sheffield.

Pigs raise hopes for blindness cure - Telegraph

 

Technorati Tags: macular degeneration

Doctors Report Transplant Breakthrough

 

The treatment involved weakening the patient's immune system, then giving the recipient bone marrow from the person who donated the organ. In one experiment, four of five kidney recipients were off immune-suppressing medicines up to five years later.

"There's reason to hope these patients will be off drugs for the rest of their lives," said Dr. David Sachs of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who led the research published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Since the world's first transplant more than 50 years ago, scientists have searched for ways to trick the body to accept a foreign organ as its own. Immune-suppressing drugs that prevent organ rejection came into wide use in the 1980s. But they raise the risk of cancer, kidney failure and many other problems. And they have unpleasant side effects such as excessive hair growth, bloating and tremors.
Eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs is "a huge advance," said Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, a University of Louisville immunology specialist who had no role in the work.
"It still needs some fine-tuning so that everyone who gets treated gets the same consistent outcome ... It's not the holy grail of tolerance yet," she cautioned.

Doctors Report Transplant Breakthrough

Technorati Tags: Organ Transplants,immune system

Stem Cell Study to Target Crohn's disease

Crohn's sufferers are genetically predisposed to the disease, which is first triggered in their body when they come into contact with a particular environmental stimulus. Once this happens, the immune system responds — leading to symptoms that blight the lives of sufferers.

Stem cells hold a potential solution to this problem. As the body's 'master' cells, which can be directed to form any type of tissue, they will be extracted from patients and then re-established in their bone marrow to 're-boot' the immune system, taking it back to a state before Crohn's symptoms were triggered.

Professor Hawkey and his team intend to recruit 48 volunteers who are suffering with the most serious symptoms, from the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and the Czech Republic and Canada. The study is called ASTIC – which stands for Autologous Stem cell Transplant International Crohn's Disease trial.

Link

Tags: Stem Cells, Crohn's Disease

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Nanotechnology Propels Advances In Regenerative Medicine Research

Nanotubes help adult stem cells morph into neurons in brain-damaged rats.

Nanostructures promote formation of blood vessels, bolster cardiovascular function after heart attack

Are the two major advances discussed at a conference recently. No hint of how the nanotubes did this was supplied.

Link

Tags: nonotube, CHD, stem cells

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Cancer Death Rates Dropping Fast

This rate of improvement in cancer treatement is evidence of medical transformation.  While a 2pct improvement may not sound like much the cumulative effect is transforming.

Link

Tags: colon cancer

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Virtual Colonoscopy

Virtual colonoscopy as effective as traditional one: study

AFP

- Oct 04, 2007

- 1 hour ago

Virtual colonoscopy requires some injection of air. The removal of any polyps found requires a separate procedure. The study found almost the same number of ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 10/2007

ACRIN Study Endorses Virtual Colonoscopy - Validation for Colon ...

CNNMoney.com

- Oct 03, 2007

- Oct 03, 2007

The results are expected to lead to wider adoption of CT colonography (also known as virtual colonoscopy) as routine screening for colorectal cancer. ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 10/2007

Virtual Colonoscopy Suggested as Initial Screening for Colorectal ...

Cancer Consultants (press release)

, USA

- Oct 04, 2007

- 5 hours ago

According to an article recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, virtual colonoscopy, also referred to as computed tomographic ...

Related Articles »

clipped from Google - 10/2007

National and Washington news in brief

San Jose Mercury News

, USA

- Oct 04, 2007

- 12 hours ago

Virtual colonoscopy also is less invasive, has fewer complications and doesn't require sedation, said the lead author, David Kim. stripping 4 million ...

Link

Tags: Colonoscopy

This is another example of the advances made in imaging.  More to follow...

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The Library of Congress - Webcasts

The Library of Congress - Webcasts

Medical transformation depends so much on new technology and world views that this video explains, I have a link to it here.

John C. Mather presents us with a view of the cosmos and how all matter is created. The second presentation by Craig Mello deals with modern biology and RNAi. Both are key to understanding reality and disease.

Benefits of stem-cell engraftment may not last

The good news is that real, beating cardiomyocytes can be grown from undifferentiated stem cells, and large quantities of these cells with distinctly human characteristics can be obtained from human embryonic stem cells, as Mummery's talk proved. These differentiated cells will permit screens for drugs that bolster the numbers of cardiomyocytes produced and that help cardiomyocytes engraft and survive. Thus, although this progress may not signal the arrival of effective therapies, it may mark the true beginning of their development.

Link

The good news is also that the real work of heart repair is beginning.  The tough answers are beginning to come out.  Now, we can suspect that varying results might be caused by mis-labeling cells. Now, we know that the heart is a difficult but not impossible place to use stem cells, and that stem cells can form heart cells.

Tags: Heart, Cardiomyocytes, Mummery, ISSCR.

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Scientists Create Breakthrough Sensor Capable of Detecting Individual Molecules

This device could make direct observation of single biological events possible.

Applied physicists at the California Institute of Technology have figured out a way to detect single biological molecules with a microscopic optical device. The method has already proven effective for detecting the signaling proteins called cytokines that indicate the function of the immune system, and it could be used in numerous medical applications, such as the extremely early detection of cancer and other diseases, as well as in basic biological research.

Article

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Embryo Screening

The Times's Amy Harmon talks about the increasingly common practice of the embryo screening procedure known as PGD. (Producer: Erik Olsen)

Video

Embryo screening will be much more complex when more than one condition is being checked.  The field should be very interesting.

Tags: Embryo Screening, PGD

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Studies to find better ways to preserve human eggs, ovarian tissue under way

The goal is to make human eggs, ovarian tissue, blood vessels, even whole organs available when needed.

To get there, researchers are directly comparing slow-freezing techniques, used successfully for decades to preserve sperm and embryos, to a more rapid method of cryopreservation that transforms tissues into durable

“Regenerative medicine will help supplement the shortage of organs in the future, and we need technology to preserve those we make.”

Article

Tags: Regenerative Medicine, Cryopreservation, human eggs

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AmpliChip CYP450 Test

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., June 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM) today announced it is the first Midwest-based laboratory to offer the FDA-approved AmpliChip(R) CYP450 Test to physicians and hospitals.

This genomics-based, FDA-approved clinical laboratory test provides physicians information that may be used to help determine a patient's unique ability or inability to metabolize a large variety of prescription drugs. AmpliChip CYP450 test results may be used by physicians to make more rational drug prescription decisions, reduce "trial and error" prescription and dosing and guard against dangerous and expensive adverse drug reactions.

Tags: AmpliChip, CYP450

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Heart Failure Drug May Remove Wrinkles

Dr. Xie, a molecular biologist, is a basic scientist. He approached heart failure by looking at the behavior of a tiny doorway found in cell surfaces - a pump, actually, that controls the levels of calcium in the cell, and thereby controls the strength of each heart beat.
Dr. Xie found that the pump is more than a pump. It has a second, completely distinct role in the cell. It is a commander. It can issue instructions to the rest of the cell, and get all kinds of processes moving.
As Dr. Xie looked at how the pump also sends signals, he realized that this meant a class of drugs given to heart failure patients for nearly 200 years - digitalis and drugs like it - probably didn't work the way everyone thought.
"When we started to look at the therapeutic effect of digitalis on cardiac cells, we realized the concentration [of digitalis] we used was too low," Dr. Xie said. There wasn't enough digitalis to affect pumping. Dr. Xie discovered that drugs like digitalis actually turn on the pump's command capabilities. Drs. Shapiro and Xie conducted a series of four experiments to look at how digitalislike substances affect the rat heart. In one experiment, they gave healthy rats low doses of a digitalislike drug. Those rats developed fibrous hearts, which worked inefficiently. They were in heart failure. In another experiment, they gave heathy rats an antibody to block digitalislike drugs, then they injected a digitalislike drug into the rat. The antibody proved protective. Those rat hearts had far less fiber. In a third experiment, they induced kidney disease in rats. These rats developed hearts riven with fibrous tissue, incapable of relaxing completely, and therefore inefficient at refilling. Finally, they gave the rats with experimentally induced kidney disease an antibody to block digitalislike substances. Those rats had far less fibrous tissue. "That study was an eye-opener," Dr. Shapiro said. "It was a smoking gun implicating [digitalislike drugs] in fibrosis."

Tags: Heart Failure, digitalis, kidney failure, Kr. Xie, Molecular Biology

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Doc on a Pole makes House Calls

Or at least makes top flight care available to small rural hospitals.  The May/June Michigan Country Lines, an REA publication, had a great article on the use of telemedicine in the state.  On of the more popular features was Doc on a Pole, a robot terminal with the means to communicate with a distant doctor who did the actual brainwork of the case.

Tags: Doc-on-a-Pole, Telemedicine, Medical Transformation

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Viral Diseas Destroys Heart of Mexican Boy-citizens of Texas React.

Residents of the Texas city raised about $500,000 for the boy, who suffers a viral infection that is eating away at his heart tissue. "In many children, it just gives you a common cold, but in certain settings, it will cause an inflammation of the heart ," said Dr. Elizabeth Frazier, head of the cardiac transplantation program at Arkansas Children's Hospital. "It permanently damages the heart muscle; it actually kills the heart muscle."

This international effort to provide care for one boy shows an aspect of the transformation of medicine over the last several decades. It also speaks about the role of human charity in medical care.

Tags: Viral heart disease, heart transplant

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