Biology & Medicine News and Discussions

[Yuli Ban]

Blood test [from Grail] that finds 50 types of cancer is accurate enough to be rolled out

A simple blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer before any clinical signs or symptoms of the disease emerge in a person is accurate enough to be rolled out as a screening test, according to scientists.

The test, which is also being piloted by NHS England in the autumn, is aimed at people at higher risk of the disease including patients aged 50 or older.

It is able to identify many types of the disease that are difficult to diagnose in the early stages such as head and neck, ovarian, pancreatic, oesophageal and some blood cancers.

[weatheriscool]

Pathogenic gut bacteria linked to weight loss from low-calorie diet
By Rich Haridy
June 23, 2021
https://newatlas.com/science/microbiome ... orie-diet/

A new study investigating how a low-calorie diet alters gut microbial populations is reporting unexpected results. The findings reveal a strange relationship between extreme caloric restriction and increased levels of a pathogenic bacteria linked to inflammatory bowel disease.

The research began by recruiting 80 overweight or obese subjects. Half the cohort were directed to maintain a stable weight for 16 weeks, while the other half completed a medically supervised weight-loss program including eight weeks of a very low calorie diet (800 kcal per day).

At the end of the study period the researchers took fecal samples from the participants and found those in the diet cohort showed substantial gut microbiome alterations, including generally reduced bacterial diversity. Reiner Jumpertz von Schwartzenberg, first author on the new study, says that alongside reducing the overall numbers of gut bacteria present, the dieting seemed to distinctly alter the behavior of the remaining microbes.

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Genetically modified rice used for edible, easily stored cholera vaccine
By Rich Haridy
June 27, 2021

Japanese researchers have developed a new type of cholera vaccine by genetically modifying rice to carry a non-toxic cholera antigen. The vaccine needs no refrigeration with the rice simply ground into a powder, mixed with water and consumed.

The new vaccine first involved genetically engineering short-grain rice plants to produce cholera toxin subunit B (CTB). This part of the cholera toxin is often used for cholera vaccines as it is non-toxic but can induce potent immunity against the symptoms of a cholera infection.

The vaccine, called MucoRice-CTB, involves simply grinding up the engineered rice and mixing the powder into liquid. As rice stores its proteins in tiny membranes called protein bodies, the cholera antigens are naturally protected from digestive enzymes that would normally destroy other orally delivered vaccines.

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/g ... a-vaccine/

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Smartphone-connected device detects infections in less than an hour
By Ben Coxworth
June 25, 2021
https://newatlas.com/medical/smartphone ... nfections/

Presently, if a doctor suspects that a patient has a bacterial infection, that person has to provide a fluid sample that is sent off to a lab for analysis. A new device, however, could allow such samples to be analyzed on the spot, within minutes.

There are three main problems with the analysis of body fluid samples in labs.

For one thing, in the few days that it takes to get a result, any infection that is present could get worse. For another, it's possible that the doctor may put the patient on antibiotics right away, just in case they are infected – if it turns out that they aren't, then they will have taken the medication (and endured any side effects) needlessly. Additionally, in remote locations or developing nations, suitably equipped labs may be a long distance away.

It was with such limitations in mind that scientists at Canada's McMaster University created the prototype device. The tool actually consists of two parts – a two-channel electrical sensor chip, and a USB-stick-like main processing module that the chip is plugged into.

[Time_Traveller]

Potential new CAR-T cell therapy for multiple myeloma

June 25, 2021

Researchers at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center are studying a potential new chimeric antigen receptor-T cell therapy (CAR-T cell therapy) treatment for multiple myeloma. Their findings were published on Friday, June 24, in The Lancet.

"CAR-T cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that involves harnessing the power of a person's own immune system by engineering their T cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells," says Yi Lin, M.D., a Mayo Clinic hematologist and lead author of the study.

Dr. Lin says the Food and Drug Administration approved idecabtagene vicleucel, the first CAR-T cell treatment for multiple myeloma, in March. "Today, we are working toward another potential CAR-T cell treatment for multiple myeloma," says Dr. Lin.

Dr. Lin says the CARTITUDE-1 study is a registration-phase 1B/II clinical trial. The trial tested B cell maturation antigen targeting CAR-T cell therapy, ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel), in patients with multiple myeloma who received at least three previous lines of therapy with standard drugs, including proteasome inhibitors, immunomodulatory drugs and CD38 antibodies.

"Cilta-cel is made from patient's own T cells that have been genetically engineered and administered as a single dose infusion," says Dr. Lin.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 173204.htm

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Smart wound dressings with built-in healing sensors
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-smart-wou ... nsors.html
by RMIT University

Researchers have developed smart wound dressings with built-in nanosensors that glow to alert patients when a wound is not healing properly.

The multifunctional, antimicrobial dressings feature fluorescent sensors that glow brightly under UV light if infection starts to set in and can be used to monitor healing progress.

The smart dressings, developed by a team of scientists and engineers at RMIT University harness the powerful antibacterial and antifungal properties of magnesium hydroxide.

They are cheaper to produce than silver-based dressings but equally as effective in fighting bacteria and fungi, with their antimicrobial power lasting up to a week.

Project leader Dr. Vi Khanh Truong said the development of cost-effective antimicrobial dressings with built-in healing sensors would be a significant advance in wound care.

[Yuli Ban]

Harvard Scientists Pinpoint ‘Ground Zero’ of Aging in Mouse Embryo Study

How do old cells in adult humans give rise to the youthful cells found in infants? New research suggests they reset to their lowest biological age in early embryonic development, with potential ramifications for longevity science.

For a long time, it was assumed that germline cells—those that form eggs and sperm and pass a parent’s genetic information on to their children—were essentially ageless. But how this could be was never clear and more recent research had shown that germline cells do accumulate the signs of aging.

This led to the conclusion that there must be some kind of rejuvenation event that allows the offspring’s cells to start with a clean slate. But when and how this occurs was a mystery.

Now a team from Harvard has shown that the age of mouse embryo cells resets about a week into development, representing the “ground zero” of aging. The finding not only provides insight into the fundamental dynamics of aging, but also suggests we might mimic the process in adult cells to rejuvenate aging tissues.

[weatheriscool]

FDA Approves Diabetes Drug For Weight Loss
Source: MSN/NBC4

(2 hrs ago). A revamped version of a popular diabetes drug that’s given at a higher dose to fight obesity is the first prescription medication for weight loss approved by the Food and Drug Administration in seven years.

Wegovy is a synthetic version of a gut hormone that curbs hunger. Patients inject the medication under their skin once a week. Dr. Domenica Rubino, director of the Washington Center for Weight Management and Research in Arlington, Virginia, took part in a study, enrolling and monitoring two dozen patients.

“It's mimicking a hormone we have but in a greater amount, so it actually tells the brain we're not as hungry,” Rubino said. The drug is intended for adults with obesity or a body mass index of 27 or higher who also have at least one weight-related medical condition such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Like other weight loss drugs, it’s to be used with diet and exercise.

More than half of the participants in the trial lost 15-20 percent of their weight. “I've been involved in this field for about 20-plus years, and it was the first time that we saw such significant weight loss in some people,” Rubino said. “And the reason it actually matters is there are a lot of medical conditions that are associated with obesity that we need more weight loss...

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrit ... ar-AALybSF

[caltrek]

Russian Daily Death Toll Reaches New High

https://apnews.com/article/russia-europ ... 240b3165ee
(This AP website actually has its own version of an around the world round up of Coronavirus news and statistics. Other countries covered include Indonesia, France, the U.S., Belgium, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Australia)

Extract:

(AP) MOSCOW — Russian authorities have reported 652 new coronavirus deaths on Tuesday — the highest daily tally in the pandemic. The new record comes as Russia struggles to cope with a surge in infections and deaths and low vaccine uptake.

Russia’s state coronavirus task force has been registering over 20,000 new coronavirus cases and around 600 deaths every day since last Thursday. On Tuesday, 20,616 new contagions were recorded.

Russian officials have blamed the surge, which started in early June, on Russians’ lax attitude toward taking necessary precautions, growing prevalence of more infectious variants and laggard vaccination rates. Although Russia was among the first countries to announce and deploy a coronavirus vaccine, only about 14% of the population has received at least one shot.

Russia’s coronavirus task force has reported nearly 5.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases in the pandemic and 134,545 deaths.

[Ken_J]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/does ... ket-newtab

Intestinal inflammation might give rise to Parkinson’s in several ways, Houser explains. One possibility is that a chronically inflamed gut might elevate alpha-synuclein levels locally—as Zasloff’s investigation in children suggests—or else it may give rise to inflammation throughout the body, which in itself could increase the permeability of the gut and blood-brain barriers. Or else it could increase circulating cytokines, molecules that that can promote inflammation. Tansey adds that changes in the microbiome could also be influencing gut inflammation.

[Time_Traveller]

A new class of functional elements in the human genome?

June 29, 2021

Some regions of the human genome where the DNA can fold into unusual three-dimensional structures called G-quadruplexes (G4s) show signs that they are preserved by natural selection. When G4s are located in the regulatory sequences that control how genes are expressed or in other functional, but non-protein coding, regions of the genome, they are maintained by selection, are more common, and their unusual structures are more stable, according to a new study. Conversely, the structures are less common, less stable, and evolve neutrally outside of these regions, including within the protein-coding regions of genes themselves.

Together, these lines of evidence suggest that G4 elements should be added to the list of functional elements of the genome along with genes, regulatory sequences, and non-protein coding RNAs, among others. A paper describing the study, by a team of researchers led by Penn State scientists, appears June 29, 2021 in the journal Genome Research.

"There have been only a handful of studies that provided experimental evidence for individual G4 elements playing functional roles," said Wilfried Guiblet, first author of the paper, a graduate student at Penn State at the time of research, and now a postdoctoral scholar at the National Cancer Institute. "Our study is the first to look at G4s across the genome to see if they show the characteristics of functional elements as a general rule."

As much as 1% of the genome can fold into G4s, rather than the typical double helix (in comparison, protein-coding genes occupy approximately 1.5% of the genome). G4s are one of several non-canonical shapes into which DNA can fold, collectively known as "non-B DNA." The G4 structure forms in DNA sequences rich in the nucleotide guanine, the "G" in the ACGT alphabet of the genome. G4s have been implicated in several key cellular processes and have been suggested to play a role in several human diseases, including neurological disorders and cancer.

To better understand the function of G4s at a genome-wide scale, the research team looked at their distribution across the genome, their thermostability, and whether or not they showed signs of being under the influence of natural selection, all in relation to other functional elements of the genome. They confirmed that, as a rule, G4s are more common in regions of the genome known to have important cellular functions and that the G4s in these regions are more stable than elsewhere in the genome.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 134330.htm

[Time_Traveller]

Researchers identify muscle proteins whose quantity is reduced in type 2 diabetes

June 29, 2021

Globally, more than 400 million people have diabetes, most of them suffering from type 2 diabetes.

Before the onset of actual type 2 diabetes, people are often diagnosed with abnormalities in glucose metabolism that are milder than those associated with diabetes. The term used to indicate such cases is prediabetes. Roughly 5-10% of people with prediabetes develop type 2 diabetes within a year-long follow-up.

Insulin resistance in muscle tissue is one of the earliest metabolic abnormalities detected in individuals who are developing type 2 diabetes, and the phenomenon is already seen in prediabetes.

In a collaborative study, researchers from the University of Helsinki, the Helsinki University Hospital and the Minerva Foundation Institute for Medical Research investigated the link between skeletal muscle proteome and type 2 diabetes.

In the study, the protein composition of the thigh muscle was surveyed in men whose glucose tolerance varied from normal to that associated with prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. A total of 148 muscle samples were analysed.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 134307.htm

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Newly discovered proteins protect against progression of diabetic kidney disease

by Joslin Diabetes Center
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06- ... sease.html

Elevated levels of three specific circulating proteins are associated with protection against kidney failure in diabetes, according to research from the Joslin Diabetes Center that will be published 30th June in Science Translational Medicine.

"As well as acting as biomarkers for advancing kidney disease risk in diabetes, the proteins may also serve as the basis for future therapies against progression to the most serious types of kidney disease," said Andrzej S. Krolewski MD, Ph.D., senior author on the publication, senior investigator at Joslin Diabetes Center and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. This would likely include the delay and prevention of end stage renal disease (ESRD), which is the most serious and advanced stage of diabetic kidney disease.

[Time_Traveller]

Aspirin could cut risk of death in cancer patients by 20%, study suggests

Friday 2 July 2021

Cancer patients who take aspirin as part of their treatment could cut their risk of death by 20%, according to a major review of studies.

Researchers at Cardiff University said the medication - commonly used as pain relief - not only has "biological mechanisms" that help reduce mortality risk, but they also found it to reduce the spread of cancer within the body.

They said "serious consideration" could be given to using aspirin alongside other therapies to treat cancer, based on a body of evidence on its efficacy and safety.

As part of the study, the team reviewed 118 earlier published studies, which included 250,000 patients with 18 different cancers.

They also considered the risks of aspirin-taking and wrote to the authors of the papers, asking about any stomach or other bleeding episodes.

https://news.sky.com/story/aspirin-coul ... s-12347232

[weatheriscool]

Building a better biosensor polymer

by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-biosensor-polymer.html

A new organic (carbon-based) semiconducting material has been developed that outperforms existing options for building the next generation of biosensors. An international research team led by KAUST is the first to overcome some critical challenges in developing this polymer.

Much research effort is currently expended into novel types of biosensors that interact directly with the body to detect key biochemicals and serve as indicators of health and disease.

"For a sensor to be compatible with the body, we need to use soft organic materials with mechanical properties that match those of biological tissues," says Rawad Hallani, a former research scientist in the KAUST team, who developed the polymer along with researchers at several universities in the U.S. and the U.K.

[weatheriscool]

Student designs device to save stabbing victims' lives
By Ben Coxworth
July 05, 2021
https://newatlas.com/good-thinking/reac ... ms-device/

When someone is suffering from a deep stab wound, it's important to apply pressure within that wound, not just down onto it. A new student-designed device is intended to let first responders do just that, potentially saving lives that might otherwise be lost.

Police officers are often the first people to arrive at the scene of a stabbing. If the knife or other implement is still inside the wound, it's typically left in place until an ambulance arrives. This is because it acts somewhat like a cork, with the pressure that it's applying actually helping to limit internal bleeding.

In many cases, however, police arrive to find an open stab wound that urgently needs to be "plugged." It was with such scenarios in mind that Joseph Bentley – a final-year Product Design and Technology student at Britain's Loughborough University – created the REACT tool.

[weatheriscool]

Our genes shape our gut bacteria, new research shows

by University of Notre Dame
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07- ... teria.html

Our gut microbiome—the ever-changing "rainforest" of bacteria living in our intestines—is primarily affected by our lifestyle, including what we eat or the medications we take, most studies show.

But a University of Notre Dame study has found a much greater genetic component at play than was once known.

In the study, published recently in Science, researchers discovered that most bacteria in the gut microbiome are heritable after looking at more than 16,000 gut microbiome profiles collected over 14 years from a long-studied population of baboons in Kenya's Amboseli National Park. However, this heritability changes over time, across seasons and with age. The team also found that several of the microbiome traits heritable in baboons are also heritable in humans.

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Biomaterial vaccines ward off broad range of bacterial infections and septic shock
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07- ... range.html
by Harvard University

This illustration shows how a ciVax infection vaccine against a pathogenic E. coli strain is produced and applied. First, carbohydrate-containing surface molecules (PAMPs) of killed bacteria are captured with magnetic beads coated with FcMBL. The beads are then combined with mesoporous silica (MPS) rods, immune cell-recruiting GMCSF, and immune cell-activating CpG adjuvant to form the complete ciVax vaccine. Upon injection under the skin of mice, the ciVAX vaccine forms a permeable scaffold that recruits immature dendritic cells (DCs), educates them to present PAMP-derived antigens, and additionally activates and releases them again. The reprogrammed DCs then migrate to draining lymph nodes where they orchestrate a complex immune response, including reactive T cells and antibody-producing B cells reacting against the E. coli pathogen. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University.

Current clinical interventions for infectious diseases are facing increasing challenges due to the ever-rising number of drug-resistant microbial infections, epidemic outbreaks of pathogenic bacteria, and the continued possibility of new biothreats that might emerge in the future. Effective vaccines could act as a bulwark to prevent many bacterial infections and some of their most severe consequences, including sepsis. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "Each year, at least 1.7 million adults in America develop sepsis. Nearly 270,000 Americans die as a result of sepsis [and] 1 in 3 patients who dies in a hospital has sepsis." However, for the most common bacterial pathogens that cause sepsis and many other diseases, still no vaccines are available.

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Selective, toxin-bearing antibodies could help treat liver fibrosis
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07- ... rosis.html
by Heather Buschman, University of California - San Diego

Chronic alcohol abuse and hepatitis can injure the liver and lead to fibrosis, the buildup of collagen and scar tissue. As a potential approach to treating liver fibrosis, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers and their collaborators are looking for ways to stop liver cells from producing collagen.

"So we thought... what if we take immunotoxins and try to get them to kill collagen-producing cells in the liver?" said team lead Tatiana Kisseleva, MD, Ph.D., associate professor of surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "If these antibodies carrying toxic molecules can find and bind the cells, the cells will eat up the 'gift' and die."

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Progress towards new treatments for tuberculosis
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07- ... losis.html
by Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

Boosting the body's own disease-fighting immune pathway could provide answers in the desperate search for new treatments for tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis still represents an enormous global disease burden and is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide.

Led by WEHI's Dr. Michael Stutz and Professor Marc Pellegrini and published in Immunity, the study uncovered how cells infected with tuberculosis bacteria can die, and that using new medicines to enhance particular forms of cell death decreased the severity of the disease in a preclinical model.