Biology & Medicine News and Discussions

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A single memory is stored across many connected brain regions
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... gions.html
by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A new study by scientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT provides the most comprehensive and rigorous evidence yet that the mammalian brain stores a single memory across a widely distributed, functionally connected complex spanning many brain regions, rather than in just one or even a few places.

Memory pioneer Richard Semon had predicted such a "unified engram complex" more than a century ago, but achieving the new study's affirmation of his hypothesis required the application of several technologies developed only recently. In the study, the team identified and ranked dozens of areas that were not previously known to be involved in memory and showed that memory recall becomes more behaviorally powerful when multiple memory-storing regions are reactivated, rather than just one.
weatheriscool
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From rare soil microbe, a new antibiotic candidate
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-rare-soil ... idate.html
by Washington University in St. Louis
Demand for new kinds of antibiotics is surging, as drug-resistant and emerging infections are becoming an increasingly serious global health threat. Researchers are racing to reexamine certain microbes that serve as one of our most successful sources of therapeutics: the actinomycetes.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Hawaii discovered a potential candidate for drug development from one such microbe, the soil bacterium known as Lentzea flaviverrucosa. They reported their findings in a study published the week of April 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Rare actinomycetes are an underexploited source of new bioactive compounds," said Joshua Blodgett, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, co-corresponding author of the new study. "Our genomics-based approach allowed us to identify an unusual peptide for future drug design efforts."

Actinomycetes produce bioactive components that form the basis for many clinically useful drugs, especially antibiotics and anticancer agents. Since the 1940s, pharmaceutical companies have analyzed many common actinomycetes to see what they might produce. Today, about two-thirds of all antibiotics used in hospitals and clinics are derived in part from actinomycetes.
weatheriscool
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Research in human kidney organoids reveals target to prevent irreversible kidney damage

by Massachusetts General Hospital
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... sible.html
To a certain extent, kidneys have the capacity to repair themselves after being injured, but a switch can occur from such intrinsic repair to incomplete repair that leads to irreversible damage and chronic kidney disease (CKD). A team led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) recently used kidney organoids derived from human stem cells to identify genes that are important for maintaining healthy repair in the kidneys. The findings, which are published in Science Translational Medicine, may lead to new targets to help prevent or treat CKD.

Although various factors involved in kidney repair have been identified in animal studies, translating these findings into the clinical been difficult because many treatments deemed safe and effective in animals have subsequently been found to be toxic or ineffective in clinical trials. Human kidney organoids, which are like miniature kidneys, may help investigators avoid these setbacks.

"We have pioneered the work of human kidney organoids and think they'll be useful for therapeutic development for CKD," says lead author Navin Gupta, MD, an investigator in the Division of Nephrology at MGH. "As physician-scientists, we wanted to create a new CKD model in human cells to facilitate drug development."
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New 3D printing technique is a game changer for medical testing devices
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-3d-techni ... dical.html
by Greta Harrison, University of Southern California
Microfluidic devices are compact testing tools made up of tiny channels carved on a chip, which allow biomedical researchers to test the properties of liquids, particles and cells at a microscale. They are crucial to drug development, diagnostic testing and medical research in areas such as cancer, diabetes and now COVID-19. However, the production of these devices is very labor-intensive, with minute channels and wells that often need to be manually etched or molded into a transparent resin chip for testing. While 3D printing has offered many advantages for biomedical device manufacturing, its techniques were previously not sensitive enough to build layers with the minute detail required for microfluidic devices. Until now.

Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering have now developed a highly specialized 3D-printing technique that allows microfluidic channels to be fabricated on chips at a precise microscale not previously achieved. The research, led by Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Ph.D. graduate Yang Xu and Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and Industrial and Systems Engineering Yong Chen, in collaboration with Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Noah Malmstadt and Professor Huachao Mao at Purdue University, was published in Nature Communications.

The research team used a type of 3D printing technology known as vat photopolymerization, which harnesses light to control the conversion of liquid resin material into its solid end state.
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Researchers create first comprehensive map of human blood stem cell development
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... -cell.html
by University of California, Los Angeles

UCLA scientists and colleagues have created a first-of-its-kind roadmap that traces each step in the development of blood stem cells in the human embryo, providing scientists with a blueprint for producing fully functional blood stem cells in the lab.

The research, published today in the journal Nature, could help expand treatment options for blood cancers like leukemia and inherited blood disorders such as sickle cell disease, said Dr. Hanna Mikkola of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, who led the study.

Blood stem cells, also called hematopoietic stem cells, have the ability to make unlimited copies of themselves and to differentiate into every type of blood cell in the human body. For decades, doctors have used blood stem cells from the bone marrow of donors and the umbilical cords of newborns in life-saving transplant treatments for blood and immune diseases. However, these treatments are limited by a shortage of matched donors and hampered by the low number of stem cells in cord blood.

Researchers have sought to overcome these limitations by attempting to create blood stem cells in the lab from human pluripotent stem cells, which can potentially give rise to any cell type in the body. But success has been elusive, in part because scientists have lacked the instructions to make lab-grown cells differentiate into self-renewing blood stem cells rather than short-lived blood progenitor cells, which can only produce limited blood cell types.

"Nobody has succeeded in making functional blood stem cells from human pluripotent stem cells because we didn't know enough about the cell we were trying to generate," said Mikkola, who is a professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology in the UCLA College and a member of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
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Small trial targeting Epstein-Barr infections shows promise as multiple sclerosis treatment
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... tiple.html
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress
A team of researchers at Atara Biotherapeutics has conducted a small Phase I clinical trial of a therapeutic called ATA188 that targets Epstein-Barr infections (EBV) as a treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS). Representatives from Atara Biotherapeutics presented their findings at an EBV and MS Day event. A press release from late last year described the results of their clinical trial.

MS is a disease of the central nervous system in which the immune system attacks the sheath that covers and protects nerve cells. And EBV is a virus also known as human herpesvirus 4; it is one of the most common viral infections in humans. Some scientists have estimated that approximately 95% of people alive today have been infected by the virus at some point. In addition to being the root cause of mononucleosis, it is believed to play a role in several autoimmune diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome, encephalomyelitis and possibly MS. Prior research has shown that the virus enters a dormant state after attack by the immune system, only to reemerge later, causing difficult-to-isolate problems.
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Novel injection repairs severe spinal cord injuries in mice
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... -mice.html
A brighter future could be in store for people with a spinal cord injury if new animal research pans out in humans.

Mice that were paralyzed due to severe spinal cord damage regained the ability to walk within four weeks of receiving an experimental injectable therapy, say researchers led by Samuel Stupp of Northwestern University in Chicago.

The research team plans to seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the treatment to be used in people.

"Our research aims to find a therapy that can prevent individuals from becoming paralyzed after major trauma or disease," said Stupp, a professor of materials science and engineering, chemistry, medicine and biomedical engineering.

"For decades, this has remained a major challenge for scientists because our body's central nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord, does not have any significant capacity to repair itself after injury or after the onset of a degenerative disease," Stupp said in a university news release.
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Rilzabrutinib for blood disorder shows promise in phase 1–2 clinical trial

by Michael Morrison, Massachusetts General Hospital
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... nical.html
In people with immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), the body produces destructive antibodies against platelets in the blood, which increases the risk of bruising, bleeding, hospitalization, death, fatigue, and an impaired quality of life. A drug called rilzabrutinib has generated promising safety and efficacy results in a recent international multi-center phase 1–2 ITP trial led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The findings, which are published in the New England Journal of Medicine, pave the way for more advanced clinical trials.

Research has shown that cells called macrophages are primarily responsible for destroying antibody-coated platelets in ITP, and an enzyme called Bruton kinase is critical to their function. Although an inhibitor of Bruton kinase that was approved to treat a common form of leukemia decreases macrophage activity and raises platelets counts in patients with both leukemia and ITP, the drug, called ibrutinib, also inhibits the function of platelets, which reduces its efficacy in ITP.
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Scientists discover 'missing link' in a severe form of asthma, paving the way to new therapy
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04- ... aving.html
by Delthia Ricks , Medical Xpress

Scientists have identified a single molecule that may explain how bacteria can trigger one of the most severe types of asthma, a discovery that for the first time identifies the "missing link" between exposure to bacterial components and extreme inflammation of the lungs' airways.

The new research not only clarifies how a severe form of asthma affects patients, but further underscores how bacterial dysbiosis—disruptions in beneficial bacteria amid exposure to pathogenic forms—affects vulnerable lungs. Going into the research, scientists already knew that bacterial molecules can trigger inflammatory activity in the lungs' airways because patients with severe asthma often have changes in their bacterial populations. Yet the exact mechanisms by which bacteria exacerbate asthma remained unclear.

Seeking answers, Dr. Sarah Headland and colleagues in the immunology division of Genentech in south San Francisco, zeroed in on a form of asthma known as non-type-2 to find out why it is one of the severest forms of inflammatory respiratory disease. She and her team have also begun the arduous task of developing a customized therapy.
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Research could enable assembly line synthesis of prevalent amine-containing drugs

by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-enable-li ... ining.html
A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign research team has discovered a way to produce a special class of molecule that could open the door for new drugs to treat currently untreatable diseases.

Open the household medicine cabinet and you will likely find organic derivatives of ammonia, called amines. They are one of the most prevalent structures found in medicines today. More than 40 percent of drugs and drug candidates contain amines, and 60 percent of those amines are tertiary, so named for the three carbons that are bonded to a nitrogen.

Tertiary amines are found in some of the most impactful human medicines, including antibiotics, breast cancer and leukemia drugs, opioid pain medications, antihistamines, blood thinners, HIV treatments, antimigraine medications and more. They increase a drug's solubility and can trigger its key biological functions.
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