Biology & Medicine News and Discussions

weatheriscool
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Engineering team develops process to make implants safer
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-team-implants-safer.html
by Grant Martin, University of Alabama at Birmingham

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have developed a new plasma-enabled process that could limit the proliferation of toxins from implants into a patient's bloodstream. The team, led by Vinoy Thomas, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB School of Engineering's Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, recently published findings in the ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces journal.

In the article, the authors explain that a major challenge of developing nanoparticle-modified biomedical implant material is to stably attach metallic nanoparticles on different surfaces—particularly polymer surfaces.

"For years, scientists have achieved synthesis of metallic nanoparticles in aqueous solutions using both chemical and biological (plant extracts) reducing agents," Thomas said. "The challenge of attaching metallic nanoparticles is especially difficult in cases involving hydrophobic polymeric biomaterials, which most polymeric biomaterials fall under."

To address this challenge, Thomas and his team developed a plasma-enabled process called plasma electroless reduction. The PER process allows researchers to deposit gold and silver nanostructures on different 2D and 3D polymer material surfaces, such as cellulose paper, polypropylene-based facemasks and 3D printed polymer scaffolds.

"It is well known that there are toxicity issues offered by the rapid and premature release of the metallic nanostructures from the implant material into the bloodstream," Thomas said. "This issue could be addressed only by ensuring the stable anchoring of the metallic nanostructures on implant surfaces. This has inspired us to optimize our PER process by conducting systematic and in-depth investigation of concentration of the metallic precursor followed by sonication wash before cell culture in vitro."
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funkervogt
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Bone marrow transplant cures man's AIDS.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-62312249
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raklian
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
weatheriscool
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How ADAR1 mutation leads to self-destructive inflammation
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07- ... ation.html
by University of Washington
A new study shows how mutation of the ADAR1 gene sets off biochemical pathways that produce an autoimmune response that harms the developing brain and other areas of the body.

The ADAR gene contains instructions for making proteins used by the immune system. Normally, the body's immune system fights off pathogens, foreign bodies, and cancers. An RNA-editing enzyme produced by the ADAR1 gene steps in to stop abnormal immune activation when the body misidentifies its own RNA.

Mutations in the ADAR1 gene are common in people of northern European descent. When a second specific mutation is also present in an individual, together they can contribute to a condition in which an embryo, fetus or newborn appears to be over-zealously fighting off a viral infection, but no causative pathogens are present. In people the disease is called Aicardi-Goutieres Syndrome.

While most babies with the mutation do not have symptoms, the severe forms of the condition can lead to cognitive impairment, additional neurological problems, and damage to other organs, like the kidneys and liver, and it can be fatal. While the two disorders are not considered related, the syndrome shares a few features with another autoimmune disease, systemic lupus erythematosus.

Because it looks like the baby is trying to overcome a virulent virus, but no actual infection can be detected, the disease appears to mimic an infection acquired just before or soon after birth.

Studying the immunological repercussions of this mutation, in addition to increasing critical knowledge to improve medical understanding about this devastating disease, can provide broader insights into some aspects of genetic and biochemical activities and interactions culminating in abnormal inflammation.
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Researchers harness the power of carbenes to fabricate drugs more easily and more safely
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-harness-p ... drugs.html
by Tatyana Woodall, The Ohio State University

Despite being some of the most versatile building blocks in organic chemistry, compounds called carbenes can be too hot to handle. In the lab, chemists often avoid using these highly reactive molecules due to how explosive they can be.

Yet in a new study, published today in the journal Science, researchers from The Ohio State University report on a new, safer method to turn these short-lived, high-energy molecules to much more stable ones.

"Carbenes have an incredible amount of energy in them," said David Nagib, co-author of the study and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State. "The value of that is they can do chemistry that you just cannot do any other way."

In fact, members of the Nagib Lab specialize in harnessing reagents with such high chemical energy, and have helped invent a multitude of new substances and techniques that would otherwise be chemically unobtainable.
weatheriscool
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Drosophila embryonic development at single-cell resolution

by European Molecular Biology Laboratory
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-drosophil ... ution.html
Scientists have constructed the most complete and detailed single-cell map of embryo development in any animal to date, using the fruit fly as a model organism.

Published in Science, this study, co-led by Eileen Furlong at EMBL and Jay Shendure at the University of Washington, harnesses data from more than one million embryonic cells spanning all stages of embryo development and represents a significant advance at multiple levels. This fundamental research also aids scientists' ability to pursue questions like how mutations lead to different developmental defects. In addition, it provides a path to understand the vast non-coding part of our genome that contains most disease-associated mutations.

"Just capturing the entirety of embryogenesis—all stages and all cell types—to obtain a more complete view of the cell states and molecular changes that accompany development is a feat in its own right," said Eileen Furlong, Head of EMBL's Genome Biology unit. "But what I'm really excited about is the use of deep learning to obtain a continuous view of the molecular changes driving embryonic development—down to the minute."

Embryonic development begins with the fertilization of an egg, followed by a series of cell divisions and decisions that give rise to a very complex multi-cellular embryo that can move, eat, sense, and interact with its environment. Researchers have been studying this process of embryonic development for over a hundred years, but only in the last decade have new technologies enabled scientists to identify molecular changes that accompany cell transitions at a single-cell level.

These single-cell studies have raised tremendous excitement as they demonstrated the complexity of cell types in tissues, even identifying new cell types, and revealed their developmental trajectories in addition to underlying molecular changes. However, attempts to profile the entirety of embryo development at single-cell resolution have been out of reach due to many technical challenges in sampling, costs, and technologies.
weatheriscool
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Scientists create long-acting injectable drug delivery system for tuberculosis
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08- ... losis.html
by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine
In 2020, more than 1.5 million people around the world died of tuberculosis, marking the first time in more than a decade that annual TB deaths had increased and demonstrating the global need for better access to treatments. To address that problem, scientists at the UNC School of Medicine, the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, and the International Center for the Advancement of Translational Science developed a long-acting injectable formulation of the anti-TB drug rifabutin.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, research in animal models showed the potential of delivering a TB drug with one injection that lasts at least four months, in lieu of the current standard treatment requiring constant adherence to a daily drug regimen.
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funkervogt
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Engineered pig tissue cures a type of human blindness in medical trials.
The Iranian and Indian patients all suffered from an eye disease called keratoconus, a condition in which the cornea (the clear, dome-shaped front surface of your eye) thins and gradually bulges outward into a cone shape. The disease affects up to 2 out of 1,000 people and often requires surgery to remove a full-thickness portion of the malfunctioned central cornea and replace it with donor tissue. But as you might imagine, there aren’t many cornea donors around, and only 1 out of every 70 people in need of one actually receive one.

If there are no donors, that means we’ll just have to make our own corneas, researchers at Linköping University in Sweden must have thought. They dissolved pig skin tissue to extract collagen, purified it, then used it to make a hydrogel that essentially mimics the human cornea. The hydrogel was inserted into pockets of the patient’s cornea to thicken it out and reshape it to restore the cornea’s function — and it worked.

Most of the patients improved their average visual acuity to 20/58 with glasses, meaning they need to be 20 feet away to see an object that people can normally see from 58 feet away. Not the best eyesight, but still light-years ahead of what they could see. Three of the patients even gained 20/20 vision, meaning they now have the clarity or sharpness of vision of a “normal” person, after they used to be legally blind (20/200 vision).

Two years after surgery, the patients still retained these improvements. And although their corneas now technically contain foreign biological material, because collagen is a structured protein that lacks individual cells, the patient’s immune system didn’t reject the implant.

“Fourteen of 14 initially blind subjects had a final mean best-corrected vision (spectacle or contact lens) of 20/36 and restored tolerance to contact lens wear. This work demonstrates restoration of vision using an approach that is potentially equally effective, safer, simpler, and more broadly available than donor cornea transplantation,” the authors wrote in their study.
https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/art ... -12082022/
weatheriscool
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Researchers discover new approach to healing skin infections and wounds
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08- ... ounds.html
by University of Calgary

University of Calgary researchers have identified a promising new approach to treating bacterial skin infections. In a study recently published in Nature, first author Dr. Rachel Kratofil, Ph.D., and co-senior authors Drs. Paul Kubes, Ph.D., Justin Deniset, Ph.D., and their research team show new insight which could lead to advancements in treating bacterial infections and wounds.

"While translating our research from bench to bedside will require many more experiments and involve a model more closely related to human disease, it is exciting that we have made a fundamental discovery that could improve infections and tissue repair in humans, especially hard-to-treat cases," says Kratofil.

Traditionally, researchers have thought that both neutrophils and monocytes (white blood cells) were recruited to clear bacteria from an infected site on the skin. When these cells work together, they act as the immune system's first line of defense in our bodies.

However, the new research reveals that monocytes alone are capable of facilitating faster healing of wounds. Monocytes help the healing process by regulating leptin levels and blood vessel growth during wound repair. They also produce ghrelin, a hormone that helps wounds heal more efficiently.
weatheriscool
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Gene mutations from patients with debilitating seizure and movement disorder created in mice
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08- ... izure.html
by University of Maryland School of Medicine
Three genetic alterations associated with a rare seizure and a movement disorder primarily found in children were successfully mirrored in mice and their symptoms treated, in a new study from a University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researcher, Andrea Meredith, Ph.D., Professor of Physiology and her collaborators.

The disorder—KCNMA1-linked channelopathy, named after the affected gene—is associated with involuntary collapsing episodes, in which patients slump over from loss of posture and muscle tone. Although these episodes are brief, they can occur hundreds of times per day, putting patients at risk of serious injury. The disorder can cause severe developmental delay and has been difficult to treat, with researchers lacking an explanation as to how this disease affects the brain and body.

"Most individuals with KCNMA1-linked channelopathy did not inherit the disorder from their parents," said Dr. Meredith, senior author of the paper. "Without this inheritance pattern, it is difficult to identify the major symptoms of the disorder and the KCNMA1 gene changes that produce these symptoms. Introducing patients' mutations into mice provides answers to these questions."

Dr. Meredith said that once they establish the mechanism behind these symptoms they will be ready to test therapies that can treat the disorder.

The findings were published online on July 12, 2022, in eLife.

Along with collapsing episodes, people who have mutations in the KCNMA1 gene can experience seizures and developmental delay. The manner in which genetic changes produce these symptoms is currently unknown. However, the researchers know that the KCNMA1 gene encodes an ion channel, which moves charged potassium through cells to produce electrical signals in neurons and muscles, controlling muscle movement. For KCNMA1 mutations found in patients, a single DNA letter is exchanged for another incorrect one. The researchers believe these KCNMA1 patient mutations change how ion channels function, which affects the brain's ability to control muscle movements.
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