Biosingularity

Medicine’s focus has long been on treating specific diseases. We have radiation treatments to combat cancer tumors, cholesterol-lowering drugs to stave off heart attacks, and insulin to control diabetes.

But imagine if there were a drug that would slow down the aging process itself, a drug that didn’t just treat a single disease but instead targeted multiple diseases of old age at once? It may sound far-fetched, but that’s precisely what longevity scientists are working hard to produce.

“It’s not just that we’re trying to make people live longer; we’re trying to make people live healthier. This is an exciting time for research,” says Felipe Sierra, director of the Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging.

Indeed, top-notch research labs are rolling out studies at a rapid rate, and a growing chorus of experts believe the advances being made will ultimately lead to a crop of drugs capable of extending healthy lifespans. Signs of progress are abundant in medical journals.

via The Hunt for an Anti-Aging Pill Is on – US News and World Report.

A group of American researchers from MIT, Indiana University, and Tufts University, led by Erin Treacy Solovey, have developed Brainput — pronounced brain-put, not bra-input — a system that can detect when your brain is trying to multitask, and offload some of that workload to a computer.

The idea of using computers to do our grunt work isn’t exactly new — without them, the internet wouldn’t exist, manufacturing would be a very different beast, and we’d all have to get a lot better at mental arithmetic. I would say that the development of cheap, general purpose computers over the last 50 years, and the freedoms they have granted us, is one of mankind’s most important advancements. Brainput is something else entirely though.

Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which is basically a portable, poor man’s version of fMRI, Brainput measures the activity of your brain. This data is analyzed, and if Brainput detects that you’re multitasking, the software kicks in and helps you out. In the case of the Brainput research paper, Solovey and her team set up a maze with two remotely controlled robots. The operator, equipped with fNIRS headgear, has to navigate both robots through the maze simultaneously, constantly switching back and forth between them. When Brainput detects that the driver is multitasking, it tells the robots to use their own sensors to help with navigation. Overall, with Brainput turned on, operator performance improved — and yet they didn’t generally notice that the robots were partially autonomous.

via MIT’s Brainput boosts your brain power by offloading multitasking to a computer | ExtremeTech.

Positive emotions like joy and compassion are good for your mental and physical health, and help foster creativity and friendship. But people with bipolar disorder seem to have too much of a good thing. In a new article to be published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist June Gruber of Yale University considers how positive emotion may become negative in bipolar disorder.
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Humans walk on two feet and (mostly) lack hair-covered bodies, but the feature that sets us furthest apart from other apes is a brain capable of language, art, science, and other trappings of civilisation.

Now, two studies published online today in Cell1, 2 suggest that DNA duplication errors that happened millions of years ago might have had a pivotal role in the evolution of the complexity of the human brain. The duplications — which created new versions of a gene active in the brains of other mammals — may have endowed humans with brains that could create more neuronal connections, perhaps leading to greater computational power.

via

Could duplicated genes explain why you can read this?

ANN CUTTING / GETTY IMAGES

Human brain shaped by duplicate genes : Nature News & Comment.

A pill that has long been used to treat HIV has moved one step closer to becoming the first drug approved to prevent healthy people from becoming infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that Gilead Sciences’ Truvada appears to be safe and effective for HIV prevention. It concluded that taking the pill daily could spare patients “infection with a serious and life-threatening illness that requires lifelong treatment.”

On Thursday a panel of FDA advisers will consider the review when it votes on whether Truvada should be approved as a preventative treatment for people who are at high risk of contracting HIV through sexual intercourse. The FDA is not required to follow the advice of its panels, but it usually does.

via FDA review favors first drug for HIV prevention | Nation & World | The Seattle Times.

Chemotherapy saves lives, but it can take a considerable toll on the body. Now, by inserting a mutated gene into cancer patients, researchers have found a way to protect them against the side effects of chemotherapy and boost their odds of surviving a particularly aggressive type of cancer.

Patients with glioblastoma, a fast-growing and usually fatal brain cancer, face overwhelming odds. Half die within 13 months of diagnosis, and very few survive long-term. Treatment is part of the problem. Many glioblastomas are resistant to chemotherapy because they harbor an overactive gene called MGMT, which repairs the cancer cells after chemotherapy damages them. To counteract the gene, physicians sometimes add an MGMT-blocking drug, benzylguanine, to the chemotherapy regimen to make the cancer cells easier to kill. But benzylguanine also makes healthy blood and bone marrow cells easy to kill.

To find a way around these severe side effects, Kiem and colleagues zeroed in on a mutated version of MGMT called P140K. The gene enables cells to resist chemotherapy and benzylguanine. The team wondered what would happen if healthy cells had P140K.

via A Shield Against Chemotherapy – ScienceNOW.

The typical naked mole rat lives 25 to 30 years, during which it shows little decline in activity, bone health, reproductive capacity and cognitive ability. What is the secret to this East African rodent’s long, healthy life?

Scientists from the United States and Israel found a clue. From infancy to old age, naked mole rats are blessed with large amounts of a protein essential for normal brain function.

“Naked mole rats have the highest level of a growth factor called NRG-1 in the cerebellum. Its levels are sustained throughout their life, from development through adulthood,” said Yael Edrey, doctoral student at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio’s Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies.

via The secret of long life may be in a naked mole rat – San Antonio Express-News.

Magnet-making bacteria may be building biological computers of the future, researchers have said.

A team from the UK’s University of Leeds and Japan’s Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have used microbes that eat iron. As they ingest the iron, the microbes create tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives.

The research may lead to the creation of much faster hard drives, the team of scientists say. The study appears in the journal Small.

As technology progresses and computer components get smaller and smaller, it becomes harder to produce electronics on a nano-scale. So researchers are now turning to nature – and getting microbes involved.

Tiny magnets form inside magnetic bacteria

via BBC News – Magnetic bacteria may help build future bio-computers.

If you’re counting calories to lose weight, that may be only part of the weight loss equation says a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org). In the report, French scientists show that impairments to a gene known to be responsible for our internal body clocks, called “Rev-Erb alpha,” leads to excessive weight gain and related health problems. This provides new insights into the importance of proper alignment between the body’s internal timing and natural environmental light cycles to prevent or limit excessive weight gain and the problems this weight gain causes.
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British researchers writing in the journal Nature said they had found a major pathway leading to brain cell death in mice with prion disease, the mouse equivalent of Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease (CJD).

They then worked out how to block it, and were able to prevent brain cells from dying, helping the mice live longer.

The finding, described by one expert as “a major breakthrough in understanding what kills neurons”, points to a common mechanism by which brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and CJD damage the nerve cells.

In neurodegenerative diseases, proteins “mis-fold” in a various ways, leading to a buildup of misshapen proteins, the researchers explained in the study.

These misshapen proteins form the plaques found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s and the Lewy bodies found in Parkinson’s disease

via Scientists switch off brain cell death in mice | Reuters.

Researchers have remotely activated genes inside living animals, a proof of concept that could one day lead to medical procedures in which patients’ genes are triggered on demand.

The work, in which a team used radio waves to switch on engineered insulin-producing genes in mice, is published today in Science1.

Jeffrey Friedman, a molecular geneticist at the Rockefeller University in New York and lead author of the study, says that in the short term, the results will lead to better tools to allow scientists to manipulate cells non-invasively. But with refinement, he thinks, clinical applications could also be possible.

Nanoparticles induced cell excitation to increase insulin expression and release in vitro (credit: Sarah A. Stanley et al./Science)
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Gaining access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, achieving this entry is such a painstaking task that it is considered an art form; it is so difficult to learn that only a small number of labs in the world practice it.

But that could soon change: Researchers at MIT and Georgia Tech have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain. The researchers have shown that a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm can identify and record from neurons in the living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human experimenter.

The new automated process eliminates the need for months of training and provides long-sought information about living cells’ activities. Using this technique, scientists could classify the thousands of different types of cells in the brain, map how they connect to each other, and figure out how diseased cells differ from normal cells.

Graphic coutresy of the Boyden Lab

via Robots that reveal the inner workings of brain cells – MIT News Office.

Worrywarts, fidgety folk and the naturally nervy may have a real cause for concern: accelerated cancer. In a new study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, anxiety-prone mice developed more severe cancer then their calm counterparts.

The study, to be published online April 25 in PLoS ONE, found that after hairless mice were dosed with ultraviolet rays, the nervous ones — with a penchant for reticence and risk aversion — developed more tumors and invasive cancer. Consistent anxiety also came with sensitivity to chronic stress and a dampened immune system. Though other researchers have already linked chronic stress to higher risks for cancer and other maladies, the study is the first to biologically connect the personality trait of high anxiety to greater cancer threats.

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Researchers have rejuvenated aged hematopoietic stem cells to be functionally younger, offering intriguing clues into how medicine might one day fend off some ailments of old age.

Scientists at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Ulm University Medicine in Germany report their findings online May 3 in the journal Cell Stem Cell. The paper brings new perspective to what has been a life science controversy — countering what used to be broad consensus that the aging of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) was locked in by nature and not reversible by therapeutic intervention. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. government is looking for the next AZT, Viagra and thalidomide — substances that washed out as treatments for one disease but later turned out to work well against a totally different ailment.

AZT failed as a cancer drug but became the first antiviral to work against HIV. Viagra didn’t succeed as a treatment for angina but turned out to be great against impotence. Thalidomide, the notorious morning sickness pill that caused thousands of birth defects in Europe, is a treatment for leprosy and multiple myeloma.

via Collaboration seeks to find new uses for failed drugs – The Washington Post.

Whether someone is a “go-getter” or a “slacker” may depend on individual differences in the brain chemical dopamine, according to new research in the May 2 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest that dopamine affects cost-benefit analyses.

The study found that people who chose to put in more effort — even in the face of long odds — showed greater dopamine response in the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain important in reward and motivation. In contrast, those who were least likely to expend effort showed increased dopamine response in the insula, a brain region involved in perception, social behavior, and self-awareness. Read the rest of this entry »

The first blind patients to be fitted with electronic eye implants in a UK clinical trial have regained “useful vision” only weeks after surgery.

Chris James was able to see outlines of objects for the first time in 20 years after surgeons fitted him with the device during an eight-hour operation.

The 51-year-old from Wiltshire, who lost his sight to the disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP), is one of two patients taking part in the first UK trial of the technology that began in April.

Doctors said that both patients showed improvements in their eyesight that “exceeded expectations”

via Eye implants restore ‘useful sight’ to two blind patients | Science | The Guardian.

Researchers have found new evidence showing that resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, may play a role in preventing cell aging.

The study in rodents found that when mice had a particular gene — SIRT1 — knocked out, or turned off, resveratrol had no effect on them. But tests of muscle tissue in mice with a normal SIRT1 gene that were given resveratrol found that the substance boosted mitochondrial function.

Mitochondria provide the energy that cells need to function. A decrease in mitochondrial energy production has been linked to a variety of diseases, including diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as to the aging process itself, said senior study author David Sinclair, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

But don’t go reaching for that Chianti yet. Yes, resveratrol is found in the skin of red grapes. But “the amounts we gave to our mice would be like drinking 100 glasses of red wine a day,” Sinclair said.

Instead, the goal is to develop synthetic resveratrol compounds that activate SIRT1 and could be taken as medication. “My colleagues are in the middle of developing better molecules that we hope will be medicines that will be used to treat diseases of aging, not to extend lifespan, though that may be a side effect,” Sinclair said.

via How That Glass of Red Wine Might Help You Live Longer – Diabetes – MSN Health.

Scientists have discovered that they can dramatically increase the life span of mice with progeria (premature aging disease) and heart disease (caused by Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy) by reducing levels of a protein called SUN1. This research was done by A*STAR’s Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in collaboration with their partners at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States and the Institute of Cellular and System Medicine in Taiwan. Their findings were published in the scientific journal, Cell, on 27th April 2012 and provide an exciting lead into developing new methods to treat premature aging and heart disease.
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Aggressive pancreatic tumours may be treatable with a new class of drugs, according to Cancer Research UK

Less than one in five people with this form of cancer are still alive a year after being diagnosed.

A study, published in the journal Nature, showed that a gene was being switched off in the cancerous cells.

The reseachers said drugs were already being tested which had the potential to turn the gene back on, to stop the spread of the cancer.

via BBC News – ‘Brake gene’ turned off in pancreatic cancer.

Blueberries and strawberries, which are high in flavonoids, appear to reduce cognitive decline in older adults according to a new study published today in Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society. The study results suggest that cognitive aging could be delayed by up to 2.5 years in elderly who consume greater amounts of the flavonoid-rich berries.

Flavonoids are compounds found in plants that generally have powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Experts believe that stress and inflammation contribute to cognitive impairment and that increasing consumption of flavonoids could mitigate the harmful effects. Previous studies of the positive effects of flavonoids, particularly anthocyanidins, are limited to animal models or very small trials in older persons, but have shown greater consumption of foods with these compounds improve cognitive function. Read the rest of this entry »

UC Santa Barbara researchers have discovered Salmonella bacteria that are up to 100 times more capable of causing disease. Their findings may help prevent food poisoning outbreaks that continue to plague public health and the food industry.

These “hypervirulent” bugs can override vaccines and pose a risk to food safety –– and mitigation efforts are currently under way.

Previous strategies to find the more dangerous bugs were unsuccessful since they behave like a “Trojan Horse”— exposing their weapons only when causing disease — but looking much like their less-virulent cousins in the environment.

Now that scientists know what to look for, they are developing methods to discriminate them from their less-virulent cousins. The researchers have been successful in forcing the bacteria to reveal their weapons in the laboratory –– the first step in combating them

via UCSB Press Release: “UCSB Researchers Discover Particularly Dangerous Salmonella “.

Every year, millions of people are born with debilitating genetic disorders, a result of inheriting just one faulty gene from their parents. They may have been dealt a dud genetic hand, but they do not have to stick with it. With the power of modern genetics, scientists are developing ways of editing these genetic errors and reversing the course of many hard-to-treat diseases.

These gene therapies exploit the abilities of viruses – biological machines that are already superb at penetrating cells and importing genes. By removing their ability to reproduce, and loading them with the genes of our choice, we can transform viruses from causes of disease into vectors for cures.

After a few shaky starts, some of these approaches are beginning to hit their stride. Thirteen children with SCID, an immune disorder that leaves people fatally vulnerable to infections, now have working immune systems. Several British patients with haemophilia, which prevents their blood from clotting properly, can now produce a clotting protein called factor IX, which they once had to inject. A British man and three Americans with inherited forms of progressive blindness can see again.

via Will we ever correct diseases before birth? | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine.

Specialized compounds that naturally reduce inflammation in mice also help clear bacterial infections. A combination of these inflammation-resolving factors and antibiotics lowers the antibiotic dose needed to clear E. coli and Staphylococcus, according to a new paper in Nature.

The finding suggests it would be possible to stimulate a person’s own defenses to enhance the effects of antibiotics—a potentially valuable weapon in the fight against increasing rates of antibiotic resistance.

“This paper bridges two seemingly different and distant areas of research—antimicrobial resistance and the resolution of inflammation,” said Alberto Mantovani, an immunologist at the University of Milan in Italy who was not involved in the research. “It’s an unexpected perspective.”

S. aureus bacteria being attacked by human white blood cells.

NIAID/RML

via Anti-inflammatory Factors Fight Bugs | The Scientist.

Traumatic experiences in early life can leave emotional scars. But a new study suggests that violence in childhood may leave a genetic mark as well. Researchers have found that children who are physically abused and bullied tend to have shorter telomeres—structures at the tips of chromosomes whose shrinkage has been linked to aging and disease.

Telomeres prevent DNA strands from unravelling, much like the plastic aglets on a shoelace. When cells divide, these structures grow shorter, limiting the number of times a cell can reproduce. For this reason, telomeres may reflect biological age. Research has found associations between stress and accelerated telomere loss, and shortened telomeres correlate with several health problems, including diabetes, dementia, and fatigue.

via Childhood Stress Leaves Genetic Scars – ScienceNOW.

Scientists have created artificial genetic material that can store information and evolve over generations in a similar way to DNA – a feat expected to drive research in medicine and biotechnology, and shed light on how molecules first replicated and assembled into life billions of years ago.

Ultimately, the creation of alternatives to DNA could enable scientists to make novel forms of life in the laboratory.

Researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, developed chemical procedures to turn DNA and RNA, the molecular blueprints for all known life, into six alternative genetic polymers called XNAs.

The process swaps the deoxyribose and ribose (the “d” and “r” in DNA and RNA) for other molecules. It was found the XNAs could form a double helix with DNA and were more stable than natural genetic material.

In the journal Science the researchers describe how they caused one of the XNAs to stick to a protein, an ability that might mean the polymers could be deployed as drugs working like antibodies.

DNA and RNA have been turned into alternative genetic polymers called XNAs by researchers in Cambridge. Photograph: Mopic/Alamy

via DNA alternative created by scientists | Science | The Guardian.

Scientists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science have identified similarities and differences among regions of the human brain, among the brains of human individuals, and between humans and mice by analyzing the expression of approximately 1,000 genes in the brain. The study, published online today in the journal Cell, sheds light on the human brain in general and also serves as an introduction to what the associated publicly available dataset can offer the scientific community.

This study reveals a high degree of similarity among human individuals. Only 5% of the nearly 1,000 genes surveyed in three particular regions show differences in expression between humans. In addition, comparison of this dataset to data in the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas indicates great consistency between humans and mice, as the human visual cortex appears to share 79% of its gene expression with that of the mouse.

The dataset, which is publicly available online via the Allen Brain Atlas data portal (www.brain-map.org) as part of the Allen Human Brain Atlas, holds promise for spurring further discoveries across the research community. Specifically, it contains detailed, cellular-level in situ hybridization gene expression data for about 1,000 genes, selected for their involvement in disease or neural function, in two distinct cortical areas of several disease-free adult human brains, both male and female.

Genes analyzed in this study fall into three categories: genes that serve as indicators of cell types found in the cortex, genes that are related to particular neural functions or diseases of the central nervous system, and genes that hold value for understanding the neural evolution of different species.

via Allen Institute for Brain Science: Newsroom: Press Releases.

A new technique for analyzing brain images offers the possibility of using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to predict the rate of progression and physical path of many degenerative brain diseases, report scientists at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

The technique, developed by SFVAMC scientists in collaboration with a team led by Bruce Miller, MD, clinical director of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, also supports mounting evidence that dementias spread through the brain along specific neuronal pathways in the same manner as prion diseases.

White matter connections in human brain (credit: David Shattuck, Arthur Toga, Paul Thompson/UCLA Lab of Neuro Imaging)
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Two Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)-based research teams, along with a group from the University of California at San Diego, have discovered that animals have a previously unknown system for detecting and responding to pathogens and toxins. In three papers published in the journals Cell and Cell Host & Microbe, the investigators describe finding evidence that disruptions to the core functions of animal cells trigger immune and detoxification responses, along with behavioral changes.
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Worrying may have evolved along with intelligence as a beneficial trait, according to a recent study by scientists at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and other institutions. Jeremy Coplan, MD, professor of psychiatry at SUNY Downstate, and colleagues found that high intelligence and worry both correlate with brain activity measured by the depletion of the nutrient choline in the subcortical white matter of the brain. According to the researchers, this suggests that intelligence may have co-evolved with worry in humans. Read the rest of this entry »

Ripe for biomedical applications

Until recently, the production of pluripotent “multipurpose” stem cells from skin cells was considered to be the ultimate new development. In the meantime, it has become possible to directly convert cells of the body into one another – without the time-consuming detour via a pluripotent intermediate stage. However, this method has so far been rather inefficient. Scientists from the Bonn Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology (director: Prof. Dr. Oliver Brüstle) have now developed the method to the point that it can be used for biomedical applications. The scientists are presenting their results in the journal “Nature Methods”.
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Working together can hasten brain evolution, according to a new computer simulation.

When programmed to navigate challenging cooperative tasks, the artificial neural networks set up by scientists to serve as mini-brains “learned” to work together, evolving the virtual equivalent of boosted brainpower over generations. The findings support a long-held theory that social interactions may have triggered brain evolution in human ancestors.

It may take a big brain to handle a big group of friends.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Nicolas Rougier

via Cooperative Neural Networks Suggest How Intelligence Evolved: Scientific American.

Brain tumors and head trauma, including concussions, can elevate pressure inside the skull, potentially crushing brain tissue or cutting off the brain’s blood supply. Monitoring pressure in the brains of such patients could help doctors determine the best treatment, but the procedure is so invasive — it requires drilling a hole through the skull — that it is done only in the most severely injured patients.

That may change with the development of a new technique that is much less risky. The method, described in the April 11 issue of Science Translational Medicine, could allow doctors to measure brain pressure in patients who have suffered head injuries that are milder, but would benefit from close monitoring.

MIT researchers have developed a way to monitor pressure inside the brains of patients with injuries such as the bleeding seen in this CT scan. 

Image: Lucien Monfils/wikipedia

via Sensing when the brain is under pressure – MIT News Office.

Pregnant women might now have one more good reason to watch their diet and exercise: A new study links autism and developmental delays in young children to metabolic conditions, like obesity and diabetes, in their mothers.

The findings, published in Monday’s edition of the journal Pediatrics, found that women who had diabetes or hypertension or were obese were 1.61 times as likely as healthy women to have children with autism spectrum disorders. They also were 2.35 times as likely to have children with developmental delays.

Child development experts said the findings were interesting but that it would be premature to suggest that the results could help explain the dramatic rise in diagnosed cases of autism over the last decade.

via Study finds link between autism and obesity during pregnancy – latimes.com.

Killing harmful bacteria in hospitals is difficult; out in the field, it can be an even bigger problem. Now, researchers may have a means for remote disinfection in a portable “flashlight” that shines a ray of cold plasma to kill bacteria in minutes.

Medical scientists have high hopes for plasmas. Produced in electrical discharges, these gases of free electrons and ions have already been shown to destroy pathogens, help heal wounds, and selectively kill cancer cells. No one is exactly sure how all of this works, but it seems that plasmas generate so-called reactive oxygen species in the air. These highly reactive molecules, which are present in our own immune system, oxidize cell membranes and damage DNA.

Plasma devices are already undergoing clinical testing to see whether they are safe to use. But these prototypes are limited: Either they need an external power source to generate the many kilovolts required for the electrical discharge, or they need an external gas supply and regulation to sustain the plasma. Such drawbacks make it difficult to use the devices in the field for emergency calls, natural disaster responses, or military operations.

via Plasma Flashlight Zaps Bacteria – ScienceNOW.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the O.K. last Friday to a new radioactive dye that helps doctors scan the brain for Alzheimer’s disease.

The dye, called Amyvid (florbetapir), made by Eli Lilly & Co., binds to the sticky amyloid proteins that build up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s. The dye can be detected by using positron emission tomography, or PET scans.

The test could allow doctors to diagnose Alzheimer’s much earlier and more accurately. In patients with symptoms of cognitive decline, the presence of amyloid would support an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The dye cannot be used alone to diagnose Alzheimer’s, however, especially not in people without symptoms because people with normal brain function may accumulate amyloid plaques as they age, and because the plaques can be associated with neurological conditions other than Alzheimer’s.

via Alzheimer’s Brain Scan Test Gets FDA Approval | Healthland | TIME.com.

Scientists at Novartis AG (NOVN) have discovered a compound that spurred cartilage growth from stem cells to fix damaged joints of mice, a finding that may point to a novel therapy for the arthritis that afflicts most elderly.

Researchers tested 22,000 drug-like molecules using a robotic screen, applying each one to bone marrow stem cells in tiny laboratory dishes. One compound, dubbed kartogenin, promoted the development of chondrocytes, cells that become cartilage, according to the report in the journal Science.

Researchers injected kartogenin into the damaged knee joints of mice, which prompted cartilage regeneration, improved symptoms and lowered levels of proteins and collagen fragments linked to damaged joints. The results suggest a unique, though early-stage, way to regulate cartilage and possibly repair some of the damage from osteoarthritis, the breakdown of cartilage that leads to joint failure, the researchers said.

via Novartis Compound Spurs Cartilage in Arthritic Mice – Bloomberg.

The discovery of a major gear in the biological clock that tells the body when to sleep and metabolize food may lead to new drugs to treat sleep problems and metabolic disorders, including diabetes.

Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, led by Ronald M. Evans, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, showed that two cellular switches found on the nucleus of mouse cells, known as REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ, are essential for maintaining normal sleeping and eating cycles and for metabolism of nutrients from food.

The findings describe a powerful link between circadian rhythms and metabolism and suggest a new avenue for treating disorders of both systems, including jet lag, sleep disorders, obesity and diabetes.

(Credit: iStockphoto) Read the rest of this entry »

Drugs made of protein have shown promise in treating cancer, but they are difficult to deliver because the body usually breaks down proteins before they reach their destination.

To get around that obstacle, a team of MIT researchers has developed a new type of nanoparticle that can synthesize proteins on demand. Once these “protein-factory” particles reach their targets, the researchers can turn on protein synthesis by shining ultraviolet light on them.

The particles could be used to deliver small proteins that kill cancer cells, and eventually larger proteins such as antibodies that trigger the immune system to destroy tumors, says Avi Schroeder, a postdoc in MIT’s David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and lead author of a paper appearing in the journal NanoLetters.

MIT researchers designed these particles that can produce proteins when ultraviolet light is shone on them. In this case, the protein is green fluorescent protein. 

Image: Avi Schroeder

via Nano-sized ‘factories’ churn out proteins – MIT News Office.

Men who eat flavonoid-rich foods such as berries, tea, apples and red wine significantly reduce their risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to new research by Harvard University and the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Published today in the journal Neurology ®, the findings add to the growing body of evidence that regular consumption of some flavonoids can have a marked effect on human health. Recent studies have shown that these compounds can offer protection against a wide range of diseases including heart disease, hypertension, some cancers and dementia.

This latest study is the first study in humans to show that flavonoids can protect neurons against diseases of the brain such as Parkinson’s. Read the rest of this entry »

You might recall a particular photograph that caused quite a stir back in 1999. It was the photograph of Samuel Armas, then just a 21-week-old fetus, reaching his tiny hand out from inside the uterus to clasp onto the doctor’s finger during a surgical procedure to correct the birth defect spina bifida. The fetal surgery at the time was still a bold undertaking, just two years after the first of its kind in 1997. Today, 13 years after Samuel’s “Hand of Hope,” the amazing procedure has been performed on over 400 fetuses around the world.

via In Utero Surgery – More Common Today, But No Less Miraculous | Singularity Hub.

The immune system cancer known as lymphoma can often be cured, but some types remain stubbornly resistant to treatment. Now researchers have found a drug that appears to help vanquish these lymphomas by targeting their abnormal cell wiring. Tumors shrank in four of 10 advanced lymphoma patients treated with the drug, and one is still in remission more than a year later.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, which involves immune cells called B cells, is one of the more common and dangerous lymphomas. Each year about 23,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with it, and some 10,000 die annually. Over the past decade, cancer biologist Louis Staudt’s team at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, has analyzed patterns of gene activity within the malignant immune cells to break this cancer into subtypes, including one, activated B-cell-like (ABC) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, that kills 60% of patients within 3 years. By dissecting the roles of different genes and proteins in the lymphoma cells, Staudt and colleagues have uncovered what appears to go wrong in this cancer: Genetic mutations cause B-cell receptors, proteins on the B cell’s surface that normally recognize infections, to send signals into the cell that block a self-destruction process that normally helps rid the body of abnormal cells. In lab studies, the lymphoma cells died when treated with an experimental drug called ibrutinib that overrides this anti-suicide signal. The drug blocks a protein called Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) that’s part of the B-cell-receptor signaling pathway.

via New Drug Shows Promise for Advanced Lymphoma – ScienceNOW.

Awakening from anesthesia is often associated with an initial phase of delirious struggle before the full restoration of awareness and orientation to one’s surroundings. Scientists now know why this may occur: primitive consciousness emerges first. Using brain imaging techniques in healthy volunteers, a team of scientists led by Adjunct Professor Harry Scheinin, M.D. from the University of Turku, Turku, Finland in collaboration with investigators from the University of California, Irvine, USA, have now imaged the process of returning consciousness after general anesthesia. The emergence of consciousness was found to be associated with activations of deep, primitive brain structures rather than the evolutionary younger neocortex.

These results may represent an important step forward in the scientific explanation of human consciousness. The study was part of the Research Programme on Neuroscience by the Academy of Finland.

Caption: This image shows one returning from oblivion — imaging the neural core of consciousness. Positron emission tomography (PET) findings show that the emergence of consciousness after anesthesia is associated with activation of deep, phylogenetically old brain structures rather than the neocortex. Left: Sagittal (top) and axial (bottom) sections show activation in the anterior cingulate cortex (i), thalamus (ii) and the brainstem (iii) locus coeruleus/parabrachial area overlaid on magnetic resonance image (MRI) slices. Right: Cortical renderings show no evident activations.

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Targeted therapeutic nanoparticles that accumulate in tumors while bypassing healthy cells have shown promising results in an ongoing clinical trial, according to a new paper.

The nanoparticles feature a homing molecule that allows them to specifically attack cancer cells, and are the first such targeted particles to enter human clinical studies. Originally developed by researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the particles are designed to carry the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, used to treat lung, prostate and breast cancers, among others.

In the study, which appears April 4 in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the researchers demonstrate the particles’ ability to target a receptor found on cancer cells and accumulate at tumor sites. The particles were also shown to be safe and effective: Many of the patients’ tumors shrank as a result of the treatment, even when they received lower doses than those usually administered.

via Targeted nanoparticles show success in clinical trials – MIT News Office.

Does your mind wander? During a class or meeting, do you find yourself staring out the window and thinking about what you’ll do tomorrow or next week? As a child, were you constantly reminded by teachers to stop daydreaming?

Well, psychological research is beginning to reveal that daydreaming is a strong indicator of an active and well-equipped brain. Tell that to your third-grade teacher.

A new study, published in Psychological Science by researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, suggests that a wandering mind correlates with higher degrees of what is referred to as working memory. Cognitive scientists define this type of memory as the brain’s ability to retain and recall information in the face of distractions.

via The Benefits of Daydreaming | Surprising Science.

A new drug that tackles advanced prostate cancer in three different ways has passed its first hurdle towards being approved.

Scientists reported promising early trial results using galeterone, which is designed to treat cancer that no longer responds to hormone therapy. However, researchers counselled caution as tests on the “triple whammy” drug have been carried out on only a small number of patients.

In their tests, scientists based at Harvard University reported that galeterone reduced levels of prostate specific antigen (PSA), a prostate cancer blood marker, by 30% or more in about half of patients. Eleven patients had PSA reductions of 50% or more, and in some there was significant shrinkage in tumour size.

A total of 49 patients took part in the phase one study, which primarily looked at safety and dosing levels. All had “refractory” or “castration resistant” cancer that had ceased to respond to hormone therapy. Currently there is little doctors can do to help prostate cancer patients who progress to this stage.

via Prostate cancer patients given hope by new ‘triple-whammy’ drug | Science | The Observer.

What is the relation between selective attention and consciousness? When you strain to listen to the distant baying of coyotes over the sound of a campsite conversation, you do so by attending to the sound and becoming conscious of their howls. When you attend to your sparring opponent out of the corner of your eye, you become hyperaware of his smallest gestures. Because of the seemingly intimate relation between attention and consciousness, most scholars conflate the two processes.

Image: John Rensten/Getty Images

via Consciousness Does Not Reside Here: Scientific American.