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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,263

George Church: Learn from COVID and fast-track therapies that reverse aging

All eyes are on the Emerald Isle this week as the Longevity Summit Dublin brings together a host of speakers covering the spectrum of this booming sector. Delegates have been hearing from some of the leading entrepreneurs, companies, investors, and researchers in the field as they address many of the hot-button topics affecting longevity. One of those speakers is the so-called “father of genomics” – Harvard professor of genetics, George Church – who closes the conference later today with a keynote on Gene, cell and organ therapies for de-aging.

Longevity. Technology: In addition to his Harvard professorship, Church heads up synthetic biology at the Wyss Institute, where he oversees development of new tools with applications in regenerative medicine. Much of his focus more recently has been on the development of gene therapies targeting age-related disease, a passion that led him to co-found Rejuvenate Bio, with the goal of creating “full age reversal gene therapies.” We caught up with Church ahead of his Dublin presentation for a brief conversation on longevity.

Dr Church’s name is synonymous with genomic science, and he was a key contributor to the Human Genome Project and technologies including next-generation fluorescent and nanopore sequencing, aimed at understanding genetic contributions to human disease. However, he doesn’t feel that those initiatives did a huge amount to move the aging field forward.

Scientists develop novel technique to grow meat in the lab using magnetic field

Scientist from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have found a novel way of growing cell-based meat by zapping animal cells with a magnet. This new technique simplifies the production process of cell-based meat by reducing reliance on animal products, and it is also greener, cleaner, safer and more cost-effective.

Cultured is an alternative to animal farming with advantages such as reducing and the risk of transmitting diseases in animals. However, the current method of producing cultured meat involves using other , which largely defeats the purpose, or drugs to stimulate the growth of the meat.

To cultivate cell-based meat, are fed animal serum—usually fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is a mixture harvested from the blood of fetuses excised from pregnant cows slaughtered in the dairy or meat industries—to help them grow and proliferate. This is a critical, yet cruel and expensive, step in the current cell-based meat production process. Ironically, many of these molecules come from the muscles within the slaughtered animal, but scientists did not know how to stimulate their release in production scale bioreactors. Other methods to promote are using drugs or relying on genetic engineering.

Tiny sea creature’s genes shed light on evolution of immunity

How a tiny marine invertebrate distinguishes its own cells from competitors’ bears striking similarities to the human immune system, according to a new study led by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers.

The findings, published now in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the building blocks of our immune system evolved much earlier than previously thought and could help improve understanding of transplant rejection, one day guiding development of new immunotherapies.

“For decades, researchers have wondered whether self-recognition in a marine creature called Hydractinia symbiolongicarpus was akin to the processes that control whether a piece of skin can be successfully grafted from one person to another,” said senior author Matthew Nictora, Ph.D., assistant professor of surgery and immunology at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute. “Our study shows for the first time that a special group of proteins called the immunoglobulin superfamily— which are important for adaptive immunity in mammals and other vertebrates—are found in such a distantly-related animal.”

Can we live longer? And does the answer lie in Physics?

Physics is not the first scientific discipline that springs to mind at the mention of DNA, but a group of scientists, including John van Noort from the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA.

Longevity. Technology: In every cell of our bodies are chromosomes that carry genes that determine our characteristics. At the ends of these chromosomes are telomeres, which protect the genes from damage. Telomeres are rather like aglets, the plastic tips at the end of a shoelace – they protect the DNA from damage and fraying. However, every time a cell divides, the telomeres become shorter, until eventually the Hayflick Limit is reached, the cell can no longer divide and apoptosis – programmed cell death – occurs.

This means that telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer, and the researchers behind this new discovery hope it will help us to better understand aging and age-related diseases.

Certific and PocDoc collaborate to tackle cardiovascular disease

Hot on the heels of its €7.4 million raise to accelerate remote medical diagnostics, Certific has announced it is partnering with healthtech startup PocDoc to tackle the world’s biggest killer – cardiovascular disease.

The novel screening will allow patients to remotely monitor blood pressure, BMI and, crucially, quantitative lipid levels through the same user experience. This solution will be rolled out through a number of pilots, in conjunction with the NHS, across the UK, and eventually across Europe and globally.

Longevity. Technology: Heart and circulatory diseases cause a quarter of all deaths in the UK – that’s more than 160,000 deaths each year, or one every three minutes. There are around 7.6 million people living with a heart or circulatory disease in the UK. This costs the country’s National Health Service (NHS) an estimated £7.4 billion per year, with a wider cost to the economy of around £15.8 billion. Early identification of those at highest risk can ensure appropriate treatment, prevent many cases and reduce the strain on the healthcare system.

New study allows scientists to test therapeutics for rare neurodegenerative disease affecting young children

For the first time, scientists will be able to test therapeutics for a group of rare neurodegenerative diseases that affect infants and young children, thanks to a new research model created by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hereditary spastic paraplegias (HSPs) are a group of caused by . They lead tens of thousands of children to develop increased muscle tone in their lower extremities, causing weakness in their legs and ultimately affecting their ability to crawl or walk.

“Kids as early as six months of age that have these start to show signs of disease,” says Anjon Audhya, a professor in the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry at UW-Madison. “Between two and five years of age, these kids become wheelchair-bound, and they unfortunately will never be able to walk.”

3D metal complexes could be the answer to overcoming fungal drug-resistance

Scientists discover that 1 in 5 metal compounds display anti-fungal properties-they are non-toxic too.

Metal compounds could be the answer to the growing problem of drug-resistant fungal infections, according to new research published in the American Chemical Society on Sept .23.

The compounds could help develop much-needed antifungal drugs-particularly for immunocompromised patients susceptible to fungal infections.

Viruses may monitor their hosts’ environment to spread more effectively

This is both good and bad news.

A team of international researchers has revealed that viruses take cues from their surroundings to perform different actions. This implies that they have the ability to sense their and their host’s environment and decide whether or not it is suitable to spread infection, attack the host cells, multiply in number, or suspend activity at any given time.

The researchers believe that this discovery could further disclose various unknown aspects of the virus-host interaction and lead to the development of a new generation of antiviral drugs. During their study, they studied bacteriophages, also called “phages,” viruses that infect and harm bacteria, and discovered that the DNA of such viruses contains binding sites for a protein called CtrA.

Interestingly, a phage never produces CtrA, so why does its DNA have a binding site for the protein? While looking for an answer to this question, the researchers discovered an unheard power of the phages.

Nanopore-based technologies beyond DNA sequencing

Ideally, the nanopore dimensions should be comparable to those of the analyte for the presence of the analyte to produce a measurable change in the ionic current amplitude above the noise level. Nanopores can be formed in several ways, with a wide range of pore diameters. Biological nanopores are formed by the self-assembly of either protein subunits, peptides or even DNA scaffolds in lipid bilayers or block copolymer membranes1,3,6,17,18. They possess atomically precise dimensions controlled by biopolymer sequences, providing the ability to recognize biomolecules with constriction diameters of ~1–10 nm. Solid-state nanopores are crafted in thin inorganic or plastic membranes (for example, SiNx), which allows the nanopores to have extended diameters of up to hundreds of nanometres, permitting the entry or analysis of large biomolecules and complexes. The tools for fabricating solid-state nanopores, which include electron/ion milling4,5, laser-based optical etching19,20 and the dielectric breakdown of ultrathin solid membranes21,22, can be used to manipulate nanopore size at the nanometre scale, but allow only limited control over the surface structure at the atomic level in contrast to biological nanopores. The chemical modification and genetic engineering of biological nanopores, or the introduction of biomolecules to functionalize solid-state nanopores23, can further enhance the interactions between a nanopore and analytes, improving the overall sensitivity and selectivity of the device2,17,24,25,26. This feature allows nanopores to controllably capture, identify and transport a wide variety of molecules and ions from bulk solution.

Nanopore technology was initially developed for the practicable stochastic sensing of ions and small molecules2,27,28. Subsequently, many developmental efforts were focused on DNA sequencing1,7,8,9. Now, however, nanopore applications extend well beyond sequencing, as the methodology has been adapted to analyse molecular heterogeneities and stochastic processes in many different biochemical systems (Fig. 1). First, a key advantage of nanopores lies in their ability to successively capture many single molecules one after the other at a relatively high rate, which allows nanopores to explore large populations of molecules at the single-molecule level in reasonable timeframes. Second, nanopores essentially convert the structural and chemical properties of the analytes into a measurable ionic current signal, even achieving enantiomer discrimination29. The technology can be used to report on multiple molecular features while circumventing the need for labelling chemistries, which may complicate the overall analysis process and affect the molecular structures. For example, nanopores can discriminate nearly 13 different amino acids in a label-free manner, including some with minute structural differences30. An important aspect is the ability of nanopores to identify species31 that lack suitable labels for signal amplification or whose information is hidden in the noise of analytical devices. Consequently, nanopores may serve well in molecular diagnostic applications required for precision medicine, which achieves the identification of nucleic acid, protein or metabolite analytes and other biomarkers11,32,33,34,35. Third, nanopores provide a well-defined scaffold for controllably designing and constructing biomimetic systems, which involve a complex network of biomolecular interactions. These nanopore systems track the binding dynamics of transported biomolecules as they interact with nanopore surfaces, hence serving as a platform for unravelling complex biological processes (for example, the transport properties of nuclear pore complexes)36,37,38,39. Fourth, chemical groups can be spatially aligned within a protein nanopore, providing a confined chemical environment for site-selective or regioselective covalent chemistry. This strategy has been used to engineer protein nanoreactors to monitor bond-breaking and bond-making events40,41.

Here we discuss the latest advances in nanopore technologies beyond DNA sequencing and the future trajectory of the field, as well as the opportunities and main challenges for the next decade. We specifically address the emerging nanopore methods for protein analysis and protein sequencing, single-molecule covalent chemistry, single-molecule analysis of clinical samples and insights into the use of biomimetic pores for analysing complex biological processes.

Exploring the Mechanisms Underlying Disorders of Consciousness

Summary: Study reveals altered brain dynamics in those with unresponsive arousal syndrome, previously known as “vegetative state”, and in those with minimally conscious state.

Source: University of Liege.

A study by the Human Brain Project (HBP), led by scientists from the University of Liège (Belgium), has explored new techniques that may help distinguish between two different neurological conditions in patients with severe brain damage and or in a coma. The results of this study have just been published in open access in the journal eLife.