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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,623

Investigational Magnetic Device Shrinks Glioblastoma in First-in-World Human Test

Summary: A novel helmet that generates a noninvasive oscillating magnetic field was able to reduce tumor mass by 31% in a glioblastoma brain cancer patient.

Source: Houston Methodist.

Houston Methodist Neurological Institute researchers from the department of neurosurgery shrunk a deadly glioblastoma tumor by more than a third using a helmet generating a noninvasive oscillating magnetic field that the patient wore on his head while administering the therapy in his own home. The 53-year-old patient died from an unrelated injury about a month into the treatment, but during that short time, 31% of the tumor mass disappeared. The autopsy of his brain confirmed the rapid response to the treatment.

‘Next-Generation’ Total Artificial Heart Successfully Transplanted into First US Patient

Late last year, a French company called Carmat received approval in Europe for its total artificial heart. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a heart made of synthetic and biological materials intended for implantation into people who need heart transplants. Now, just half a year later, the first US patient has received one of the hearts.

The transplant took place last week in a 39-year-old man at Duke University Hospital in North Carolina. The man didn’t go to the hospital expecting to have a heart transplant, but it ended up saving his life.

After experiencing unexpected heart failure, he was diagnosed with advanced coronary artery disease (when plaque builds up in the blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood to heart) and went in for bypass surgery (which implants a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body to redirect blood around a blocked artery).

Sirtuins Anti Aging. Revisited. What they are. Why you should care. How you can benefit

Good day to you all.

Sirtuins are once again, making headlines. From a longer lifespan, again, through to helping old and dormant hair follicles to grow new hair, and of course a discourse between certain personalities on twitter, they continue to stimulate the interest and promise so much…

So I have decided to follow up my last sirtuins video with this one, Sirtuins revisited.

Here I look at them all from 1 to 7, to see what is being claimed for each one, and then I look at all the ways we can try to bring them all up to optimum so that we can live long, healthy lives, free from the maladies of old age.

I look at lifestyle interventions from exercise, saunas, cold therapies and more, through to diet choices and then finally on to supplements that are available to boost them all further.

So I hope you find it of use and enjoyable, and have a great weekend.

Continue reading “Sirtuins Anti Aging. Revisited. What they are. Why you should care. How you can benefit” | >

Clinical Course and Risk Factors of Disease Deterioration in Critically Ill Patients with COVID-19

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) began in December 2019 and rapidly spread to other provinces in China as well as other countries. In this study, 262 patients diagnosed with moderate to severe SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia in Wuhan, China, were analyzed. Data were compared between survivors and nonsurvivors. Of all the 262 patients, 23 (8.8%) patients died and 239 (91.2%) were discharged. The median age was 63.5 years and 46.9% of patients were male. The main complaints were fever (83.6%), cough (63.4%), and fatigue (49.2%) in the surviving group, while there were more complaints of dyspnea (39.1%) and shortness of breath (56.5%) in the nonsurviving group. The main comorbidities were hypertension (35.5%), diabetes mellitus (16.4%), and coronary artery disease (9.9%). Morbidity is higher in elderly patients with more comorbidities. Patients were mainly treated with nasal cannula (93.9%), while the nonsurviving group received more invasive mechanical ventilation (39.1%). Arbidol (80.9%), ribavirin (36.6%), oseltamivir (38.9%), interferon (16.4%), and ganciclovir (14.5%) were used for the antiviral treatment. In the nonsurviving group, the number of white blood cells (WBC) was significantly increased and lymphocytes were decreased, and lymphopenia was more common. The levels of aspartate transaminase (AST), brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), creatine kinase isoenzyme MB (CK-MB), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and C-reactive protein (CRP) were also significantly increased in the nonsurviving group. The adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for association of known variables for all-cause mortality due to the coronavirus disease 2019 were 2.467 (95% confidence interval[CI], 1.007−6.044; p = 0.048) for shortness of breath and 1.025 (95% CI, 1.001−1.049; p = 0.042) for AST. Elderly patients with more comorbidities and complaints of dyspnea and shortness of breath had increased risk of death. Patients with lymphopenia and high levels of WBC, AST, BNP, CK-MB, LDH, and CRP may be more likely to deteriorate.

Human Gene Therapy.

Health Canada Provides Positive Feedback on Tetra Bio-Pharma’s Application for ARDS-003 to be Studied in COVID-19 Patients at Risk of Developing Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Tetra’s trial will be the first worldwide drug which involves the use of an injectable sterile synthetic cannabinoid in patients infected by COVID-19. Tetra will use this study to demonstrate that its ARDS-003 drug can help prevent the acute respiratory distress seen in serious complications of COVID-19.

The proposed study is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and preliminary efficacy of ascending doses of ARDS-003 in hospitalized COVID-19 patients with pneumonia and at risk of developing acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Seeking guidance on clinical study protocol to be conducted in patients with COVID-19 is a pre-requisite of the Health Canada regulatory process for COVID-related trials. The Office of Clinical Trials of Health Canada’s Therapeutic Products Directorate acknowledged that Tetra’s extensive nonclinical data, including genotoxicity, safety pharmacology and toxicities studies, assessing the safety and pharmacokinetic profile of the investigational drug meet the authority’s requirements for a New Molecular Entity and granted the Company the approval for filing a clinical trial application in patients infected with Sars-CoV-2 (COVID-19). The authorities also agreed on the proposed study design, target population, and primary and secondary objectives and endpoints of the study in severe COVID-19 patients. To this end, contingent to Health Canada’s accelerated review process for Covid-related trials, the Company’s drug ARDS-003, will be evaluated in COVID-19 patients.

Rapid new bioprinting method unlocks potential of human tissue transplants

Scientists from the University at Buffalo have developed a rapid new 3D bioprinting method that could represent a significant step towards fully-printed human organs.

Using a novel vat-SLA-based approach, the team have been able to reduce the time it takes to create cell-laden hydrogel structures, from over 6 hours to just 19 minutes. The expedited biofabrication method also enables the production of embedded blood vessel networks, potentially making it a significant step towards the lifesaving 3D printed organs needed by those on transplant waiting lists.

“Our method allows for the rapid printing of centimeter-sized hydrogel models,” explained the study’s lead co-author, Chi Zhou. “It significantly reduces part deformation and cellular injuries caused by the prolonged exposure to the environmental stresses you commonly see in conventional 3D printing.”

Volumetric Bioprinting of Complex Living‐Tissue Constructs within Seconds

Bioprinting in seconds.

Biofabrication technologies, including stereolithography and extrusion-based printing, are revolutionizing the creation of complex engineered tissues. The current paradigm in bioprinting relies on the additive layer-by-layer deposition and assembly of repetitive building blocks, typically cell-laden hydrogel fibers or voxels, single cells, or cellular aggregates. The scalability of these additive manufacturing technologies is limited by their printing velocity, as lengthy biofabrication processes impair cell functionality. Overcoming such limitations, the volumetric bioprinting of clinically relevant sized, anatomically shaped constructs, in a time frame ranging from seconds to tens of seconds is described. An optical-tomography-inspired printing approach, based on visible light projection, is developed to generate cell-laden tissue constructs with high viability (85%) from gelatin-based photoresponsive hydrogels. Free-form architectures, difficult to reproduce with conventional printing, are obtained, including anatomically correct trabecular bone models with embedded angiogenic sprouts and meniscal grafts. The latter undergoes maturation in vitro as the bioprinted chondroprogenitor cells synthesize neo-fibrocartilage matrix. Moreover, free-floating structures are generated, as demonstrated by printing functional hydrogel-based ball-and-cage fluidic valves. Volumetric bioprinting permits the creation of geometrically complex, centimeter-scale constructs at an unprecedented printing velocity, opening new avenues for upscaling the production of hydrogel-based constructs and for their application in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and soft robotics.

New Gene Therapy Developed That Could Be Effective Against Many Types of Cancer

Mount Sinai researchers have developed a therapeutic agent that shows high effectiveness in vitro at disrupting a biological pathway that helps cancer survive, according to a paper published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, in July.

The therapy is an engineered molecule, named MS21, that causes the degradation of AKT, an enzyme that is overly active in many cancers. This study laid out evidence that pharmacological degradation of AKT is a viable treatment for cancers with mutations in certain genes.

AKT is a cancer gene that encodes an enzyme that is frequently abnormally activated in cancer cells to stimulate tumor growth. Degradation of AKT reverses these processes and inhibits tumor growth.