What the bleep is an exocortex and why should we care?
Continue reading “Thinking Outside the Brain – Why We Need to Build a Decentralized Exocortex” »
Sharing for fellow researchers and others who have interest in GBM news.
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary malignant brain tumor in adults and is uniformly lethal. T-cell-based immunotherapy offers a promising platform for treatment given its potential to specifically target tumor tissue while sparing the normal brain. However, the diffuse and infiltrative nature of these tumors in the brain parenchyma may pose an exceptional hurdle to successful immunotherapy in patients. Areas of invasive tumor are thought to reside behind an intact blood brain barrier, isolating them from effective immunosurveillance and thereby predisposing the development of “immunologically silent” tumor peninsulas. Therefore, it remains unclear if adoptively transferred T cells can migrate to and mediate regression in areas of invasive GBM. One barrier has been the lack of a preclinical mouse model that accurately recapitulates the growth patterns of human GBM in vivo. Here, we demonstrate that D-270 MG xenografts exhibit the classical features of GBM and produce the diffuse and invasive tumors seen in patients. Using this model, we designed experiments to assess whether T cells expressing third-generation chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) targeting the tumor-specific mutation of the epidermal growth factor receptor, EGFRvIII, would localize to and treat invasive intracerebral GBM. EGFRvIII-targeted CAR (EGFRvIII+ CAR) T cells demonstrated in vitro EGFRvIII antigen-specific recognition and reactivity to the D-270 MG cell line, which naturally expresses EGFRvIII. Moreover, when administered systemically, EGFRvIII+ CAR T cells localized to areas of invasive tumor, suppressed tumor growth, and enhanced survival of mice with established intracranial D-270 MG tumors. Together, these data demonstrate that systemically administered T cells are capable of migrating to the invasive edges of GBM to mediate antitumor efficacy and tumor regression.
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common form of primary malignant brain tumor in adults and remains one of the most deadly neoplasms. Despite multimodal therapy including maximal surgical resection, radiation, and temozolomide (TMZ), the median overall survival is less than 15 months [1]. Moreover, these therapies are non-specific and are ultimately limited by toxicity to normal tissues [2]. In contrast, immunotherapy promises an exquisitely precise approach, and substantial evidence suggests that T cells can eradicate large, well-established tumors in mice and humans [3] –[7].
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Al5RhaJgxxU
Pretty cool!
As Brain-Computer Interface is rapidly developed worldwide, mind-controlled drones turn into sports and weapons of today.
Continue reading “Brave New World: Mind-Controlled Drones Revolutionizing Sports And Warfare” »
Ever notice how maps of the large structures of the Universe look like maps of the brain or a Pollock painting?
On the grandest scale, our universe is a network of galaxies tied together by the force of gravity. Cosmic Web, a new effort led by cosmologists and designers at Northeastern’s Center for Complex Network Research, offers a roadmap toward understanding how all of those tremendous clusters of stars connect—and the visualizations are stunning.
Continue reading “Breathtaking Visualization of the Universe Will Make You Feel Like an Ant” »
Over the past few days, Wired has published some articles that give us the closest look yet at the ambitious, enigmatic augmented reality company called Magic Leap. They’ve left us with both a lot of fascinating possibilities and a lot of questions, because most of Magic Leap’s technological explanations are couched in the language of either science fiction or, well, magic. As poetic as “[talking] to the GPU of the brain” and “dreaming with your eyes open” sounds, this is probably the clearest and most interesting description of Magic Leap’s work in the piece:
“IL-33 is a protein produced by various cell types in the body and is particularly abundant in the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord),” says lead researcher, Eddy Liew from the University of Glasgow in the UK. “We found that injection of IL-33 into aged APP/PS1 mice rapidly improved their memory and cognitive function to that of the age-matched normal mice within a week.”
Before we go any further, we should make it clear that these results are restricted to mice only, and at this stage, we have no idea if they will translate at all in humans with Alzheimer’s.
And the odds aren’t great — one study put successful translation of positive results in mice to humans at a rate of about 8 percent, so we can never get too excited until we see how things fare in human trials.
Continue reading “New protein injection reverses Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice in just one week” »
