Category Archives: Health Care

Nanospheres Targeting Cancer at MIT

Nanospheres targeting cancer cells

Single-Shot Chemo – Nanospheres that target cancer cells and gradually release drugs could make treatment safer and more effective

Photo – Three prostate cancer cells have taken up fluorescently labeled nanoparticles (shown in red). The cells’ nuclei and cytoskeletons are stained blue and green, respectively. By Omid Farokhzad and Robert Langer at MIT.

A key to the nanoparticles’ effectiveness is the ability of their RNA strands to bind to a cancer cell membrane. The cell then pulls the particles inside. Having the particles inside the cell has two advantages: it gets the drug where it needs to be to kill the cells, and it decreases the concentration of the drug outside the cancer cells, thereby decreasing toxicity to healthy tissue. The fact that the polymer releases the drug gradually also helps — the drug is released over the hours or days it takes for the particles to be pulled into cells, where it continues to be released, killing the cells.
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Eventually, the MIT-Harvard researchers hope to design nanoparticles that can be injected into the bloodstream, from which they could seek out cancer cells anywhere in the body, making it possible to treat late-stage metastasized cancer. “Even though this represents a small percentage of patients that actually have the disease, these are the ones that have no therapeutic option available to them,” Farokhzad says.

More life science related posts and medical related posts.

Singapore woos top scientists with new labs

Singapore woos top scientists with new labs, research money by Paul Elias:

Singapore’s siren song is growing increasingly more irresistible for scientists, especially stem cell researchers who feel stifled by the U.S. government’s restrictions on their field.

Two prominent California scientists are the latest to defect to the Asian city-state, announcing earlier this month that they, too, had fallen for its glittering acres of new laboratories outfitted with the latest gizmos.

They weren’t the first defections, and Singapore officials at the Biotechnology Organization’s annual convention in Chicago this week promise they won’t be the last.

Other Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea and even China, are also here touting their burgeoning biotechnology spending to the 20,000 scientists and biotechnology executives attending the conference.
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In all, the country has managed to recruit about 50 senior scientists — far short of what it needs, but a start for a tiny country of 4.5 million people off the tip of Malaysia.

Another 1,800 younger scientists from all corners of the world staff the Biopolis laboratories, which were built with $290 million in government funding and another $400 million in private investment by the two dozen biotechnology companies based there. Biopolis opened in 2003 and contains seven buildings spread over 10 acres and connected by sky bridges

Nobel Laureate Discusses Protein Power

Nobel Laureate discusses protein power – Podcast

Nobel Laureate Professor Robert Huber visited the The University of Queensland – Brisbane to discuss the future of biomedicine.

He presented the studies that earned him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 and discussed the future of protein crystallography to reduce several diseases such as influenza and cancer.

Nobel Prize

$1 Million Each for 20 Science Educators

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Names 20 New Million-Dollar Professors – Top Research Scientists Tapped for their Teaching Talent:

“The scientists whom we have selected are true pioneers—not only in their research, but in their creative approaches and dedication to teaching,” said Thomas R. Cech, HHMI president. “We are hopeful that their educational experiments will energize undergraduate science education throughout the nation.”

The Institute awarded $20 million to the first group of HHMI professors in 2002 to bring the excitement of scientific discovery to the undergraduate classroom.

The experiment worked so well that neurobiologist and HHMI professor Darcy Kelley convinced Columbia University to require every entering freshman to take a course on hot topics in science. Through Utpal Bannerjee’s HHMI program at the University of California, Los Angeles, 138 undergraduates were co-authors of a peer-reviewed article in a top scientific journal. At the University of Pittsburgh, HHMI professor Graham Hatfull’s undergraduates mentored curious high school students as they unearthed and analyzed more than 30 never-before-seen bacteriophages from yards and barnyards. And Isiah Warner, an award-winning chemist and HHMI professor at Louisiana State University, developed a “mentoring ladder,” a hierarchical model for integrating research, education, and peer mentoring, with a special emphasis on underrepresented minority students.

Nanotech Product Recalled in Germany

Nanotech Product Recalled in Germany by Rick Weiss

At least 77 people reported severe respiratory problems over a one-week period at the end of March — including six who were hospitalized with pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs — after using a “Magic Nano” bathroom cleansing product, according to the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in Berlin.

Symptoms generally cleared up within 18 hours, though some had persistent breathing problems for days.

On Nanotechnology in general:

Studies of health effects have just begun in several countries, and regulatory agencies are still formulating their stances, but hundreds of nano products are already for sale.

It was unclear yesterday what kind of nanomaterial is in the spray, or even whether the particles were to blame. Every case has involved the aerosol spray-can form (the product was previously available in a pump bottle, without complications). And the propellant used in the aerosol has long been used uneventfully in hair sprays and other products.

Are Antibiotics Killing Us?

Are Antibiotics Killing Us? by Jessica Snyder Sachs:

To counteract these killers, some physicians have turned to lengthy or lifelong courses of antibiotics. At the same time, other researchers are counterintuitively finding that bacteria we think are bad for us also ward off other diseases and keep us healthy. Using antibiotics to tamper with this complicated and little-understood population could irrevocably alter the microbial ecology in an individual and accelerate the spread of drug-resistant genes to the public at large.

Articles on the overuse of antibiotics.

Salyers says her research shows that decades of antibiotic use have bred a frightening

degree of drug resistance into our intestinal flora. The resistance is harmless as long as the bacteria remain confined to their normal habitat. But it can prove deadly when those bacteria contaminate an open wound or cause an infection after surgery.

Organs Engineered in a Lab

Straight Out of Science Fiction: Organs Engineered in a Lab:

Several years after receiving new bladders engineered entirely in a laboratory, seven young patients are all still healthy.

It marks the first long-term success of total-organ tissue regeneration, an area of medicine that until now was more the stuff of science fiction than clinical reality.

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

UW-Madison Scientist Solves Bird Flu Puzzler

UW-Madison scientist solves bird flu puzzler by David Wahlberg:

Before the H5N1 virus can cause a human pandemic, the new findings suggest, it must mutate and become able to recognize human flu virus receptors, Kawaoka said.

The virus, which has led to the death or slaughter of millions of birds in Asia, Africa and Europe, has killed 103 of the 184 people known to be infected since 2003, nearly all of them thought to be sickened by birds.

If the virus starts spreading from person to person, health officials say, it could cause a pandemic like the one in 1918 that killed up to 50 million people worldwide.

Smokeless Stove Uses 80% Less Fuel

Philips Smokeless Stove Uses 80% Less Fuel, Saves Lives

300 million families in the world’s poorest regions burn wood for cooking, and smoke and toxic emissions kill 1.6 million people per year.

That claim in the article is disputed by a comment on the web site. The difficulty of drawing direct causation for many medical problems makes such claims difficult to prove. A scientific paper explores the issue:

Chronic pulmonary disease in rural women exposed to biomass fumes

There is little question finding engineering solutions that serve to reduce health risks are often much better than trying to deal with the health consequences after people are sick. So providing safe drinking water, for example, will do more for health than increase spending on medical care to treat those who get sick.

Additionally the opportunities to save lives and improve health in the world often do not require cutting edge science. It is often a matter of engineering effective solutions for hundreds of millions and billions of people living without what those in the wealthy take for granted (Water and Electricity for All – Solar Powered Hearing Aid – Appropriate Technology).

Intel Science Talent Search Results

photo of Shannon Lisa Babb

Shannon Babb of Utah Named Top High School Scientist:

With a rare ability to combine research and remediation in environmental science, Babb, 18, of American Fork High School, conducted a six-month study to identify water quality problems in the Spanish Fork River. Babb, who started researching water quality at age 13, analyzed the chemical and physical properties along the river drainage system. She concluded that humans, through urban and agricultural factors, have a negative effect on the water quality of the river. She contends that the water quality problem can be resolved with a combination of restructuring and educating the public that household chemicals should not be poured down storm drains.

Yi Sun, 17, of The Harker School in San Jose, Calif., received second-place honors and a $75,000 scholarship. Sun discovered new geometric properties of random walks, a mathematical theory with applications to computer algorithms and polymers.

Yuan “Chelsea” Zhang, 17, of Montgomery Blair High School in Rockville, Md., received third-place honors and a $50,000 scholarship. Zhang researched the molecular genetic mechanisms behind heart disease. Specifically, Zhang implicated CX3CL1 molecules as contributing to plaque build-up in the arteries. This knowledge can lead to the development of new medicines for atherosclerosis.

Intel Chairman Craig Barrett, a long-time advocate for improving science and math education, praised the contributions these young scientists are poised to make.

“The talent represented at Intel STS is a dramatic illustration that investing in science and math education will pay great dividends for the future of American innovation,” Barrett said. “The seed of the next big scientific discovery could very well be planted in this room tonight.”

Photos from News.com

Read about more science talent search winners.