Tech Suki

DailyTech – Nanoparticle Combination Painkiller to Save Lives at Home and on the Battlefield.

Morphine + special new drug + polymer nanoparticles = a lifesaver.
With injury, chronic or sudden, comes pain.  The severity of pain can cause a variety of detrimental effects and dangers.  One of the most common pain-relievers, used both on battlefields and in hospitals at home, is Morphine.

Morphine is a powerful pain reliever, but it has the unfortunate side effect of lowering blood pressure and depressing normal breathing.  Both effects can cause a shortage of oxygen in the blood stream, a potentially deadly stress on an already injured patient.  Typically in a hospital setting the effects are controlled with an antimorphine agent such as Naloxone, but on the battlefield, without the extensive monitoring equipment of a hospital, this becomes a dangerous art.

Now researchers at the University of Michigan have devised both a new drug and a new delivery system that promises to help control these side effects and bring safer, more effective pain relief to hospitals and to our soldiers serving overseas.

The new drug, a Naloxone derivative, transforms into Naloxone, only when blood oxygen levels dip to low, indicating the Morphine is interfering with breathing.  Describes Baohua Huang, Ph.D., the study’s first author and a research investigator at the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute and in Internal Medicine (MNIMBS), “When respiratory distress is too severe, that will trigger release of Naloxone, the antagonist (morphine-suppressing) drug. When the oxygen blood levels go up, that will stop the action of the antagonist drug and more morphine will be available.”

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | We’re all mutants, say scientists.

Each of us has at least 100 new mutations in our DNA, according to research published in the journal Current Biology.

Scientists have been trying to get an accurate estimate of the mutation rate for over 70 years.

However, only now has it been possible to get a reliable estimate, thanks to “next generation” technology for genetic sequencing.

The findings may lead to new treatments and insights into our evolution.

BBC NEWS | Health | Gel hope for brain injury repair.

An injectable hydrogel could aid recovery from brain injury by helping stimulate tissue growth at the site of the wound, researchers say.

Research on rats suggests the gel, made from synthetic and natural sources, may spur growth of stem cells in the brain.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | A step closer to ’synthetic life’.

In what has been described as a step towards the creation of a synthetic cell, scientists have created a new “engineered” strain of bacteria.

A team successfully transferred the genome of one type of bacteria into a yeast cell, modified it, and then transplanted into another bacterium.

This paves the way to the creation of a synthetic organism – inserting a human-made genome into a bacterial cell.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Artificial brain ‘10 years away’.

A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.

Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain.

The Blue Brain project at Swizerland’s EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) was launched in 2005 and aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data.

In particular, his team has focused on the neocortical column – repetitive units of the mammalian brain known as the neocortex.

The project now has a software model of “tens of thousands” of neurons – each one of which is different – which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column.

Although each neuron is unique, the team has found the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns.

To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a supercomputer.

“You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron,” he said. “So you need ten thousand laptops.”

Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors.

For example, they can show the brain a picture – say, of a flower – and follow the electrical activity in the machine.

BBC NEWS | Health | Killer parasites’ genes decoded.

Scientists have decoded the genetic blueprint of two parasitic flatworms responsible for thousands of deaths worldwide every year.

Researchers working on the genetic blueprint of S. masoni, the most widespread of the schistosomiasis parasites, found that it was made up of 11,809 genes – about 10 times the size of the malaria parasite genome.

In particular, they identified a large number of genes which produce enzymes that break down proteins, giving the parasite its ability bore through tissue.

Subsequent analysis revealed 120 enzymes that could potentially be targeted with drugs to disrupt the worm’s metabolism.

The researchers also identified 66 drugs already on the market which might also be effective against schistosomiasis.

DailyTech – Students Embed Stem Cells Into Sutures for Tendon Repair.

Biomedical engineering students from Johns Hopkins have demonstrated a way to use stem cells from a patient to help repair serious orthopedic injuries such as ruptured tendons. The students demonstrated a method of embedding the patient’s own stem cells into a surgical thread that the surgeon uses to repair torn tendons.

The new process doesn’t change or impact the way that surgeons repair the injury. Currently the new process is undergoing animal trials and will hopefully make it to human trials in about five years. The new process has great promise for speeding healing from serious injuries.

Matt Rubashkin, the student team leader said, “Using sutures that carry stems cells to the injury site would not change the way surgeons repair the injury. But we believe the stem cells will significantly speed up and improve the healing process. And because the stem cells will come from the patient, there should be no rejection problems.”

DailyTech – Study Shows Drug Rapamycin Extends Lifespan of Mammals.

Researchers have discovered the first drug that has been proven to extend the lifespan of mammals when taken late in life. The drug is called rapamycin and is derived from bacteria that lives in the soil on the remote and legendary Easter Island most well-known for its gigantic moai statues.

Rapamycin is already used to treat disease in humans and is an antifungal compound that is approved by the FDA as an immunosuppressive therapy to prevent rejection in organ transplant patients. The drug is also undergoing clinical trials at this time as an anti-cancer drug. Previous studies had proven that the drug was capable of extending the lifespan of invertebrates.

The new study gave the drug to mice starting at 20 months of age, the equivalent of 60 human years. During the study, the researchers found that the drug was able to extend the life of male mice by 9% and by 13% in female mice.

BBC NEWS | Health | Coffee ‘may reverse Alzheimer’s’.

Drinking five cups of coffee a day could reverse memory problems seen in Alzheimer’s disease, US scientists say.

The Florida research, carried out on mice, also suggested caffeine hampered the production of the protein plaques which are the hallmark of the disease.

Previous research has also suggested a protective effect from caffeine.

BBC NEWS | Health | Universal embryo test ‘very near’.

A gene mapping test that can test embryos for almost any inherited disease could be available in the UK within a year, say researchers.

DailyTech – Scientists Use Sudoku to Speed Genome Sequencing.

Scientists thing the new method can save millions in sequencing costs

Scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have discovered a new method of pooling a multitude of DNA samples for sequencing. The new method is being called DNA Sudoku because it uses a method similar to the math game to greatly increase the speed at which DNA can be sequenced.

The researchers report that DNA Sudoku method allows for tens of thousands of DNA samples, short combinations of polynucleotides with A, T, G, and C bases, to be combined and sequenced.  The simultaneous sequencing is done by looking at the letter order and comparing it to the correct order of the known human genome using an algorithm that resembles those used to solve Soduku puzzles.

The ability to do all the sequencing at once is a massive improvement over past methods that allowed only a single DNA sample to be sequenced at a time. It is also an improvement on current techniques that can ideally only combine hundreds of samples.

DailyTech – New Study: Smoking and Second Hand Smoke Cause Brain Damage.

A new study shows that smoking tobacco cigarettes, like consuming alcohol, can lead to severe brain damage, though the mechanism is different. The study also suggests that second hand smoke exposure can also lead to brain damage. (Source: The New York Times)

BBC NEWS | Health | New cancer drug ’shows promise’.

Researchers say a new type of cancer treatment has produced highly promising results in preliminary drug trials.

Olaparib is the first successful example of a new type of personalised medicine using a technique called “synthetic lethality” – a subtle way of exploiting the body’s own molecular weaknesses for positive effect.

BBC NEWS | Health | Hysterectomies a stem cell source.

Discarded fallopian tubes from hysterectomies could be a good source of donor stem cells, say researchers.

Girl Who Does Not Age, Brooke Greenberg Baffles Doctors – ABC News.

At about 16 pounds and 30 inches, 16-year-old Brooke Greenberg has not aged significantly, physically or apparently cognitively, since she was a toddler.