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Q&A with Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, discussing research her team conducted recently that discovered local vaccines administered with a nasal spray were more effective in protecting mice against influenza than vaccines that are injected into the muscle, the way standard flu shots are done.

A Yale School of Medicine research team led by Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, recently found that local vaccines administered with a nasal spray were more effective in protecting mice against influenza than vaccines that are injected into the muscle, the way standard flu shots are done. Iwasaki, who is Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology and professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and of epidemiology (microbial diseases), discusses her new research, which was published December 10 in Science Immunology.

Akiko Iwasaki: We found that local mucosal immunity that’s established by intranasal vaccination elicits a much more robust and cross reactive, cross protective immunity than a conventional vaccine that uses intramuscular injection. And the way we got to this knowledge is that we were comparing different routes of vaccine administration and found that only after the intranasal vaccination, there are these antibodies that are secreted into the mucosa known as IgA. And this IgA coats the mucus membrane and mucus surface and protects the host by preventing the virus from entering the body. So it’s like putting the guard outside of the door instead of inside the door where antibodies normally work, inside the body.

Continue reading “Nasal Vaccination May Protect Against Respiratory Viruses Better Than Injected Vaccines” »

They are at the forefront in the fight against viruses, bacteria, and malignant cells: the T cells of our immune system. But the older we get, the fewer of them our body produces. Thus, how long we remain healthy also depends on how long the T cells survive. Researchers at the University of Basel have now uncovered a previously unknown signaling pathway essential for T cell viability.

Like human beings, every cell in our body tries to ward off death as long as it can. This is particular true for a specific type of immune cells, called T-lymphocytes, or T cells for short. These cells keep viruses, bacteria, parasites and cancerous cells at bay. While T cell production is an active process in infants, children and young adults, it comes to a gradual stop upon aging, meaning that in order to maintain adequate immunity up to an old age, your T cells should better live as long as you.

How T cells manage to survive for such a long time, up to several decades in humans, has long remained unclear. In collaboration with scientists at the Department of Biomedicine and sciCORE, the Center for Scientific Computing of the University of Basel, Professor Jean Pieters’ research group at the Biozentrum has now revealed the existence of a hitherto unrecognized pathway promoting long-term survival of T cells. In Science Signaling they report that this signaling pathway, regulated by the protein coronin 1, is responsible for suppressing T cell death.

Drug-target interaction is a prominent research area in drug discovery, which refers to the recognition of interactions between chemical compounds and the protein targets. Chemists estimate that 1,060 compounds with drug-like properties could be made—that’s more than the total number of atoms in the Solar System, as an article reported in the journal Nature in 2017.

Drug development, on average, takes about 14 years and costs up to 1.5 billion dollars. During the journey of drug discovery in this vast “galaxy,” it is apparent that traditional biological experiments for DTI detection are normally costly and time-consuming.

Prof. Hou Tingjun is an expert in computer-aided drug design (CADD) at the Zhejiang University College of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In the past decades, he has been committed to developing drugs using computer technology. “The biggest challenge lies in the interactions between unknown targets and drug molecules. How can we discover them more efficiently? This involves a new breakthrough in method.”

A number of four-legged robot dogs made by companies like Boston Dynamics, Anybotics and Ghost Robotics have been deployed in the workforce already for applications like inspections, security and public safety among others. At their core, these four-legged robots are mobility platforms that can be equipped with different payloads depending on the type of information that companies want to gather.

Experts predict the insurance industry alone will spend $1.7 billion on robotics systems in 2025. And other industries may follow suit. Amid the pandemic, a tight job market is forcing many companies to turn to automation. A survey done in December of 2020 by McKinsey, showed that 51 percent of respondents in North America and Europe said they had increased investment in new technologies during 2020, not including remote-work technologies.

Continue reading “The Rise Of The Robotic Working Dog” »

A documentary and journey into the future exploring the possibilities and predictions of artificial intelligence. This timelapse of the future explores what is coming, from robots that are too fast for humans to see, to A.I. bots from Microsoft (bringing back loved ones to life) and Google’s laMDA (replacing the need for online searches).

Elon Musk’s Neuralink goes from a medical and healthcare device, to helping people become superhuman – with intelligence amplification, and add-ons that connect to the brain chip.

Continue reading “TIMELAPSE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2028 — 3000+)” »

Over-the-counter antioxidants 🤔

Mitochondria are pivotal for bioenergetics, as well as in cellular response to viral infections. Nevertheless, their role in COVID-19 was largely overlooked. Here, we analyzed available bulk RNA-seq datasets from COVID-19 patients and corresponding healthy controls (three blood datasets, N = 48 healthy, 119 patients; two respiratory tract datasets, N = 157 healthy, 524 patients). We found significantly reduced mtDNA gene expression in blood, but not in respiratory tract samples from patients. Next, analysis of eight single-cells RNA-seq datasets from peripheral blood mononuclear cells, nasopharyngeal samples, and Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (N = 1,192,243 cells), revealed significantly reduced mtDNA gene expression especially in immune system cells from patients. This is associated with elevated expression of nuclear DNA-encoded OXPHOS subunits, suggesting compromised mitochondrial-nuclear co-regulation. This, together with elevated expression of ROS-response genes and glycolysis enzymes in patients, suggest rewiring toward glycolysis, thus generating beneficial conditions for SARS-CoV-2 replication. Our findings underline the centrality of mitochondrial dysfunction in COVID-19.

The Neuro-Network.

GOING TO BED AFTER THIS SPECIFIC TIME DAMAGES METABOLIC HEALTH – STUDY

In a study published last week in Diabetologia, both disturbed sleep patterns and going to sleep after midnight were correlated to a less-than-optimal postprandial response. Specifically, poor sleep affected the body’s ability to rope glucose (sugar) levels back to normal after a meal.

Continue reading “Going to bed after this specific time damages metabolic health — study” »

Sometimes new medicine tastes bad but it works.

#decentralization #decentralisation #avoidthesinglepointoffailure #medicineforsociety #businessforsociety

The targeted gene used for the edit is conserved across evolution, suggesting the technique could work in more animals than just mice.