https://www.youtube.com/watch?si\u003dGp5uRChnBm-OuMqT\u0026v\u003d1Kt58VJCt5c\u0026feature\u003dyoutu.be
RN, BSN, breelyn wilky, MD, denise castillo, tessa mcspadden, stephanie hill, MA, CCRP, and tiffany cull.
Researchers at the University of Toronto have used an artificial intelligence framework to redesign a crucial protein involved in the delivery of gene therapy.
The study, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, describes new work optimizing proteins to mitigate immune responses, thereby improving the efficacy of gene therapy and reducing side effects.
“Gene therapy holds immense promise, but the body’s pre-existing immune response to viral vectors greatly hampers its success. Our research zeroes in on hexons, a fundamental protein in adenovirus vectors, which—but for the immune problem—hold huge potential for gene therapy,” says Michael Garton, an assistant professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.
This is interesting. Who knew brain drain would be helpful? Haha it’s a different context but it’s medicinal in this sense. Amazing discovery!
Estimated read time: 2–3 minutes.
SALT LAKE CITY — Add this to the list of potential targets to treat Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders: Researchers in South Korea have discovered a network of lymphatic vessels at the back of the nose that help drain cerebral spinal fluid from the brain.
While NASA is well-known for advancing various technologies for the purposes of space exploration, whether it’s sending spacecraft to another world or for use onboard the International Space Station (ISS), the little-known fact is that these same technologies can be licensed for commercial use to benefit humankind right here on the Earth through NASA’s Spinoff program, which is part of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and its Technology Transfer program. This includes fields like communication, medical, weather forecasting, and even the very mattresses we sleep on, and are all featured in NASA’s annual Spinoff book, with NASA’s 2024 Spinoff book being the latest in sharing these technologies with the private sector.
“As NASA’s longest continuously running program, we continue to increase the number of technologies we license year-over-year while streamlining the development path from the government to the commercial sector,” Daniel Lockney, Technology Transfer Program Executive at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. “These commercialization success stories continually prove the benefits of transitioning agency technologies into private hands, where the real impacts are made.”
One example is a medical-grade smartwatch called EmbracePlus developed by Empatica Inc., which uses machine learning algorithms to monitor a person’s vitals, including sleep patterns, heart rate, and oxygen flow. EmbracePlus reached mass production status in 2021 and has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with the goal of using the smartwatch for astronauts on future spaceflights, including the upcoming Artemis missions, along with medical patients back on Earth.
Steve P. Miller, PhD, has spent much of his career figuring out how to shut off autoimmune responses when he observed dying cells acting as carriers of autoantigens that could modulate the immune system. More than 20 years ago, while a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Miller discovered that dendritic cells (DCs), a subtype of antigen-presenting cells (APCs), could be changed or turned off to send the right signals to make immunologically tolerant T cells, also known as “tolerogenic.”
Miller’s attention turned toward investigating how best to mimic the apoptotic cells, overriding the expression of dendritic cells. So, Miller partnered with polymer chemist Lonnie D. Shea, PhD, who was at the McCormick School of Engineering, to develop a nanoparticle that interacts effectively with dendritic cells.
In 2013, Miller and Shea helped launch a company spun out of Northwestern University, when Shea was still in Chicago, called Cour Pharmaceutical Development Company, to develop innovative nanobiological therapeutics for acute inflammation, autoimmune, and allergic conditions. After years of experimentation, they developed a formula for nanoparticles of the right size and charge that interact well with the immune system, which is the foundation for their proprietary antigen-specific immune tolerance platform.
Whether or not you can work during a stem cell transplant may depend on the type of job you have. The process of a stem cell transplant, with the high-dose treatments, the transplant, and recovery, can take many months. You will be in and out of the hospital during this time. Even when you are not in the hospital, sometimes you will need to stay near it, rather than staying in your own home.
You will be more tired and your ability to concentrate on work may be affected. You will be visiting the hospital two or three times a week after discharge. You may need to spend a few hours in the hospital for blood or platelet transfusions or replacing minerals in your body.
So, if your job allows, you may want to arrange to work remotely part-time. Many employers are required by law to change your work schedule to meet your needs during cancer treatment. Talk with your employer about ways to adjust your work during treatment. You can learn more about these laws by talking with a social worker.
Nanoclusters (NCs) are crystalline materials that typically exist on the nanometer scale. They are composed of atoms or molecules in combination with metals like cobalt, nickel, iron, and platinum, and have found several interesting applications across diverse fields, including drug delivery, catalysis, and water purification.
A reduction in the size of NCs can unlock additional potential, allowing for processes such as single-atom catalysis. In this context, the coordination of organic molecules with individual transition-metal atoms shows promise for further advancement in this field.
An innovative approach to further reduce the size of NCs involves introducing metal atoms into self-assembled monolayer films on flat surfaces. However, it is crucial to exercise caution in ensuring that the arrangement of metal atoms on these surfaces does not disrupt the ordered nature of these monolayer films.
A large number of applications in the chemical industry rely on the molecules NADH or NADPH as fuel. A team led by Professor Dirk Tischler, head of the Microbial Biotechnology working group at Ruhr University Bochum, used a biocatalyst to study their production in detail.
The researchers proved that, in addition to formate, the biocatalyst formate dehydrogenase can also convert formamides. This means, for one thing, that the enzyme can also cleave the difficult-to-break C–N bond. For another, formamides are a common solvent.
“This opens up completely new possibilities for poorly soluble NADH reactions as well as NADPH-dependent reactions,” says Tischler.
Acoustic tweezers can control target movement through the interaction of momentum between an acoustic wave and an object. Due to their high tissue penetrability and strong acoustic radiation force, such tweezers overcome the limitations of optical and magnetic tweezers, thus making them suitable for in vivo cell manipulation.
A research team led by Prof. Zheng Hairong from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has recently developed a new type of acoustic tweezers —the phased-array holographic acoustic tweezers (PAHAT) system—which is based on a high-density planar array transducer capable of generating tunable three-dimensional bulk acoustic waves. The researchers hope this system can realize a pharmacological version of “telekinesis.” The study was published in Nature Communications on June 6.
The in vivo environment is extremely complex, due to the different characteristics of various tissues, organs, bones, blood vessels, and blood flow. Such a complex environment creates a huge challenge: How can acoustic methods be used to “trap” bacteria so they can produce therapeutic effects on tumors?
The latest in the intersection of large language models and life science: virus sequences, virus proteins, and their function.
Large language models improve annotation of prokaryotic viral proteins.
Ocean viral proteome annotations are expanded by a machine learning approach that is not reliant on sequence homology and can annotate sequences not homologous to those seen in training.
