Diamond Lights Source: UK’s national synchrotron shining the light on infections

Aerial View of Diamond Synchrotron, June 2005

The UK’s national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, is now the first and only place in Europe where pathogens requiring Containment Level 3 – including serious viruses such as those responsible for AIDS, Hepatitis and some types of flu – can be analysed at atomic and molecular level using synchrotron light. The synchrotron produces beams of light that can be used to investigate the structure and properties of a wide range of tiny entities, such as proteins and viruses. Level 3 is one step down from the most dangerous types of infectious agent, such as Ebola, which can only be handled in the most secure government facilities.

 

Special Report: Blockbuster death and growth of generics

When a new drug is developed, the pharmaceutical company that discovers it receives a patent, usually for about 20 years. This gives the original company time to make back the money that it spent on R&D for the drug.

If you like, the patent serves as the ‘incentive’ for pharmaceutical companies to take risks and spend lots of money on developing drugs. And remember that the cost of bringing a new drug to the market is over $1 billion – if they were unable to secure profit, how would a pharmaceutical company justify the cost of R&D?

From autoluminescent jellyfish to autoluminescent trees

In 1832, Charles Darwin stood on the deck of the HMS Beagle in Tenerife and looked out to sea. He was amazed by the glow emanating from the ocean. On a night in January 1832, off the coast of Tenerife, a young Charles Darwin wandered up on to the deck of the HMS Beagle. As the young naturalist looked out to sea, he was struck by the unearthly glow emanating from the ocean.

“The sea was luminous in specks & in the wake of the vessel of an uniform slight milky colour. When the water was put into a bottle it gave out sparks for some few minutes after having been drawn up.” – Zoology notes, 1832-1836

Darwin was almost certainly describing the light emitted by tiny marine organisms called dinoflagellates, which hold the capacity of bioluminescence.

Bioluminescence refers to the light that some organisms emit from their cells, which comes from a chemical reaction in the living cells and can occur in the absence of light. 

DNA quadruple helix visualized in human cells

Scientists find a four-stranded form of DNA in the shape of a quadruple helix (pictured), which is arranged like a stack of squares lying on top of one another.

The double stranded DNA helix was first described by Watson and Crick in February 1953 at Cambridge University. And now, exactly 60 years down the line and at the same place where Crick and Watson made their famous discovery, researchers have found that human DNA can naturally wrap itself into a different shape – a quadruple helix.

Ameliorating R&D: targeting young students and the continued implementation of systems biology

Drug discovery has traditionally gone through a linear process – scientific disciplines have been separated, with very limited crosstalk between the fields. Geneticists studied genes, cellular biologists studied cells, physiologists studied organs, so on and so forth. This approach was useful for a long time – by breaking down a complex phenomenon into smaller components, it becomes easier to understand. But medical research has come a long way and if before the reductionist approach increased our understanding of disease and ameliorated R&D, it now poses a problem. We have maxed out all there is to know by breaking down the system into components, so to speak.

The pluralism of causes and effects in biological networks can only be seen if observing multiple components simultaneously.  Researchers looking at information on a single level, for example, a DNA expression profile, only observe a partial composite of the biological system. So why not simultaneously measure different biological systems, at the level of a subcellular organelle, cell, organ, tissue or organism? 

Pivotal Alzheimer’s prevention trial to commence this year

Genentech, the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute have partnered to carry out the first-ever study of healthy individuals. In this study, 300 members of distantly related families in Colombia who share a rare gene mutation that triggers Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in early life, with initial symptoms appearing around the age of 45. A small number of US citizens will also be included in this study.

This study is the first of its kind, in that it will examine patients before they show any symptoms of cognitive decline.

BNA 2013: FESTIVAL OF NEUROSCIENCE & PUBLIC PROGRAM

The British Neuroscience Association’s (BNAs) Neuroscience festival is being held April 7-10 2013, right at the heart of London at the wonderful Barbican centre. This will be a unique event – this is the first Neuroscience festival engaging both with scientists and the public.

The Wellcome Trust and Barbican have teamed up and will be programming an array of exciting events for the public, “Wonder: Art and Science On the Brain”, to take place in the run up and alongside the Festival of Neuroscience.

“Wonder brings together the Barbican and the Wellcome Trust for the first time. These two cutting-edge organisations from art and science combine to create a rich season of events that explore, and are inspired by, the human brain.” – Barbican website 

Highlights include a music inspired performance lecture by Marcus du Sautoy; Ruby Wax giving a personal insight into her journey from the heights of fame to depression; a film season exploring mental health on the big screen; Salon a Parisian theatrical 19th century styled event that allows you to debate the big topics of 21st century; a hands-on interactive neuroscience Street Fair – and a feast of other events that invite you to think, to explore and to wonder.

Government supports DNA research – £100 million put into fully mapping the DNA of patients with cancer and rare diseases

The Prime Minister looking cool in a lab coat!

Prime Minister David Cameron pledged £100 million to help scientists “crack cancer” by mapping NHS patients’ DNA when he visited Cambridge. £100 million of existing NHS budgets will be put aside over the next three to five years to develop new tests and better care that could save thousands of lives. The aim of the project is to bring genetic sequencing to a mainstream health service for the first time.

Publication bias: the cancer of evidence-based medicine

When a new drug gets tested, the results of the trials should be published for the rest of the medical world — except much of the time, negative or inconclusive findings go unreported, leaving doctors and researchers in the dark. Publication bias is huge in medicine – negative results simply go “missing”. Positive results are more “interesting” and are twice as likely to be published in peer-reviewed journals. But this completely skews results and provides false “evidence”.

For example, of 38 positive and 36 negative FDA trials for 12 antidepressants, only 6 of the negative trials were published in peer-reviewed academic literature. Compared to 37 of the positive trials. A systematic review of literature published analyzing publication bias has shown that publication bias affects all aspects of medicine: specifically, it was found that about one half of trials go missing and that positive results are twice as likely to be published. Famous British physician and author, Ben Goldacre, refers to publication bias as the “cancer” of evidence-based medicine.

Money means progress: Innovation through incentivisation in the form of competition.

“The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit organization whose mission is to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity, thereby inspiring the formation of new industries and the revitalization of markets that are currently stuck due to existing failures or a commonly held belief that a solution is not possible.” – X Prize website.

Founded in 1995, the X Prize Foundation is a non-profit organization, based in California, that designs and manages public competitions intended to encourage technological development that could benefit mankind.

X Prizes are monetary rewards to create incentive. It is aimed to encourage teams around the world to invest the intellectual and financial capital needed to solve difficult challenges. The idea is to offer money in order to promote creation and innovation.

The necessity of computational models for cognitive neuroscience research.

My mum is a trained programmer, but it seems that I’ve inherited nothing of this knowledge. Several times we’ve sat down together and she jots down diagrams for me – “so this is the server… It sits in location X… And this is you, sat here…” And the good old “so this is a computer.. Binary.. On or off..” I stare blankly at the page, “uh-huh”.

But I love the brain. And what more is the brain than a highly complicated cognitive system, our own personal “computer”? I mean sure, the binary is not so binary but then again – a neuron either fires or not. An action potential is either propagated or it is not. So perhaps I have inherited some of her curiosity for computational information systems.

The more I dive into neuroscience, the more it becomes apparent that without the application of computation and algorithms, it will never be possible to understand whole-brain functioning. We can now isolate neurons and can analyse how they function independently. We can grow neuronal cells in petri dishes and study groups of neurons. But the complexity of the brain is underpinned by a highly complicated neuronal architecture. That is the billions of cells that integrate and process information to form the neuronal networks governing decision-making, memory, thought and action.

In order to understand how the physical functions within brain cells translate into mental function, including our sense of consciousness, memory and thought, we must study the brain as a whole. Despite the rapid progress in our understanding of the brain, we are yet to understand how the physical happenings translate into our sense of consciousness and cognitive processes. This is where it becomes integral to use computational models of cognition to explain how the brain functions.

Why do we need computational models in cognitive neuroscience? Why can’t we learn what we need to know about the neural basis of cognition through rigorous experimental investigation?

Stem cells for personalized medicine

Researchers at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York have developed a method of screening treatments for a rare genetic disorder. Authors say the same method could be applied to test stem-cell-derived personalized medicine. In their press release published yesterday, John Hopkins researchers show how stem cells can be used to test how diseased cells respond to drugs.

Paralysis reversed in dog using stem cells

Researchers have successfully reversed paralysis in Jasper the dachshund by injecting Jasper with cells grown from the lining of his nose! Jasper’s owner, May Hay told the BBC: “Before the treatment we used to have to wheel Jasper round on a trolley because his back legs were useless. Now he whizzes around the house and garden and is able to keep up with the other dogs. It’s wonderful.”

Infertility reversed in a male primate for the first time.

Men can lose the ability to make sperm after chemotherapy. This is because cancer drugs are designed to target rapidly dividing cells, the typical feature of cancer. Unfortunately, other healthy rapidly dividing cells can also be killed – and these include the cells that produce sperm. The only viable option today is to freeze sperm samples prior to undergoing chemotherapy, and to use these at later date for artificial insemination. But this is not an option for young boys, who are yet to reach puberty and do not produce sperm.

Although prepubescent boys do not produce sperm, they do possess “spermatogonial” stem cells (SSCs) (i.e. undifferentiated male germ cells) that will eventually produce them in adulthood. Kyle Orwig, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and his team of researchers may have found a method by which to exploit the presence of these SSCs in young boys to restore fertility post-chemotherapy.

First human gene therapy to hit European market in 2013

Dutch biotech company uniQure said last week that it would start selling the first available gene therapy in Europe by mid-2013. uniQure announced Monday 2nd November that it received approval from the European Commission for the gene therapy Glybera® (alipogene tiparvovec), a treatment for patients with lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD, also called familial hyperchylomicronemia) suffering from recurring acute pancreatitis.

LPLD is a rare, inherited disease that results in the build up of fat in the blood leading to abdominal pain and life-threatening inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis). The approval by the European Commission on October 25th 2012 means that Glybera can now be sold throughout Europe, the first treatment of its kind to be approved in Europe. The company are now seeking approval in USA and Canada.

Nobel Prize 2012 – Physiology or Medicine: Gurdon and Yamanaka share prize for their stem cell work

“The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: /- – -/ one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine …”

                                    — Excerpt from the will of Alfred Nobel

Sir John B. Gurdon (left) and Shinya Yamanaka (right) were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka “for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent”.

“Transient” silicon electronics: medical implants that disappear

Tiny electronic devices that are able to dissolve harmlessly into their surroundings after functioning a specified amount of time have been created by a team of biomedical engineers and researchers at Tufts University and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The team was led by Josh Rogers, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at UIUC and Fiorenzo Omenetto, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts.

Pharmacogenomics explained: how genetic makeup influences our individual responses to drugs

The human genome is made up of 3 billion DNA bases (A, T, C and G). This makes up a human. 99.7% bases are the same across humans. The remaining 0.3%, together with environmental factors, explains why no two humans on earth are the same. Of those 3 billion bases, there are about one million that vary across humans at a significant frequency.

Side note – Even if we only differed at one million positions, with four choices at each position, this means that there are 4 to the power of one million possible genomes that can exist!!! We have only seen a small fraction of all the possible genomes…

Doctors grow a new ear on a woman’s arm and attach it to her head (WARNING: graphic)

The discovery of a rapidly-spreading basal cell cancer in Sherrie Walter’s ear in 2008 required the removal of part of her ear, part of her skull and her left ear canal. But now, in a groundbreaking and complicated set of surgeries, Johns Hopkins doctors have attached a new ear made from Walters’ own tissue and grown on her forearm. 

Lessons from Leonardo: What makes a great scientist great?

In the normal course of events many men and women are born with various remarkable qualities and talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvelously endowed by heaven with beauty, grace, and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired,and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human art. — Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the Painters,Sculptors and Architects, 1568

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an artist, architect, engineer and scientist. But today, he is best known for his sculptures and paintings – the Mona Lisa alone averages 15,000 visitors a day, most of whom have traveled a long distance to take a snapshot of the world-famous masterpiece. However, the exhibit of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings at the Royal Collection portrays Leonardo above all as a scientist, at least in the second half of his life – with painting placed largely to the side. More importantly, this exhibit shows that the scientific methods of deduction and experimentation employed by Leonardo remain applicable today.