Feature Channels: Biotech

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, NIH-funded researchers have used stem cells to grow intestinal tissues with a functioning nervous system. The advance creates new opportunities for studying intestinal diseases, nutritional health, and diabetes. It also brings researchers one step closer to growing patient-specific human intestines for transplant.

• share
• favorite_border

A study reported Jan. 17 in the journal Science led by researchers at Indiana University and Harvard University is the first to reveal in extreme detail the operation of the biochemical clockwork that drives cellular division in bacteria. It is an important step forward in research on bacterial growth and could inform efforts to develop drugs that combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

• share
• favorite_border

Winter is in full swing, and many of us have fantasized about curling up in a warm cave and slumbering until the warmth of spring arrives, just like a bear. Bears have the ability to sleep away the harsh winter months when food is scarce. They can spend five to seven months in hibernation. During this time, bears do not eat, drink, excrete or exercise. Despite the length of inactivity, bears do not experience bone loss, muscle loss, heart complications or blood clots like humans do during extended bouts of inactivity.

• share
• favorite_border

Saint Louis University pharmacologist Daniela Salvemini, Ph.D., will use a $363,000 grant from The Mayday Fund to advance her work to understand pain in order to develop new painkillers, partnering with physicians who treat four debilitating conditions.

• share
• favorite_border

World-renowned scientists will present pioneering research and discuss key issues affecting the life sciences at the 2017 Experimental Biology meeting (EB 2017), the premier annual meeting of six scientific societies in Chicago to be held April 22–26.

• share
• favorite_border

Is it better to treat aneurysms with two overlapping flow diverters, or one compressed diverter? A computational study published in the American Journal of Neuroradiology points to the single, compressed diverter provided that it produces a mesh denser than the two overlapped diverters, and that it covers at least half of the aneurysm opening. The ongoing research could eventually help doctors determine the best way to treat patients suffering from aneurysms.

• share
• favorite_border

A group of researchers from the Czech Republic were intrigued that living organisms emit small amounts of light resulting during oxidative metabolism, when oxygen is used to create energy by breaking down carbohydrates. The researchers began to think about how detecting this light could have potential for biomedical diagnostics. At the Biophysical Society’s meeting, Feb. 11-15, 2017, Michal Cifra will present the group’s work within this realm.

• share
• favorite_border

Investigating the lower bound of energy required for life helps us understand ecological constraints on other planetary bodies in our solar system as well as our own. In a new study, researchers analyze cellular processes across species and sizes of bacteria, to zoom in on life's minimal energy requirements.

• share
• favorite_border

Using super-resolution microscopy, an international research team led by Assistant Professor Pakorn (Tony) Kanchanawong from the Mechanobiology Institute, Singapore (MBI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at NUS, as well as Dr Cristina Bertocchi, Research Fellow at MBI, has revealed, for the first time, how cadherin-based cell-cell contacts are organised.

• share
• favorite_border

Life can thrive in some of the most extreme environments on the planet. Microbes flourish inside hot geothermal vents, beneath the frigid ice covering Antarctica and under immense pressures at the bottom of the ocean. For these organisms to survive and function, so must the enzymes that enable them to live and grow. Now, researchers from Georgetown University have homed in on what allows particular enzymes to function under extreme pressures. The team will present its work during the Biophysical Society meeting held Feb. 11-15, 2017.

• share
• favorite_border

The National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine issued a report Tuesday focused on human genome editing. It lays out principles and recommendations for governments grappling with how to handle rapid advances in human genome-editing technology as it applies to human health and disease. Two University of Wisconsin–Madison experts served on the 22-member international committee that compiled the report.

• share
• favorite_border

Penn Medicine’s Orphan Disease Center (ODC) announces a new partnership with FAST (Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics) to study gene therapy approaches to treat Angelman syndrome (AS). FAST will provide funding to establish a gene therapy research program led by ODC.

• share
• favorite_border

Research from the University of Notre Dame brings scientists one step closer to developing new forms of biorobotics and novel treatment approaches for several muscle-related health problems such as muscular degenerative disorders, arrhythmia and limb loss.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

The exercise was an early opportunity for the NBAF program to observe a simulated full-scale emergency response to allow its planners to envision how the facility might serve a crucial role in response and recovery.

• share
• favorite_border

A scanning-tunneling microscope (STM), used to study changes in the shape of a single molecule at the atomic scale, impacts the ability of that molecule to make these changes – the entropy of the molecule is changed and, in turn, can be measured. The study is published in Nature Communications.

• share
• favorite_border

The Endocrine Society expressed disappointment today in the European Commission's revised proposal on defining and identifying endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), citing unnecessarily narrow criteria for identifying EDCs that will make it nearly impossible for regulatory agencies to meet the unrealistically high burden of proof and protect the public from dangerous chemicals.

• share
• favorite_border

One big challenge targeted drug delivery faces today is efficiently “loading” a drug into a carrier without compromising the carrier’s structural integrity. A promising method is to deform a carrier by squeezing it through a narrow, microscale constriction. This mechanical deformation creates transient pores in the carrier membrane to enhance the membrane’s permeability to macromolecules and promote the efficient uptake of drugs. During the Society of Rheology meeting, being held Feb. 12-16, Joseph Barakat will present his work to develop a model for vesicle squeezing that can be used to predict and optimize drug loading procedures.

• share
• favorite_border

A new report from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research chronicles the embryonic origins of planaria, providing new insight into the animal's remarkable regenerative abilities.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of investigators from Cedars-Sinai and UCLA is using a new blood-analysis technique and tiny experimental device to help physicians predict which cancers are likely to spread by identifying and characterizing tumor cells circulating through the blood.

• share
• favorite_border

Research published this week in Nature Communications makes it possible to predict how volume for a given protein will change between the folded and unfolded state. Computations accurately predict how a protein will react to increased pressure, shed light on the inner-workings of life in the ocean depths, and may also offer insights into alien life.

• share
• favorite_border

Berkeley Lab chemists have developed a powerful new method of selectively linking chemicals to proteins, a major advance in the manipulation of biomolecules that could transform the way drugs are developed, proteins are probed, and molecules are tracked and imaged. This technique, called ReACT, is akin to a chemical Swiss army knife for proteins.

• share
• favorite_border

California State University, Los Angeles and its partners the Biocom Institute and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) have been awarded an i6 Challenge grant of nearly $500,000 to fund LABioStart, a boot camp to train emerging bioscience entrepreneurs in the region and prepare them to launch bioscience startup companies.

• share
• favorite_border

Instead of running tests on live kidneys, researchers at Binghamton, University State University of New York have developed a model kidney for working out the kinks in medicines and treatments. Developed by Assistant Professor Gretchen Mahler and Binghamton biomedical engineering alumna Courtney Sakolish PhD ’16, the reusable, multi-layered and microfluidic device incorporates a porous growth substrate, with a physiological fluid flow, and the passive filtration of the capillaries around the end of a kidney, called the glomerulus, where waste is filtered from blood.

• share
• favorite_border

Ludwig researchers discover that circular DNA, once thought to be rare in tumor cells, is actually very common and seems to play a fundamental role in tumor evolution

• share
• favorite_border

A team of researchers, led by the University of Minnesota, has invented a new technology to produce automobile tires from trees and grasses in a process that could shift the tire production industry toward using renewable resources found right in our backyards.

• share
• favorite_border

Day in and day out, the DNA in our cells is damaged for a variety of reasons, and thus DNA-repair systems are fundamental to the maintenance of life. Now UNC scientists have confirmed and clarified key molecular details of one of these repair systems, known as nucleotide excision repair.

• share
• favorite_border

Irvine, Calif., Feb. 7, 2017 – Your doctor waves a hand-held scanner over your body and gets detailed, high-resolution images of your internal organs and tissues. Using the same device, the physician then sends gigabytes of data instantly to a remote server and just as rapidly receives information to make a diagnosis.Integrated circuit researchers at the University of California, Irvine have created a silicon microchip-based component that could make these and many other actions possible.

• share
• favorite_border

An expectant mother’s exposure to the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) can raise her offspring’s risk of obesity by reducing sensitivity to a hormone responsible for controlling appetite, according to a mouse study published in the Endocrine Society’s journal Endocrinology.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers found that the metal-organic framework NU-1000 allows separation of toxic furanics from sugars, which is necessary for efficient ethanol production.

• share
• favorite_border

After 10 years of research, a team at Université de Montréal's research centre has succeeded in deleting the Armc5 gene in experimental mice, discovering that its loss gives rise to a heretofore unidentified syndrome.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Maryland School of Medicine announced that it has hired several top scientists in a range of fields, including orthopaedics and brain science.

• share
• favorite_border

Using Harvard-developed technology, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have catalogued more than 20,000 brain cells in one region of the mouse hypothalamus. The study, published in Nature Neuroscience, revealed some 50 distinct cell types, including a previously undescribed neuron type that may underlie some of the genetic risk of human obesity. This catalog of cell types marks the first time neuroscientists have established a comprehensive “parts list” for this area of the brain. The new information will allow researchers to establish which cells play what role in this region of the brain.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Living systems dynamics about as predictable as a chemical reaction: Bacteria that stab and poison for defense and conquest can be charted using math equations that apply to phase separation of metals.

• share
• favorite_border

• New Roswell Park spinoff company will develop next-generation cancer immunotherapies • Novel approach combines unique adoptive T cell therapy with genetically engineered stem cell therapy • Clinical trial planned in ovarian, pancreatic, lung, prostate and other hard-to-treat cancers

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah chemists publish a new method for ammonia production, using enzymes derived from nature, that generates ammonia at room temperature. As a bonus, the reaction generates a small electrical current.

• share
• favorite_border

In a video interview, Thomas O’Halloran discusses the roles of metals in the body with a focus on how zinc regulates egg cell maturation and fertilization.

• share
• favorite_border

Berkeley Lab is set to receive nearly $4.6 million over four years as part of an ongoing, federally funded project to create a comprehensive catalog for fundamental genomics research. This latest expansion of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, or ENCODE 4, is funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute.

• share
• favorite_border

Research by The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology will help scientists can better understand how our cells work. The research is part of a four-year, $31.5 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project.

• share
• favorite_border

Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have invented a new technique for constructing chiral drug molecules.

• share
• favorite_border

The prospect of regenerating bone lost to cancer or trauma is a step closer to the clinic as University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have identified two proteins found in bone marrow as key regulators of the master cells responsible for making new bone.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers are setting out to design and test troops of self-directed microscopic warriors that can locate and neutralize dangerous strains of bacteria.

• share
• favorite_border

What do furniture makers, the auto industry and foresters all have in common? A need for innovation in Michigan forest biomaterials. The Michigan Forest Bioeconomy Conference, held Feb. 1 and 2 at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, explores opportunities in wood innovation, construction, and recycling.

• share
• favorite_border

The Endocrine Society is pleased to announce the recipients of the Early Investigators Awards. The Early Investigators Awards were established to recognize the achievements of early career investigators in endocrine research. Winners are honored at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, the world’s premier event for presenting and obtaining the latest information in endocrine science and medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health has developed a new tool to monitor under a microscope how cells attach to an adjacent substrate. Studying adhesion events can help researchers understand how tissues grow, how diseases spread, and how stem cells differentiate into more specific cell types.

• share
• favorite_border

Three nonprofits partner to create powerful database that will aim to improve immunotherapy for many types of cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

. Jefferson researchers pieced together the three-dimensional atomic structure of a doughnut-shaped protein that acts like a door or ‘portal’ for the DNA to get in and out of the capsid, and have now discovered that this protein begins to transform its structure when it comes into contact with DNA.

• share
• favorite_border

One of the most detailed genetic studies of any ecosystem to date has uncovered incredible biological diversity among subsurface bacteria. This research has nearly doubled the number of known bacterial groups.