Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, have developed what could be a groundbreaking drug that seems effective at curing nearly any viral infection to include the common cold, influenza and other such illnesses.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Study Digs Into Secrets of Keeping HIV in Check
By By Randy Dotinga HealthDay Reporter | HealthDay
SUNDAY, June 10 (HealthDay News) -- A small number of HIV-infected patients have immune systems that are able to keep AIDS at bay by preventing the virus from reproducing for years, and researchers are reporting that they've gained new insight into how that works.
These fortunate patients, known as "elite controllers" or "long-term non-progressors," are quite rare. They've long fascinated scientists who want to understand the secrets lurking inside their immune cells. Researchers trying to develop an AIDS vaccine are especially interested in these special patients.
The key seems to be that certain cells in the immune systems of these people are better able to detect and kill cells that are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, said study co-author Dr. Bruce Walker, a professor at Harvard School of Public Health.
In essence, he said, they have better "glasses" than the same cells in patients who can't fight off the virus as well. These cells are better able to "see" signs of trouble from infected cells that send out a kind of distress signal.
The new research shows that "there's a way to measure what's good vision and what's bad vision," Walker said. "We can immediately start looking at vaccine candidates to see if our techniques of training these killer cells are leading to really good vision or not. We can also try to understand what it is that's impaired the vision in some of these patients and allowed for good vision to develop in others."
The researchers came to their conclusions after studying the blood of five "elite controllers" and five normal HIV patients.
Only about one in 200 or 300 HIV patients is able to naturally keep the virus from developing into AIDS without the help of medications, Walker noted. One person has been fending off AIDS since 1978.
"We can't be sure that everybody who achieves this state is actually going to persist in it, but it certainly looks like the vast majority of them will," he said.
Nitin Saksena, head of the retroviral genetics division at Westmead Millennium Institute's Center for Virus Research in Sydney, Australia, said the study needs to be confirmed by other research, and it has limitations, such as the small number of patients involved. It's important to consider that "elite controllers" are quite different from each other, Saksena added.
Dr. Mark Connors, chief of the HIV-specific immunity section with the Laboratory of Immunoregulation of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, questioned the study results, saying they don't demonstrate why the killer immune cells work more effectively in the elite controllers. Essentially, Connors doesn't think the study authors discovered why the cells have better "vision."
Study co-author Walker, however, said the research is valuable: "This is another example of HIV revealing its secrets. Having been in this field for 30 years, the remarkable thing is that we just keep learning more."
The study is published in the June 10 online edition of Nature Immunology.
Monday, April 2, 2012
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012
 Posted on Wed, Feb. 08, 2012 MDC launches first-ever course to help Miami-Dade officers save their own livesFlorida currently leads the nation with the highest number of officer fatalities in the line of duty.Now, a pioneering course developed by Miami-Dade College’s Medical Campus and Miami-Dade police aims to reduce that number by training officers to tend to wounded partners, and even themselves, before paramedics arrive. Tactical Life-Saver course is the country’s first of its kind. The training will focus on what officers should do in the first minutes after an officer is shot, which can mean the difference between life and death. The intense 40-hour course will teach officers necessary medical knowledge and stay alive until help arrives, which can be delayed by circumstances. “If an officer is wounded and is pinned down by gunfire, the paramedics will not come into a crime scene until the bad guys are captured,” said MDC School of Health Sciences Dean Pete Gutierrez, who is a former Miami police officer. “This training is meant to teach officers to keep each other alive in that situation. It’s a way to buy them time.” Gutierrez said the impetus for the course, which resembled those given to U.S. Army soldiers, came after the slaying in January 2011 of two Miami-Dade police officers while trying to serve a warrant on a murder suspect in Miami. Fatally wounded were Officers Amanda Haworth and Roger Castillo. A third officer was wounded and the suspect was shot to death. “After that tragic incident, we decided to take a look and see what we could do to help officers better survive such a violent incident,” said Gutierrez, who is also the police department’s medical training director. Part of the officers week-long training will take place at MDC’s medical campus’ state-of-the-art Simulation Lab, where human simulators will be used to teach wound assessment and bleeding control; stabilize spinal injuries and treat a sucking chest wound. Another segment will be taught at the Miami-Dade police training center where officers will be placed in realistic, dangerous scenarios where they will simulate being wounded on duty. All officers who take the course will be giving special emergency trauma kits to carry during their shift. The course is underway all this week with 17 officers. It will continue until all county officers have gone through the training. |
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Monday, September 12, 2011
High blood pressure genetic clues
More than 20 new sections of genetic code have been linked to blood pressure by an international team of scientists.
Almost everyone will carry at least one of the genetic variants, according to studiespublished in Nature and Nature Genetics.
Researchers believe their findings could be used to develop new treatments.
The British Heart Foundation said lifestyle was still key to a healthy blood pressure.
High blood pressure - or hypertension - can run in families as well as being influenced by obesity, exercise and the amount of salt in the diet.
While the lifestyle risks are well known, the genetic element of hypertension has been poorly understood.
Researchers now say they have made a "major advance" in understanding the role of genes.
In the first study, scientists from 24 countries around the world analysed data from more than 200,000 people.
They identified 16 new points on the genome which were linked to blood pressure.
One of the lead researchers, Prof Mark Caulfield, from Barts and The London Medical School, said each genetic variant was in at least 5% of people, while some were much more common.
"This is having an influence across the population," he said.
Uncovering the genetic basis of blood pressure has revealed processes in the body which could one day be targeted with drugs.
One series of chemical reactions involving nitric oxide, which opens up blood vessels, has been highlighted as a potential target.
Gene puzzle
Prof Caulfield said: "There is substantial potential for moving the findings from the lab to the clinic.
"There are, in development or in existence, drugs which could be considered."
However, researchers say they have still uncovered only 1% of the genetic contribution to blood pressure.
A second study, presented in Nature Genetics, identified a further six new stretches of genetic code.
The British Heart Foundation's medical director, Prof Peter Weissberg, said: "Researchers from across the world have now identified some of the genes linked to blood pressure control, which could pave the way for new treatments in the future.
"But your genes are only one piece of the puzzle. You are less likely to have high blood pressure if you stick to a healthy diet, do plenty of exercise, and maintain a healthy weight."
Malaria report sees near-zero deaths by end of 2015
(Reuters) - The world has made impressive progress against malaria in the past 10 years, increasing optimism that an end to the killer mosquito-borne disease could be in sight, a World Health Organization-backed report said on Monday.
Deaths from malaria have fallen by an estimated 38 percent in the past 10 years with 43 countries -- 11 of them in Africa -- cutting malaria cases or deaths by 50 percent, reversing the previous decade's trend and saving more than a million lives.
The progress -- partly due to a substantial increase in funding for fighting malaria -- means deaths from the disease could be brought down to near zero by the end of 2015, the report by the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) partnership said.
The WHO, which helped set up the RBM partnership, has also said the world can stop malaria deaths by 2015 if massive investment is made to ramp up control measures, but this is seen by some experts as an ambitious target.
RBM also aims to reduce global malaria cases by 75 percent by the end of 2015 from the levels seen in 2000, and eliminate malaria in 10 more countries.
Total eradication of the parasitic disease, which is spread through the bites of infected mosquitoes and threatens around half the world's population, is still a long way off. Some think it could take another 40 to 50 years.
"The results of the past decade exceed what anyone could have predicted and prove that malaria control is working," Robert Newman, director of WHO's global malaria programme, said in a statement released alongside the report.
According to the WHO, the number deaths from malaria worldwide dropped to 781,000 in 2009 from nearly a million in 2000. But there are still around 225 million cases a year and the disease remains endemic in 106 countries.
Malaria can damage the nervous system, kidneys and liver and severe cases can kill. Most malaria deaths are in Africa, where a child dies from the disease every 45 seconds.
The RBM report found that international funding for malaria had increased more than 15-fold since 2003, jumping from 62 million pounds ($98.5 million)a year then to 93 million pounds ($148 million)a year by 2010. Certain donor countries such as Britain, France and the United States had also stepped up contributions, the report noted.
"We are light years away from where we were 10 years ago," said Awa Coll-Seck, RBM's executive director.
She said this progress was partly down to the development of new tools such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets, indoor spraying strategies and more effective anti-malarial medicines, but also because of "vastly improved policies, financing, and strategies" and better international coordination.
Yet despite impressive gains, the RBM report said many people at risk of malaria still did not have good enough access to treatment and prevention options, such as insecticide treated nets, indoor spraying, proper diagnostic testing, and effective drugs, including drugs to treat and prevent malaria in pregnant women.
Progress is also being threatened by the emergence of insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, and of malaria parasites resistant to artemisinin, a key component of the most effective anti-malaria drug combinations.
"There is more to be done to address these issues, but with appropriate commitments, the gains can accrue rapidly," the report said.
The RBM partnership is a global health group set up in 1988 by the WHO, the United Nations children's fund UNICEF, the World Bank and others to coordinate the fight against malaria.
(Editing by Alison Williams)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
'Anti-cancer virus' shows promise'
An engineered virus, injected into the blood, can selectively target cancer cells throughout the body in what researchers have labelled a medical first.
The virus attacked only tumours, leaving the healthy tissue alone, in a small trial on 23 patients, according to the journal Nature.
Modified vaccinia virus can target cancer
Researchers said the findings could one day "truly transform" therapies.
Cancer specialists said using viruses showed "real promise".
Using viruses to attack cancers is not a new concept, but they have needed to be injected directly into tumours in order to evade the immune system.
Smallpox to cancerScientists modified the vaccinia virus, which is more famous for being used to develop a smallpox vaccine.
The virus, named JX-594, is dependent upon a chemical pathway, common in some cancers, in order to replicate.
It was injected at different doses into the blood of 23 patients with cancers which had spread to multiple organs in the body.
In the eight patients receiving the highest dose, seven had the virus replicating in their tumours, but not in healthy tissue.
Prof John Bell, lead researcher and from the University of Ottawa, said: "We are very excited because this is the first time in medical history that a viral therapy has been shown to consistently and selectively replicate in cancer tissue after intravenous infusion in humans.
"Intravenous delivery is crucial for cancer treatment because it allows us to target tumours throughout the body as opposed to just those that we can directly inject."
Infection prevented further tumour growth in six patients for a time. However, the virus did not cure cancer. Patients were given only one dose of the virus as the trial was designed to test the safety of the virus.
It is thought that the virus could be used to deliver treatments directly to cancerous cells in high concentrations.
Prof Bell acknowledges that the research is still in the very early stages, but he said: "I believe that some day, viruses and other biological therapies could truly transform our approach for treating cancer."
Cancer Research UK's Prof Nick Lemoine, also director of Barts Cancer Institute, said: "Viruses that multiply in just tumour cells - avoiding healthy cells - are showing real promise as a new biological approach to target hard-to-treat cancers.
"This new study is important because it shows that a virus previously used safely to vaccinate against smallpox in millions of people can now be modified to reach cancers through the bloodstream - even after cancer has spread widely through the patient's body.
"It is particularly encouraging that responses were seen even in tumours like mesothelioma, a cancer which can be particularly hard to treat."
Friday, August 19, 2011
Test Taking Strategies Video Series
Test Taking Strategies (Video Series)
Test-Taking Strategies 1 (of 12): Eliminating Wrong Answers
http://youtu.be/l0P5U9s4wYE
Test-Taking Strategies 2 (of 12): Working Backwards
http://youtu.be/vEF_mkeFawU
http://youtu.be/l0P5U9s4wYE
Test-Taking Strategies 2 (of 12): Working Backwards
http://youtu.be/vEF_mkeFawU
Test-Taking Strategies 6 (of 12): Show Your Work (Use Your Pencil!)
Test-Taking Strategies 7 (of 12): Tricky Words (Game Changers)
Test-Taking Strategies 8 (of 12): "All" or "None" Answers
Test-Taking Strategies 12 (of 12): How to Feel Great!
Monday, August 15, 2011
MIT Researchers Discover New Drug That May Cure Nearly All Viral Infection
By IBTimes Staff Reporter | August 15, 2011 1:02 PM EDT
"In theory, it should work against all viruses," Rider says in a statement posted on MIT's Web site.
A paper on the drug can be read in the journal PLoS One.
According to a press release on DRACO, Rider had the idea to try and develop a broad-spectrum antiviral therapy some 11 years ago. This was after inventing CANARY (Cellular Analysis and Notification of Antigen Risks and Yields), a biosensor that can rapidly identify pathogens.
"If you detect a pathogenic bacterium in the environment, there is probably an antibiotic that could be used to treat someone exposed to that, but I realized there are very few treatments out there for viruses," Rider says.
He drew inspiration for DRACO from living cells' own defense systems. Researchers tested the drug against 15 viruses and found it was effective against all of them to include rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.
When viruses infect a cell, they take over its cellular machineryto use for their own purpose. Their purpose is to create more copies of the themselves, and during this process, the viruses make long strings of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), which isn't found in human or other animal cells, a press release notes.
The human cells, as part of their natural defenses against viral infection, have proteins that latch onto dsRNA, which then sets off a cascade of reactions that prevents the virus from replicating itself. But many viruses can outsmart that system by blocking one of the steps further down that cascade.
So Rider had the idea to combine a dsRNA-binding protein with another protein that induces cells to undergo apoptosis (programmed cell suicide) — launched, for example, when a cell determines it's en route to becoming cancerous. And so, when one end of the DRACO joins to dsRNA, it signals the other end of the DRACO to initiate cell suicide, the press release states.
Karla Kirkegaard, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University, says combining those two elements is a "great idea" and a very novel approach.
"Viruses are pretty good at developing resistance to things we try against them, but in this case, it's hard to think of a simple pathway to drug resistance," she says in a statement.
Researchers say most of the tests reported in this study were done in human and animal cells cultured in the lab, but the they also tested DRACO in mice infected with the H1N1 influenza virus. When mice were treated with DRACO, they were completely cured of the infection. The tests also showed that DRACO itself is not toxic to mice. Researchers are now testing DRACO against more viruses in mice and beginning to get promising results.
Rider says he hopes to license the technology for trials in larger animals and for eventual human clinical trials.
Friday, August 5, 2011
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