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Category: health – Page 183

An Israeli company has launched a clinical trial to determine if its innovative microbiome-based therapeutic could increase the responsiveness of some cancer patients to immunotherapy.

The microbiome is gut bacteria – trillions of microorganisms that live in the intestinal tract and play a role in digestion, immunity and many other aspects of health.

Rehovot-based Biomica, a subsidiary of Evogene, dosed its first patients in a Phase I clinical trial at Rambam Health Care Campus last month with a new drug – BMC128 – that is expected to help patients who do not respond to immunotherapy. Specifically, the company hopes the trial will demonstrate the safety, tolerability and preliminary clinical effectiveness of its BMC128 microbiome-based immuno-oncology drug candidate in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) immunotherapy.

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Comotion_design/iStock.

The U.S. Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is a collaboration among the National Institutes of Health, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Science Foundation, Food and Drug Administration, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, and others. Since its inception in 2013, its goal has been to develop and use new technologies to examine how each neuron and neural circuit come together to “record, process, utilize, store, and retrieve vast quantities of information, all at the speed of thought.”

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The space between the planets in our solar system is filled with a wispy sea of charged particles that flow out from the Sun’s atmosphere. This particle population is augmented by cosmic rays — speedy protons and atomic nuclei accelerated in extreme environments across the universe — which ebb and flow against the 11-year solar activity cycle. This undulating particle background is punctuated by bursts of high-energy particles from the Sun, which can be unleashed suddenly in violent solar storms.

Spacecraft that venture out from the protection of Earth’s magnetic field must navigate this ocean of particles and weather solar storms. And if we someday wish to send astronauts to other planets, we’ll need to know how high-energy solar particles, which pose a risk to the health of astronauts and electronic systems alike, travel through the solar system.

In a new publication, a team led by Shuai Fu (Macau University of Science and Technology), Zheyi Ding (China University of Geosciences), and Yongjie Zhang (Chinese Academy of Sciences) studied the high-energy solar particles produced in an event in November 2020, when the Sun emitted a solar flare and a massive explosion of solar plasma called a coronal mass ejection.

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Science, Technology, Health, Physics, Chemistry stay Updated.

Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) and James Cook University (JCU) have identified an “exquisite” natural mechanism that helps plants limit their water loss with little effect on carbon dioxide (CO2) intake—an essential process for photosynthesis, plant growth and crop yield.

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In a first-of-its-kind gathering at the New York Academy of Sciences, researchers from some of the world’s leading universities and institutions convened to discuss at the 13th annual Key Symposium the various applications of bioelectronic medicine, the cutting-edge field that uses technology to treat disease and injury. While still in early stages of development, bioelectronic medicine has already been proven in studies and clinical trials to successfully treat conditions including paralysis and rheumatoid arthritis.

This panel, moderated by Miles O’Brien from PBS’ NewsHour, discusses what life will be like when we can fully modulate the nervous system and the impact that would have on disease, drugs, the healthcare industry, personal freedom, and privacy. The panel includes Polina Anikeeva, PhD, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chad Bouton from The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research at Northwell Health, Peder S. Olofsson, MD, PhD, from the Karolinska Institutet, and Doug Weber, PhD, from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration.

To learn more about this year’s event, visit feinsteininstitute.org/key-symposium

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“Pamela” is an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) developed as an entrepreneurial idea at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) for sampling a variety of surface water particles, from microplastic to plankton to salmon lice. The USV is a joint effort by an interdisciplinary team—Andrea Faltynkova, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Biology, and Artur Zolich, a postdoc at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics.

Faltynkova studies microplastics in the ocean. Microplastics are bits of plastic smaller than 5 mm, which is roughly the size of the end of a pencil. While researchers know that microplastics can have negative effects on marine or freshwater organisms, there’s less known about how they affect human health. But studying microplastics is a challenge because of the nature of the substance itself, she says.

“Microplastics are so heterogeneous. It’s a very large, diverse group of particles. Not only that but they are very unevenly distributed. Microplastic is not like other dissolved pollutants that can be detected even in small quantities of water or soil. If you go and you take a liter from the sea, and there’s no plastic in it, can you conclude that there is no plastic in the sea?” she asked.

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MPXV was first discovered during a nonfatal outbreak at an animal facility in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1958. The facility received a continual supply of Asian monkeys (mostly M. fascicularis) and rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), which were used for polio vaccine research. The first outbreak occurred 2 months after the monkeys had been received and the second outbreak occurred 4 months after the initial outbreak. The outbreaks occurred in M. fascicularis that had arrived from Singapore. Upon arrival, monkeys were treated with antibiotics and appeared in satisfactory health.

Monkeypox virus (MPXV) was discovered in 1958 during an outbreak in an animal facility in Copenhagen, Denmark. Since its discovery, MPXV has revealed a propensity to infect and induce disease in a large number of animals within the mammalia class from pan-geographical locations. This finding has impeded the elucidation of the natural host, although the strongest candidates are African squirrels and/or other rodents. Experimentally, MPXV can infect animals via a variety of multiple different inoculation routes; however, the natural route of transmission is unknown and is likely to be somewhat species specific. In this review we have attempted to compile and discuss all published articles that describe experimental or natural infections with MPXV, dating from the initial discovery of the virus through to the year 2012. We further discuss the comparative disease courses and pathologies of the host species.

Keywords: aerosol, animals, infection, intrabronchial, intradermal, intramuscular, intranasal, intratracheal, intravenous, outbreak, primates, subcutaneous.

Orthopoxviruses (OPVs) have host specificities ranging from narrow (e.g., ectromelia and variola [VARV]) to broad (e.g., cowpox and vaccinia [VACV]). Monkeypox virus (MPXV) has a broad host-range and is capable of infecting many species from across the globe. In nature, the major environs of MPXV are restricted to the Congo Basin (CB) and West Africa (WA). The MPXV virion is a brick-shaped enveloped virus of 200–250 nm, characterized by surface tubules and a dumbbell-shaped core. Humans and highly susceptible nonhuman primates (NHPs) infected with MPXV have near identical clinical manifestations compared to humans infected with VARV. For humans, the only obvious difference in clinical signs is the absence of lymphadenopathy in smallpox patients [1,2].

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In order to cover the different areas and to manage the large volume of research that has been conducted on the serotonin system, we conducted an ‘umbrella’ review. Umbrella reviews survey existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses relevant to a research question and represent one of the highest levels of evidence synthesis available [23]. Although they are traditionally restricted to systematic reviews and meta-analyses, we aimed to identify the best evidence available. Therefore, we also included some large studies that combined data from individual studies but did not employ conventional systematic review methods, and one large genetic study. The latter used nationwide databases to capture more individuals than entire meta-analyses, so is likely to provide even more reliable evidence than syntheses of individual studies.

We first conducted a scoping review to identify areas of research consistently held to provide support for the serotonin hypothesis of depression. Six areas were identified, addressing the following questions: Serotonin and the serotonin metabolite 5-HIAA–whether there are lower levels of serotonin and 5-HIAA in body fluids in depression; Receptors — whether serotonin receptor levels are altered in people with depression; The serotonin transporter (SERT) — whether there are higher levels of the serotonin transporter in people with depression (which would lower synaptic levels of serotonin); Depletion studies — whether tryptophan depletion (which lowers available serotonin) can induce depression; SERT gene – whether there are higher levels of the serotonin transporter gene in people with depression; Whether there is an interaction between the SERT gene and stress in depression.

We searched for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and large database studies in these six areas in PubMed, EMBASE and PsycINFO using the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search tool provided by Health Education England and NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence). Searches were conducted until December 2020.

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