Innovative Biosensors Inc., a Washington area company, has set out to create a device that manipulates biosensors from the human immune system to detect certain types of bacteria, viruses and proteins, according to a Washington Post article today. Depending on the reagent inserted, it will be able to find traces of pathogens such as anthrax or E. coli and will be especially useful in spotting respiratory viruses and contagious bacteria in the operating room.
Given the tough job of keeping patients from catching new stuff in the hospital, this is an exciting idea.
I can just envision a day when members of the public will be walking around with these things. At a gathering the other evening a bunch of us were enjoying the music and when I looked down the table, I noticed all the technology laid out–cell phones, beepers, digital records, digital cameras, etc. Looked like our modern equivalent of the old westerns where the card player hauls out his six shooter and lays it on the table to let the other guy know he’s serious.
“My tech is bigger’n yourn”–so watch for an addition to the lineup soon: the personal bacteria-spotter device.
In Taiwan people who drink tea–black or green, even a little bit–have much lower blood pressure than those who don’t, according to a note in the International Herald Tribune. And they’re also much more likely to smoke, drink alcohol, eat salt, and eat fewer vegetables. Does it ever feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack with your experiments–and that the hay looks suspiciously like a pile of needles?
The healthy version of BRCA1 gene blocks estrogen signalling that can encouarge breast cancer cells to grow. When the gene is mutated, the blocking function is lost and tumors can grow unchecked–which suggests that drugs can be developed to imitate the blocking function. Written up in July issue of Molecular and Cellular Biology, one hope (according to a Medical News Today article) is to create a better way to help handle menopausal symptoms without increasing the danger of breast cancer.
Dosing women with estrogen is a popular way to mitigate the symptoms of menopause. So to a certain extent, this research is helping us solve one of the problems we created by our choice of treatment. Hopefully researchers will also be working out how to help prevent breast cancer in all women.
A recent test done by SUNY-Buffalo endocrinology experts had normal-weight adults fast overnight and then eat a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin, a Sausage McMuffin and two servings of hash-brown potatoes–not at all an unheard-of amount of carbs and calories and fat for an American meal.
Compared to a control group who had only a 10-ounce glass of water after the fast, “the calorie-laden breakfast increased levels of free radicals, C-reactive protein and nuclear factor-kappa B, a protein that triggers the release of inflammatory chemicals.”
When you eat like this, your body is in an inflamed state for several hours, says the Kansas.com article. Then if you eat another lots-of-bad-stuff meal, you prolong the condition. Inflammation contributes to a higher risk of heart attack and stroke.
As if we needed more evidence that our fast-food lifestyle is dangerous to life…
The Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam (serving 3 million people) is implementing the use of Affymetrix microarray technology for every area of research. The goal is to take genetic and genomic research that is consistent and reproducible–as required for clinical trials–and translate it into clinical tools to improve patient care.
I see this on a Swiss team of pulmonary experts investigating acute mountain sickness and think of the research that’s been done that links this sort of oxygen exchange problem with asthma.
“…acute mountain sickness and the pronounced fall in oxygen saturation were not related to nocturnal breathing disturbances such as reduced or irregular and periodic ventilation, but more likely to impaired gas exchange in the lungs. ”
Asthma is such a stealer of the quality of life. It would be great to see the findings of this article applied to that research.
In ten years the English have tripled their rates of Type II diabetes–and expect the trend to continue. A new study, to the tune of a million English pounds, is being conducted through the University of Bristol (and others) to test how much better patients will get by increasing exercise levels. One of three groups of newly diagnosed Type II diabetics will begin wearing monitors to gauge how much exercise they get each day. The study will compare results for those treated with dietary advice alone, dietary plus exercise, and the “usual care” routine.
A friend goes to a holistic treatment guy who has managed to get her off lifelong allergy medicines and out of decades-long chronic pain. One of the secrets is reducing sugar to an absolute minimum. And she says how incredibly hard that is–because almost everything that goes through any processing at all gets corn syrup or some derivative added to it. That’s everything from bread to soups–let alone the obviously sugar-laden items on our shelves.
This makes sense–because it’s hard to believe the incredible rise in obesity is due simply to the fact that people all over the world are eating so much more than ever.
Like so many regions that finally realize the economic impact of the bioscience industry, much passion from many people has gone into wanting to make Northeast Ohio attractive to those organizations. Now, according to a Plain Dealer article today, somebody’s putting the money where the talk is.
Congratulations to these four (all but one of which are consortia of other organizations) for receiving money from the Fund for Our Economic Future (itself a collaboration of more than 50 different funding organizations in the region):
BioEnterprise (includes Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals)
JumpStart Inc. (the merger of CWRU’s Enterprise Development Inc. NEOpreneur Inc. (a NorTech group), and NEOpreneur Exchange and is supposed to support promising entrepreneurs and start-up companies in the region)
NorTech (stands for Northeast Ohio Technology Coalition and replaced Cleveland Tomorrow’s Technology Leadership Council and is intended to promote science and technology businesses)
Team NEO (the Greater Akron Chamber, Stark Development Board, Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, Regional Chamber, Cleveland Tomorrow and the Greater Cleveland Growth Association fosters a regional approach to economic development)
Thanks to the Plain Dealer for explaining who all these groups are; the rapid shapeshifting of power and influence centers in the region has been hard for some of us to track. But any way you look at it, this is a lot of firepower to aim at a goal. If it can overcome issues about regionalism and sharing–which a healthy dose of funding may go a long way towards solving–the region is well positioned to take a lead in the battle to be a star arena for bioscience.