Betatrophin
and a new hope for Diabetes
 |
| Professor Douglas Melton in his lab |
A study published in Cell last
year offered evidence that a hormone called betatrophin, or Angiopoietin-like
protein 8 (ANGPTL8), could ramp up pancreatic β cell proliferation in a
mouse model of insulin resistance. The results made quite a splash; the
study’s authors—led by Doug Melton at Harvard University—even wrote that
betatrophin treatment “could augment or replace insulin injections by
increasing the number of endogenous insulin-producing cells in diabetics.”
Early this month,
Melton and his colleagues report a complex recipe that can transform either
human ES cells or iPS cells directly into functional β cells. The
breakthrough is based on more than a decade of tenacious work in Melton’s lab.
He and his colleagues have painstakingly studied the signals that guide
pancreas development, applying what they and others have found to develop a
method that turns stem cells into mature β cells. “There’s no magic to this,”
Melton says. “It’s not a discovery so much as applied developmental biology.”
The protocol “is reproducible, but it is tedious,” Melton adds.
The stem cells
are grown in flasks and require five different growth media and 11 molecular
factors, from proteins to sugars, added in precise combinations over 35 days to
turn them into β cells. On the bright side, Melton says, the technique can
produce 200 million β cells in a single 500 ml flask—enough, in theory, to
treat a patient. Melton says the protocol seems to work equally well with ES
and iPS cell lines.
Cutting
HIV off
How about if we re-write the whole
story?
Scientists have discovered a new technique using a
20-nucleotide strand of what's known as 'guide RNA' that basically goes into
the cell, detects the HIV's genetic code, and cuts it out of the
genome making it as if the HIV had never existed
As a retrovirus, HIV literally
writes itself into the genome of the people it infects, which in turn programs
a person's cells to make more viruses and thus remain infected. But a new human
genome-editing technique has eradicated the virus from a human cell for the
first time, in what could eventually function as an entirely new HIV treatment.
So far, true cures and vaccines for
HIV have remained elusive (except for a few rare cases involving bone marrow
transplants, as has just happened in two patients), in no small part because
the HIV virus infects a cell with its RNA, which causes infected cells to
implement it into the person's own genetic code. That's where a new technique,
developed by Kamel Khalili and Wenhui Hu of Temple University, comes in.
This study was published in Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences
Brazil Uses Technology To Fight Dengue
.jpg) |
| Aedes aegypti larvae |
Researchers from the UFMG (Universidade Federal de Minas
Gerais) and USP (Universidade de São Paulo) are developing new, innovative and
low-cost technologies that could help in fighting Dengue. A chemical cocktail prevents larvae to eat or breathe and
an intelligent trap catches ' bad mosquitoes'
Another study from New Scientist, reports that GM-Mosquitoes
will be raised and unleashed in a commercial scale for the first time in
attempt to stop outbreaks of Dengue fever in Brazil.
A novel Approach To Prevent Malaria
A study led by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health found that injecting a vaccine-like compound into mice was
effective in protecting them from malaria. The findings suggest a potential new path toward the elusive goal of malaria
immunization.
In their study, researchers
used a virus containing genes that were encoded to produce an antibody targeted
to inhibit P. falciparum infection. Up to 70 percent of the mice were protected
from malaria-infected mosquito bites. In a subset of mice that produced higher
levels of serum antibodies, the protection was 100 percent.
The mice were tested a year after receiving a single injection of the virus and were shown to still produce high levels of the protective antibody. The approach is known as Vector Immuno Prophylaxis or VIP
The mice were tested a year after receiving a single injection of the virus and were shown to still produce high levels of the protective antibody. The approach is known as Vector Immuno Prophylaxis or VIP
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