Sick Dogs Could Be Key to Unlocking Mysteries of Immunotherapy
NIH is recruiting dogs to test a new type of promising cancer drugs called immunotherapy. Photo credit: MIT Technology Review
Written by: Emily Mullin
Novel cancer drugs that harness an individual’s own immune system to fight cancer are showing incredible promise in some patients, but researchers don’t fully understand why these immunotherapies work for some people and not others.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health say they need animal models that imitate the human immune system to study the effects of these drugs. This week an advisory committee at the National Cancer Institute at NIH said it will start a new program in 2017 to study experimental immunotherapies in dogs with cancer. The National Cancer Institute has been performing clinical trials in dogs since 2003 with other cancer therapies, but this is the first large-scale dog immunotherapy effort the institute is supporting. Read more.
Early study finds antibody that ‘neutralizes’ Zika virus
The findings may also aid efforts to develop an effective anti-Zika vaccine, said James Crowe Jr., M.D., director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, have isolated a human monoclonal antibody that in a mouse model “markedly reduced” infection by the Zika virus.
The antibody, called ZIKV-117, also protected the fetus in pregnant mice infected with the virus, the researchers reported in the journal Nature. Zika is believed to cause microcephaly, unusually small heads, and other congenital malformations in children born to infected women.
Similar protection studies in primates are warranted, and if the findings hold up, ZIKV-177 could be developed as a protective antibody treatment for pregnant women at risk of Zika infection, the researchers concluded. Read more.
Harvard’s 3D-Printed Heart on a Chip Will Speed Up Drug Research and Make Animal Testing Safer
By: Ghuncha Shaheed
3D printing is gradually taking over the world. We’ve had 3D printed models for architecture, 3D sonic holograms, and then 3D synthetic bones to replace bones in our body. 3D printing’s potential to create such customized objects has made more advancements in the medical field than in anything else.
Harvard has now created a 3D printed organ-on-a-chip and has gotten closer to mimicking the human organs through its integrated sensors. This is particularly of use when it comes to testing the efficacy of the artificial tissue before implanting them into the human body. Read more.
Scientists Take Big Step Toward Being Able To Repair Brain Injuries
Photo Credit Sofia Grade
Embryonic neurons (shown in red) transplanted into the adult mouse brain connect with host neurons (shown in black), rebuilding neural circuits previously lost due to an injury.
Written by: Bahar Gholipour
Scientists have long been working toward a day when a traumatic injury or stroke doesn’t cause brain cells to be permanently lost.
Executing this extremely difficult task would involve figuring out how to transplant new neurons into brain tissue. But neurons form precise connections with each other, and are guided by physiological signals that are active during early brain development ― meaning that you can’t sow a fistful of new neurons into mature brain tissue and expect them to grow the way they should. Read more.
Psychological science explores the minds of dogs
Dogs are one of the most common household pets in the world, so it’s curious that we know relatively little about their cognitive abilities when we know so much about the abilities of other animals, from primates to cetaceans. Over the last couple decades, researchers have been aiming to bridge this gap in scientific knowledge, investigating how our canine companions behave and what they know and why.
The October 2016 issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science presents an entire special issue dedicated to exploring all that psychological scientists have learned about dog behavior and cognition in recent years. Current Directions in Psychological Science is a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Read more.
There’s a New Vaccine to Protect Us From the Black Death
Written by: Jess Vilvestre
INTRODUCING A WEAKER STRAIN
The Black Death, a killer disease that wiped out nearly a third of the population of 14th century Europe, has recently been re-emerging. Cases of the plague have been reported from the USA, Peru, and Africa. The Journal of Infectious Diseases & Preventive Medicine writes that there are about 1,000 to 2,000 cases of the plague reported each year to the World Health Organization.
Developments from researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston bring forth new potential vaccines to protect against the plague, as reported in NPJ Vaccines. Read more.
Published by Futurism October 17, 2016
How naked mole rats conquered pain—and what it could mean for us
By Elizabeth Pennisi
Although it has a face—and body—that only a mother could love, the naked mole rat has a lot to offer 
biomedical science. It lives 10 times longer than a mouse, almost never gets cancer, and doesn’t feel pain from injury and inflammation. Now, researchers say they’ve figured out how the rodents keep this pain away.
“It’s an amazing result,” says Harold Zakon, an evolutionary neurobiologist at the University of Texas, Austin, who was not involved with the work. “This study points us to important areas … that might be targeted to reduce this type of pain.”
Naked mole rats are just plain weird. They live almost totally underground in colonies structured like honey bee hives, with hundreds of workers servicing a single queen and her few consorts. To survive, they dig kilometers of tunnels in search of large underground tubers for food. It’s such a tough life that—to conserve energy—this member of the rodent family gave up regulating its temperature, and they are able to thrive in a low-oxygen, high–carbon dioxide environment that would suffocate or be very painful to humans. “They might as well be from another planet,” says Thomas Park, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Read more
Hype vs. hope in medical research
By Eric S. Lander
IS THE PROMISE of genomic medicine overhyped?
This might seem a strange question coming from one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project, and the director of the Broad Institute, which brings together researchers from Harvard, MIT, and Harvard-affiliated hospitals to accelerate the understanding and treatment of disease.
I think the answer is a clear yes — and a resounding no. The contradiction highlights a thorny challenge in the ongoing conversation between scientists and the public.
This summer, I gave a talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival in which I discussed the need to accelerate medical progress through data-sharing and expressed the hope that, within the next 30 to 40 years, we might have enough knowledge to be able to turn cancer, for the majority of patients, into a treatable chronic condition rather than a lethal disease. Read more
CRISPR Gene Editing Has Been Used to Cure Mice of Sickle Cell Disease
by Jess Vilvestre
CORRECTING A MUTATION
Credit: Getty Images at Futurism.com
Gene editing shows promise as a new treatment for sickle cell disease, according to a study published in the online journal Science Translational Medicine.
Experts from the University of California, Berkeley, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), and the University of Utah School of Medicine have found success in correcting the blood cell mutation in tests of the blood of both mice and human sickle cell patients using CRISPR-Cas9, a genome “scissor” that can cut out and edit a DNA sequence.
After CRISPR was used to correct the mutated hematopoietic stem cells — precursor cells that mature into the hook-shaped hemoglobin characteristic of sickle cell disease, the corrected blood stem cells produced healthy hemoglobin. Following reintroduction into the mice, the genetically engineered stem cells remained in circulation for at least four months — a significant indication that any potential therapy would be lasting. Read more
Humans aren’t the only great apes that can ‘read minds’
By Virginia Morell
All great mind reading begins with chocolate. That’s the basis for a classic experiment that tests whether children have something called theory of mind—the ability to attribute desires, intentions, and knowledge to others. When they see someone hide a chocolate bar in a box, then leave the room while a second person sneaks in and hides it elsewhere, they have to guess where the first person will look for the bar. If they guess “in the original box,” they pass the test, and show they understand what’s going on in the first person’s mind—even when it doesn’t match reality.
For years, only humans were thought to have this key cognitive skill of attributing “false belief,” which is believed to underlie deception, empathy, teaching, and perhaps even language. But three species of great apes—chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans—also know when someone holds a false belief, according to a new study published today in Science. The groundbreaking study suggests that this skill likely can be traced back to the last common ancestor of great apes and humans, and may be found in other species. Read more