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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2234

The bacteria that live in our bodies have a pivotal role in the maintenance of our health, and can influence a range of conditions, such as obesity and cancer. Perhaps the most important role for the community of microorganisms that live in our gut — termed the microbiota, which include bacteria, fungi and archaea — is to aid immune-system development. Writing in Nature, Tanoue et al. report the identification of 11 strains of bacteria that reside in the guts of some healthy humans and that can boost immune responses that fight infection and cancer.

Microorganisms in the human gut can affect immune-system cells. Gut bacterial strains have been discovered that boost immune cells that have cell-killing capacity and that can target cancer and protect against infection. Human gut bacteria boost immune cells that have cell-killing capacity.

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Jan. 10 (UPI) — Scientists have developed a single dose treatment that has shown promise for combating all forms of the Ebola virus, a study says.

The new medication successfully blocked a strain of the deadly virus in nonhuman primates and ferrets, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

The drug, a two-antibody combination called MBP134, was successful against several strains of Ebola, including the Zaire strain behind the current months-long outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Hansen’s disease, which is commonly known as leprosy, is among the leading causes of non-traumatic, peripheral neuropathies around the world.

The World Health Organization (WHO) initiated its ‘Leprosy Elimination Project’ during the 1980s with great results, curing more than 14 million cases.

Leprosy is caused by Mycobacterium leprae, with the infection progressing to cause disfiguration of the skin and mucous membranes, as well as progressive and irreversible nerve damage.

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Behold the new black gold. Dark and warm, it oozes water and teems with beneficial properties. It even harbors precious metals.

And boy does it stink.

Call it the excrement economy. Between the rise of fecal transplants and water strained from latrine sludge, the poop market is hot. Besides removing toxic waste, the commodification of crap could mean big bucks, especially in the developing world. Sounds crazy, but look at what happened with used cooking oil — now processed into biofuel instead of dumped into landfills — which went from being worth nothing in the early 2000s to $3.30 a gallon in 2011, according to the Utah Biodiesel Supply.

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Morad said in its infancy, AEBi was essentially “doing what everyone else was doing, trying to discover individual novel peptides for specific cancers.”

But then Morad and his colleague, Dr. Hanan Itzhaki, began attempting to identify why other cancer-killing drugs and treatments didn’t work or eventually failed. And they say they’ve found a way to counter that effect.

Morad said most anti-cancer drugs attack a specific target on or in the cancer cell. “Inhibiting the target usually affects a physiological pathway that promotes cancer. Mutations in the targets – or downstream in their physiological pathways – could make the targets not relevant to the cancer nature of the cell, and hence the drug attacking it is rendered ineffective,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

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(Advances in science and public health are increasing longevity and enhancing the quality of life for people around the world. In this series of interviews with the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, 14 visionaries are revealing exciting trends and insights regarding healthy longevity, sharing their vision for a better future. The Longevity Innovators interviews highlight new discoveries in biomedical and psychosocial science, as well as strategies to promote prevention and wellness for older adults. This is the last story in the series.)

Director of the Longevity Genes Project at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Dr. Nir Barzilai has discovered several longevity genes in humans that appear to protect centenarians against major age-related diseases. Barzilai is also co-founder of CohBar, a biotech company developing mitochondria-based therapeutics to treat diseases associated with aging. In an interview with the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, Barzilai explains why some people have longevity genes and the challenges in drug design for age-related diseases:

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