Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre have discovered that a protein, called Menin, contributes to abnormal deactivation of specific genes in cancer cells.

One of the hallmarks of cancer is that the normal regulation of genes is disrupted, and this causes cancer cells to look and behave differently to normal cells. Cancer cells can switch off certain genes, keeping them in a dormant state. By deactivating specific immune genes, some cancers are able to evade detection by the immune system, essentially becoming invisible. This allows the cancer to grow and become more aggressive.

By targeting the Menin protein using drug therapies, the researchers believe they can reactivate these genes, making the cancer cells once again visible and allowing the immune system to seek out and destroy them.

Biorealistic organic electrochemical neurons enabled by ion-tunable antiambipolarity in mixed ion-electron conducting polymers.

An artificial organic neuron that closely mimics the characteristics of biological nerve cells has been created by researchers at Linköping University (LiU), Sweden. This artificial neuron can stimulate natural nerves, making it a promising technology for various medical treatments in the future.

Work to develop increasingly functional artificial nerve cells continues at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics, LOE. In 2022, a team of scientists led by associate professor Simone Fabiano demonstrated how an artificial organic neuron could be integrated into a living carnivorous plant to control the opening and closing of its maw. This synthetic nerve cell met 2 of the 20 characteristics that differentiate it from a biological nerve cell.

Fungi such as Aspergillus are so common in our surroundings that we breathe in hundreds to thousands of spores every day. In healthy people, fungi typically pose no threat, but they can cause deadly infections in those with compromised immune systems. However, it is increasingly recognized that viral infections such as influenza or SARS-CoV-2 can increase the risk of invasive Aspergillus infections even in healthy people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that invasive fungal infections are an increasing threat to human health and has reiterated that more research is needed. Until now little was known about how the Aspergillus fungus was able to take root, and what could be done to get rid of it. Researchers at the University of Calgary working with researchers at McGill University have provided new insight on why the immune system fails.

“We discovered that influenza and COVID-19 destroy a previously unknown natural immunity that we need to resist invasive fungal infections,” says Nicole Sarden, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Calgary and first author on the study.

This case highlights a rare but important side effect after vaccination that primary physicians and neurologists should be aware of in order to identify and efficiently manage these patients.

Case presentation: A 10 year old girl was evaluated for headache, fever and vomit. CSF analysis revealed pleocytosis and presence of S. pneumoniae antigen, and proper antibiotic therapy for bacterial meningitis was started, with rapid improvement.

https://europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr181933

Continue reading “Aseptic meningitis after vaccination of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine” »

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology have discovered the biosynthesis of a rare compound called benzoxazolinate, which is found in Benzobactins – a class of bacterial natural products that have unique biological activity due to its two-ring structure.

By utilizing genomic research, scientists were able to uncover the previously unknown genes responsible for its formation. This breakthrough opens doors to the discovery of a multitude of new natural compounds with medical applications.

Microorganisms in their natural habitat often face varying environmental conditions and have evolved to produce a diverse range of natural products with various chemical compositions and functions to aid their survival.

Psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and depression, affect nearly one in five adults in the United States and nearly half of patients diagnosed with a psychiatric illness also meet the criteria for a second. With so much overlap, researchers have begun to suspect that there may be one neurobiological explanation for a variety of psychiatric illnesses. A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, investigated four pre-existing, publicly available neurological and psychiatric datasets, and pinpointed a network of brain areas underlying psychiatric illnesses. Their results are published in Nature Human Behavior.

“Traditionally, neurology and psychiatry have different diagnostic strategies,” said corresponding author Joseph J. Taylor, MD, Ph.D., Medical Director of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation at the Brigham’s Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics and an associate psychiatrist in the Brigham’s Department of Psychiatry. “Neurology asks: ‘Where is the lesion?’ and psychiatry asks: ‘What are the symptoms?’ We now have tools to explore the ‘where’ question for psychiatry disorders. In this study, we examined whether psychiatric disorders share a common brain network.”

The researchers began by analyzing a set of structural brain data from over 15,000 healthy controls as well as patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or anxiety. They found gray matter decreases in anterior cingulate and insula, two brain regions commonly associated with psychiatric illness. However, only a third of studies showed gray matter decreases in these brain regions. Additionally, neurodegenerative diseases also showed gray matter decreases in these same regions.

Emotional maltreatment, also known as psychological violence, is difficult to recognize and record both in research and in practice. That is why researchers at the Leipzig University Faculty of Medicine carried out a highly elaborate study on the psychological effects that abuse, neglect and emotional maltreatment have on children and adolescents. Examples of emotional abuse include when parents subject their children to extreme humiliation, threaten to put them in a home, or blame them for their own psychological distress or suicidal thoughts.

Physical violence between parents observed by children also plays a crucial role. “Our study findings clearly show that emotional maltreatment is not only a very common form of maltreatment, but also one with psychiatric consequences that are similar to or even more severe than other forms of maltreatment,” explains study leader and last author Dr. Lars White, research group leader at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at Leipzig University Hospital.

In their study of 778 children, the Leipzig researchers, together with researchers from other German universities, found that 80 percent of the children and adolescents who reported having been maltreated had also experienced emotional maltreatment. This makes emotional maltreatment the most common form of child abuse.

An international study 13 years in the making demonstrates for the first time that degradation in the way DNA is organized and regulated — known as epigenetics — can drive aging in an organism, independently of changes to the genetic code itself.

Rats and mice have been the backbone of biomedical research for decades—including research to understand cancer and pioneer new treatments.

New drug compounds are tested for safety and effectiveness in animal models before being approved for clinical trials in humans.

But scientists at research institutions like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Sloan Kettering Institute are working to develop nonmammalian alternatives that could reduce the number of rodents used in biomedical research —a positive result in its own right, and one that could also lower costs and accelerate results.