A school in southeastern Massachusetts latches onto a novel program that uses canines to sniff out COVID on surfaces. The idea is to help protect kids from the virus and keep the school open.
(https://hscrb.harvard.edu/labs/whited-lab/) is an Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University where her lab focuses on limb regeneration in axolotl salamanders and where they develop tools to manipulate gene expression during limb regeneration, and explore signaling events following wound healing that initiate the regenerative process.
Dr. Whited earned a B.A. in Philosophy and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Missouri, and obtained her Ph.D. in Biology from MIT, where she studied in Dr. Paul Garrity’s laboratory.
Scientists at ETH Zurich designed a push-button device that lets patients control cell-based therapies with the push of a button, using a piezoelectric device.
Hong Kong, a densely populated city where agriculture space is limited, is almost totally dependent on the outside world for its food supply. More than 90% of the skyscraper-studded city’s food, especially fresh produce like vegetables, is imported, mostly from mainland China. “During the pandemic, we all noticed that the productivity of locally grown vegetables is very low,” says Gordon Tam, cofounder and CEO of vertical farming company Farm66 in Hong Kong. “The social impact was huge.”
Tam estimates that only about 1.5% of vegetables in the city are locally produced. But he believes vertical farms like Farm66, with the help of modern technologies, such as IoT sensors, LED lights and robots, can bolster Hong Kong’s local food production—and export its know-how to other cities. “Vertical farming is a good solution because vegetables can be planted in cities,” says Tam in an interview at the company’s vertical farm in an industrial estate. “We can grow vegetables ourselves so that we don’t have to rely on imports.”
Tam says he started Farm66 in 2013 with his cofounder Billy Lam, who is COO of the company, as a high-tech vertical farming pioneer in Hong Kong. “Our company was the first to use energy-saving LED lighting and wavelength technologies in a farm,” he says. “We found out that different colors on the light spectrum help plants grow in different ways. This was our technological breakthrough.” For example, red LED light will make the stems grow faster, while blue LED light encourages plants to grow larger leaves.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen found an alternative route that certain cells take to make organs and used that knowledge to exploit a new type of stem cells as a potential source of organs in a dish.
Eric Topol speaks with DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis about harnessing the potential of AI in health and medicine.
All monkeys appeared clinically normal on Day 0 of the study. Monkeys began to show evidence of exanthema, enanthema, mild anorexia, fever, cough, and nasal discharge on Days 6 and 7 postexposure. Dyspnea, noted as early as Day 8 postexposure, was evident in all animals by Day 10. By Days 9 and 10, all animals had exanthema and enanthema, were depressed and severely anorectic, and showed signs of weakness. Clinical signs progressed until the animals died naturally or were killed 9 to 17 days postexposure (mean 11.7 days). There was no correlation of inhaled dose to survival time. Leukocytosis (absolute and relative monocytosis) developed with the onset of clinical signs on Day 6. There were no trends detected in clinical chemistry data. Virus was first isolated from buffy coat cells of one of eight animals tested on Day 6. Nine of 11 animals were positive on Day 9, and 2 of 7 remained positive on Days 12 or 13. There was no cell-free viremia detected at any time.
Principal gross necropsy findings are presented in Table 1. All deaths were attributed to bronchopneumonia, although secondary bacterial septicemia was considered to be a contributing factor in one animal. Lungs were heavy and congested and failed to collapse. A dark red, lobular, mottled pattern of edema, atelectasis, and necrosis was distributed throughout all lung lobes (Fig. 1A). Occasionally, there was fibrinous pleuritis with pleural adhesions and multifocal, white, plaque-like thickenings of the visceral pleura. We observed a clear pericardial effusion in two monkeys.
Dermatitis, present in all monkeys, varied from barely detectable, single, small papules to extensive involvement primarily affecting the inguinal, ventral abdominal, ventral thoracic, perineal, and facial regions (Fig. 1, B and C). Palmar surfaces of the hands and plantar surfaces of the feet were only occasionally involved. The extent of involvement and the stage of skin lesion development noted at necropsy exhibited a positive correlation with the number of days elapsed since initial onset of the lesions was noted clinically. In animals necropsied 1 to 2 days after onset of exanthema, lesions were generally minimal in extent and were in the papular stage, appearing as pale tan to white, slightly raised foci, 2 to 4 mm in diameter. At 3 to 5 days post onset, lesion distribution was characterized as mild. Papules were accompanied by 1 to 2 mm vesicles. Vesicle formation, however, was not prominent grossly.
A research team from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology has developed ‘nanomachines,’ which use mechanical molecular movements to penetrate and destroy cells. Selective cancer cell penetration is also possible by using a latch molecule released near cancer cells. Cancer is a condition where some of the body’s cells grow out of control and spread to other bodily regions. Cancer cells divide continually, leading them to invade surrounding tissue and form solid tumors. The majority of cancer treatments involve killing the cancer cells.
According to 2020 estimates, 1.8 million new instances of cancer were diagnosed in the US, and 600,000 people passed away from the condition. Breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer are the most common cancers. The average age of a cancer patient upon diagnosis is 66, and individuals between the ages of 65 and 74 account for 25% of all new cancer diagnoses.
Proteins are involved in every biological process and use the energy in the body to change their structure via mechanical movements. They are referred to as biological ‘nanomachines’ since even minor structural changes in proteins have a substantial impact on biological processes. To implement movement in the cellular environment, researchers have focused on the development of nanomachines that imitate proteins. However, cells use a variety of mechanisms to defend themselves against the effect of these nanomachines. This restricts any relevant mechanical movement of nanomachines that could be used for medical purposes.
Imagine if you could repair damaged tissue in your organs. That is what stem cell research is working towards, because stem cells have tremendous potential to produce the cells of organs such as the liver, pancreas and intestine.
For decades, scientists have attempted to mimic the path that stem cells follow in order to form, for example, organs in embryos. However, despite extensive efforts, getting cells to properly develop in the lab has been very difficult. But they may have overlooked an important step and maybe missing another type of stem cells, suggests a new study from the University of Copenhagen.
“Very simply put, a number of recent studies have attempted make a gut from stem cells in a dish. We have found a new way to do this, a way which follows different aspects of what happens in the embryo. Here, we found a new route that the embryo uses, and we describe the intermediate stage that different types of stem cells could use to make the gut and other organs,” says Ph.D. student at Martin Proks, one of the primary authors of the study from Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine at the University of Copenhagen (reNEW).
Researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine have discovered a possible new approach in treating solid tumors through the creation of a novel nanoparticle. Solid tumors are found in cancers such as breast, head and neck, and colon cancer.
In the study, Xin Ming, Ph.D., associate professor of cancer biology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and his team used a nanoparticle to deliver a small molecule called ARL67156 to promote an anti-tumor immune response in mouse models of colon, head and neck, and metastatic breast cancer, resulting in increased survival.
The study is published online in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
