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Showing posts from September, 2017

Powerful RNA-based technology could help shape the future of therapeutic antibodies

Utilizing antibodies to deal with illness has been one of many nice success tales of early 21st-century medication. Already 5 of the ten top-selling prescription drugs in the USA are antibody merchandise. However antibodies are giant, advanced proteins that may be costly to fabricate. Now, a workforce led by scientists from the Perelman Faculty of Medication on the College of Pennsylvania demonstrates in an animal mannequin a brand new approach to ship safer and more cost effective therapeutic antibodies. The method includes the injection of messenger RNAs (mRNAs), the "blueprint" molecules that cells use to fabricate proteins. The mRNA molecules are taken up by cells within the physique, which then grow to be factories for making the therapeutic proteins -- on this case, antibody proteins -- encoded by the mRNAs. These mRNAs are modified to allow them to simply enter cells and never activate inflammatory molecules that result in hostile occasions. R...

New way to assess medication-based HIV prevention proposed

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Antiretroviral drugs -- only one a day -- might help forestall individuals at excessive threat for HIV an infection from contracting the virus. Credit score: Alec Tributino/The Miriam Hospital Probably the most promising new approaches to slowing the unfold of HIV is pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a once-a-day remedy that individuals who do not have HIV can take to stop turning into contaminated. However that technique solely works if individuals in danger for contracting HIV turn into and stay absolutely engaged in preventive care and truly take the capsules. In the true world of medical apply, that has typically proved difficult. In a brand new article within the journal  AIDS , a Brown College-based workforce of researchers attracts on their expertise in offering and punctiliously learning PrEP packages to suggest a brand new system for understanding and evaluating how PrEP is applied in medical apply. By viewing the method as a continuu...

How antibody treatment led to lasting HIV-like virus remission

In October 2016, researchers reported that they had achieved sustained SIV remission in monkeys using a monkey antibody similar to the human drug vedolizumab , which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. The mechanism behind this observation has been unclear, but a new report presented today at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle provides clues. Scientists have known that alpha-4 beta-7 integrin is a gut-homing receptor present at high levels on the immune-system cells that HIV and SIV preferentially infect. In the new study, scientists found that maturing HIV and SIV particles acquire alpha-4 beta-7 as they emerge from an infected cell, presenting researchers with a new target for HIV prevention and treatment and shedding light on how HIV disease develops. "We expected the antibody to attack alpha-4 beta-7 on immune cells and reduce their movement to the gut, where HI...

HIV hijacks common cells to spread infection

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Analysis by Jason Neidleman , Nadia Roan, PhD, and Warner Greene, MD, PhD, revealed that breaches within the reproductive and intestinal tracts enable HIV to entry a standard cell sort to extend the danger of HIV transmission. Credit score: Chris Goodfellow, Gladstone Institutes Scientists on the Gladstone Institutes and the College of California, San Francisco (UCSF), along with collaborators in Europe, found widespread sort of cell throughout the human reproductive and intestinal tracts assists HIV in infecting immune cells. Understanding how these cells support HIV might result in new strategies that forestall HIV transmission. The human reproductive system and intestinal tract are lined with a protecting layer of cells, known as the mucosa. Breaches in these layers, which will be attributable to bodily trauma or some sexually transmitted ailments, enable HIV to bypass the protecting floor to entry immune cells that may be contaminated by HIV. W...

Understanding how HIV evades the immune system

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This can be a stylized illustration of a peptide epitope extending from the N-terminal finish of the HLA-I binding groove. Credit score: Imaging CoE Monash College (Australia) and Cardiff College (UK) researchers have come a step additional in understanding how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) evades the immune system. Declared a pandemic in 1987 by the World Well being Group, HIV an infection has been chargeable for 39 million deaths over the past 30 years. It stays one of many world's most important public well being challenges and thus a better understanding of how HIV capabilities is urgently wanted in order that researchers can design higher therapies to focus on this devastating pathogen. Revealed in  Nature Structural and Molecular Biology , the Monash-Cardiff crew has made an essential discovering in understanding how HIV-I can evade the immune system. They demonstrated, in molecular element, how mutations inside HIV can result in ...

Research teams hone in on Zika vaccines, but challenges remain

"The pace of preclinical and early clinical development for Zika vaccines is unprecedented," said Barouch, corresponding author and director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at BIDMC. "In less than a year, our group and others have demonstrated that multiple vaccine platforms can provide robust protection against Zika virus challenge in animal models. However, unique challenges will need to be addressed in the clinical development of a Zika vaccine. " The recent outbreak of the Zika virus in the Americas began in Brazil nearly two years ago. By February 2016, the World Health Organization had declared the epidemic a global public health emergency, based largely on the virus' newly-established link to microcephaly and other major birth defects in babies born to infected mothers. The virus has also been associated with the neurologic disorder Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults. In a previously published paper, Barouch and colleagues, including Co...

Device will rapidly, accurately and inexpensively detect zika virus at airports and other sites

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Waseem Asghar, Ph.D., is lead investigator and assistant professor on the Division of Laptop and Electrical Engineering and Laptop Science in FAU's Faculty of Engineering and Laptop Science and within the Division of Organic Sciences in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt Faculty of Science. Credit score: Florida Atlantic College In regards to the measurement of a pill, a conveyable gadget that could possibly be utilized in a number of environments like a busy airport or perhaps a distant location in South America, could maintain the important thing to detecting the dreaded Zika virus precisely, quickly and inexpensively utilizing only a saliva pattern. Whereas scientists the world over are scrambling to seek out some kind of immunization, researchers from Florida Atlantic College are working to develop a diagnostic device to cut back the influence of the outbreak till a vaccine is recognized. "A lot of the Zika instances in the US and particularly in...

New nano approach could cut dose of leading HIV treatment in half

The healthy volunteer trial, conducted by the collaborative nanomedicine research programme led by Pharmacologist Professor Andrew Owen and Materials Chemist Professor Steve Rannard, and in collaboration with the St Stephen's AIDS Trust at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital in London, examined the use of nanotechnology to improve the delivery of drugs to HIV patients. The results were from two trials which are the first to use orally dosed nanomedicine to enable HIV therapy optimisation. Manipulation of matter Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale. Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to the prevention and treatment of disease in the human body. By developing smaller pills that are better for patients and less expensive to manufacture, this evolving discipline has the potential to dramatically change medical science and is already having an impact in a number of clinically used therapies and diagnostics...

New TB drug candidates developed from soil bacteria

The research partnership -- involving the University of Warwick , and spanning institutions from Australia, Canada and the USA -- has discovered a compound which could translate into a new drug lead for TB. The group looked at soil bacteria compounds, known to effectively prevent other bacteria growing around them. Using synthetic chemistry, the researchers were able to recreate these compounds with structural variations, turning them into more potent chemical analogues. When tested in a containment laboratory, these analogues proved to be effective killers of Mycobacterium tuberculosis -- the bacterium which causes TB. These chemicals target an enzyme in Mycobacterium tuberculosis called MraY, which catalyses a crucial step in building the cell wall around a bacterium. Attacking this part -- a potential 'Achilles' heel' of the bacterium -- provided an essential pathway for the antibacterial compounds to attack and destroy TB strains. Key reagents and expertise i...

Cholesterol-processing enzyme protects from debilitating brain lesions

The targeted enzyme's primary purpose is to eliminate excess cholesterol from the brain. But the researchers hypothesized it could also help remove another cholesterol-like molecule -- cholestanol. Cholestanol is normally found in very low levels in the body, at least 500 times less often than cholesterol, but spikes in people with a rare, uncurable genetic disease called cerebrotendinous xanthomatosis. Patients with the disease slowly accumulate cholestanol in areas of the brain responsible for muscle coordination, causing seizures, involuntary movements, and cognitive decline. With help from the right enzymes, the debilitating accumulations could be eliminated. "We found that an enzyme called CYP46A1 not only eliminates cholesterol but also cholestanol from the brain," said Irina Pikuleva, PhD, study lead and Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. "CYP46...