Press monitoring
Tiny, pain free vaccinations – microneedles and nanoparticles
2.11.2018 | Press monitoring
If it's up to Ph.D. student Guangsheng Du, patients don't need to worry about big needles anymore. At the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR), he studied the use of microneedles and nanoparticles as a new vaccination system. "I want to create a more patient-friendly delivery method." He defends his Ph.D. on 30 October. In his...
Anti-cancer virus fits tumor receptor like a key in a lock
31.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Seneca Valley virus sounds like the last bug you'd want to catch, but it could be the next breakthrough cancer therapy. Now, scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and the University of Otago have described exactly how the virus interacts with tumors – and why it leaves healthy tissues alone. The study, published in...
CRISPR opens door to new type of medicine - genome surgery
29.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Within a few years, Jim Johnsen and Delaney Van Riper may be among the first to benefit from CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, a breakthrough that has already revolutionized biology research and promises to resurrect gene therapy. UC San Francisco doctors working closely with UC Berkeley scientists plan to edit their genomes to correct rare genetic...
Cellular dust provides new hope for regenerative medicine
26.10.2018 | Press monitoring
While stem cells have the most therapeutic potential, the benefits of regenerative medicine may best be mobilised using extracellular vesicles (EVs), also known in the past as "cellular dust." A team of researchers from CNRS, AP-HP, INSERM and Paris Descartes and Paris Diderot Universities have tested these vesicles for the first time in a...
Vaccinating humans to protect mosquitoes from malaria
24.10.2018 | Press monitoring
For decades, scientists have been trying to develop a vaccine that prevents mosquitoes from spreading malaria among humans. This unique approach – in which immunized humans transfer anti-malarial proteins to mosquitoes when bitten – is called a transmission-blocking vaccine (TBV). A few malarial TBVs have shown promise but they have not been...
Smallest life forms have smallest working CRISPR system
22.10.2018 | Press monitoring
An ancient group of microbes that contains some of the smallest life forms on Earth also has the smallest CRISPR gene-editing machinery discovered to date. The peewee protein machinery, dubbed Cas14, is related to but one-third the size of the Cas9 protein, the business end of the revolutionary gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. While Cas9 was...
Engineered enzyme eliminates nicotine addiction in preclinical tests
19.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Scientists at Scripps Research have successfully tested a potential new smoking-cessation treatment in rodents. In a study published online in Science Advances on Oct. 17, 2018, the scientists gave nicotine-dependent rats an engineered enzyme that breaks down nicotine in the bloodstream before it can reach the brain. Treatment quickly reduced the...
Protein derived from cottonseed for human nutrition one step closer to reality
17.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Cottonseed ground into flour to deliver protein to millions of people, a project to which Dr. Keerti Rathore has devoted more than half his professional career, is one step closer to reality. Through a project funded by Cotton Incorporated, Rathore and the Texas A&M team have developed a transgenic cotton plant – TAM66274 – with ultra-low...
Nanoparticles to treat snakebites
15.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Venomous snakebites affect 2.5 million people, and annually cause more than 100,000 deaths and leave 400,000 individuals with permanent physical and psychological trauma each year. Researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have now described a new approach to treating snake bites, using nanoparticles to bind to venom toxins and...
Human retinas grown in a dish explain how color vision develops
12.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Biologists at Johns Hopkins University grew human retinas from scratch to determine how cells that allow people to see in color are made. The work, set for publication in the journal Science, lays the foundation to develop therapies for eye diseases such as color blindness and macular degeneration. It also establishes lab-created "organoids" as...
