Press monitoring
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...
Adult heart attack risk can be predicted in childhood with new cheap genetic test
10.10.2018 | Press monitoring
The current way doctors evaluate a patient's risk for coronary heart disease involves monitoring one's blood pressure and cholesterol while also identifying other factors such as smoking, family history or diabetes. The problem with this strategy is that it is age-dependent, with monitoring only beginning when a person reaches the age of 40 or...
Bionic algae barrel through blood to deliver drugs
8.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Swimming algae have been enlisted to carry drugs to individual cells, raising the prospect that such ‘microswimmers’ could deliver targeted therapies. Miniscule devices propelled by living organisms can ‘swim’ through the body to deliver cargo such as doses of drugs. A variety of organisms have been joined with artificial structures to treat some...
Japan set to allow gene editing in human embryos
5.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Japan has issued draft guidelines that allow the use of gene-editing tools in human embryos. The proposal was released by an expert panel representing the country’s health and science ministries on 28 September. Although the country regulates the use of human embryos for research, there have been no specific guidelines on using tools such as...
Microbial spacesuits help bacteria convert CO2 to useful chemicals
3.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Bacteria have been found living in some pretty hostile environments, but they're not invincible. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have now developed "spacesuits" that wrap around bacteria to not only protect them from the elements, but turn them into biohybrids that capture carbon dioxide and turn it into useful...
