23299630
submission
hlovy writes:
Clostridium difficile, or C. difficile, is a nasty bit of business. A "superbug" that is the scourge of hospitals, C. difficile strikes when antibiotics kill all the "good bugs" that dwell in the gut--like the ones that aid in digestion--and leave only the dreaded harmful bacteria. But as it turns out, the body has a natural way of defending against C. difficile by inactivating the toxin that spreads it. And researchers describe how this knowledge can create new treatments in Nature Medicine.
23299452
submission
hlovy writes:
On July 4, 1939, a young man in his 30s held a retirement party. He stood in a pinstripe uniform before an adoring, emotional crowd at Yankee Stadium and declared himself "the luckiest man on the face of the earth...I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for." Sadly, two years later, Lou Gehrig would be dead at the age of 37. The "bad break" he referred to was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--a neurodegenerative disease from then on popularly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Now, 72 years later, researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago think they at last have found an answer that could lead to treatment for this incurable disease.
23157840
submission
hlovy writes:
The good guys are beginning to build up their arsenal in the escalating arms race between humans and viruses. A couple of recently announced breakthroughs give some hope that we can gain the upper hand against drug-resistant viruses through medication that can take aim at a wider range of bad guys. MIT reports that researchers at its Lincoln Laboratory have designed a kind of smart bomb--a drug that can identify any type of virus, then kill the infected cells to get rid of the infection. And a Boston researcher working for Howard Hughes Medical Institute has discovered an antibody that can recognize many different strains of flu, raising hope for flu shots that do not need to be updated every single year.
23156640
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hlovy writes:
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that Major Depressive Disorder is, indeed, a disease, there remains a sometimes-vocal minority of critics who insist that depression was invented by pharmaceutical companies in order to sell drugs. While it is doubtful that these critics, like all conspiracy theorists, will ever become convinced by facts, a San Diego-based company, Ridge Diagnostics, is hopeful that a blood test that detects biomarkers for Major Depressive Disorder will convince more critics that there is something more than a psychiatrist's opinion involved in the diagnosis. "By having a biological indication of depression, patients and their families have a better understanding of the condition as a medical one, which reduces the stigma of mental health disorders and leads to an improvement in treatment compliance," Lonna J. Williams, Ridge's CEO, says in a release. The quotation comes from a larger article in Psychiatric Times, which outlines the search for blood tests for both depression and schizophrenia.
23156158
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hlovy writes:
A major obstacle to widespread therapeutic use of human embryonic stem cells in therapy is this nasty tendency for a few of them to turn "Frankenstein" on us. Out of the tens of millions of pluripotent cells used in therapy, cells that have been "programmed" by scientists to become any type of specified adult tissue, a few go rogue and become dangerous tumors called teratomas when transplanted into patients. So, researchers at Stanford University, writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, describe a method to get rid of the cells that can become teratomas before they are used in humans.
21526218
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hlovy writes:
Biomarker research takes a hit this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A study basically says that most biomarker claims are hyped up too much initially, then later prove to be less than accurate in subsequent studies. Stanford researcher John Ioannidis says this is all so confusing to physicians, they might make some bad clinical decisions based on inaccurate biomarker research.
I'll get to that last point in a minute. First, it must be frustrating for many people who follow biotech research news to know that much of the research we report on here at FierceBiomarkers will never make it to the clinic. And those that do will likely go through as much as two decades of development before an actual, approved drug makes it onto the market--or even a generally agreed-upon biomarker. It does seem frustrating, and maybe things should go faster, but this has traditionally been the pace of progress. Most medical technologies take about 20 years of research and clinical trials before they're ready for prime time.
For example, we're about 12 years into development of gene-silencing RNAi technologies. It has gone through cycles of hype and disappointment in the media. Meanwhile, development continues. The same can be said for gene therapy and stem cell therapy. Both will be alternately elevated as saviors and demonized as dead ends in the impatient popular and financial press while the slow, careful pace of scientific discovery and FDA approval plods along.
Why would biomarker research be any different? Yet, Ioannidis talks about this time lag as if it is something new. "There is a huge literature, with thousands of studies being published every year and with lots of highly promising claims being made in prestigious journals," Ioannidis tells Nature News. "Yet very few make it to the clinic."
Yes, of course. That's the way scientific research is supposed to be. If it were easy to go from lab to drug, then everybody would be doing it, right?
21470468
submission
hlovy writes:
There is a general consensus that extracellular amyloid-beta (Aß) plaques are the villains that cause Alzheimer's disease and the death of neurons. But, other than identifying amyloid-beta in a lineup, that's about all that is known about these criminal peptides. Not much can be said about what makes them tick. Now, researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara think they have discovered the mechanism by which these plaques destroy cells, giving some hope for new areas of inquiry for a cure.
21363384
submission
hlovy writes:
The blood-brain barrier: There are not many other natural defense mechanisms with which we humans have such a love-hate relationship. First, the love: The capillaries and blood vessels in our brains, of course, need this kind of protection from foreign invaders. After all, we have a very personal relationship with our brains and evolution has fixed it so that it is extremely difficult for unauthorized personnel to break through. Now, the hate: The BBB stands directly in the way of better treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, brain tumors and other neurological conditions. Chemistry World, in its June 2011 issue, devotes some considerable ink to attempts to break through this final frontier of the brain to treat some of the most challenging brain diseases.
19737140
submission
hlovy writes:
Alzheimer's disease is a thief. It robs seniors of a lifetime of experience and memories as it also robs their children and other loves ones of the benefits of their wisdom. It empties the wallets of families, and leaves many emotionally drained at seeing their elders slowly disappear into themselves.
So, what new answers has medical science has come up with? At best, it's good news and bad news. First, the bad news: there is no cure. There is not even complete agreement as to its cause. There is a general consensus that extracellular amyloid-beta (Aß) plaques and intraneuronal tangles in the brain are to blame. Drugs being developed tend to target these plaques. But, at best, they hold off symptoms temporarily.
Now, the good news. Biomarkers research is making it increasingly possible to determine whether a person might develop Alzheimer's disease, perhaps even decades in advance. The earlier the disease is detected, the better the chances are of being able to delay its symptoms or at least prepare for them. It could be argued, however, that this detection capability is, in itself, a good news/bad news scenario.
But, those sticky philosophical issues aside, medical progress marches on in its usual lurching way--many failures mixed with some progress. Here's a rundown of what's on the market, recent drug failures, pipeline prospects and the most recent research from the the laboratory trenches.
19463764
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hlovy writes:
Conspiracy theories seem to be all the rage these days, so the cynic might say that the fast-food industry is in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry. One makes millions fattening us up and the other empties our wallets as we try to slim down. Recently, there were a string of high-profile, big, fat failures in the obesity pharmaceutical market. The most-recent string of bad luck started back in the '90s, when the anti-obesity medication Fen-phen--a combination of two drugs--was found to cause heart disease, resulting in Wyeth pulling the product from the market and, of course, billions of dollars in lawsuits ensued. Since then, the FDA has been, understandably, not very shy about rejecting weight loss drugs or pulling existing ones off the market.
18977188
submission
hlovy writes:
The story of drug delivery development these days seems to be increasingly about breaking through that final frontier--the blood-brain barrier. Scientists from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center managed to sneak peptides past the brain's protective barrier by creating a particle that's a kind of master of disguise. It impersonates iron, and then hops onboard the body's iron transport system for a free ride into the brain. Along the way, the researchers say, the disguised particle could be used to deliver imaging agents or treatments.
18972442
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hlovy writes:
Vector, the blog for Children's Hospital Boston, tells us about Edward Smith, director of pediatric cerebrovascular surgery, who is on a quest to find easily detectable biomarkers to diagnose and assess a brain tumor's status. His solution is very simple: a urine test.
Next to trauma, brain tumors are the leading cause of death among children. "Right now, every three months--when we know they have a tumor--we put kids under anesthesia, place them in a freezing cold scanner and take a study for thousands of dollars to see if there's a growth there," explains Smith. So, his search for an easier, less-expensive method brought him to Marsha Moses, director of the vascular biology program. Moses has pioneered the use of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) as urine biomarkers for breast and ovarian cancer.
18881084
submission
hlovy writes:
The profit motive can--yes, shockingly--drive biotech research. But, according to a report by the AFP news agency, this same drive to make money is actually putting the brakes on embryonic stem cell research. With the research already set back years due to government research bans, U.S. scientists now face roadblocks because other universities or companies have secured exclusive rights.
18858148
submission
hlovy writes:
Deep in the wild, frozen woodlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, it seems that even the scientists are a different, heartier breed of human. A few years ago, Seth Donahue, an associate professor in biomedical engineering at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, MI, decided to gather a few of his bravest grad students and sneak into caves occupied by hibernating black bears.
Yes, those kinds of black bears. The ones with all the fur and claws and teeth.
But these bears also have something else that Donahue was curious about—something that makes the risks associated with rousing a sleeping bear worth it. He wondered how bears could go to sleep for 4-6 months every year and not suffer any bone loss, given that humans who are immobilized by age or infirmity begin to lose bone after only a few weeks. You won’t see a hibernating bear wake up in the springtime with osteoporosis. So very quietly very carefully, Donahue and his team took blood samples to find out why the bears’ bones remained so strong despite their long periods of inactivity.
The secret, it turns out, is parathyroid hormone (PTH), a molecule that helps regulate the body’s calcium stores.
18836536
submission
hlovy writes:
Another week, another nano-prefixed word to add to the lexicon: NanoPopcorn. This one comes courtesy of researchers at Jackson State University in Mississippi who created a popcorn-shaped nanoparticle that can perform three separate tasks. First, it can detect as few as 50 prostate cancer cells, then it switches into thermal scalpel mode to cook the cancer cells to death, and it can track the response of cancer cells to the therapy.
