Research chemist who ‘discovered’ Ecstasy dies aged 88

June 4, 2014

A world-renowned chemist famous for rediscovering a decades old recipe for the psychedelic drug ecstasy has died aged 88.

Alexander Shulgin died at his home in a remote part of northern California on Monday.

His wife, Ann, said that terminal liver cancer was the cause. She announced his death on Facebook, saying that his going “was graceful, with almost no struggle at all.”

Known to some as the ‘Godfather of Ecstasy’, Shuglin created over 200 chemical compounds for use in psychotherapy – often testing the extremely psychoactive substances on himself and his wife.

He his most widely known, however, for dusting off a decades-old chemical recipe for 3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine, or MDMA – the ‘active ingredient’ in the drug ecstasy.

MDMA been forgotten for almost 65 years since its initial discovery in 1912 and the drug had never been tested on humans until Shuglin began clinical trials on himself.

His research into the drug and its properties has led some scientists to believe that it could be introduced as a possible treatment for some mental health conditions and terminal cancer patients.

Source: itv

New genetic cause of male reproductive birth defects revealed

June 2, 2014

Researchers have defined a previously unrecognized genetic cause for two types of birth defects found in newborn boys.

Lead author Dr. Dolores Lamb, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Baylor, professor and vice chair for research of urology and molecular and cellular biology at Baylor, asid cryptorchidism and hypospadias are among the most common birth defects but the causes are usually unknown.

Cryptorchidism is characterized by the failure of descent of one or both testes into the scrotum during fetal development. In the adult man, the testes produce sperm and the male hormone, testosterone. Hypospadias is the abnormal placement of the opening of the urethra on the penis.

Both birth defects are usually surgically repaired during infancy.

Lamb and colleagues used a method of genome wide screening (essentially a molecular karyotype) called array comparative genomic hybridization to study children with these defects. The method looks specifically at changes in chromosomal regions that have undergone duplication or deletions too small to see under a microscope, termed copy number variations.

These genomic changes can alter gene dosage (gene gains or losses) resulting in a change in cell function.

In its analysis, the team showed that the cause of these birth defects in a subset of children with these defects of testis and penile development resulted from a change in the number of copies of a gene, VAMP7.

The role of VAMP7 gene duplication in causing these male birth defects was important because of the type of protein family it belongs to – it is a SNARE (Soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor activating protein receptor) protein (a large protein superfamily consisting of more than 60 members in yeast and mammalian cell), Lamb said.

The report has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Source: yahoo news

Immunotherapy for prostate cancer coming soon

May 28, 2014

A new treatment called Ipilumumab may soon be approved for people with advanced prostate cancer, according to an international study.

Previous research has shown that prostate cancer patients who are resistant to conventional treatments such as hormones and chemotherapy may benefit from the immunotherapeutic agent Ipilumumab. In the new study, scientists from the MedUni Vienna, examined whether the immunotherapeutic agent could treat prostate cancer in its advanced stages.

The results of the study, published in the journal The Lancet Oncology, were successful in that the Ipilumumab antibodies essentially disabled “inhibitors” and helped boost the body’s immune system. However, the researchers also noted that Ipilumumab will be a suitable treatment only for people with advanced prostate cancer who are in good general health. They explained that since the newly-boosted immune system can also attack the body’s own tissues, people who are in poor health overall may experience negative side effects.

Researchers are now conducting a follow-up study on patients with advanced prostate cancer who are in good overall health, which they expect to be completed in 2015.

Source: health central

VEINROM, a technology to minimize drug administration errors

May 27, 2014

At any healthcare centre, the most common form of intervention recommended for a patient by a physician is drug therapy. Things go awry when medications are wrongly administered for reasons that could be lack of professional practice or other unintentional human errors, incompetent healthcare products and lax procedures and systems. Observational studies all over the world have identified that errors associated with medications are the most frequent cause of adverse medical events.

Erroneous drug administration though, unfortunately, under-reported remains a rampant iatrogenic induced insult to patients. Medical errors are known to be the leading cause of death in the US and probably worldwide. A total of 44,000-98,000 Americans die every year due to this. It’s estimated that each year medical errors injure at least 1.5 million Americans and cost the health system more than 3.5 billion US dollars. Many anaesthesiologists have faced legal prosecution for allegations ranging from malpractice to homicide.

The major consequences of erroneous intravenous drug administration are patient’s morbidity and mortality that could cause a great psychological pain to patients, families, and healthcare providers. Prolonged hospital stay can increase financial burden on patient and healthcare system besides eroding public confidence and trust in healthcare services.

To prevent potential errors during drug administration, a technological innovation by Dr Anurag Tewari, a Fellow of neurosurgical and spine anaesthesiologist at US-based Cleveland Clinic Foundation, could provide a possible solution to minimize medication related errors.

Dr Tewari has designed an innovative drug delivery system called VEINROM, which could totally obliterate the incidence of wrong drug administration in anaesthesiology and other critical care areas. VEINROM (an acronym for Vasopressors, Emergency medicine, Induction agents, Neuromuscular blockers, Reversal drugs, Opioids/painkillers and Miscellaneous drugs) has been proposed by him as a conceivable solution to erroneous intravenous drug administration. The above seven categories of drugs encompass most of the intravenous drugs that are used frequently in anaesthesia.

The envisioned fluid delivery system, VEINROM, will harbour one syringe port for each of the seven drug class categories that are most commonly used drugs in anaesthesiology and critical care. A deterrent to prevent erroneous drug administration, VEINROM is a unique drug delivery manifold and syringe assembly which has incorporated mechanical and electronic mechanisms that will make it very difficult to administer wrong drugs intravenously. Preloaded syringes will further decrease the potential for human error when administering drugs instead of loading-labelling them perioperatively.

The report has been published in the Journal of Anaesthesiology Clinical Pharmacology.

Dr Tewari told India Medical Times, “VEINROM is so far the safest and the only fail-proof intravenous drug delivery assembly of specialized syringes and manifold. It incorporates more than six deterrents that will obliterate the chance of a physician injecting wrong drug into the patient.”

“This is definitely a path breaking innovation in anaesthesiology, critical care and emergency medicine. All three fields are related to service providers working under extreme duress, which predisposes them to inadvertently inject wrong drug into patient’s blood stream. VEINROM intends to ameliorate this potentially lethal outcome and hence circumvent patient harm and also malpractice lawsuits against physicians worldwide,” he added.

Instrumental in designing the technology, Dr Tewari also collaborated with four senior students of the biomedical engineering department of the University of Iowa, US on conceptualizing and designing the prototypes of VEINROM as per the ASTM (American Standards Testing Materials) regulations.

“The four students were Taylor Hines, Brady Palm, Trace Royer, and Eric Alexander. Project VEINROM was adjudged as the best senior research project by the university, besides being awarded prestigious prizes in Francis Elevator Pitch and Huber Storer Entrepreneurial competitions. Right now we are promoting this concept to various manufacturers hoping its introduction into practice will soon lead to enhanced patient safety,” he said.

About his plans to bring the technology to India, Dr Tewari said, “I hope to reach out to the country’s medical fraternity to incorporate this into their practice and help patients and themselves via media. The incidence of erroneous drug administration in India is perhaps equal or more than in the developed nations. Countrymen and physicians stand to benefit immensely from VEINROM.”

Many a times, some of the best people make the worst mistakes and even the best systems sometimes fail to prevent recurring medical errors. Perhaps, it’s the time to bring some changes in the field of anaesthesiology and modification in the safety protocol is essential. Adoption of best practices along with innovative technology could potentially minimize medical errors and improve overall healthcare system and most importantly save lives.
Source: India Medical Times

U.S. doctors eradicate woman’s cancer with engineered measles vaccine

May 19, 2014

A 49-year-old U.S. woman with advanced bone marrow cancer called multiple myeloma is effectively cancer-free after receiving an experimental trial that injected her a single dose of an engineered measles vaccine, according to a new U.S. study published this week.

The patient, with tumors all over her body, including a 3-cm- diameter one on her forehead, experienced complete remission of myeloma and has been clear of the disease for over six months, according to Mayo Clinic researchers who described their trial Wednesday in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

A second patient in the study, a 65-year-old woman, did not respond as well to the virus treatment that is selectively toxic to myeloma plasma cells.

However, high-tech imaging studies “provided a clear proof” that the intravenously administered virus specifically targeted the sites of tumor growth, they said.

The researchers said the trial is a “proof of concept” that virotherapy, destroying cancer with a virus that infects and kills cancer cells but spares normal tissues, can be effective against the deadly cancer multiple myeloma.

“This is the first study to establish the feasibility of systemic oncolytic virotherapy for disseminated cancer,” Mayo Clinic hematologist Stephen Russell, first author of the paper and co-developer of the therapy, said in a statement.

“These patients were not responsive to other therapies and had experienced several recurrences of their disease,” Russell said.

Virotherapy has a history dating back to the 1950s, according to the Mayo Clinic, and thousands of cancer patients have been treated with a host of various viruses.

“However, this study provides the first well-documented case of a patient with disseminated cancer having a complete remission at all disease sites after virus administration,” according to the Mayo Clinic statement. It was noted that both patients were studied at the highest possible dose of the therapy.

The normal dose of a measles vaccine contains 10,000 infectious units of the measles virus, Russell told local media. They, however, started out giving the two 1 million infectious units and gradually cranked up the dosage but it didn’t work until both patients were injected with 100 billion infectious units, enough to inoculate 10 million people.

Both women also had limited previous exposure to measles, and therefore fewer antibodies to the virus, and essentially had no remaining treatment options.

The researchers said their next step is to see if the measles vaccine works in a larger number of patients. They also want to test the effectiveness of the virotherapy in combination with radioactive therapy in a future study

source: china

New app may detect mood swings associated with bipolar disorder

May 19, 2014

A new mobile phone app is being developed that may help mental health professionals detect very early signs of depression or mania – the opposite extremes of bipolar disorder.

The app, created and under investigation by a team at the University of Michigan, monitors speech patterns as people use their cell phones. By using computer programs to assess the tone and rate of the speech, along with other variables, the researchers say they have encouraging findings that the app can identify very early signs of a depressive episode or a manic episode.

The University of Michigan team calls their research project PRIORI, as they hope that this marriage of mental health assessment and technology can yield early detection of recurrent episodes of bipolar disorder, even before it would be obvious to the individual or a clinician. Slowed speech, lower tone of speech, or hesitating speech on phone calls could precede a person becoming depressed, complaining of low energy or low mood. And speaking quickly, with lots of inflection or exclamations, could precede someone displaying the full euphoria, sleeplessness and uninhibited behaviors that can be associated with mania.

The researchers point out that privacy is maintained for those using the app, because the content of their conversations is encrypted. But, obviously, privacy remains an issue, because anyone with access to data from the app would know whether the person being monitored might be getting depressed or manic. And the app or another like it could yield data to detect anxiety.

Hence, third parties could potentially install this app, or another, on mobile phones (with or without the knowledge of the owners of the phones) and potentially determine if those individuals are mentally well or not. Needless to say, the government could use such an app, to note whether an individual or many individuals are showing mood volatility that might be associated with a pending protest or a strike, for example.

Most of us are not keen on having our mental health monitored by anyone other than ourselves or our medical professionals. This app, misdirected, could pose just such a risk.

Still, for all the caution, the promise of PRIORI is that it might help people who choose to use it and, perhaps, choose to send the data to their doctors. This could help medical professionals jump on the earliest signs of bipolar disorder, which affects over 5 million Americans and costs hundreds of thousands of lives per year.

Source: fox news

Living heart tissue grown

May 19, 2014

In a first, scientists have merged stem cell and ‘organ-on-a-chip’ technologies to grow functioning human heart tissue carrying an inherited cardiovascular disease.

The research is a big step forward for personalised medicine as now, a chunk of tissue containing a patient’s specific genetic disorder can be replicated in the laboratory, a promising research says.

In this case, the scientists modelled the cardiovascular disease Barth syndrome – a rare X-linked cardiac disorder caused by mutation of a single gene called Tafazzin, or TAZ.

The untreatable disorder primarily appears in boys and is associated with a number of symptoms affecting heart and skeletal muscle function.

“In the case of the cells grown out of patients with Barth syndrome, we saw much weaker contractions and irregular tissue assembly. Being able to model the disease from a single cell all the way up to heart tissue, I think that’s a big advance,” explained Kevin Kit Parker from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

The researchers took skin cells from two Barth syndrome patients and manipulated the cells to become stem cells that carried these patients’ TAZ mutations.

Instead of using the stem cells to generate single heart cells in a dish, the cells were grown on chips lined with human extracellular matrix proteins that mimic their natural environment – tricking the cells into joining together as they would if they were forming a diseased human heart.

The engineered diseased tissue contracted very weakly, as would the heart muscle seen in Barth syndrome patients.

The investigators then used genome editing to mutate TAZ in normal cells.

On the other hand, delivering the TAZ gene product to diseased tissue in the laboratory corrected the contractile defect, creating the first tissue-based model of correction of a genetic heart disease.

“Whether that can be achieved in an animal model or a patient is a different story, but if that could be done, it would suggest a new therapeutic angle,” said Harvard scientist William Pu.

Their work has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Source: zee news

UK teen who raised $5 million for cancer research dies

May 16, 2014May 16, 2014

Comedian Ricky Gervais and singer Barry Manilow are among those paying tribute to a teenager from central England who inspired a nation to give 3 million pounds ($5 million) to support cancer research.

In a posting on his Facebook page, Stephen Sutton’s mother said he died peacefully in his sleep Wednesday.

Using social media, the 19-year-old with incurable bowel cancer shared a list of the 46 things he wished to do before he died. Urging followers to support the Teenage Cancer Trust as they followed along, he went sky-diving, played drums before a crowd and hugged an elephant.

The page evolved, with Sutton’s goal ultimately being simply to help others.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who had visited him in the hospital, praised his “incredible” efforts.

Bone marrow stem cells show promise in stroke treatment, UCI team finds

May 12, 2014

Stem cells culled from bone marrow may prove beneficial in stroke recovery, scientists at UC Irvine’s Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center have learned.

In an analysis of published research, neurologist Dr. Steven Cramer and biomedical engineer Weian Zhao identified 46 studies that examined the use of mesenchymal stromal cells – a type of multipotent adult stem cells mostly processed from bone marrow – in animal models of stroke. They found MSCs to be significantly better than control therapy in 44 of the studies.

Importantly, the effects of these cells on functional recovery were robust regardless of the dosage, the time the MSCs were administered relative to stroke onset or the method of administration. (The cells helped even if given a month after the event and whether introduced directly into the brain or injected via a blood vessel.)

“Stroke remains a major cause of disability, and we are encouraged that the preclinical evidence shows [MSCs’] efficacy with ischemic stroke,” said Cramer, a professor of neurology and leading stroke expert. “MSCs are of particular interest because they come from bone marrow, which is readily available, and are relatively easy to culture. In addition, they already have demonstrated value when used to treat other human diseases.”

He noted that MSCs do not differentiate into neural cells. Normally, they transform into a variety of cell types, such as bone, cartilage and fat cells. “But they do their magic as an inducible pharmacy on wheels and as good immune system modulators, not as cells that directly replace lost brain parts,” he said.

In an earlier report focused on MSC mechanisms of action, Cramer and Zhao reviewed the means by which MSCs promote brain repair after stroke. The cells are attracted to injury sites and, in response to signals released by these damaged areas, begin releasing a wide range of molecules. In this way, MSCs orchestrate numerous activities: blood vessel creation to enhance circulation, protection of cells starting to die, growth of brain cells, etc. At the same time, when MSCs are able to reach the bloodstream, they settle in parts of the body that control the immune system and foster an environment more conducive to brain repair.

“We conclude that MSCs have consistently improved multiple outcome measures, with very large effect sizes, in a high number of animal studies and, therefore, that these findings should be the foundation of further studies on the use of MSCs in the treatment of ischemic stroke in humans,” said Cramer, who is also clinical director of the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center.

The analysis appears in the April 8 issue of Neurology

Source: UCI rvine

Indian-origin scientist makes leadless pacemaker

May 12, 2014May 12, 2014

The world’s first leadless pacemaker, developed by an Indian-origin scientist Vivek Reddy, has shown promising results after one year of human trials on 32 patients who received the pacemaker.

“This is the first time we have seen one-year follow-up data for this innovative, wireless cardiac pacing technology. Our results show the leadless pacemaker is comparable to traditional pacemakers,” said Reddy, director of arrhythmia services at the Mount Sinai Hospital here.

The findings further support the promising performance and safety of this minimally-invasive, non-surgical pacing device.

The follow-up study evaluated 32 patients with a slowed heartbeat (bradycardia) who successfully received St. Jude Medical’s “Nanostim” leadless pacemaker at two hospitals in Prague and one in Amsterdam.

“There was no experience of infections or failure to sense, pace or communicate with the pacemaker,” Reddy noted.

The leadless cardiac pacemaker is placed directly inside a patient’s heart without surgery during a catheter-guided procedure through the groin via the femoral vein.

The device, resembling a tiny, silver tube and smaller than a triple-A battery, is only a few centimetres in length, making it less than 10 percent the size of a traditional pacemaker.

It works by closely monitoring the heart’s electrical rhythms and if the heart beat is too slow it provides electrical stimulation therapy to regulate it.

“More long-term follow-up of these ‘leadless’ study patients will further our understanding of the potential advantages, benefits, and complication risks of leadless pacemaker technology, along with additional ongoing, larger trials,” Reddy said.

More than four million patients globally have a pacemaker, and 700,000 new patients receive one each year.

Reddy presented the one-year ‘leadless’ study data findings at ‘Heart Rhythm 2014,’ the Heart Rhythm Society’s 35th annual scientific sessions in San Francisco city in the US May 9.

Source: Times of India