Protiens effect on alzheimers patients condition

There have been many reports on numerous different approaches by scientists looking to tackle Alzheimer’s disease. While some, such as the anticancer drug bexarotene and a compound known as J147, show great promise, there is still no approved treatment to slow the disease’s progression. The latest promising candidate for a treatment comes from Canada’s Simon Fraser University (SFU), where a team has concluded that ensuring that sugar levels in a brain protein known as tau are maintained could slow or prevent the fatal disease.

Tau proteins are abundant in neurons of the central nervous system where they stabilize microtubules, which act like highways inside cells that allow intracellular transport. Earlier research has shown that defective tau proteins can lead to Alzheimer’s disease and that linkage of sugar molecules to proteins like tau is essential in cells.

Previous research has also shown a naturally occurring enzyme known as O-GlcNAcase robs tau of these essential sugar molecules, resulting in an Alzheimer brain having clumps of tau have almost none of this sugar attached to them. This clumping is an early sign of the disease and the number of clumps correlates with its severity.

Using a chemically-created inhibitor called Thiamet-G, SFU chemistry professor David Vocadlo and his colleagues have been able to stop O-GlcNAcase from depleting tau proteins of sugar molecules. The researchers found that mice given a daily dose of Thiamet-G in their drinking water had fewer clumps of tau and maintained healthier brains.

“A lot of effort is needed to tackle this disease and different approaches should be pursued to maximize the chance of successfully fighting it,” said Vocadlo. “In the short term, we need to develop better inhibitors of the enzyme and test them in mice. Once we have better inhibitors, they can be clinically tested.”

The team’s paper, “Increasing O-GlcNAc slows neurodegeneration and stabilizes tau against aggregation,” is published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

Source: Simon Fraser University

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DO COMPANIES HAVE THE RIGHT TO OWN PATENTS ON HUMAN GENES.?

COMPANIES do not have the right to a patent over human gene sequences and genetic mutations because such biological material is a product of nature, a court has been told.

The patient advocacy group Cancer Voices has launched landmark legal action against two biotechnology companies that hold patents over a genetic mutation linked to breast and ovarian cancer, known as BRCA1.

The Federal Court has been asked for the first time to decide if patents granted over segments of human DNA are valid.

The US biotech company Myriad Genetics and the exclusive Australian licensee, Genetic Technologies, have a monopoly right to control the use of the BRCA1 mutation for research and development as well as diagnostic testing.

It was granted on the basis that the process of isolating the gene from the human body in a laboratory constituted an “invention”.

In 2008, Genetic Technologies threatened to invoke its patent by ordering all other laboratories to stop performing BRCA1 diagnostic testing but withdrew after a public backlash. The patent is enforced in the US.

Rebecca Gilsenan, from Maurice Blackburn lawyers, which is running the case pro bono, said isolating a gene from the human body cannot amount to a patentable invention, as it is merely a ”discovery”.

Under Australian law, patents can only be granted over “inventions” which constitute a “manner of manufacture” or “manner of new manufacture”.

The court will have to decide whether a naturally occurring biological material when isolated from its natural environment is a ”manner of manufacture”.

Ms Gilsenan said the plaintiffs would argue there were no material structural or functional differences between a BRCA1 gene that is inside the body and a BRCA1 gene that has been isolated from the body.

However, David Shavin, QC, for Myriad, told the court that when removed from the body and used to predict a person’s predisposition to breast or ovarian cancer, the isolated nucleic acid is, in fact, different to that which exists in the cell.

”We are not seeking to patent the BRACA1 gene,” he said. ”The thing that has been created and isolated … is an artificially constructed state of affairs.”

Cancer Voices says allowing genetic mutations linked to specific diseases to be patented could restrict access to life-saving diagnostic procedures and actively discourage scientific research.

”More and more research is leading to the genetic diagnosis of cancer,” the group’s executive director, John Stubbs, said outside court. ”They are our genes, we want to make sure they and the diagnostic tests that go along with them are protected.”

The second applicant, breast cancer survivor Yvonne D’Arcy, said she has taken legal action as she believes biological material should not be used for profit.

”If you’re really sick and its a genetic form of cancer, then everyone female down the line should be able to get the testing done at a price they can afford and if its patented, it won’t be,” she said.

In 2010, a US District Court ruled the same patent was invalid, but the decision was overturned on appeal last year. The American Council for Civil Liberties has petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the decision.

The hearing before Justice John Nicholas is expected to last up to eight days.

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Little people secret

that might save

big problems of

diabetes, cancer

Nicky Phillips

February 18, 2011

Then and now … members of the group of 99 Ecuadorians with dwarfism who took part in a 22-year study, pictured at the start of the study in 1988, above, and in 2009.

A GROUP with dwarfism from a province in Ecuador could hold clues to preventing cancer.

Of the 99 individuals, who are in perfect proportion except for a genetic mutation that stunts their growth, only one developed cancer during a 22-year study.

Scientists researching the group believe this growth mutation is the key to their disease immunity, and suggest drugs could give a similar degree of protection to full-grown adults.

An Ecuadorian endocrinologist and co-author of the study, Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, said researchers first noticed the lack of chronic disease in the community while they were investigating their growth defect.

”[We] were more in search of problems than solutions,” he said.

After more than two decades of following those with Laron dwarfism, which is caused by a mutation in their growth hormone receptor gene, Dr Guevara-Aguirre and his American colleague Valter Longo found no cases of diabetes and only one non-lethal case of cancer.

When they looked at the group’s normal-sized relatives, who lived in the same town over the same period, around17 per cent had been diagnosed with cancer and 5 per cent had diabetes – the same rate found among other Ecuadorian adults.

The researchers concluded that growth hormone must have a downside in normal size adults. ”The growth hormone receptor-deficient people don’t get two of the major diseases of ageing,” said Associate Professor Longo, a biologist at the University of Southern California.

To understand how this mutation could protect against cancer and diabetes, the researchers studied the effects of compounds in the participants’ blood.

They found low levels of IGF-1 could reduce DNA damage and promote cell death when DNA damage did occur – two processes that decrease cancer-promoting behaviour in cells.

The Laron group also had lower blood insulin levels, which accounted for the absence of diabetes.

People with Loran dwarfism were instead more likely to die from accidents, cardiovascular disease or alcohol-related causes, the researchers found.

Drugs that reduce growth hormone are readily available and are used to treat people with gigantism. The risks and benefits of giving adults these or similar drugs to reduce growth hormones would need to be weighed up against the side-effects of drugs used to treat diabetes and cancer, said Professor Longo, whose findings are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

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Cure clues from cancer cell close-up

Dec 17 – Video of tumor growth in zebrafish is providing clues that could lead to new cancer treatments. Images from scientists in the UK and Italy show how new cancer cells co-opt the immune system into helping the disease spread. Rob Muir reports

View video here

Cure clues from cancer cell close-up

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TO RECONSTRUCT WORN BODY PARTS

*Grow new breasts

*Replace damaged tissues

*Body parts grown on demand

*No more organ transplants needed

VIEW VIDEO HERE

Stem cells from body fat promising

Dec 17 – A San Diego-based company is breaking new ground in the field of regenerative medicine with a system that uses patients’ own body fat to generate stem cells and repair tissue and organs. Ben Gruber reports.

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Scientists excited about

‘key’ to solving cancer

Researchers are closing in on a cure for cancer.

Scientists leading the battle against cancer say they are on the verge of acquiring their most valuable weapon yet.

Leading international cancer researcher Michael Stratton said obtaining the genetic make-up of the disease, expected in the next five to seven years, would give scientists the key to unlocking the secrets of what causes it.

He said they may even be able to determine the influence of outside effects, such as the environment and occupational impacts, on the development of cancer.

Professor Stratton, who has made international headlines for his cancer discoveries, said such insights could help solve several mysterious cancer clusters in Queensland, including the 18 cases of breast cancer at the former ABC site in Toowong.

“The sequencing [will be] like a new microscope being applied to cancer,” he told brisbanetimes.com.au.

“With the much deeper understanding of the genes that are abnormal … and actual DNA abnormalities of these genes, we’re anticipating that over the next few years we will acquire a better understanding of what those outside factors might be that are implicated in causing individual clusters.”

Despite numerous environmental tests of the Toowong site, scientists have not been able to link anything between the high number of breast cancer cases there.

The ABC abandoned the site in 2006 and is struggling to sell the riverfront property.

Professor Stratton said there were unexplained cancer clusters all over the world, including on Long Island in New York.

He said while the disease was common and such clusters may be coincidence, it was possible there were hidden environmental factors – “something we don’t know about”.

Such cases could be re-examined following the expected breakthrough on cancer genomics, Professor Stratton said.

“When these clusters occur we have to document them carefully, we have to collect as much information about them as we can … and then keep these materials for later on when we have new ways of looking at these clusters,” he said.

Professor Stratton is in Queensland as part of an International Cancer Genome Consortium workshop and delivered a speech at the University of Queensland last night.

He leads a research team that recently developed a pill that rapidly shrinks skin cancer tumours – the first cancer drug to harness knowledge from the full decoding of human DNA.

Professor Stratton said cancer research had come a long way in the past century.

“Go back 100 years or more, before they applied a microscope to cancer, all they knew was cancer was lumps that appeared to spread [in the body],” he said.

“There’s plenty more to be done … but the fact that we have succeeded in part for those cancers [with a cure] … should give us hope that we’d be able to do more in the future.”

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New pump made for infant heart surgery

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (UPI) — U.S. researchers say they’ve developed a new heart pump that could help infants born with congenital heart defects survive necessary surgeries.

Scientists at Purdue University have created a “viscous impeller pump” for children born with univentricular circulation, a congenital heart disease that is the leading cause of death from birth defects in the first year of a child’s life, a university release said Tuesday.

The normal human heart contains two pumping chambers, called ventricles.

One circulates oxygenated blood throughout the body, while the other less-powerful ventricle circulates deoxygenated blood to the lungs.

Children born with univentricular circulation have only one functioning ventricle but can survive if blood vessels in the heart are restructured in a series of open-heart surgeries.

At least 30 percent of babies do not survive the surgeries, called the Fontan procedures.

To improve the survival rate, Purdue engineers and researchers developed the new mechanical pump to assist the heart during surgeries.

“A big advantage of this pump is that it gets delivered through the skin with a catheter without open heart surgery,” Steven Frankel, a Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering, said.

“It is designed to be in the body for two weeks at most, almost like a disposable item,” Frankel said.

The researchers have received a $2.1 million, four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to continue developing the heart pump, Purdue said.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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Low-Fat Fried Food?

Food Chemist Develops Protein-Based

Batter for Healthier Frying

January 1, 2006 — Deep-fried fish could get healthier with a new protein-based batter extracted from the muscle of discarded fish parts. When coated onto the fish it forms a barrier, locking in taste and moisture while blocking out fat.

GLOUCESTER, Mass.–Low-fat, fried food sounds like a contradiction, but those types of products may soon be popping up at your local grocer.

Fish sticks slathered in oil and deep-fried are tasty, but the after-effects can take a toll on your waistline. The love affair with food usually ends when it’s time to weigh in. Now, a new discovery may tip the scales in your favor when it comes to eating some of your favorite fried foods.

Stephen Kelleher, a food chemist at Proteus Industries in Gloucester, Mass., says, “People like fried food, but there’s a lot of bad things associated with fried food.” Understanding the bittersweet fondness for fried cuisine, Kelleher invented a way to cook low-fat, fried food.

The protein solution is extracted from fish muscle. When coated onto the fish it forms a barrier, locking in taste and moisture, but blocking out fat and carbohydrates. “These protein molecules after we treat them and extract them the way we do, they form these very, very, micro-thin films that — when they are sprayed onto the surface — become this invisible, impenetrable, film that forms on the surface,” Kelleher says.

The protein molecules go through a treatment process. Water and other ingredients are filtered then added to the batter. Kelleher says the finished product has 25-percent to 75-percent less fat. Plus the added protein cuts down the carbohydrates by 15 percent.

When put to the test, comparing traditional fried batter to the special protein coating, both food tasters agreed there was nothing fishy about the low-fat, fried meal.

The process is FDA approved and can be used to fry low-fat chicken, too. They are also testing the application on other foods, like potato chips.

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