Category Archives: Research

Government, Health, Medical, Research, Science, Scotland, Society

Scottish scientists in a breakthrough bid to find a vaccine for malaria…

MALARIA VACCINE

Scientists in Scotland trying to produce a vaccine for malaria have successfully tested a prototype on mice.

Researchers at Edinburgh University found that their vaccine enabled the immune system to produce antibodies which responded to the human malaria parasite.

Mosquito-borne malaria kills around 600,000 people around the world each year and many forms of the disease are becoming resistant to existing drugs.

A successful vaccine is difficult to produce as it must contain proteins which are present in the malaria parasite in order for the immune system to produce antibodies.

Malaria proteins, however, have a complex chemical structure, which is difficult to reproduce in a laboratory.

Despite that, scientists in Edinburgh have managed to grow them inside a tiny single-celled aquatic creature.

It’s hoped the technique will not only make a vaccine possible but easy to produce, as the creature can multiply quickly.

The team leader, Dr David Cavanagh, from the immunology department at Edinburgh University, said:

… There is a desperate need for an effective vaccine which can be made easily in large quantities.

He added:

… Our findings meet this challenge and, with more work, could lead to a vaccine to help those most at risk.

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Health, Medical, Research, Science, Scotland, Society

A breakthrough treatment in beating superbugs…

GALLIUM

Scottish scientists may have discovered a ‘silver bullet’ in winning the war against infection.

For some time now it has been feared that antibiotics are becoming increasingly powerless in the face of lethal bacteria which are developing resistance to the drugs.

The latest breakthrough, however, suggests that a revolutionary new treatment could turn the tide.

Scientists and researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Zurich, in Switzerland, found that germs are not only killed off by the element gallium but that they also struggle to evolve into resistant strains.

In tests carried out, the metal was pared against a highly-resistant bacterium commonly found in hospitals which can cause pneumonia and septic shock.

The researchers noted that the bug continued to multiply when faced with antibiotics but stalled when it came up against gallium.

Scientists also found that three-quarters of infected moth larvae survived when given the treatment compared with only 5 per cent of those which went without.

The study states: ‘Crucially, while resistance soon evolved against conventional antibiotic treatments, gallium treatments retained their efficacy over time.’

It adds: ‘In light of our results, we contend that this approach could curb microbial virulence… and therefore represents a promising alternative to our dwindling succession of traditional antibiotics.’

The team behind the research said they hoped their work would lead to a new breed of drugs.

The team’s lead author, Dr Adin Ross-Gillespie, said:

… It’s crucial that alternatives to antibiotics are found. Humanity is facing what has been described as a catastrophic threat: conventional antibiotics are losing efficacy due to the worldwide rise and spread of multi-drug resistant bacteria and very few new antibiotics are on the horizon.

The key to gallium’s success is its chemical similarity to iron, which bacteria cells need to flourish.

They send out molecules, called siderophores, which search for and track down the essential nutrient.

These are then tricked into binding with gallium instead. As the cells become starved of iron, they dispatch even more siderophores, a process which eventually wears them out.

Gallium’s subtler approach limits the chances of a resistant strain evolving. Unlike antibiotics, it works outside of the cell so the odds are slim of a mutation which survives and then evolves further.

Last year, Scotland’s chief medical officer, Sir Harry Burns, wrote to all health boards in Scotland warning of increasing numbers of bugs resistant to the most powerful antibiotics. There was only one such case in 2007, but 25 cases in 2012.

ABOUT GALLIUM:

Gallium is a soft, silvery metal which forms a brittle solid at lower temperatures.

The heat of a human hand is enough to convert it into a shiny liquid that at first glance resembles mercury. This is because the melting point is usually low for a metal, being about 29.76c – only a few degrees above the usual room temperature of about 21c.

Gallium was first isolated in its elemental form in 1875 by French scientist Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who named it after the Latin name for his homeland, Gallia.

Despite its ability to interfere with cells’ uptake of iron, gallium is not normally considered toxic in low doses.

 

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Health, Japan, Medical, Research, Science

Medical treatments through simple stem-cell advances edge closer…

Intro: Until relatively recently it was thought that mammals – and humans – were distinctly different to the asexual and biological properties of plants

Novelist Arthur C Clarke was notorious for his three laws to explain the ‘science of prediction’. His third law stated that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Some may truly believe that there is an element of magic behind Japan’s announcement that its researchers have created stem cells (i.e. the basic tissue from which all others are made) simply from a process of bathing a sample of blood in a weak solution of citric acid.

In making this phenomenal breakthrough, the Japanese scientists were inspired of the biological process where plants have the ability to make copies of themselves without sexual reproduction. Taking a cutting or a piece of tissue from the apex of a growing plant stem can be used to create an entirely new shrub with all its complex parts. Any gardener will be aware of the magic involved in creating a completely new life form in this way.

Until recently, it was thought that mammals – and humans – were very different and distinct from plants in respect of asexual reproduction. Once an early embryo had moved through the biological processes of cell differentiation to become a fully formed individual, its constituent mature cells were said to be incapable of going into reverse and becoming embryonic again.

This particular principled belief was blown away following the cloning of Dolly the Sheep. She was cloned from the specialised skin cell of an adult ewe and yet somehow her genes had been reprogrammed to their earlier embryonic state. This shibboleth gave rise to the idea of creating stem cells from cloned embryos.

A separate Japanese team went one step further in 2006 and reprogrammed skin cells back to their embryonic state by the addition of a handful of genes. The scientists successfully argued and got round the ethical issues of using human embryos, but safety concerns were raised over using genetically modified cells in medicine.

Now, though, we have the stunning revelation that skin or blood cells can be reprogrammed back to their embryonic state simply by bathing them for 30 minutes in weak acid. This may sound like magic, but it appears to be scientifically true. We can only hope that it can be quickly applied in medical treatments for many insufferable conditions for which there are no practical or effective remedies.

 

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