BioExpert Network

Tardigrade enjoying volvox algae. The tardigrade, also known as the water bear, has the most foreign genes among animals studied. About one-sixth of its genes are borrowed from various sources like bacteria, plants, fungi, and Archaea. This genetic diversity is believed to be key to the water bear's ability to survive in extreme conditions. It also likes to eat volvox algae by piercing the cells and sucking out the contents though it’s tube-shaped mouths.

Hot on the heels of my previous post on developing #CARTtherapies with #donorcells, comes this study on the use of #grapheneoxide – a wonder material with applications in everything from nanomedicine to the environment – to improve the efficiency and potency of CAR-T cell therapies. The new method involves anchoring #antibodies onto a flexible graphene oxide antigen-presenting platform to mimic an immunological synapse. That's quite a mouthful, I know, but what it basically does is stimulate the creation of T cells during the manufacturing process. More specifically, engineering the CAR-T cells was 5x more efficient, while T cell proliferation increase by 100x. This last result is due to the fact that the platform triggers the production of interleukin-2 (IL-2), a protein that stimulates the division and expansion of T cells. Since IL-2 has to be added in current manufacturing methods, and doesn't come cheap, this advance could positively impact manufacturing costs. Between this and other recent innovations, the future of CAR-T is looking bright.

Autoimmune diseases affect 5-10% of the population, and the prevalence is on the rise, especially in first-world countries. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells — engineered immune cells that are now routinely used in the treatment of #bloodcancers — have shown potential in treating #autoimmunediseases like #lupus and #multiplesclerosis. Up till now, however, the patient's own #immunecells were engineered, a personalized process that makes it expensive and time-consuming. Now, for the first time, researchers have managed to overcome this hurdle by using #CART cells from donors, rather than the patients themselves. The new therapy was tested on three patients with severe autoimmune diseases, and the clinical outcomes were phenomenal, with one of the patients reporting major improvements only three days after the treatment. As always with early stage research, there is a lot still to be done. But if it is successful, the use of donor cells would allow for the industrial scale-up of manufacture, significantly lowering the costs and making the treatments accessible on a large scale.

#glioblastoma tumours are rare but deadly, with a five-year survival rate of only 5% and a high rate of recurrence. And although an impressive amount of research is being done, a definitive cure currently remains out of reach. But a safe, cheap and widely available #serotoninmodulator called vortioxetine, already FDA approved for treating depression, may soon be a welcome addition to the weapons arsenal against this devastating disease. The drug has been shown to halt #tumour growth in both ex vivo human tissue samples and mouse models, and human #clinicaltrials are set to follow. The discovery was made during a study that tested existing drugs for anti-cancer activity, focused primarily on antidepressants, antipsychotics, and drugs for Parkinson's disease. They tested a total of 132 known drugs and found that antidepressants that activated signalling cascades supressed cell division and therefore also the development of #cancer cells, with vortioxetine heading the pack. They then tested the drug in mice against a placebo group and a control group treated with another antidepressant, with positive results. They also combined vortioxetine with #chemotherapy, again demonstrating improved survival times. As the drug is already FDA approved, if it proves to be effective in humans, incorporating it into the standard treatment protocol will be considerably quicker and simpler than with a new drug.

🎗️ Today is Dense Breasts Awareness Day 🎗️ Do you know what type of breasts you have? Do you know what dense breasts are? Did you know that almost 50% of women have dense breasts? Do you know why it's important to be aware of this? Here are some key facts: 🔹 Dense breasts have more fibrous and glandular tissue than fatty tissue. 🔹 Dense breasts can hide tumors on mammograms, increasing the risk of false negatives. This means cancer may not be detected at an early stage. 🔹 Women with dense breasts have up to twice the risk of developing breast cancer, according to various studies. 🔍 It's crucial to raise awareness about how breast density can affect breast cancer diagnosis. Remember! Early diagnosis increases the chances of recovery. At FrontWave Imaging, we continue to work on improving breast cancer detection with innovative solutions that offer more accurate diagnoses, especially for women with dense breasts. #DenseBreastsAwarenessDay #BreastCancerPrevention #EarlyDetection #HealthInnovation #EarlyDiagnosis

Revolutionary New Diabetes Drug Multiplies Insulin-Producing Cells by 700%: • Researchers from Mount Sinai Health System and City of Hope discovered a therapeutic combination that regenerates human insulin-producing beta cells, offering a potential new treatment for diabetes. • The combination of harmine and GLP1 receptor agonists increased human beta cell numbers by 700 percent in mice over three months. • This is the first time scientists have developed a drug treatment proven to increase adult human beta cell numbers in vivo. • The team plans to initiate first-in-human trials with independent research teams next year. #diabetes #insulin #drugdelivery #drugdev #innovation #drugdiscovery

🚨 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 🚨  Lumiris Spectral Solutions, a spin-off from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) that has developed a technology to improve the reliability in embryo selection and the success rate in assisted reproduction has just launched its crowdfunding campaign on Capital Cell. 🍼 📊 1 in 10 European children are born through in vitro fertilization (IVF), and 1 in 6 couples need medical assistance to conceive. IVF treatments currently cost between €6,000 and €30,000, with a success rate of less than 40%. The company -led by renowned scientist Samuel Ojosnegros along with Anna Seriola and 𝗝𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘀- simplifies embryo selection using a simple color-coded system through an innovative hyperspectral imaging method. This provides embryologists with a tool to improve their accuracy rate: a key metric in the rapidly growing IVF industry. 🚀 ▪️ The round offers a convertible investment with a guaranteed discount of 25% over the next Series A investors. ▪️ If you're a tax resident in Spain, France or Belgium you may be eligible for a 50% tax deduction. You would be risking only half your money. ▪️ This crowdfunding campaign has been approved by the BioExpert Network. 💡Access to 𝗟𝘂𝗺𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘀' investment page in the first comment. ⬇️

🥀 Only one in three IVF treatments ends with a live birth and treatments are usually associated with long waiting times and a huge emotional toll. At Lumiris we want to challenge this notion and offer patients and IVF specialists a whole new approach in embryo selection.  🔬 We have developed a groundbreaking medical device based on hyperspectral imaging and AI analysis to observe the metabolism of live embryos and oocytes in real-time in a safe and non-invasive way. Our diagnostic system promises to redefine the standards of care in the fertility market by providing IVF specialists with a comprehensive and unbiased assessment of embryo quality, enabling them to make informed decisions before embryo transfer.  ⭐ Today we want to invite you to join our journey and invest in the future of IVF as we are launching a crowdfunding campaign on Monday September 23rd.  🔥 Many experts in the field are backing this innovative project and as an investor, you will have the opportunity to invest in a project led by a team of experienced entrepreneurs who have previously launched successful ventures in the IVF market.  📅 Join at our informative webinar on next Thursday September 26th at 19:00 (CEST). Book a spot by emailing us at info@lumiris.tech ➡ ➡ To learn more check our campaign @Capital cell   https://lnkd.in/dA8bWmkR #ivf #investment #infertility #embryo #crowdfunding #startup  

Reference genomes: what they are and why the next big thing in genomics is the human pangenome. The human genome project started in 1990 and was declared complete in April of 2003. In actuality, only about 90% of the genome was finished then, but the pesky telomeres (ends of chromosomes), centromeres (centers of chromosomes) and a bunch of lengthy repetitive regions remained elusive. The human genome wasn't actually completed telomere-to-telomere (T2T) until January of 2022 and that's thanks to the development of long-read sequencing and mapping technologies that didn't exist when the human genome was originally sequenced. But the 'human genome' here is a bit of a misnomer because the samples used to sequence the 'human genome' were pooled at random from 20 donors, except that pool turned out to mostly be low quality, so 66% of the original human genome sequence was from one male donor, RPCI-11, who was later determined to be 50% White European and 50% African. While the completion of the 'human genome' in 2003 was historic, and we learned a lot from it, we also learned that a single reference genome that's supposed to represent the 'average' human actually misses a ton of important variation. Studies since the completion of that genome have shown that it is missing a lot of the variation observed across ancestral populations! What this means in practice is that something that is identified as a 'variant' using our current reference genome might not actually be a variant depending on that individual's genetic ancestry. This has HUGE implications for genomics, tracking disease, and identifying causal variants of those diseases in diverse populations! So, to recap, we sequenced a couple people, created a linear consensus that serves as our reference, and called the genome done. And we've continued to use that genome, despite knowing that, at best, it's a huge compromise and probably doesn't do a super good job of helping us identify all of the relevant variation in diverse populations. Fortunately, humans aren't the only species that have this genetic diversity problem and microbes have served as a reasonable proxy for the development of a better solution. Early work with mixed bacterial populations showed us that 'graph' genomes are much more powerful than linear ones. Graph genomes are special because instead of settling on a single consensus, they annotate all of the variation observed at each position in the genome, meaning, you actually retain all of the important ancestral variation. Fortunately, we can do the same exact thing in humans, and capture our species wide diversity in a pangenome! This work has already begun and teams are contributing datasets to the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium, a group dedicated to bringing equity to the reference genome.

🧠 Scientists have identified a #brainregion called the frontostriatal salience network (FSN) that is double the usual size in people with #depression. 🤔 What is more, there is evidence to suggest that the FSN can encroach on the space usually reserved for other functional networks, and that this expansion may have a genetic origin. 🧐 Further research demonstrated that the increased size was observed before #diagnosis, indicating that it may be a #riskfactor and potential contributor, rather than an effect of the depression. 🗺️ The research used a fairly new approach in #neuroscience known as precision functional mapping, which uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (#fMRI) data to provide a detailed picture of #brainfunction and connectivity.