New Alzheimer's theory gains NASA backing

More cool stuff from NASA...I didn't know they did this kind of research...

A controversial new theory on the origins of Alzheimer's has divided opinion in the medical world, but if proved right could 'revolutionise' treatment.

Dr Shaohua Xu of Florida's Space Life Sciences Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and of Florida Tech has earned a $150,000 grant from Space Florida and a $30,000 cash injection from NASA's Aerospace Medicine and Occupational Health Branch to test his theory.

Conventional wisdom dictates that when tau protein joins together to form tangled fibres at the start of Alzheimer's, each tau molecule join to the fibre's tip. However, Xu has a different idea."

We find that it is a three-step process," he said. "First, molecules of the tau protein cluster together into spheres, each almost the same size. Next, the spheres join together in linear chains like beads on a string. In the third stage the beads merge together to form a uniform filament identical to those found in the brains of patients with the disease."

Using atomic force microscopy, Xu has been using purified protein to synthesis the fibres into their various forms. He first developed his theory over a decade ago. "

Shaohua's theory is revolutionary; his evidence is overwhelming. The medical implications are beyond anything in my experience," said advocate Dr Daniel Woodard at KSC, who was the first medical doctor to review Xu's work."

This could be the most important biomedical discovery ever made at Kennedy Space Center," echoed NASA physician David Tipton, chief of the Aerospace Medicine and Environmental Health Branch at KSC.

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'World's best microscope' up and running

I want one!!!...

The world's most powerful transmission electron microscope has been turned on in the US, with single-atom resolution bringing within reach the ability to analyse chemicals simply by looking at them.

The Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope (TEAM 0.5) has been installed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, having been developed in collaboration with the US Department of Energy (DOE), the University of Illinois and two microscopy firms: the FEI Company and Germany's CEOS.
Traditionally TEM and scanning TEM microscopes have suffered from somewhat limited resolution that stopped frustratingly short of allowing researchers to study materials accurately at the atomic level. This latest development has managed to reach a resolution of 0.5 Angstroms (A) (0.05nm) or one quarter of the diameter of a carbon atom.
The increased resolution of the TEAM microscope should enable scientists in all disciplines to characterise atomic scale structure and chemistry more accurately than ever before.

The director of the TEAM Project, Uli Dahmen, explained that the microscope is the world's best thanks to the equipments resolution, improved contrast and low signal-to-noise ratio.

"[It] brings us within reach of meeting the great challenge posed by the famous physicist Richard Feynman in 1959: the ability to analyse any chemical substance simply by looking to see where the atoms are.

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Research Coast a 10-year project?

I saw the headline that read "10 Year Biotech Project" and thought "Now, That's a Project!..."

read on for the real story...

PORT ST. LUCIE — The Research Coast is a sprint against other biotech hubs to land more companies.

It will take longer to generate local jobs at Oregon Health & Science University's Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, which announced Tuesday it would create a center at Tradition.

"It took 60 years to create the Research Triangle (in North Carolina). We're going to make that happen in a little less than 10 years," said state Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie. "This is about our kids and, when you run a relay race, you run as fast as you can."

The Senate president foresees big returns from the institute's arrival and the opening of Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies. California-based Mann Research Center intends to build a $100 million, 400,000-square- foot life sciences complex next to the two research firms in the Florida Center for Innovation at Tradition.

The numbers are lofty.

The state and city are putting up $117.9 million for the Oregon institute.

In return, economic development leaders say that the 200 jobs spawned during the next decade by the institute will grow into 1,466 positions directly and indirectly through spin-off companies in the next two decades.

Those workers will generate $2 billion in payroll and $4.2 billion in gross state products.

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Vulnerable germ labs tough to identify

WASHINGTON - Federal terror-fighting agencies can't identify all the American research laboratories that could become targets of attackers, congressional investigators have found.

The Government Accountability Office asked a dozen agencies whether they kept track of all the labs handling dangerous germs and toxins, or knew the number. All responded negatively.

Combine this with the previous story

WASHINGTON - American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing steadily as more labs across the country are approved to do the work.

The findings were prepared for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Thursday.

The government regulates 409 laboratories approved to work with 72 of the world's deadliest organisms and poisons, including anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria.

But less is known about other labs that work with organisms that cause whooping cough, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, meningitis, typhoid fever, hepatitis, herpes, several strains of flu, rabies, HIV and SARS.

The GAO said U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, told its investigators they need to track all labs that could be vulnerable to terrorism.

U.S. intelligence agencies said they already are handicapped by the failure of some foreign countries to regulate the shipment or possession of biological agents.

The Associated Press reported this week that American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.


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U.S. labs mishandling deadly germs

I have had some limited discussions with people knowledgeable in this subject...

the drive to construct these sophisticated research facilties has led to a dramtic shortfall in the availablity of personnel that have the proper training and experience required to function in these demanding environments...

WASHINGTON - American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing steadily as more labs across the country are approved to do the work.

No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs, some of which work with organisms and poisons so dangerous that illnesses they cause have no cure. In some cases, labs have failed to report accidents as required by law.

The mishaps include workers bitten or scratched by infected animals, skin cuts, needle sticks and more, according to a review by The Associated Press of confidential reports submitted to federal regulators. They describe accidents involving anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria at 44 labs in 24 states. More than two-dozen incidents were still under investigation.

The number of accidents has risen steadily. Through August, the most recent period covered in the reports obtained by the AP, labs reported 36 accidents and lost shipments during 2007 — nearly double the number reported during all of 2004.

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New Drugs Declining, Research Costs Increasing, GAO Says

less innovation is normally considered a bad thing...

Drug companies are becoming less innovative, with the number of new drugs being developed failing to keep pace with the substantial increases in spending on research and development, according to congressional investigators.

A report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that annual research and development spending by the pharmaceutical industry increased 147 percent, to $60 billion, between 1993 and 2004. At the same time, the number of new drug applications to the Food and Drug Administration grew by only 38 percent, and it generally has declined since 1999.

What is more, about two-thirds of the new applications were for drugs that simply represent modifications to existing medicines, while 32 percent were for potentially innovative new drugs.

"Over the past several years it has become widely recognized throughout the industry that the productivity of its research and development expenditures has been declining," investigators wrote in the 52-page report. "That is, the number of new drugs being produced has generally declined while research and development expenditures have been steadily increasing."

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Penn Researchers Find Potential New Target for Type 2 Diabetes

(PHILADELPHIA) – Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered a potential new target for treating type 2 diabetes, according to a new study that appeared online this week in Nature. The target is a protein, along with its molecular partner, that regulates fat metabolism.

“Over the last 10 years, we have begun to understand the importance of fat metabolism in diabetes,” notes lead author Morris J. Birnbaum, MD, PhD, the Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases at Penn and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “Type 2 diabetics are at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease because they also have disorders in fat metabolism as a result of obesity and abnormal insulin action.” Birnbaum is also the Associate Director of the Type 2 Diabetes Unit for Penn’s Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism.

When a person eats a meal, the pancreas usually responds by secreting insulin that signals the liver to stop making glucose and burning fat. When a type 2 diabetic eats a meal, insulin cannot stop the manufacture of glucose in the liver, but it can stop the burning of fat stores. This gives the diabetic person a “double whammy:” fatty acids accumulate from food and from the liver. Consequently, more fat is deposited in tissues and obesity worsens.

Until now there was no clear connection between insulin and the control of fat metabolism. This study shows that when insulin is present, as it is after a meal, the protein Akt2/PKB adds a phosphate group to its molecular partner PGC-1a. When this happens, PGC-1a cannot activate the genes needed for fat metabolism.

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US scientists discover new, potentially deadly bacteria

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - In a dramatic case of microbial sleuthing, US scientists said they have discovered a new, potentially deadly strain of bacteria previously unknown to medicine.

The bacteria was found in a 43-year-old American woman who had traveled across Peru for three weeks and suffered from symptoms similar to typhoid fever or malaria. The woman has since recovered.

Named Bartonella rochalimae, the new species is a close relative of a microbe that sickened thousands of soldiers during the First World War with what became known as trench fever, spread through body lice.

It is also related to a bacteria identified 10 years ago during the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco as the cause of cat scratch disease, which infects 25,000 people a year in the United States.

It was this previous work on cat scratch disease related to AIDS that helped experts at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention isolate the new bacteria found in the female traveler.

The findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Two weeks after returning to the United States from her trip to Peru, the woman experienced potentially life-threatening anemia, a rash, an enlarged spleen, insomnia and a high fever that lasted for several weeks.

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