Archive for February, 2020

FEBRUARY 19, 2020 When Lt. Col. Jason Barnhill traveled to Africa last summer, he took with him not only the normal gear of an Army officer, but also a 3D printer.

Barnhill, who is the life science program director at the U.S. Military Academy, traveled to Africa to study how 3D printers could be used for field medical care. Barnhills printer was not set up to print objects made out of plastics as the printers are frequently known for. Instead, his printer makes bioprinted items that could one day be used to save Soldiers injured in combat.

The 3D bioprinting research has not reached the point where a printed organ or meniscus can be implanted into the body, but Barnhill and a team of cadets are working to advance the research in the field.

Twenty-six firsties are doing bioprinting research across seven different projects as their capstone this year. Two teams are working on biobandages for burn and field care. Two teams are working on how to bioengineer blood vessels to enable other bioprinted items that require a blood source, such as organs, to be viable. One team is working on printing a viable meniscus and the final team is working on printing a liver.

The basic process of printing biomaterial is the same as what is used to print a plastic figurine. A model of what will be printed is created on the computer, it is digitally sliced into layers and then the printer builds it layer by layer. The difference is the ink that is used.

Instead of heating plastic, 3D bioprinting uses a bioink that includes collagen, a major part of human tissue, and cells, typically stem cells.

A lot of this has to do with the bioink that we want to use, exactly what material were using as our printer ink, if you will, Class of 2020 Cadet Allen Gong, a life science major working on the meniscus project, said. Once we have that 3D model where we want it, then its just a matter of being able to stack the ink on top of each other properly.

Cadets are researching how to use that ink to create a meniscus to be implanted into a Soldiers injured knee or print a liver that could be used to test medicine and maybe one day eliminate the shortage of transplantable organs.

The research at West Point is funded by the Uniformed Services University of Health Science and is focused on increasing Soldier survivability in the field and treating wounded warriors.

Right now, cadets on each of the teams are in the beginning stages of their research before starting the actual printing process. The first stage includes reading the research already available in their area of focus and learning how to use the printers. After spring break, they will have their first chance to start printing with cells.

For the biobandage, meniscus and liver teams, the goal is to print a tangible product by the end of the semester, though neither the meniscus or liver will be something that could be implanted and used.

There are definitely some leaps before we can get to that point, Class of 2020 Cadet Thatcher Shepard, a life science major working on the meniscus project, said of actually implanting what they print. (We have to) make sure the body doesnt reject the new bioprinted meniscus and also the emplacement. There can be difficulties with that. Right now, were trying to just make a viable meniscus. Then, well look into further research to be able to work on methods of actually placing it into the body.

The blood vessel teams are further away from printing something concrete because the field has so many unanswered questions. Their initial step will be looking at what has already been done in the field and what questions still need to be answered. They will then decide on the scope and direction of their projects. Their research will be key to allowing other areas of the field to move forward, though. Organs such as livers and pancreases have been printed, so far, they can only be produced at the micro level because they have no blood flow.

Its kind of like putting the cart before the horse, Class of 2020 Cadet Michael Deegan, a life science major working on one of the blood vessel projects, said. Youve printed it, great, but whats the point of printing it if its not going to survive inside your body? Being able to work on that fundamental step thats actually going to make these organs viable is what drew me and my teammates to be able to do this.

While the blood vessel, liver and meniscus projects have the potential to impact long-term care, the work being done by the biobandage teams will potentially have direct uses in the field during combat. The goal is to be able to take cells from an injured Soldier, specifically one who suffers burns, and print a bandage with built in biomaterial on it to jumpstart the healing process.

Medics would potentially be deployed with a 3D printer in their Humvee to enable bandages to be printed on site to meet the needs of the specific Soldier and his or her exact wound. The projects are building on existing research on printing sterile bandages and then adding a bioengineering element. The bandages would be printed with specialized skin and stem cells necessary to the healing process, jumpstarting healing faster.

Were researching how the body actually heals from burns, Class of 2020 Cadet Channah Mills, a life science major working on one of the biobandage projects, said. So, what are some things we can do to speed along that process? Introducing a bandage could kickstart that healing process. The faster you start healing, the less scarring and the more likely youre going to recover.

The meniscus team is starting with MRI images of knees and working to build a 3D model of a meniscus, which they will eventually be able to print. Unlike a liver, the meniscus doesnt need a blood flow. It does still have a complex cellular structure, though, and a large part of the teams research will be figuring out how and when to implant those cells into what theyre printing.

Of the 26 cadets working on bioprinting projects, 17 will be attending medical school following graduation from West Point. The research they are doing gives them hands-on experience in a cutting-edge area of the medical field. It also enabled them to play a role in improving the care for Soldiers in the future, which will be their jobs as Army doctors.

Being on the forefront of it and just seeing the potential in bioengineering, its pretty astounding, Gong said. But it has also been sobering just to see how much more complicated it is to 3D print biomaterials than plastic.

The bioprinting projects will be presented during the academys annual Projects Day April 30.

By Brandon OConnor

More:
Cadets Research Bioprinting to Improve Soldier Care - MilitarySpot

"I would take them to the clean lab and at my work station I would open them up and then I would use a swab to swab around the inside of the pots that contained the samples to recover the DNA," he said.

"Once I'd done that, I'd have an extraction tube ready and you cut the tip off the swab and put it in the extraction tube for processing."

Mr Talbot said he would have carried out the process twice, keeping AJM40 and AJM42 separatefrom AJM46 and AJM48 to prevent contamination.

"The whole point of the clean lab is to prevent contaminating your sample with extraneous DNA," he said.

"There are safety cabinets for working in so the airflow is designed to prevent contamination and the labs themselves have a positiveair pressure."

Mr Talbot then added a chemical solution to the tubes with the swabs inside and they underwent a heating and spinning process for the DNA to be extracted.

He noted that the first time he tried to extract the DNA, it failed, as some of the chemical solution - the phenol - he had added to the tubes appeared frozen or crystallised.

He then added more phenol to the samples from a new bottle and repeated the process, which successfully separated the DNA.

A further several stages of the extraction were then carried out, with Mr Talbot estimating it would have taken a "few hours" to get to the final extract.

Witnesses were present for the key stages of the extraction process, to peer review Mr Talbot's workings.

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Claremont killer trial LIVE: Court sits into night for UK witnesses to give evidence on breakthrough DNA moment - WAtoday

You might be familiar with a womens clinic that provides care and treatment specifically for womens health concerns such as pregnancy, menstrual concerns. Infertility issues and chronic disorders that involve womens reproductive health. Just like women, men also have their own medical issues and it is universal fact men and women have different medical issues concerning their reproductive health and related problems.

A typical mens clinic such as DBClinic in Singapore focuses on mens health especially on topics or health issues that most men arent comfortable to talk about. These include sexual health issues like testicular and penile concerns, fertility issues, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV infection, prostate problems and even disorders like hair loss in men.

If you and your partner have been trying to conceive but to no avail, then it is recommended that you (and your partner) undergo fertility screening to determine what causes infertility. A proper diagnosis from fertility screening will enable your doctor to devise an appropriate treatment and management plan to help you and your partner. Fertility screening is also useful for people who plan to conceive or get married to determine whether they are able to make children.

It cannot be denied that there is a stigma concerning STDs and HIV not only in Singapore but worldwide. This is why people who are affected by these infections are not very open to seeking treatment and proper diagnosis because of the fear of being exposed. A mens clinic in Singapore is a safe haven for people with STDs and HIV because they are treated with the utmost care and confidentiality.

Prostate cancer is one of the top cancers affecting men in Singapore and usually affects men at an older age (usually beyond 50). It can be manifested by urination problems, blood in urine and semen, pain during ejaculation and erection problems. Early detection of prostate cancer gives you a chance for seeking treatments as early as possible. Another type of prostate problem is called benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) and characterized by an enlarged prostate. Hough this condition isnt cancerous, it can bring lots of negative effective effects to ones quality of life.

Medically called Androgenic Alopecia is a common occurrence in men. It can even occur in men in their early 20s and it is a condition that is influenced by genetics. Meaning, it can run in the genes. While male pattern hair loss is not a serious medical concern, it can be a serious cosmetic concern for men. Thinning hair can make you look older than you actually are and in severe cases, it can cause total baldness.

DB Clinic for Mens Health

DB Clinic is a mens health clinic in Singapore that provides expert and personalized treatments and guidance to men who are experiencing sensitive and personal medical issues. Men in general, arent really open to sharing very personal concerns because it is just part of their nature. And when dealing with personal health issues, it is good to have someone you can trust. Someone who can help you have effective treatments. The doctors at DB Clinic are trained to deal with mens health. They are experts in creating an environment where patients can freely and comfortably share their issues which ultimately, builds trust.

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Services and Treatments That You Can Receive at a Mens Clinic in Singapore - Chiang Rai Times

Heres the truth about serum: Its the biggest secret to having younger-looking, radiant skin.

You know all the other steps to staying healthyand showing it: wearing SPF, and applying retinol. You stay hydrated and eat healthy foods. You get lots of exercise and plenty of sleep. But, are you applying serums? They can give your skin some of the most immediate and impactful benefits.

Serum seeps into all three layers of your skin to work its magic at deeper levels than moisturizer ever could. Those moisturizing creams merely sit atop your skin. Theyre equally important, and shield skin from toxins, but they do little to reverse dark spots and smooth wrinkles. Serums, on the other hand, can correct hyperpigmentation and puffy eyes.

Serum brightens your skin complexion, and can preserve moisture levels in ways that moisturizers never could (funny, given its name). No two serums are alike in terms of ingredients and overall benefits, but almost all of them brighten your skin and smooth complexion. Here are seven of our favorite serums; apply them to clean, dried skin before moisturizers, SPFs, retinol or night creams.

If your skin suffers from redness or discoloration, then look for a corrective serum. SkinCeuticals gel serum uses thyme and cucumber extract to soothe irritation, as well as mulberry extract to even skin tone and gently hydrate the skin. If most moisturizers make your skin break out, then this is a gentle and top-notch moisturizing alternative.

Vitamin C is one of the best ingredients you can apply to skin for brighter, more even complexion. Glossiers serum is packed with it, along with magnesium, for an instant pick-me-up for tired or dull skin. Use it daily to preserve a fresh face, and to get ahead of the inevitable hangovers or early mornings.

The skin around your eyes is more sensitive than the rest of your face, and is much thinner, too hence why you quickly show signs of tiredness. (Its fluid buildup from a lack of rest, shining through your skin.) So, target the eyes with a special-blend serum that tightens and brightens at the same time. In OSEAs eye serum, hyaluronic acid preserves firmness and moisture levels, grape-seed-derived resveratrol shields this thin skin from toxins, and algae extract plumps and nourishes tired eyes (and alert eyes, if youre plenty rested already everyone benefits). It also prevents and helps reverse fine lines and other signs of aging.

Some serums are best worn during the day those that focus on hydration and pure brightening. Others, like corrective and exfoliating serums, are often best suited for bedtime so that they can sync with your bodys circadian rhythm to boost cellular turnover (and in turn guarantee that you wake up looking rested and more youthful). However, some serums cover both bases: Brickells night serum is ultra-hydrating so much so that its impact is maximized by wearing it overnight. Its loaded with plant stem cells, hyaluronic acid and vitamin C, and promises to magnify the benefits of a full nights sleep. Your friends and colleagues will notice the difference within days. (Assuming you arent pairing it with a lovely binge-drinking or chain-smoking habit.)

Theres an entire family of serums that focuses on exfoliation, by using ingredients that dissolve dead skin cells and reduce hyperpigmentation (dark spots and discoloration). Herbivores serum does so with alpha- and beta-hydroxy acids, all of which are naturally derived, despite their sciencey-sounding names. Theyre extracted from things like willow bark and sugar maple, and in turn leave skin bright, while minimizing pore size and smoothing skin texture.

Its hard to categorize Caudelies skin-brightening serum, since it uses the brands proprietary blend of ingredients (Viniferine, derived from grape vines) but they seem to deliver on their promise to brighten skin 62 times better than Vitamin C. All around the globe, this is what Caudelies spa customers pay top dollar for, and you can enjoy the same complexion-smoothing effects for less than a buck a day (assuming you just use a couple drops daily).

If your skin texture needs attention just as much as your skin tone, then look for a corrective and smoothing serum. This one from PCA Skin is pumped with peptides, and it waxes poetic on your skin to undo signs of aging (like the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, dark spots and acne spots). It also helps skin retain moisture thanks to the inclusion of hyaluronic acid, rice bran extract, squalene, ensuring firmness and brightness.

See the rest here:
The Best Serums to Brighten and Refresh Dull, Tired Skin - gearpatrol.com

TOKYO and BOTHELL, Wash., Feb. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Astellas Pharma Inc. (TSE: 4503, President and CEO: Kenji Yasukawa, Ph.D., "Astellas") and Seattle Genetics, Inc. (Nasdaq:SGEN) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation for PADCEV (enfortumab vedotin-ejfv) in combination with Merck's (known as MSD outside the United States and Canada) anti-PD-1 therapy KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab) for the treatment of patients with unresectable locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who are unable to receive cisplatin-based chemotherapy in the first-line setting.

The FDA's Breakthrough Therapy process is designed to expedite the development and review of drugs that are intended to treat a serious or life-threatening condition. Designation is based upon preliminary clinical evidence indicating that the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement over available therapies on one or more clinically significant endpoints.

"The FDA's Breakthrough Therapydesignation reflects the encouraging preliminary evidence for the combination of PADCEV and pembrolizumab in previously untreated advanced urothelial cancer to benefit patients who are in need of effective treatment options," said Andrew Krivoshik, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Oncology Therapeutic Area Head, Astellas. "We look forward to continuing our work with the FDA as we progress our clinical development program as quickly as possible."

"This is an important step in our investigation of PADCEV in combination with pembrolizumab as a first-line therapy for patients with advanced urothelial cancer who are unable to receive cisplatin-based chemotherapy," said Roger Dansey, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Seattle Genetics. "Based on encouraging early clinical activity, we recently initiated a phase 3 trial of this platinum-free combination and look forward to potentially addressing an unmet need for patients."

The Breakthrough Therapy designation was granted based on results from the dose-escalation cohort and expansion cohort A of the phase 1b/2 trial,EV-103 (NCT03288545), evaluating patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelialcancer who are unable to receive cisplatin-based chemotherapytreated in the first-line setting with PADCEV in combination with pembrolizumab. Initial results from the trial were presented at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2019 Congress, and updated findings at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. EV-103 is an ongoing, multi-cohort, open-label, multicenter phase 1b/2 trial of PADCEV alone or in combination, evaluating safety, tolerability and efficacy in muscle invasive, locally advanced and first- and second-line metastatic urothelial cancer.

About Bladder and Urothelial CancerIt is estimated that approximately 81,000 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2020.1 Urothelial cancer accounts for 90 percent of all bladder cancers and can also be found in the renal pelvis, ureter and urethra.2

Globally, approximately 549,000 people were diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2018, and there were approximately 200,000 deaths worldwide.3

The recommended first-line treatment for patients withadvanced urothelial cancer is a cisplatin-based chemotherapy. For patients who are unable to receive cisplatin, such as people with kidney impairment, a carboplatin-based regimen is recommended. However, fewer than half of patients respond to carboplatin-based regimens and outcomes are typically poorer compared to cisplatin-based regimens.4

About PADCEV PADCEV (enfortumab vedotin-ejfv) was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December 2019 and is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who have previously received a programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) or programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor and a platinum-containing chemotherapy before (neoadjuvant) or after (adjuvant) surgery or in a locally advanced or metastatic setting. PADCEV was approved under the FDA's Accelerated Approval Program based on tumor response rate. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.5

PADCEV is a first-in-class antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that is directed against Nectin-4, a protein located on the surface of cells and highly expressed in bladder cancer.5,6 Nonclinical data suggest the anticancer activity of PADCEV is due to its binding to Nectin-4 expressing cells followed by the internalization and release of the anti-tumor agent monomethyl auristatin E (MMAE) into the cell, which result in the cell not reproducing (cell cycle arrest) and in programmed cell death (apoptosis).5PADCEV is co-developed by Astellas and Seattle Genetics.

Important Safety Information

Warnings and Precautions

Adverse ReactionsSerious adverse reactions occurred in 46% of patients treated with PADCEV. The most common serious adverse reactions (3%) were urinary tract infection (6%), cellulitis (5%), febrile neutropenia (4%), diarrhea (4%), sepsis (3%), acute kidney injury (3%), dyspnea (3%), and rash (3%). Fatal adverse reactions occurred in 3.2% of patients, including acute respiratory failure, aspiration pneumonia, cardiac disorder, and sepsis (each 0.8%).

Adverse reactions leading to discontinuation occurred in 16% of patients; the most common adverse reaction leading to discontinuation was peripheral neuropathy (6%). Adverse reactions leading to dose interruption occurred in 64% of patients; the most common adverse reactions leading to dose interruption were peripheral neuropathy (18%), rash (9%) and fatigue (6%). Adverse reactions leading to dose reduction occurred in 34% of patients; the most common adverse reactions leading to dose reduction were peripheral neuropathy (12%), rash (6%) and fatigue (4%).

The most common adverse reactions (20%) were fatigue (56%), peripheral neuropathy (56%), decreased appetite (52%), rash (52%), alopecia (50%), nausea (45%), dysgeusia (42%), diarrhea (42%), dry eye (40%), pruritus (26%) and dry skin (26%). The most common Grade 3 adverse reactions (5%) were rash (13%), diarrhea (6%) and fatigue (6%).

Lab AbnormalitiesIn one clinical trial, Grade 3-4 laboratory abnormalities reported in 5% were: lymphocytes decreased, hemoglobin decreased, phosphate decreased, lipase increased, sodium decreased, glucose increased, urate increased, neutrophils decreased.

Drug Interactions

Specific Populations

For more information, please see the full Prescribing Information for PADCEV here.

About Astellas Astellas Pharma Inc., based in Tokyo, Japan, is a company dedicated to improving the health of people around the world through the provision of innovative and reliable pharmaceutical products. For more information, please visit our website at https://www.astellas.com/en.

About Seattle Genetics Seattle Genetics, Inc. is a global biotechnology company that discovers, develops and commercializes transformative medicines targeting cancer to make a meaningful difference in people's lives. The company is headquartered in Bothell, Washington, and has offices in California, Switzerland and the European Union. For more information on our robust pipeline, visit http://www.seattlegenetics.com and follow @SeattleGenetics on Twitter.

About the Astellas and Seattle Genetics CollaborationSeattle Genetics and Astellas are co-developing PADCEV (enfortumab vedotin-ejfv) under a collaboration that was entered into in 2007 and expanded in 2009. Under the collaboration, the companies are sharing costs and profits on a 50:50 basis worldwide.

About the Astellas, Seattle Genetics and Merck CollaborationSeattle Genetics and Astellas entered a clinical collaboration agreement with Merck to evaluate the combination of Seattle Genetics' and Astellas' PADCEV (enfortumab vedotin-ejfv) and Merck's KEYTRUDA (pembrolizumab), in patients with previously untreated metastatic urothelial cancer. KEYTRUDA is a registered trademark of Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA.

Astellas Cautionary NotesIn this press release, statements made with respect to current plans, estimates, strategies and beliefs and other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements about the future performance of Astellas. These statements are based on management's current assumptions and beliefs in light of the information currently available to it and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: (i) changes in general economic conditions and in laws and regulations, relating to pharmaceutical markets, (ii) currency exchange rate fluctuations, (iii) delays in new product launches, (iv) the inability of Astellas to market existing and new products effectively, (v) the inability of Astellas to continue to effectively research and develop products accepted by customers in highly competitive markets, and (vi) infringements of Astellas' intellectual property rights by third parties.

Information about pharmaceutical products (including products currently in development), which is included in this press release is not intended to constitute an advertisement or medical advice.

Seattle Genetics Forward Looking StatementsCertain statements made in this press release are forward looking, such as those, among others, relating to the development of PADCEV in combination with pembrolizumab as a first-line therapyfor patients with advanced urothelial cancerwho are unable to receive cisplatin-based chemotherapy, and the therapeutic potential of PADCEVincluding its efficacy, safety and therapeutic uses. Actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected or implied in these forward-looking statements. Factors that may cause such a difference include the possibility that ongoing and subsequent clinical trials may fail to establish sufficient efficacy, that adverse events or safety signals may occur and that adverse regulatory actions may occur. More information about the risks and uncertainties faced by Seattle Genetics is contained under the caption "Risk Factors" included in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Seattle Genetics disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

1American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts & Figures 2020.https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cancer-facts-and-statistics/annual-cancer-facts-and-figures/2020/cancer-facts-and-figures-2020.pdf.Accessed 01-23-2020.2American Society of Clinical Oncology. Bladder cancer: introduction (10-2017). https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/bladder-cancer/introduction. Accessed 05-09-2019.3International Agency for Research on Cancer. Cancer Tomorrow: Bladder.http://gco.iarc.fr/tomorrow 4National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN). NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology: Bladder Cancer. Version 4; July 10, 2019. https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/bladder.pdf.5PADCEV [package insert]. Northbrook, IL: Astellas, Inc.6Challita-Eid P, Satpayev D, Yang P, et al. Enfortumab Vedotin Antibody-Drug Conjugate Targeting Nectin-4 Is a Highly Potent Therapeutic Agent in Multiple Preclinical Cancer Models. Cancer Res 2016;76(10):3003-13.

SOURCE Astellas Pharma Inc.

http://www.seattlegenetics.com

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Astellas and Seattle Genetics Receive FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation for PADCEV (enfortumab vedotin-ejfv) in Combination with Pembrolizumab in...

New therapeutic approaches for chronic inflammatory diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriasis are needed because current treatments are often suboptimal in terms of both efficacy and the risks of serious adverse events. Inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAPs) are E3 ubiquitin ligases that inhibit cell death pathways and are themselves inhibited by second mitochondria-derived activator of caspases (SMAC). SMAC mimetics (SMs), small-molecule antagonists of IAPs, are being evaluated as cancer therapies in clinical trials. IAPs are also crucial regulators of inflammatory pathways because they influence both the activation of inflammatory genes and the induction of cell death through the receptor-interacting serine-threonine protein kinases (RIPKs), nuclear factor B (NF-B)inducing kinase, and mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs). Furthermore, there is an increasing interest in specifically targeting the substrates of IAP-mediated ubiquitylation, especially RIPK1, RIPK2, and RIPK3, as druggable nodes in inflammation control. Several studies have revealed an anti-inflammatory potential of RIPK inhibitors that either block inflammatory signaling or block the form of inflammatory cell death known as necroptosis. Expanding research on innate immune signaling through pattern recognition receptors that stimulate proinflammatory NF-B and MAPK signaling may further contribute to uncovering the complex molecular roles used by IAPs and downstream RIPKs in inflammatory signaling. This may benefit and guide the development of SMs or selective RIPK inhibitors as anti-inflammatory therapeutics for various chronic inflammatory conditions.

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SMAC mimetics and RIPK inhibitors as therapeutics for chronic inflammatory diseases - Science

I have this really annoying habit which I know I need to work on. Despite the fact that I'm naturally a very early riser (I'm talking, *wakes up at 6:30 a.m. 365 days a yeareven on the weekends* kind of early riser), I pretty much refuse to adjust my bedtime a few hours earlierto counteract the impact of my early bird identity. I love to stay up late after a long day and binge-watch my favorite shows on Hulu, I love to read 100-page chunks of a novel, and without fail, I also love to fool around on my phone doing who even knows what. You know that feeling when you look at the clock and it's a perfectly respectable 10 p.m. and then the next time you blink it's verging on 1 a.m.?! Well, it happens to me all the time, and while I know I'd be the better for shutting down my phone, burning a candle, switching on my diffuser, and being the well-behaved beauty and wellness editor I know I should be, I really struggle to do that. And, yes, it definitely shows up on my face the next day.

I have notoriously shady under-eyes just naturally, (check out our A-list celebrity guide to dark circles, here), but my lack of sleep and consequential coffee dependence the following morning has exacerbated the situation. Luckily, my job allows me access to the newest and coolest eye creams and treatments which tout all sorts of under-eye miraclesfrom the banishment of dark circles to the erasing of puff, fine lines, and wrinkles. Spoiler: most fall flat. As in, that literally did nothing, kind of flat. However, during my 3 years as a beauty editor, I've collecteda glorified possession of creams and gels and balms that truly do work wonders on my dark circles. Regardless of whether your dark circles are sheerly caused by genetics, allergies, or not-so-stellar sleep habits (me), these shadow-targetingeye creams can lend a helping hand. Keep scrolling! I'm sharing the 15 best eye creams for dark circles I've tried since becoming a beauty editor.

Hot off of L'Occitane's French presses (it literally launched two days ago, but I received ahead of time to test-drive!), this serum has stolen my heart. It's the kid sister to the brand's best-sellingOvernight Reset Oil-in-Serum ($59) (one unit is purchased every minute!) and it uses the formula's same coveted moisture magic to do battle against telltale symptoms of fatigue like dark circles, puffiness, and expression lines. Plus, I have to say I love that you can literally see the 1,600 golden bubbles of precious Immortelle Essential Oil sitting in the stunning bottle. So stunning, right?!

Peter Thomas Roth Vital-E Microbiome Age Defense Eye Cream ($55)

Y'all, brands have really been upping the anty and cadence of eye cream launches because this is another formula for dark circles that JUST hit my vanity. (And stores everywhere.) Say goodbye to fine lines and wrinkles, dullness, uneven texture, and dark circles thanks to this protective solution designed to improve the delicate skin barrier around the eyes and support the skin's natural microbiome as well.

iS Clinical Youth Eye Complex ($105)

iS Clinical is one of the top brands chosen by the top estheticians in the industry, and this anti-aging eye cream is one of their choice formulas. Not only is it insanely creamy and hydrating (but not at all sticky or slimy like some eye creams can be!) it's a huge help in the dark circle departmentI'll apply it before bed and then again in the morning to finish off my morning skin routine. My circles are still there (obviously), but they're a lot less glaring. The key is in the mix of hyaluronic acid, peptides, and antioxidants.

111Skin Space Defence Bright Eye Lift Gel NAC Y2 ($190)

Once I found out that makeup artists use this formula from 111Skin to prep celebs' skin pre-red carpet, I was 88.5% on board. And, after a few applications when I started to notice that my under-eyes looked less shadowy and significantly firmer, tighter, and all-around less fatigued, I lept to a full 120%. Categorically, it's an eye cream, but it's formulated as a soothing, lightweight gel anyone who's against heavy, cloying creams will absolutely adore. Plus, there's the whole eye lifting effect which is pretty dang wonderful in and of itself.

EIGHTH DAY Eye Renewal Cream ($225)

If you're down to feel a little tingle (it's worth it, I promise!) this eye cream has some bite. I mean that literally because one of the reasons it quickly tightens, firms, and de-puffs is thanks to the MVP ingredient: snake venom. This has been one of my favorite formulas for a couple of years now, and it's what I reach for when my under-eyes are in a state of emergency.

RVive Skincare Intensit Complete Anti-Aging Eye Serum ($285)

Not only does the featherlight serum texture feel great underneath your eyes, but this favorite eye cream also features strategic brightening agents to help diffuse any purple circles that like to lurk. (You'll get what I mean once you see the gorgeous pearly finish.) It also looks AMAZING under makeup and concealer. It's a 10/10 if you can stomach the splurge.

By Terry Hydra-clat Eye Contour ($75)

If you have a weakness for anything lovely, French, and downright effective when it comes to your beauty product investments, you should definitely consider eye contour-improving cream from By Terry. Not only does application feel cooling and luxe thanks to the silver applicator, but it also hosts delicate ingredients like Black Rose, plant stem cells, and vitamin E to not ONLY reduce dark circles but to de-puff and soften the look of any fine lines and wrinkles. This is another one that thanks to its lightweight texture is superb under your foundation and/or concealer.

Sunday Riley Auto Correct Brightening and Depuffing Eye Contour Cream ($65)

One of my favorite eye creams of all time, this is probably the one I recommend to friends most often since it's a bit more affordable and so instantaneously affect. One swipe across your under-eyes and the mica-, caffeine-, and antioxidant-rich potion practically blurs away the look of lingering darkness. I honestly think this is Sunday Riley's absolute best product. But, that's just me.

La Prairie Skin Caviar Eye Lift Serum ($485)

Now, I wouldn't include a nearly $500 eye cream if it didn't work true sorcery against dark circles now would I? The sticker shock might be a bit gut-wrenching but this is probably THE most luxurious option for dark circles on the market. Plus, if you're consistent with use, the combination of La Prairie's iconic encapsulated caviar beads and an innovative gel-cream emulsion is probably just as effective as a pricey in-office treatment. The effect is a visual lift to the eye and brow area, less puffiness, lines, shadows, you get the idea.

Ole Henriksen Banana Bright Eye Crme ($39)

If you have dark circles, the yellow tint to this brightening elixir can definitely help with that. It's rich in vitamin C, it's anti-aging, and it even makes your concealer and foundation apply smoother. Wins all-around!

GlamGlow BRIGHTEYES Illuminating Anti-Fatigue Eye Cream ($39)

For glowing skin and under-eyes that mirror a full ten hours of sleep, try GlamGlow's new formula. It features illuminating spheres to brighten up dullness and darkness, caffeine to tighten and lift, hyaluronic acid to plump and moisturize, and last but not least peptides to diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Tula Skincare Glow & Get It Cooling & Brightening Eye Balm ($28)

Technically, this circle-eraser is a balm and not a cream, but please bear with meit works! Like, so, so good. You know those mornings when for whatever reason you wake up feeling like you've been hit by a freight train? Sweeping this cooling, aloe-, and caffeine-infused stick all around your eye area feels almost as good as a deep tissue marathon post-Barry's Bootcamp. (Oh, and there's also a radiance-enhancingRose Glow version FYI!)

SkinMedica Instant Bright Eye Cream ($88)

Did you know Hailey Bieber (and a slew of other celebs) is a huge fan of this brand? I don't know if miss HB has tried this brightening eye cream from SkinMedica, but if not, I personally recommend she get on that. It's brimming with tons of great ingredients like phenylethyl resorcinol (which helps to support melanin balance and correct hyperpigmentation), a hyaluronic acid blend for hydration, marine extracts to supporta healthy skin barrier, plus all the other good stuff for blue and purple under-eyes like caffeine, Persian silk tree extract, and St. Pauls Wort which aidvascular and lymphatic function for a firmer, more radiant result.

Versed Zero-G Smoothing Eye Cream ($18)

My 73-year-old mom and I agreethis affordably priced eye cream from clean skincare brand Versed, is seriously spectacular. I immediately noticed how it diminished the severity of my dark circles post-flight when I visited home recently, and my mom agreed that it reduced her puff, wrinkles, so on and so forth.

Belif Moisturizing Eye Bomb ($48)

This eye cream isn't actually touted as an eye cream for dark circles. That said, it's one of the most deeply hydrating formulas I've ever tested and due that insane moisture, I notice that my under-eys look less dried and skeletal and brighter, dewier, and plumper instead. It's a lightweight, very soothing formula that boasts a whopping 26-hour span of hydration endurance. It's one to throw in your basket the next time you find yourself wandering the aisles of Sephora.

Up next,How to Get Rid of Dark Circles Like an A-List Esthetician

This article originally appeared on Who What Wear

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I Average 5 Hours of Sleep, But No One Knows Thanks to These 15 Eye Creams - Yahoo Lifestyle

Meticulous Research a leading global market research company published a research report titled In-Vitro Toxicology/Toxicity Testing Market by Product& Service, Technology (Cell Culture, OMICS), Method (Cell-based Assays, In-Silico), End-point (ADME, Genotoxicity, Organ Toxicity, Dermal Toxicity), End-user, and Geography Global Forecast to 2025.

According to this latest publication from Meticulous Research, the globalin-vitro toxicology testing marketis expected to grow at a CAGR of 9% from 2019 to reach $14.4 billion by 2025.

Download Free Sample Copy Of The Report:: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/download-sample-report/cp_id=5047

Key questions answered in the report-

Which are the high growth market segments in terms of product & service, technology, method, end-point, end-user, and region/countries?

What was the historical market size for in vitro toxicology testing across the globe?

What are the market forecasts and estimates for the period 2019-2025?

What are the major drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges in the global in vitro toxicology testing market?

Who are the major players in the global in vitro toxicology testing market?

How is the competitive landscape and who are the market leaders in the global in vitro toxicology testing market?

What are the recent developments in the global in vitro toxicology testing market?

What are the different strategies adopted by the major players in the global in vitro toxicology testing market?

What are the geographical trends and high growth regions/ countries?

Who are the local emerging players in the global in vitro toxicology testing market and how do they compete with the global players?

Have Any Query? Ask Our Expert https://www.meticulousresearch.com/speak-to-analyst/cp_id=5047

The growth of this market is driven by factors, such as ethical issues and pressure from animal activists groups concerning the use of animals for testing, ban on animal testing on cosmetic products, support from regulatory bodies regarding the approval of in-vitro tests, low costs associated with in-vitro toxicology testing, and advancements in in-vitro methodologies. Moreover, synergetic relationships between various stakeholders in the industry and increasing toxicology databases to facilitate the use of in-vitro test methods are expected to offer significant growth opportunities for the players operating in this market.

The global in-vitro toxicology testing market study presents historical market data in terms of value (2018), estimated current data (2019), and forecasts for 2025-by product & service (equipment, assay kits, consumables, software, services), technology (cell culture technologies, high-throughput screening technologies, OMICS technologies), method (cell-based assays, biochemical assays, in-silico, ex-vivo), end-point (ADME; skin irritation, corrosion, sensitization; genotoxicity; cytotoxicity; ocular toxicity; organ toxicity; phototoxicity; and dermal toxicity), end-user (pharmaceutical & biotechnology industries, cosmetics industry, food industry, and chemical industry). The study also evaluates industry competitors and analyzes the market at a regional and country level.

You Can Directly Buy This Report From Here:: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/buy_now.php?pformat=348&vformat=1030

(Get key industry insights spread across 189 pages with 120 market data tables & 30 figures & charts from the report)

On the basis of product, the consumables segment is estimated to dominate the overall in-vitro toxicology testing market in 2019, mainly due to increasing number of in-vitro tests being performed across the globe leading to recurrent purchase of reagents and other labware. However, the software segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The high growth of this segment can be attributed to increasing computer models and algorithms being developed to predict toxicity of test substances.

On the basis of technology, the cell culture technologies segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the in-vitro toxicology testing market in 2019, owing to growing adoption of 3D cell culture and stem cell models for toxicity testing.

On the basis of method, the in-vitro toxicology testing market is sub-segmented into cell-based assays, biochemical assays, in silico testing, and ex vivo testing. Cell-based assays segment is estimated to command the largest share of the in-vitro toxicology testing market in 2019. Advancements in cell-based technologies such as high-content screening and label-free detection are the key factors attributed to the large share of this segment in the overall market.

On the basis of end point, the ADME segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the overall in-vitro toxicology testing market in 2019. This is primarily attributed to the increasing number of early stage in-vitro ADME screening tests to prevent failure at later stage.

On the basis of end user, the in vitro toxicology testing market is segmented into pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, cosmetics, food industry, and chemical industry. The pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the overall in-vitro toxicology testing market in 2019. This is primarily attributed to increasing drug attrition rates and growing adoption of early in-vitro preclinical safety testing to filter out molecules with a higher potential for toxicity. However, the cosmetics industry segment is expected to grow at a higher rate owing to the ban on use of animals for testing toxicity of cosmetics and its ingredients.

Here are the top Market companies in the world:: https://meticulousblog.org/top-10-companies-in-in-vitro-toxicology-toxicity-testing-market/

Key Players::

In-vitro toxicology testing market is a highly consolidated in nature, wherein 3 major players Thermo Fisher Scientific (US), Merck (Germany), and GE Healthcare (US) accounted for major share of the global in-vitro toxicity testing market. Other key players operating in this market are Bio-Rad Laboratories (US), SGS SA (Switzerland), Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (U.S.), Qiagen N.V. (Netherlands), and Eurofins Scientific (Luxembourg), among others.

Geographical Analysis::

This research report analyzes major geographies and provides comprehensive analysis of Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Spain, and RoE), North America (U.S., Canada), Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, India,and RoAPAC), Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Europe commanded the largest share of the global in-vitro toxicology testing market, followed by North America and Asia Pacific (APAC). The large share of this region is mainly attributed to the factors such as ban on animal testing for cosmetics and its ingredients, and government initiatives to promote the reduction of use of animals for toxicity testing. Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period of 2019 to 2025, owing to increasing biotech investments in this region and growing collaborations between local and foreign companies.

Download Free Sample Copy Of The Report:: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/download-sample-report/cp_id=5047

Related Reports::

1Veterinary Immunodiagnostics Market Size by Product (Analysers, Consumables), by technology (ELISA, Radioimmunoassay, Rapid tests, and others), by animal type [Livestock (Cattle, Pigs, Poultry) and Companion (Feline, Canine, Equine)], by application (Infectious diseases, autoimmune disorder, endocrinology & oncology, and bone & mineral diseases), and by End-user Global Forecasts to 2022

2 Cancer Immunotherapy Market By Type (Monoclonal Antibodies, Checkpoint Inhibitors, Immunomodulators, Vaccines, Cell Therapy), Application (Lung, Breast, Multiple Myeloma, Colorectal, Melanoma, Prostate), and End User- Global Forecast to 2024

3 Competent Cells Market by Type (Cloned Competent Cells, Agrobacterium Tumefaciens Competent Cells, and Expression Competent Cells), Treatment (Chemically Competent Cells and Electrocompetent Cells), Application (Cloning, Protein Expression, others), and by End User (Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry, Academic and Research Institutes, and Contract Research Organizations) Global Forecasts to 2023

About Meticulous Research

The name of our company defines our services, strengths, and values. Since the inception, we have only thrived to research, analyze and present the critical market data with great attention to details. Meticulous Research was founded in 2010 and incorporated as Meticulous Market Research Pvt. Ltd. in 2013 as a private limited company under the Companies Act, 1956. Since its incorporation, with the help of its unique research methodologies, the company has become the leading provider of premium market intelligence in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa regions.

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In-Vitro Toxicology/Toxicity Testing Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 9% From 2019 to Reach $ - PharmiWeb.com

Going gray is a natural part of getting older. It typically starts with a small streak of white in the hair or beard, a sign that a man has reached a certain level of maturity and is now on that steady, inevitable decline to the grave. Hell, it is even conceivable (and highly likely) that some of you might even pluck one of those pale bastards out of your pube patch one night while trying to determine if the source of a vicious case of crotch itch is the crabs or just dry skin. Listen, all were saying is dont be surprised if, within the next few years, you find yourself staring down at your junk, thinking about how that lustrous man bush of yours is starting to resemble Colonel Sanders with a skinless chicken leg dangling out of his mouth. It happens to the best of us.

But hey, getting old isnt always indicative of a silver coiffure. I knew a guy back in high school who had more gray hair on his head than my 73-year-old father does now. So, it seems that age alone isnt always the culprit. In fact, it has been long since believed that stress also plays a critical role in making some men look distinguished beyond their years. Well, come to find out, the concept of stressful events turning us into gray beasts before we are officially deemed DILFs is probably real. Only science says it really comes down to how our fight or flight response is triggered throughout the years that determine when our manes will be deprived of color.

Researchers at Harvards Stem Cell Institute believe they have found a direct correlation between stress and going gray. They recently published a study in the journal Nature, which shows that three kinds of extreme stress mild, short-term pain, psychological stress, and restricted movement has a way of bringing around the gray quicker than what would happen under natural circumstances. At least that is the conclusion reached by lead researcher Dr. Ya-Chieh Hsu and team after putting a legion of mice through the wringer and watching for their response.

The graying process happens as pigment cells called melanocytes start to fade from our hair follicles. Its just that over time, these cells become less prevalent and we begin brandishing that salt and pepper look popularized by legendary screen stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

Eventually, however, all of those cells fade into extinction and our hair just goes completely white, we start receiving AARP benefits and eating apple sauce with every meal. Yet, researchers say that stress can cause these cells to fade out quicker than theyre supposed to long before we start collecting social security and yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off our lawn.

Without getting overly scientific about it, researchers found that high stress seems to produce elevated levels of a chemical in the brain known as noradrenaline. Its one of the kick-ass substances manufactured by the adrenal gland when a persons fight or flight response starts firing on all cylinders. Thats the real culprit to early aging, researchers concluded. They say that once mice were injected with this chemical, they began losing melanocytes and going gray. And the transformation didnt take long either. It turns out that stress can zap our hair color in a matter of days.

When we started to study this, I expected that stress was bad for the body but the detrimental impact of stress that we discovered was beyond what I imagined, Hsu said in a statement. After just a few days, all of the melanocyte stem cells were lost. Once theyre gone, you cant regenerate pigments anymore. The damage is permanent.

While it might be challenging to manage stress in a way that keeps us looking young forever, there is a silver-lining here, boys. Women, presumably the root of all of that premature grayness in the first place, are especially hot for this look. Seriously, a recent survey from Match.com finds that 72 percent of the women on the dating scene find men with gray hair more attractive than those with darker dos. Other studies on the subject have turned out similar results. The only caveat is that women are really only turned on by the gray as long as it doesnt make the man look old. This has something to do with them wanting to feel like a guy can provide some safety and security without having to worry about changing his diapers down the road.

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Getting Gray Hair Early Actually Can Mean You Are Stressed The F*ck Out - BroBible

Stephanie Singleton for BuzzFeed News

Do you miss being a scientist? some people ask.

Sometimes.

When people talk about science, they usually mean people in white lab coats doing things, like solving equations on the board or preparing solutions in beakers. What they mean is science as this crude mechanism of discovery by which humans refine over decades and centuries a small kernel of knowing. What they mean is grant dollars. What they mean is wild hair. What they mean is clean, aseptic, analytical. Brainy little robot people. White.

I try to be honest about my time in science about the feeling of satisfaction I had when I plotted all of my confocal data and there was a beautiful curve depicting the drop-off in signal as one moved further down the tissue of the gonad. I think about the calculations we did on scraps of paper to check the ratios of inheritance of the genes we introduced. I think of the little side room where we took our coffee and bagels. I think of the feeling of friendship and family that comes with being in a big lab, where everyone has a place, a role, an expertise, a skill. I remember the surprise I felt when people started to come to me because I knew something, because I could help. And how rare that was for me.

For the better part of several years, I saw my labmates every day. For hours and hours. Every holiday, every break, we stayed. We worked. We supported each other. We fought. We feuded. We gossiped. We threw parties for each other. We celebrated. We said goodbye at graduations and retirements. There were people who supported me and cherished me and looked after me. People who treated me like I mattered. A lab is a family. In a way.

Science was beautiful and it was wild and it was unknowable. Science was spending days and weeks on a single experiment with no way to know if it would work and no real way to tell if it had worked. Science was like trying to find your way to a dark forest only to realize that you had always been inside of the forest and that the forest is inside of another, greater, darker forest. Science was laughing with my labmates about television the night before, about the song of the summer, about tennis, about the unruly nature of mold growing on our plates, about cheap wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. Science was being taught to think. Taught to speak. Science was a finishing school. Science was a brutal education. Science made me ruthless. Science made me understand the vast beauty of the world.

But science was also working 15 hours a day for weeks or months. Science was working weekends and holidays. Science was being called lazy for taking a break. Science was the beat of doubting silence after I answered a question put to me. Science was being told that racism was not racism. Science was being told that I was fortunate that I had running water while growing up and that I was actually privileged because there are some places that do not. Science was being told that I was mistaken for a waiter at a party because I had worn a black sweater. Science was being told that I had to work harder despite working my hardest. Science was being told that I talked too much. Science was being told that I was too loud. Science was being told that I was behind, always behind. Science was being told that I had failed but had been gifted a pass by virtue of who you are. Science was being told that I had never once been to class despite attending every session and office hour because I was mistaken for someone else.

Science was being the only black person in the program for four years. Science was saying nothing because I was tired of being corrected about the particulars of my own experience. Science was being told that I should consider moving to the other side of town where more black people live. Science was someone suggesting that I find a church in order to find community. Science was having my hair stroked and touched. Science was being told that I was articulate. Science was watching peoples eyes widen slightly in surprise when I told them what program I was in. Science was the constant humiliation of wondering if I had justified my presence or if I had made it harder for the next black person to get admitted. Science was having to worry about that in the first place.

Science was a place I ultimately left, not so much because I wanted to, but because I had to. Science is not being able to say that because I reflexively feel the rebuttal waiting on the other end of that sentence: You could have made it work if you wanted it enough. Science is not knowing whether I wanted it enough.

Does science influence your writing?

Oh, sure. I guess.

Do you write science fiction?

No, I write domestic realism.

After the above exchange, people sometimes look at me like Im joking and at any moment will drop the faade to reveal that I do in fact write and love science fiction, after all.

But no, I do not write science fiction. I think that if people knew more scientists and spent significant time in their company, they would understand that the worst possible preparation for a career as a science fiction writer is an intensive science education. My training as a scientist makes it difficult to absent myself in the way I need to in order to write good fiction. I can never turn off the part of my brain that knows about protein folding or microscopy or tissue preparation or stem cells or physics or chemistry. Writing science fiction would be an extended exercise in pedantry.

People presume that science and writing are quite different. But they are both ways of knowing. They are ways of understanding the greater mystery of the world. They are systems of knowledge and inquiry. I do not understand something until I have written it, or more accurately put, until I have written my way through it.

Science was being the only black person in the program for four years. Science was saying nothing because I was tired of being corrected about the particulars of my own experience.

I think in many ways, the best preparation for a writer is a period of prolonged and rigorous thought about a difficult and complicated question. You learn to assemble your resources. You learn to fight with yourself. You learn to quarrel on the page with your worst ideas and with the ones you hold dearest. You treat your expectations with suspicion. You demand proof. You demand evidence. You think hard about the alternate hypothesis or other explanations, and you devise strategies to root these out. You learn to live with doubt. You try to prove yourself wrong. You look for places where you have been too soft. Too vague. You eliminate language that contains falsehoods. You eliminate language that can mislead your reader. You ask questions. You pursue answers with all the energy you can muster. You try to put language to what it is you observe. You develop a stamina for iteration. You develop a thick skin. You learn to seek criticism. You treat criticism like kindness. You churn the raw material of life into something that can be understood, and when you fail, you marvel at the mystery of things.

Do you miss science?

Yes. No. Yes. No.

Sometimes, when I dont feel well, I consider the question of how to derive an expression for the degradation of a molecular species in a particular tissue under a given set of circumstances. Old calculus. I turn to YouTube lectures from MIT about thermodynamics. I think of my first winter in Madison, Wisconsin.

The first snowfall was in October. It had been a hot, rainy summer, so much so that the weather seemed to turn all at once with very little warning. I was either in the middle or at the start of my second rotation as a biochemistry graduate student, working in a biophysical chemistry lab and spending most of my day in the windowless instrument facility in the basement. My project was to deduce the effect of protein concentration on the ability of a polymer of DNA to wind itself. I spent a lot of time pipetting various liquids into each other in little cuvettes, slotting them into a machine, and then waiting for the reading. It was the kind of work to which I felt ideally suited, and I could have gone on that way forever. I had recently moved to the Midwest from Alabama to pursue a PhD, and it seemed as likely as anything else that I would go on pipetting and measuring the effect of things like DNA polymer length and protein concentration on DNA winding. It was as removed from the circumstances of my previous life as anything else, and so I didnt have a compelling reason to doubt that this would be the shape my life held.

But I remember sitting down at the desk in the lab and looking out the broad window. There was a large tree at the center of the courtyard that had recently turned yellow. Fall was there in name, but not in temperature. The labs were kept quite cold, and so I wore a sweater indoors and shucked it as soon as I got outside. But that day, I looked out of the window and saw snow drifting down. The flakes were thick and fluffy, and they seemed almost fake. It was the first time I had seen snow in years, and I was totally enamored by it. The other people in the lab were on edge because snow in October portended something dark and awful a hard winter, a long, brutal freeze. Where they saw inconvenient travel and slushy roads, I saw something beautiful if frivolous, a minor novelty. Winter came early that year, and it didnt end until the very beginning of the following summer. When I went to the lake on my birthday in early June, there was still ice in the water.

People presume that science and writing are quite different. But they are both ways of knowing.

When people ask me about my time in science, it is this day which presents itself to me in jewel-like clarity. It is the day something about my life altered irrevocably. Or perhaps it is that the snow has accumulated, the way all such moments do in life, the weight of meaning, of prophecy. Inevitability is an artifact of retrospection. It is because the snow represented a stark deviation from the previous course of events in my life, at the precise moment when my life was changing so wildly, that I remember it. It is not that the snow changed me, but it came at a point when I was starting not to resemble myself. I cannot use the snow to explain to people what my life was like in science. It has the whiff of superstition, folklore. It feels too much like a memory and not enough like an answer. I do not tell them about the snow or how it seemed a benediction at the outset of something I needed desperately to work.

It was only later that I realized this was wishful thinking, and that the snow was just snow.

Do you think youd ever go back to science?

That part of my life is over now.

Ive come to understand that what people want in such a situation is to have their own conceptions of the world confirmed. That is, they want me to say that when you leave science because you have written a novel and a book of stories and have decided to attend an MFA program in creative writing, you are doing something that is antithetical to science. People presume that it is akin to picking up and leaving your home in the middle of the night under great duress, never to return. What they want is the spectacle of the forgotten treasured item, the confirmation that something has been lost, perhaps forever.

I think if people knew what it was that I left, then theyd know better than to ask. It would be like asking someone if they were sad to have left their home with no prospect of returning. It would be like asking someone if they were sad to have left their faith behind. It would be like asking someone if they were sad to have given up some fundamental idea about who they are. It would be like asking someone if they were sad to have watched their life burn to the ground. It would be like asking someone if they were sad to have left their family and friends.

They would mind their own business if they knew.

But they do not know, and so they say things like Science, wow, thats so cool, like, do you miss it?

And I smile because that is what I have learned to do. Because explaining is too hard. Too messy. There is no clean or easy or simple way to make it known to others that I left because I had to, because it was necessary to leave that I do miss it, but I also dont because Im still that person but not that person, that every day I remind myself less of the person I was then. Its sad, like losing a memory of myself, and all those years are lost to me now, all the little tricks and habits of home dropping down and away, as I become this other person known for this other thing, and its too much in the moment to say that I miss it both more and less every day, that I become a person more capable of appreciating what is lost in the grand scheme of things but less a person who knows what it is Ive actually lost, and that there is some painful, brutal, awful misalignment in the scale of those two losses.

When people ask if I miss science, the only answer available to me is an incomplete solution to the problem: Yes. No. Sometimes. Its over now.

Brandon Taylor is the senior editor of Electric Literatures Recommended Reading and a staff writer at Literary Hub. His writing has earned him fellowships from Lambda Literary Foundation, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop in fiction. Learn more about his first novel Real Life here.

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Working In Science Was A Brutal Education. Thats Why I Left. - BuzzFeed News

Space has been a straightforward business so far: launch it; turn it on; hope it works; avoid the stray piece of space junk; let it die. Now, a more complex space economy is on the horizon, with maintenance spacecraft, repair robots, garbage removal trucks and even orbital manufacturing depots.

Thisyear is set to see history made with the first ever servicing operation on an in-orbit satellite. Robotic orbital trouble-shooters, which are expected to pave the way for a new era of space robotics, will one day shuttle malfunctioning spacecraft back and forth, refuel them, perform basic repairs or serve as temporary propulsion and steering units.

Satellites are a crucial component of 21st-century technology infrastructure. Wedepend on them for weather forecasting and climate monitoring, telecoms, navigation and a plethora of scientific and emerging applications. Satellites are often costly to build and launch, and once in orbit, little can be done to upgrade, inspect or fix them. If all goes well, operators can get up to 20 years service from their assets. If unexpected problems occur, the investment might go to waste.

The first ever in-orbit servicing spacecraft, the Mission Extension Vehicle 1 (MEV-1), built by Space Logistics, a wholly owned subsidiary of American aerospace giant Northrup Grumman, is set to perform the first automated docking between two commercial satellites. Upon completing this manoeuvre, it willcommence the equally pioneering task of extending the life of an ageing telecommunications satellite of US operator Intelsat.

The demonstration will take place in the so-called graveyard orbit about 200km above the geostationary ring, an orbit at the altitude of 36,000km, where spacecraft appear suspended above a certain spot on Earth. Sought after by operators of meteorological and telecommunications satellites, the geostationary orbit is one of the busiest regions of space. To keep it tidy for future users, operators are obliged to move their spacecraft into the graveyard at the end of each mission.

This mission represents many industry firsts, Joe Anderson, vice president of business development and operations at Space Logistics, tells E&T. We are using many new technologies and because there are some concerns, we decided to perform the demonstration in the graveyard orbit.

MEV-1, which launched in mid-October 2019 from Russias cosmodrome Baikonur inKazakhstan, raises itself into the geostationary graveyard orbit from the so-called geostationary transfer orbit, where it has been left by the launcher, using its electric thrusters. In the graveyard orbit, the service vehicle will meet its client, Intelsats IS901. Intelsats operators have moved the craft into the graveyard orbit using its onboard propulsion system ahead of the demonstration.

IS901 is an 18-year-old veteran. Under normal circumstances, the satellite would soon reach the end of its life, but Intelsat hopes that MEV-1 could add at least five years to its mission. The servicing spacecraft, which will autonomously approach and attach itself to IS901, will first move the satellite into a new slot in the geostationary orbit and then use its thrusters to maintain its position and attitude for the duration of the mission. At the end of the five-year period, MEV-1 will push IS901 back to the graveyard orbit before disconnecting and moving on to another client.

Space Logistics, previously part of Orbital ATK, acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2018, spent ten years developing technologies for the mission at the companys Rendezvous, Proximity, Operations and Docking (RPOD) laboratory.

In this laboratory, we have a number of very large industrial robots that we are using as puppeteers for the mock-up of the MEV, says Anderson. We used that laboratory to develop prototypes and test our software algorithms and sensors that are used to do the rendezvous and docking.

Space Logistics reused some of the technologies developed by Orbital ATK originally for the Cygnus spacecraft, one of the cargo vehicles resupplying the International Space Station (ISS). Cygnus, however, doesnt dock autonomously but is captured by the stations robotic arm and berthed to the stations Harmony module. While the ISS has dedicated docking and berthing ports, MEV-1 will have to be able to attach to satellites that were not designed with orbital docking in mind.

The MEV does that by taking advantage of two features that are, according to Anderson, on 80 per cent of geostationary satellites currently in orbit the so-called liquid apogee engine and the launcher adapter ring.

Before the start of the manoeuvre, MEV-1 circles around the target a few times and inspects it with its visible, infrared and lidar sensors, Anderson explains. It then positions itself 500m behind the target and waits for a command from the ground control team to start the approach, which is very slow.

At the distance of one metre from the target, MEV-1 deploys a probe, which enters through the liquid apogee engine into the client satellite. Inside, the probe deploys its fingers in order not to slip out. MEV-1 pulls the probe back and the two satellites are brought together, with the launcher adapter ring on the client satellite pressed against three stanchions on the MEV.

We end up with a very simple push-pull tension where we are pulling at the centre of that liquid apogee engine and we are pushing against the launcher adaptor ring and thats what clasps the two vehicles together, says Anderson. From that point onward, the MEV takes over the attitude and orbit control of the combined vehicle stack.

As an idea, in-orbit servicing has been around for almost 20 years, according to Anderson. The technology, however, didnt make economic sense before. The cost was too high and the risks considerable. On top of that, operators would prefer to replace their ageing systems with modern, more efficient ones. However, the tide has turned, space has become more cluttered and cost-cutting became more of an interest. The idea of prolonging the life of existing satellites instead of building and launching new ones came to the fore.

Future developments

In-orbit servicing presents only the first step towards a future that resembles what once would have been science fiction. Robotic manufacturing in space and orbital assembly of spacecraft, too, is getting closer to reality. US company Made in Space is developing a space robot called Archinaut One that will enable manufacturing of large structures for space in space.

Made in Space received $73.7m of Nasa funding for the Archinaut pilot project, which is expected to fly to space in 2022.

Fitted with a cutting-edge space-qualified 3D printer and robotic manipulator arms, Archinaut will print, assemble and deploy its own operational solar array, which, the company says, will be five times more efficient than regular solar panels used on todays spacecraft.

In the future, such orbital robots could build various components for existing satellites such as super-powerful antennas, radar booms, extra-large solar panels and others. The robots could also assemble entire telescopes larger than those that are possible to launch from Earth. Larger telescopes mean greater advances in scientific understanding. The ability to manufacture in space means considerably lower cost since the cost of launch from Earth represents a large portion of the overall cost of space exploration and utilisation.

There have been lots of new activities behind space sustainability in the last few years and I think we will see more resources being put into resolving the potential risks in orbit, says Daniel Campbell, managing director of Effective Space, a UK-based start-up developing what they call space drones, small satellites that would provide life-extension services similar to those offered by Space Logistics.

The company is part of the Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations (CONFERS), led by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which aims to develop operations standards for in-orbit servicing.

Effective Space, which hopes to launch its maiden mission in 2021, relies on a 111.5m platform, designed to extend the life of a satellite by up to 18 years. Space Logistics MEV-1, for comparison, based on a standard platform for geostationary satellites, comes in a larger 3.02.12.3m package.

Just like MEV-1, Effective Spaces drones will be able to detach and serve multiple satellites within their designed lifespan.

Campbell says that in addition to the growing sustainability concerns, in-orbit servicing would be handy as satellite operators await the arrival of low Earth orbit mega-constellations a new and unproven technology for telecommunications.

Many of the operators are waiting to see the impact of these deployments on the geo business, Campbell says. That incentivises them to hold off any replacement satellites and they see life extension as a potential gap filler.

DARPA envisions that robotic in-orbit servicing technology could in the future reduce the cost of geostationary satellites, which currently need to be packed with back-up systems just to ensure the missions success. That obviously increases complexity, weight and cost. In the future,new payloads could be installed as and when required by the robotic service vehicles.

Campbell says Effective Space is also looking at the possibility of using in-orbit servicing in the low Earth orbit (LEO), the area closest to the Earth up to the altitude of 2,000km, which is the most congested and set to become even more cluttered with the arrival of mega-constellations. The business case in LEO, however, will be more difficult to prove. LEO satellites tend to be smaller, cheaper and usually designed with shorter lifespans in mind compared to the geostationary platforms.

Its part of the number-crunching that needs to make sense, Campbell adds. But perhaps the incentive to use these services will not be purely economic but part of licensing requirements that will oblige the operators to safely dispose of their satellites before deploying new ones to LEO.

Space industry consultancy Northern Sky Research predicts that the in-orbit servicing market will be worth $3bn (2.3bn) by 2028 with life extension driving most of the revenue. Chris Brunskill, head of Access to Space at UK Satellite Applications Catapult, compares the current situation in space to the worlds procrastination around climate change and plastic pollution.

At the moment, we are getting away with it, he says. Mostly, it wont be a problem during our lives, but it will be something the next generation will have to worry about. The market is first going to grow very slowly, but as we start to see larger constellations, the need to manage those is going to increasingly grow the need for commercial debris mitigation and in-orbit servicing capabilities and companies.

The UK hopes to carve a slice from the prospective in-orbit servicing pie and has recently launched what is to become the UKs National In-orbit Servicing and Operations Centre in Harwell, Oxfordshire.

There are about half a dozen companies in the UK exploring in-orbit servicing, says Brunskill. That includes start-ups but also some of the established businesses such as Airbus. We are trying to establish the UK as a global centre of excellence and capabilities for debris mitigation and in-orbit servicing. With this facility we want to remove some of the roadblocks for those companies to develop their services.

The Space Applications Catapult has developed the facility in cooperation with the Japan-headquartered start-up Astroscale, which will conduct the worlds first commercial active space debris removal mission, the End-of-Life Service by Astroscale (ELSA) mission, from here in 2020.

Northrup Grumman, in the meantime, is already developing its next-generation in-orbit servicing vehicle, which will enable larger-scale operations and lower the cost of the service. The rendezvous operations will be carried out by the Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV), essentially an upgraded MEV fitted with a robotic arm. The actual propulsion and attitude control function for the client satellite will be provided by the Mission Extension Pods (MEP), smaller and cheaper units that will be installed by the MRV.

The more complex and expensive MRV will be able to install multiple MEPs in a short period of time as well as other augmentation payloads. Northrop Grumman says the MRV will even be able to perform simple repairs and perform detail inspections of the client spacecraft. *

Regulation

The biggest challenge for in-orbit servicing and robotic space operations is not in the engineering and technology field but rather in the legal and regulatory domain. A whole new set of regulations, licensing regimes and insurance policies will be needed for the technology to fully take off.

The regulatory environment is not developed for this type of activity in space, says Anderson. There are regulatory and licensing regimes for the remote sensing of the Earth and for telecommunications, but to do a service like this is something completely new and different.

Space insurers similarly struggle to fit this type of new commercial service into their existing schemes, Anderson adds.

The space insurance market is accustomed to insuring things like geostationary communication satellites but now when we are going to rendezvous and dock in orbit and bring these two vehicles together, it has brought a new challenge, he says. If there was a problem in orbit, who would be liable? How would one calculate what the insurance claim would be?

Brunskill adds that in the UK work is under way to fill these regulatory gaps and update regulations to match the latest technology developments.

I think that the regulatory infrastructure will probably lag behind the commercial need for this, he says. But companies operating mega-constellations will need these services to maintain their own spacecraft, otherwise they would be their own worst enemy.

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A new era of space robotics, 36000km above Earth - E&T Magazine

Batteries

Published on February 18th, 2020 | by Guest Contributor

February 18th, 2020 by Guest Contributor

Photo by Zach Shahan, CleanTechnica

MILWAUKEEThe Responsible Battery Coalition (RBC) a leading coalition of companies, academics and organizations dedicated to the responsible management and environmental sustainability of batteries applauded research published today by the University of Michigan (U-M) in theJournal of Energy Storageon best practices for consumers for extending the life of lithium-ion batteries, as well as the cost savings associated with minimizing degradation. The link to the paper can be foundhere.

This research is the second phase of work conducted by U-M and supported by RBC. The first phase was published in May 2019 and outlined ten Green Principles for Vehicle Energy Storage (Green Principles)that represent a comprehensive set of recommendations to guide mobile battery deployment and technology development from an environmental perspective, particularly defining best practices for minimizing the environmental impact of electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

In the new research published today, the U-M team expands onGreen Principle #6 todesign and operate battery systems to maximize service life and limit degradation by outlining nine consumer best practices for extending battery life to decrease costs and reduce environmental burdens associated with the production of new batteries. The new best practices address material consumption, mining impacts and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the disposal of used batteries.

As the nation and world shift to economies powered by batteries, it is paramount as responsible stewards of the environment that we extend the life of all types of batteries, particularly those in our cars and trucks, saidSteve Christensen, executive director of the Responsible Battery Coalition. This work by such a respected research institution as the University of Michigan is an important first step toward creating a generational change in how consumers use and manage batteries.

The International Energy Agency has predicted that 125 million electric vehicles will be on roads globally by 2030.The RBC seeks to develop a circular economy for batteries that ensures that they are part of the solution in creating a more sustainable environment.

Many of the recommended practices discovered by the U-M research team are related to three main variables that impact battery health: temperature, state of charge, and current. Specific recommendations in the findings include:

As the mobile electronics and EV industries continue to grow, even small improvements in lifetime extension will have significant environmental benefits, the authors of theJournal of Energy Storagepaper wrote.

By minimizing exposure to the conditions that accelerate degradation, batteries can last longer. And this has a positive environmental impact, as battery production is a source of greenhouse gas emissions and many other pollutants, said study corresponding authorGreg Keoleian, director of the U-M Center for Sustainable Systems at the School for Environment and Sustainability.

Additionally, there are significant financial incentives for users to avoid adverse conditions, as the cost of lithium-ion batteries can range from 5% to over 50% of a products cost,Keoleiansaid.

As an organization whose members include the worlds largest battery manufacturer and recycler, leading automotive aftermarket retailers, and some of the largest auto producers and transportation fleet owners, were proud to have been able to support this research to help both industry and consumers get maximum life and value out of their lithium-ion battery products, addedChristensen.

In developing its list of nine best practices for lithium-ion battery life extension, U-M researchers, supported by the RBC, based their search on a range of sources, including academic publications, manufacturers user manuals, and open-source consumer information from customer-support websites.

Research Details

In addition to the academic literature reviewed, researchers also surveyed publicly available information from manufacturers, looking for instructions, guidance, warnings or tips regarding the use and maintenance of lithium-ion batteries.

Those companies included 10 cell phone manufacturers (Apple, Google, HTC, Huawei, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony and ZTE), 10 laptop manufacturers (Acer, Apple, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Samsung and Toshiba), four power tool manufacturers (Bosch, DeWalt, Makita and Milwaukee Tool), and 10 electric vehicle manufacturers, including RBC members Ford Motor Company and Honda.

Authors of theJournal of Energy Storagepaper, in addition to Keoleian, are Maxwell Woody, Maryam Arbabzadeh and Geoffrey M. Lewis of the U-M Center for Sustainable Systems and Anna Stefanopoulou of the U-M Energy Institute.

Read the paper: Strategies to limit degradation and maximize Li-ion battery service critical review and guidance for stakeholdershttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352152X19314227?dgcid=author

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Tags: Acer, Apple, asus, dell, Google, hp, HTC, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Responsible Battery Coalition, samsung, SONY, toshiba, U-M Center for Sustainable Systems, U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, ZTE

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Responsible Battery Coalition Applauds University of Michigan Research on Lithium-Ion Battery Degradation Calls Research Important Step in Educating...

Triangle Energy (Global) Limited (ASX: TEG) is an oil production & exploration company, based in Perth, Western Australia. It is currently the registered operator of the producing Cliff Head Oil Field with a 78.75% interest, in addition to a 45% JV interest in the Xanadu-1 Joint Venture oil discovery (TP/15) and a 50% interest in the Mt Horner Production Licence (L7(R1)1). Additionally, TEG holds a 33.34% equity interest in State Gas Limited (ASX: GAS).

The Cliff Head operations, located almost 10 kilometres off the Western Australian coast at a water depth of 15-20 metres, was the first commercial oil operation to be developed in the offshore Perth basin and commenced production in May 2006. The current production license WA-31-L covers over 72km, with the field spreading more than 6km. It includes the one and only offshore Cantilevered jack-up rig and offshore Arrowsmith stabilisation plant in the underexplored Perth basin.

Increased Production: Increasing Throughput, Reduced Costs

During late-2019, the CH-13 well at the Cliff Head field recommenced production, following replacement of an electrical submersible pump, to boost up the Cliff Head field production over 1,000 bopd stable rate.

Source: Triangle Energy & Kalkine Research

Interesting Read: Triangle Energys Cliff Head Oil Field Exceeds 1,000bopd; Are the Share Prices Justified?

The anticipated rise in demand for sweeter crude has boosted margins over the Brent Crude prices in the recent quarters, considering IMO 2020, which restricted the usage of marine fuels with a sulphur content higher than 0.5%.

In July 2018, Triangle Energy (Operations) Pty Ltd, a TEG subsidiary, took over the operations as the registered operator, focussing on maximising the operating margins and the economic life of the offshore Cliff Head Alpha platform, and onshore Arrowsmith Stabilisation Plant.

Cliff Head Renewal Project

During 2019, Triangle progressed on the target identification to further expand the production capacity and economic life of Cliff Head operations. TEG prioritised prospective areas close to the Cliff Head platform with the possibility of operating them with minimum capital requirements.

As Triangle Energy enjoys stable production from Cliff Head operations after the recommencement of CH-13 well, ramping up the daily production to more than a 1,000 barrels of oil, the Company continues its quest to identify and evaluate new promising lands in and around the existing Cliff Head platform.

Several workovers, infill and satellite drilling opportunities within the range of the Cliff Head's Cantilevered jack-up rig were identified during the asset reviewal studies in the first half of 2019. A detailed evaluation for the appraisal of the opportunities followed by the investment decision (Cliff Head Renewal Project) commenced in mid-2019.

The current reserves for the Cliff Head field stand at 1.71 MMstb or Million stock tank barrels (as at 30 June 2019) and will add an additional 2C Contingent Resource of 3.13 MMstb on approval of the final investment decision for the upcoming projects.

The company launched the Cliff Head Renewal program with three prime objectives, which are-

The opportunities for Cliff Head Renewable Project include

The reprocessing of the 3D seismic data was completed at the end of December 2019, with the interpretation of the data planned during early 2020. The final investment decision of the projects would follow the validation from the geological data for which the reprocessing of 3D seismic data was completed in December with interpretation of the data to be revised soon, to build an advanced geological model of the field.

The final investment decision on the prioritised targets is still awaited and could lead to the economic life extension and increased throughput from the Cliff Head operations. The Company plans to start the Cliff Head Renewal Project development well drilling either during 4Q20 or 1Q21.

On 18 February 2020 (AEDT 02:38 PM), the stock of TEG was trading at $ 0.049, up 16.667% from its previous close. The market capitalisation of the Company stood at $ 15.15 million.

This website is a service of Kalkine Media Pty. Ltd. A.C.N. 629 651 672. The website has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as a complete source of information on any particular company. The above article is sponsored but NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold the stock of the company (or companies) under discussion. We are neither licensed nor qualified to provide investment advice through this platform.

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Triangle Energys Cliff Head Renewal Project: Perth Basin First Oil Operations Targeting Economic Life Extension - Kalkine Media

6 Serious Health Conditions Linked To Erectile Dysfunction

There is a connection between ED and dementia, heart disease, and other diseases.

We frequently think of erectile dysfunction as a minor consequence or side effect of getting older, and that makes sense. After all, some data show that more than half of all men ages 40 to 70 have some form of erectile dysfunction. But did you know that having difficulty getting or maintaining an erection could also be a sign of other health difficulties?

Here are six diseases linked to erectile dysfunction:

1.Stroke and Heart Attack

Erectile Dysfunction is one of the earliest symptoms of blockage in arteries, which could start to a stroke or heart attack, A Heart Attack happens when blood flow to a portion of the heart is blocked, normally by a blood clot. The damage to the heart tissue normally is made by a blocked coronary artery, which then prevents oxygen from getting to the tissue muscle of the heart. A heart attack is the most common cause of death in the US. There have been many new studies showing a relationship between erectile dysfunction and a heart condition.

A stroke occurs when a blood vein feeding the brain gets clogged or bursts. He points out that the arteries which supply the penis get blocked first because they are smaller that also within 20 and 30 percent of men who have Erectile Dysfunction have some form of unknown heart disease or blockage in their blood veins if they also have at least two other risk factors for developing a heart condition. So if you are a smoker with ED and high cholesterol, for example, you might want to ask your physician to check out your heart, too.

2.Coronary Artery Disease (CAD)

Coronary artery disease occurs when some important blood veins that provide your heart with blood, oxygen, and nutrients (coronary arteries) become injured or diseased. Cholesterol-containing deposits in your veins and infection are usually to blame for coronary artery disease. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the most common sign of heart disorder. It is the leading cause of death in the United States in both men and women.

Diseased arteries can also be an important symptom of another heart disease later on in life. One research shows having ED under the age of 45 is a major risk factor for CAD. While CAD can cause stroke and heart attack, it can also lead to heart failure and abnormal pulse. According to your physicians, presently understand that theres a link between erectile dysfunction and the lining of the blood veins, called the endothelium.

The endothelium tells the blood veins when to contract and relax, he says. The endothelium can become damaged from something like stress and tobacco usage, making it more difficult for the insulation to function accurately and for blood to reach the penis because the blood veins providing the penis are unable to relax.

3.Diabetes

Diabetes is a disease that occurs when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. Blood glucose is your main source of power and comes from the meals you eat. Diabetes has one of the most devastating influences on erectile Dysfunction for two reasons: Not only does it affect blood flow, but it also affects the nerves.

Men among with diabetes are four to six times more hopeful to develop erectile dysfunction. Diabetes can also start to strokes and heart attacks disease.

4.Dementia

Dementia is a common term applied to explain many signs of the cognitive drop, such as forgetfulness. It is a sign of various underlying disorders and brain diseases According to a 2015 research, men among erectile dysfunction are 1.69 times more possible to improve dementia than men who dont have Erectile Dysfunction.

While this research shows a relationship among erectile dysfunction and dementia, it does not truly show that dementia causes of erectile dysfunctionor vice versa. But now, there is not sufficient research to say for sure whether one causes the other. But still, he faces out that the two diseases often have some of the related risk factorslike atherosclerosis, elevated cholesterol, and diabetes, etc.

5.Prostate cancer

Prostate disease is cancer that happens in the prostate a small walnut-shaped gland in men that produces the seminal liquid that nourishes and transports sperm. This is a difficult one: When it comes to prostate cancer, two situations are occurring. Having prostate cancer it does not cause of Erectile Dysfunction, but the treatments used to fight cancerlike surgery or radiation can. He says surgery is the most frequent cause of Erectile Dysfunction in men who have prostate cancer. Aurogra 100 medicine can also help to cure Erectile Dysfunction.

When a prostate is killed, the nerves can get damaged, resulting in erectile dysfunction, he describes. Tissues and blood veins destroyed by radiation can also cause Erectile Dysfunction. It is the second-leading disease of cancer deaths for men in the U.S. About 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. This year, approximately 191,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate disease.

6.Liver disease

The more complicated the liver disorder, the more serious your odds for and the importance of Erectile Dysfunction. One research shows that Erectile Dysfunction was more prevalent in people with early-stage hepatitis C-induced liver cirrhosis than people who had a chronic hepatitis B infection.

Damaged liver function in men can result in erectile dysfunction or hypogonadism or both. We examined whether existing donor liver transplantation (LDLT) results in an increase in male sexual function.

Patients with liver disorder have raised SHBG (sex hormone-binding globulin) and less albumin, and thats a bad thingbecause [these proteins decrease your free testosterone levels, and not only can low testosterone kill your sex drive, but it also makes it more challenging to achieve an erection. Also, alcohol abuse can cause the liver disorder. That men need to limit their alcohol intake.

What you can do

Approximately 75 percent of men who have Erectile Dysfunction does not try for treatment. But they are researches that show that erectile dysfunction can be entirely changed with diet and exercise. While medicines like sildenafil (Viagra), Suhagra 100, Aurogra, Fildena, tadalafil (Cialis), can treat ED, they cannot cure it.

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6 Serious Health Conditions Linked To Erectile Dysfunction - The African Exponent

CRISPR is a powerful gene-editing technology that scientists use to change the genetic blueprint of plants and animals and even humans.

Since its development about 10 years ago, its been used to change the DNA of living things in beneficial ways creating pink tomatoes and mushrooms that dont go brown, for example, and crops that resist insect attacks.

This technology operates efficiently in virtually all cell types of organisms in which its been tested, CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview last May. It was really quite amazing how quickly it was possible to harness this technology once it was clear how it operated.

CRISPR (also known as CRISPR/Cas9) could also be used to create human designer babies with specific traits for example, a specific eye color or possibly enhanced intelligence. Most scientists have scrupulously avoided pursuing this controversial line of research, although a Chinese scientist stoked controversy in 2018 when he claimed to have used CRISPR to edit the genes of twin girls before their birth in order to make them immune to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The name CRISPR is an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, but you dont need to understand that brain-boggling term in order to understand how CRISPR works.

In short, it works by identifying a specific strand of DNA for example, the genetic instructions that determine eye color and replacing it by cutting" the original DNA and pasting in replacement DNA.

There are other gene-editing techniques, but they are slow and expensive in comparison to CRISPR. What used to take weeks or months can now be done in days with CRISPR.

Some modern CRISPR gene-editing kits, consisting of a few petri dishes, pipettes and bottles of special proteins, are small enough to keep on a shelf in the fridge and it can take as little as two days to see results.

Beyond creating better crops and hardier farm animals, CRISPR offers the tantalizing prospect of revolutionizing human health by bringing cures for genetic diseases: We are really on the threshold of a technology that is going to enable that to treat it at its source, by correcting the code in the DNA, Doudna said in a recent video.

In a series of experiments conducted a few years ago at the Broad Institute, a biomedical institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, scientists used CRISPR to improve hearing in mice with a certain form of hereditary deafness.

And in experiments at several University of California campuses published in 2016, researchers fixed defective bone marrow cells in a way that could offer a cure for sickle-cell anemia, a potentially deadly condition that affects an estimated 250 million people around the world.

Scientists are also using CRISPR in an effort to wipe out malaria by creating malaria-resistant mosquitoes, which would replace the wild populations of mosquitoes that spread the disease.

Though scientists see huge potential in CRISPR technology for treating human genetic diseases, theyve generally avoided using CRISPR to edit the genes of human embryos, citing the potential dangers of the technology and the ethical issues that surround its use for that purpose.

The actions of the Chinese researcher, He Jiankui, have drawn stern criticism from scientists and bioethicists, who called the work dangerous, unethical and even amateur. They point out that scientific knowledge of CRISPR and human genetics is far from perfect and that the twin girls could suffer as they grow up from genetic problems created by the CRISPR editing of their genes.

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What is CRISPR? - NBC News

Given that just two genes are responsible for making cats a problem for many people, it seemed like a no-brainer to engineer cats that lacked those genes, or to simply breed cats with versions of the genes that made the animals less allergenic.

But so far, itchy-eyed cat lovers have been left disappointed.

But for all those who havent given up hope, there may be new options around the corner. An allergic owner might pop open a can of allergy-fighting food for the cat. Or maybe vaccinate the cat to produce fewer allergens. And allergy shots for owners might shift from burdensome weekly or monthly injections to a shot that offers immediate relief.

The new gene-editing technology called CRISPR/Cas9 might even come to the rescue, delivering the ultimate dream to those who can afford it: a cat that doesnt produce allergens at all. One company has made some progress applying CRISPR/Cas9 to cats.

Success in taming cat allergies could bring good news for people whose allergies have nothingto do with cats. If any of the cat allergyfighting measures prove safe and effective, they could be deployed against other allergens, especially airborne ones like pollen, dog dander or dust mites.

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Dreaming of hypoallergenic cats and how CRISPR could 'come to the rescue' - Genetic Literacy Project

In August of 2011, Carl June and his team published a landmark paper showing their CART treatment had cleared a patient of cancer. A year-to-the-month later, Jennifer Doudna made an even bigger splash when she published the first major CRISPR paper, setting off a decade of intense research and sometimes even more intense public debate over the ethics of what the gene-editing tool could do.

Last week, June, whose CART work was eventually developed by Novartis into Kymriah, published in Sciencethe first US paper showing how the two could be brought together. It was not only one of the first time scientists have combined the groundbreaking tools, but the first peer-reviewed American paper showing how CRISPR could be used in patients.

June used CRISPR to edit the cells of three patients with advanced blood cancer, deleting the traditional T cell receptor and then erasing the PD1 gene, a move designed to unleash the immune cells. The therapy didnt cure the patients, but the cells remained in the body for a median of 9 months, a major hurdle for the therapy.

Endpoints caught up with June about the long road both he and the field took to get here, if the treatment will ever scale up, and where CRISPR and other advancements can lead it.

The interview has been condensed and edited.

Youve spoken in the past about howyou started working in this field in the mid-90s after your wife passed away from cancer. What were some of those early efforts? How did you start?

Well, I graduated from high school and had a low draft number [for the Vietnam War] and was going to go to study engineering at Stanford, but I was drafted and went into the Naval Academy in 1971, and I did that so I wouldnt have to go to the rice fields.

The war ended in 73, 74, so when I graduated in 1975, I was allowed to go to medical school, and then I had a long term commitment to the Navy because they paid for the Acadamy and Medical school. And I was interested in research and at the time, what the Navy cared about was a small scale nuclear disaster like in a submarine, and like what happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima. So they sent me to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center where I got trained in cancer, as a medical oncologist. I was going to open a bone marrow transplant center in Bethesda because the Navy wanted one in the event of a nuclear catastrophe.

And then in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and there was no more Cold War. I had gone back to the Navy in 86 for the transplant center, which never happened, so then I had to work in the lab full time. But in the Navy, all the research has to be about combat and casualty. They care about HIV, so my first papers were on malaria and infectious disease. And the first CAR-T trials were on HIV in the mid-90s.

In 96, my wife got diagnosed with ovarian cancer and she was in remission for 3-4 years. I moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 and started working on cancer because I wasnt allowed to do that with the Navy. My wife was obviously a lot of motivation to do that. She passed away in 2001. Then I started working with David Porter on adoptive transfer T cells.

I got my first grant to do CAR-T cells on HIV in 2004, and I learned a whole lot. I was lucky to have worked on HIV because we did the first trials using lentiviruses, which is an engineered HIV virus.

I was trained in oncology, and then because of the Navy forced to work on HIV. It was actually a blessing in disguise.

So if you hadnt been drafted, you wouldve become an engineer?

Yes. Thats what I was fully intending. My dad was a chemical engineer, my brother is an engineer. Thats what I thought I was going to do. No one in my family was ever a physician. Its one of those many quirks of fate.

Back then, we didnt have these aptitude tests. It was just haphazard. I applied to three schools Berkeley, Stanford and Caltech and I got into all three. It was just luck, fate.

And it turned out when I went to the Naval Academy, they had added a pre-med thing onto the curriculum the year before, so thats what I did when I started, I did chemistry.

I wouldve [otherwise] been in nuclear submarines. The most interesting thing in the Navy then was the nuclear sub technology.

You talked about doing the first CAR-T trials on HIV patients because thats where the funding was. Was it always in your head that this was eventually going to be something for cancer?

So I got out of the Navy in 99 and moved to Penn. I started in 98 working on treating leukemia, and then once I got to Penn, I continued working one day a week on HIV.

Its kind of a Back-to-the-Future thing because now cancer has paved out a path to show that CART cells can work and put down the manufacturing and its going to be a lot cheaper making it for HIV. I still think thats going to happen.

Jim Riley, who used to be a postdoc in my lab, has some spectacular results in monkeys with HIV models. They have a large NIH and NIAID research program.

So were going to see more and more of that. The CAR technology is going to move outside of cancer, and into autoimmune and chronic infections.

I want to jump over to cytotoxic release syndrome (CRS)because a big part of the CRISPR study was that it didnt provoke this potentially deadly adverse effect. When did you first become aware that CRS was going to be a problem?

I mean we saw it in the very first patient we treated but in all honesty, we missed it. Im an MD, but I dont see the patient and David Porter tookcare of the first three patients and our first pediatric patient,Emily Whitehead.

In our first patients, 2 out of 3, had complete remission and there were fevers and it was CRS but we thought it was just an infection, and we treated with antibiotics for 3 weeks and[eventually] it went away. And sort of miraculously he was in remission and is still in remission, 9 years later.

And then when we treated Emily. She was at a 106-degree fever over three days, and there was no infection.

Ive told this story before. My daughter has rheumatoid arthritis, and I had been president of the Clinical Immunologists Society from 2009 to 2010, and the first good drug for juvenile rheumatoid arthritisthat came out. I was invited to give the Japanese scientist Tadamitsu Kishimoto the presidential award for inventing the drug.

Then in 2012, Emily Whitehead was literally dying from CRS, she had multiple organ failures. And her labs came back and IL-6 levels were 1000x normal. It turns out the drug I was looking at for my daughter, it blocks IL-6 levels. I called the physician and I said, listen theres something actionable here, since its in your formulary to give it to her off-label.

And she gave her the appropriate dose for rheumatoid arthritis. It was miraculous. She woke up very rapidly.

Now its co-labeled. When the FDA approvedKymriah, it was co-labeled. It kind of saved the field.

How were you feeling during this time? Did you have any idea what was happening to her?

No, not until we got the cytokine levels, and then it was really clear. The cytokine levels go up and it exactly coincided. Then we retroactively checked out adults and they had adverse reactions and it easy to see. We hadnt been on the lookout because it wasnt in our mouse models.

And it appeared with those who got cured. Its one of the first on-target toxicities seen in cancer, a toxicity that happens when you get better. All the toxicities from chemotherapy are off-target: like leukopenia or hair loss.

I had a physician who had a fever of 106, I saw him on a fever when he was starting to get CRS. When the nurse came in and it said 106, they thought the thermometer must be broken. On Monday, I saw him, and said how are you feeling and he said fine. And I looked at the thermometer and histemperature was still 102.

People will willingly tolerate on-target toxicity thats very different from chemotherapy if they know it helps get them better. Thats a new principle in cancer therapy.

You had these early CART results almost at the same time that Doudna publishes the first CRISPR papers, then still in bacteria. When did you first start thinking about combining the two?

Yeah, it was published inSciencein 2012 and thats when Emily Whitehead got treated. Its an amazing thing.

Thats something so orthogonal. You think how in the heck can that ever benefit CART cells? but my lab had done the first edited cells in patients, published in 2012. And we used zinc-fingered nucleases, which were the predecessors to CRISPR. It knocked out one gene at a time, but we showed it was safe.

I was already into gene editing because it could make T cells resistant to HIV. So it was pretty obvious that there were candidates in T cells that you can knock out. And almost every lab started working on some with CRISPR, cause it was much easier.

We were the first to get full approval by the FDA, so we worked on it from 2012, had all the preclinical data by 2016, and then it takes a while to develop a lot of new assays for this as we were very cautious to optimize safety and it took longer than we wanted, but in the end, we learned a tremendous amount.

So what did we learn?

First of all our patients had advanced metastatic cancer and had had a lot of chemotherapy. The first patient had had 3 bone marrow transplants.

One thing is feasibility: could you really do all the complex engineering? So we found out we could. feasibility was passed.

Another was the fact that cas9 came out of bacteria, forms of strep and staph. Everyone has pre-existing immunity to Cas9 and we had experience from the first trial with Sangamo[with zinc-finger nucleases] where some patients had a very high fever. In that case, we had used adenoviruses, and it turned out our patients had very high levels of baseline immune response to adenoviruses, so we were worried that would happen with CRISPR, and it did not happen.

It did not have any toxicity. If it had, it would have really set the field back. If there was animmune response to cas9 and CRISPR, there couldve been a real barrier to the field.

And then, the cells survived in the patients. The furthest on, it was 9 months. The cells had a very high level of survival. In the previous trials, the cells survived less than 7 days. In our case, the half-life was 85 days. We dont know the mechanism yet.

And we found very big precision in the molecular scissors, and that was a good thing for the field. You could cut 3 different genes on 3 different chromosomes and have such high fidelity.

It [CRISPR] is living up to the hype. Its going to fix all these diseases.

Whats the potential in CAR-T, specifically?

Well theres many many genes that you can add. There are many genes that knocking outwill make the cells work better. We started with the cell receptor. There are many, I think, academics and biotechs doing this now and it should make the cells more potent and less toxic.

And more broadly, what else are you looking at for the future of CART? The week before your paper, there were the results from MD Anderson on natural killer cells.

Different cell types, natural killer cells, stem cells putting CAR molecules into stem cells, macrophages. One of my graduate students started a company to do CAR macrophages and macrophages actually eat tumor cells, as opposed to T cells that punch holes in them.

There will be different cell types and there will be many more ways to edit cells. The prime editing and base editing. All different new variations.

Youve talked about how people used to think the immuno-oncology, if it ever worked, would nevertheless be a boutique treatment. Despite all the advancements, Novartis and Gilead still have not met the sales they once hoped to grab from their CART treatments. Are you confident CART will ever be widely accessible?

Oh yeah, Novartis sales are going up. They had a hiccup launching.

Back in 96 or 97, when Genentech launched Herceptin, their commercial antibody, they couldnt meet the demand either and then they scaled up and learned how to do better cultures. So right now Novartis is using tech invented in my lab in the 1990s culture tech thats complex and requires a lot of labor, so the most expensive part is human labor. A lot can be made robotic. The scale problem will be much easier.

Thats an engineering problem that will become a thing of the past. The manufacturing problem will get a lot cheaper. Here in the US, we have a huge problem with how drugs are priced. We have a problem with pricing. Thats a political issue.

But in cell therapy, its just kind of the growth things you see in a new industry. Itll get worked out.

This article has been updated to reflect that Jim Riley conducted work on CAR in HIV.

Originally posted here:
Carl June on CRISPR, CART and how the Vietnam War dropped him into medicine - Endpoints News

Key point: Humanity isn't ready for gene editing.

More than a year ago, the world was shocked by Chinese biophysicist He Jiankuis attempt to use CRISPR technology to modify human embryos and make them resistant to HIV, which led to the birth of twins Lulu and Nana.

Now, crucial details have been revealed in a recent release of excerpts from the study, which have triggered a series of concerns about how Lulu and Nanas genome was modified.

How CRISPR works

CRISPR is a technique that allows scientists to make precise edits to any DNA by altering its sequence.

When using CRISPR, you may be trying to knock out a gene by rendering it inactive, or trying to achieve specific modifications, such as introducing or removing a desired piece of DNA.

Read more: What is CRISPR gene editing, and how does it work?

Gene editing with the CRISPR system relies on an association of two molecules. One is a protein, called Cas9, that is responsible for cutting the DNA. The other molecule is a short RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecule which works as a guide that brings Cas9 to the position where it is supposed to cut.

The system also needs help from the cells being edited. DNA damage is frequent, so cells regularly have to repair the DNA lesions. The associated repair mechanisms are what introduce the deletions, insertions or modifications when performing gene editing.

How the genomes of Lulu and Nana were modified

He Jiankui and his colleagues were targeting a gene called CCR5, which is necessary for the HIV virus to enter into white blood cells (lymphocytes) and infect our body.

One variant of CCR5, called CCR5 32, is missing a particular string of 32 letters of DNA code. This variant naturally occurs in the human population, and results in a high level of resistance to the most common type of HIV virus.

The team wanted to recreate this mutation using CRISPR on human embryos, in a bid to render them resistant to HIV infection. But this did not go as planned, and there are several ways they may have failed.

First, despite claiming in the abstract of their unpublished article that they reproduced the human CCR5 mutation, in reality the team tried to modify CCR5 close to the 32 mutation.

As a result, they generated different mutations, of which the effects are unknown. It may or may not confer HIV resistance, and may or may not have other consequences.

Worryingly, they did not test any of this, and went ahead with implanting the embryos. This is unjustifiable.

A second source of errors could have been that the editing was not perfectly efficient. This means that not all cells in the embryos were necessarily edited.

When an organism has a mixture of edited and unedited cells, it is called a mosaic. While the available data are still limited, it seems that both Lulu and Nana are mosaic.

This makes it even less likely that the gene-edited babies would be resistant to HIV infection. The risk of mosaicism should have been another reason not to implant the embryos.

Read more: 'Designer' babies won't be common anytime soon despite recent CRISPR twins

Moreover, editing can have unintended impacts elsewhere in the genome.

When designing a CRISPR experiment, you choose the guide RNA so that its sequence is unique to the gene you are targeting. However, off-target cuts can still happen elsewhere in the genome, at places that have a similar sequence.

He Jiankui and his team tested cells from the edited embryos, and reported only one off-target modification. However, that testing required sampling the cells, which were therefore no longer part of the embryos - which continued developing.

Thus, the remaining cells in the embryos had not been tested, and may have had different off-target modifications.

This is not the teams fault, as there will always be limitations in detecting off-target and mosaicism, and we can only get a partial picture.

However, that partial picture should have made them pause.

A bad idea to begin

Above, we have described several risks associated with the modifications made on the embryos, which could be passed on to future generations.

Embryo editing is only ethically justifiable in cases where the benefits clearly outweigh the risks.

Technical issues aside, the researchers did not even address an unmet medical need.

While the twins father was HIV-positive, there is already a well-established way to prevent an HIV-positive father from infecting embryos. This sperm washing method was actually used by the team.

The only benefit of the attempted gene modification, if proven, would have been a reduced risk of HIV infection for the twins later in life.

But there are safer existing ways to control the risk of infection, such as condoms and mandatory testing of blood donations.

Implications for gene editing as a field

Gene editing has endless applications. It can be used to make plants such as the Cavendish banana more resistant to devastating diseases. It can play an important role in the adaptation to climate change.

In health, we are already seeing promising results with the editing of somatic cells (that is, non-heritable modifications of the patients own cells) in beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease.

However, we are just not ready for human embryo editing. Our techniques are not mature enough, and no case has been made for a widespread need that other techniques, such as preimplantation genetic testing, could not address.

Read more: Experts call for halt to CRISPR editing that allows gene changes to pass on to children

There is also much work still needed on governance. There have been individual calls for a moratorium on embryo editing, and expert panels from the World Health Organisation to UNESCO.

Yet, no consensus has emerged.

It is important these discussions move in unison to a second phase, where other stakeholders, such as patient groups, are more broadly consulted (and informed). Engagement with the public is also crucial.

Correction: this article originally described RNA (ribonucleic acid) as a protein, rather than a molecule.

Dimitri Perrin, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology and Gaetan Burgio, Geneticist and Group Leader, The John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Link:
Gene Editing Might Let China Create The Perfect Human Being - The National Interest Online

A revolution is taking place in the knowledge base for life sciences and biotechnology, opening up new applications in healthcare, agriculture, and environmental protection. Political awareness of this potential dates back to 2001, when the European Commission recognized life sciences and biotech through the adoption of its life science and biotechnology strategy.

With the European Green Deal, the new European Commission has set out an ambitious roadmap towards a climate neutral continent in 2050. With that, Europe strives to become a global frontrunner and lead the way in tackling the climate crisis. Taking the potential of biotechnology and life sciences in benefiting people and planet, a renewed focus and impetus on life sciences and biotechnology are all the more necessary. Regaining leadership in the sector should be a fundamental priority for the EU.

In agriculture, biotechnology offers sustainable food solutions through applying newest technologies. Biotechnology, (including genetic modification of crops), has increased farmers yields and incomes while reducing CO2 emissions, and the need for farmer inputs. Meanwhile, a science-based, risk-proportionate and non-discriminatory regulatory framework that allows for gene editing in crops could pave the way for products which offer health and consumer benefits ..

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Viewpoint: If Europe wants to be 'carbon neutral,' it needs to embrace biotechnologyGMO and CRISPR crops included - Genetic Literacy Project

Feb. 19, 2020 13:00 UTC

BERKELEY, Calif. & RICHMOND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Caribou Biosciences, Inc., a leading CRISPR genome editing company, and ProMab Biotechnologies, Inc., a biotechnology CRO/CDMO specializing in antibody engineering and CAR-T development, today announced a sale and assignment agreement under which Caribou gains access to a ProMab humanized single-chain variable fragment (scFv) targeting the B Cell Maturation Antigen (BCMA) for use in allogeneic engineered cell therapies. Caribou intends to utilize this scFv in the development of its CB-011 program, an allogeneic CAR-T therapy targeting BCMA-positive tumors including multiple myeloma.

We are excited for the opportunity to have access to this highly advanced, humanized molecule and believe it will significantly advance our promising CB-011 CAR-T program, said Steven Kanner, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Caribou.

We anticipate that our humanized BCMA scFv will aid greatly in Caribous efforts to further its allogeneic CAR-T program, and hope our technology continues to improve the field of preclinical and clinical stage immunotherapy research by providing broad choices of validated antibodies, said John Wu, MD, Chief Executive Officer of ProMab.

Under the terms of the agreement, ProMab received an upfront payment and is eligible for royalties on net sales of licensed products containing the BCMA scFv.

About Caribou Biosciences, Inc. Caribou is a leading company in CRISPR genome editing founded by pioneers of CRISPR-Cas9 biology. The company is developing an internal pipeline of off-the-shelf CAR-T cell therapies, other gene-edited cell therapies, and engineered gut microbes. Additionally, Caribou offers licenses to its CRISPR-Cas9 foundational IP in multiple fields including research tools, internal research use, diagnostics, and industrial biotechnology. Interested companies may contact Caribou at licensing@cariboubio.com. For more information about Caribou, visit http://www.cariboubio.com and follow the Company @CaribouBio. Caribou Biosciences and the Caribou logo are registered trademarks of Caribou Biosciences, Inc.

About ProMab Biotechnologies, Inc. ProMab Biotechnologies focuses on developing and commercializing mouse, rabbit, and human monoclonal antibodies as well as chimeric antigen receptor-T Cell (CAR-T) products. ProMabs CAR-T platform covers both hematological and solid cancers with intensive in vitro and in vivo pre-clinical validation designed for safer and better treatment. As a CRO in the immunology field for 19 years, ProMab offers standard laboratory procedures and animal studies for antibody discovery through the integration of the newest techniques in antibody library construction, next generation sequencing, unique humanization modeling, high-throughput screening, and artificial intelligence analysis systems. ProMab aims to out-license antibodies validated in CAR-T therapy in the preclinical stage or to bring CAR-T technologies to the early stage market of clinical study. ProMab has partnered with top biotechnology startups, medical institutions, and pharmaceutical companies to advance the development of cell therapies as well as bispecific antibodies targeting multiple cancers. For more information, visit http://www.promab.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200219005112/en/

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Caribou Biosciences and ProMab Biotechnologies Announce Sale and Assignment Agreement for Humanized scFv Targeting BCMA - BioSpace

Zacks Investment Research upgraded shares of Crispr Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CRSP) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research report sent to investors on Monday, Zacks.com reports.

According to Zacks, CRISPR Therapeutics AG is a gene-editing company. It focused on the development of transformative gene-based medicines for serious diseases using its proprietary CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing platform. CRISPR Therapeutics AG is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.

Other research analysts have also recently issued research reports about the stock. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a buy rating and set a $84.00 price target on shares of Crispr Therapeutics in a research note on Monday, December 23rd. Chardan Capital reiterated a buy rating and set a $72.50 price target on shares of Crispr Therapeutics in a research note on Thursday, February 13th. Canaccord Genuity lifted their price target on shares of Crispr Therapeutics from $72.00 to $80.00 and gave the stock a positive rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 20th. TheStreet upgraded shares of Crispr Therapeutics from a d rating to a c rating in a research note on Monday, October 28th. Finally, William Blair reiterated a buy rating on shares of Crispr Therapeutics in a research note on Thursday, February 13th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, two have issued a hold rating and thirteen have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. The stock presently has an average rating of Buy and a consensus price target of $78.29.

Crispr Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CRSP) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, February 12th. The company reported $0.51 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate of ($0.68) by $1.19. The company had revenue of $77.00 million for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $39.08 million. Crispr Therapeutics had a net margin of 23.09% and a return on equity of 11.74%. The firms quarterly revenue was up 76900.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the company posted ($0.92) earnings per share. On average, analysts predict that Crispr Therapeutics will post -4.61 EPS for the current year.

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in CRSP. Nikko Asset Management Americas Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Crispr Therapeutics by 48.4% during the 3rd quarter. Nikko Asset Management Americas Inc. now owns 2,777,414 shares of the companys stock valued at $113,846,000 after buying an additional 906,006 shares in the last quarter. Orbimed Advisors LLC purchased a new position in shares of Crispr Therapeutics during the 3rd quarter valued at $21,167,000. FMR LLC lifted its stake in shares of Crispr Therapeutics by 71.8% during the 4th quarter. FMR LLC now owns 952,369 shares of the companys stock valued at $58,004,000 after buying an additional 398,012 shares in the last quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC lifted its stake in shares of Crispr Therapeutics by 904.0% during the 4th quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 394,564 shares of the companys stock valued at $24,031,000 after buying an additional 355,264 shares in the last quarter. Finally, ARK Investment Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of Crispr Therapeutics by 6.3% during the 4th quarter. ARK Investment Management LLC now owns 2,956,635 shares of the companys stock valued at $180,074,000 after buying an additional 174,495 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 51.28% of the companys stock.

Crispr Therapeutics Company Profile

CRISPR Therapeutics AG, a gene editing company, focuses on developing transformative gene-based medicines for the treatment of serious human diseases using its regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats associated protein-9 (CRISPR/Cas9) gene-editing platform in Switzerland. Its lead product candidate is CTX001, an ex vivo CRISPR gene-edited therapy for treating patients suffering from dependent beta thalassemia or severe sickle cell disease in which a patient's hematopoietic stem cells are engineered to produce high levels of fetal hemoglobin in red blood cells.

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Crispr Therapeutics (NASDAQ:CRSP) Upgraded to Hold by Zacks Investment Research - Enterprise Echo

Global CRISPR/Cas9 Market research report gives a comprehensive outlook of the markets 2019-2025 and offers an in-depth summary of the current market status, historic, and expected way forward for the CRISPR/Cas9 Market. Additionally, to this, the report provides data on the restraints negatively impacting the markets growth. The report includes valuable information to assist new entrants, as well as established players, to understand the prevailing trends in the Market.

Download Free Sample Copy of CRISPR/Cas9 Market Report: https://dataintelo.com/request-sample/?reportId=103652

Key Objectives of CRISPR/Cas9 Market Report: Study of the annual revenues and market developments of the major players that supply CRISPR/Cas9 Analysis of the demand for CRISPR/Cas9 by component Assessment of future trends and growth of architecture in the CRISPR/Cas9 Market Assessment of the CRISPR/Cas9 Market with respect to the type of application Study of the market trends in various regions and countries, by component, of the CRISPR/Cas9 Market Study of contracts and developments related to the CRISPR/Cas9 Market by key players across different regions Finalization of overall market sizes by triangulating the supply-side data, which includes product developments, supply chain, and annual revenues of companies supplying CRISPR/Cas9 across the globe

Major Players included in this report are as follows Caribou BiosciencesIntegrated DNA Technologies (IDT)CRISPR TherapeuticsMerckMirus BioEditas MedicineTakara BioThermo Fisher ScientificHorizon Discovery GroupIntellia TherapeuticsAgilent TechnologiesCellectaGenScriptGeneCopoeiaSynthego

CRISPR/Cas9 Market can be segmented into Product Types as Genome EditingGenetic engineeringgRNA Database/Gene LibrarCRISPR PlasmidHuman Stem CellsGenetically Modified Organisms/CropsCell Line Engineering

CRISPR/Cas9 Market can be segmented into Applications as Biotechnology CompaniesPharmaceutical CompaniesAcademic InstitutesResearch and Development Institutes

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CRISPR/Cas9 Market: Regional analysis includes: Asia-Pacific (Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia) Europe (Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.) North America (United States, Mexico, and Canada.) South America (Brazil etc.) The Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries and Egypt.)

Target Audience: CRISPR/Cas9 Equipment Manufacturers Traders, Importers, and Exporters Raw Material Suppliers and Distributors Research and Consulting Firms Government and Research Organizations Associations and Industry Bodies

Stakeholders, marketing executives and business owners planning to refer a market research report can use this study to design their offerings and understand how competitors attract their potential customers and manage their supply and distribution channels. When tracking the trends researchers have made a conscious effort to analyse and interpret the consumer behaviour. Besides, the research helps product owners to understand the changes in culture, target market as well as brands so they can draw the attention of the potential customers more effectively.

Customize Report and Inquiry for The CRISPR/Cas9 Market Report: https://dataintelo.com/enquiry-before-buying/?reportId=103652

Report structure: In the recently published report, DataIntelo.com has provided a unique insight into the CRISPR/Cas9 Industry over the forecasted period. The report has covered the significant aspects which are contributing to the growth of the global CRISPR/Cas9 Market. The primary objective of this report is to highlight the various key market dynamics listed as drivers, trends, and restraints.

These market dynamics have the potential to impact the global CRISPR/Cas9 Market. This report has provided the detailed information to the audience about the way CRISPR/Cas9 industry has been heading since past few months and how it is going to take a shape in the years to come.

DataIntelo has offered a comprehensive analysis of the CRISPR/Cas9 industry. The report has provided crucial information about the elements that are impacting and driving the sales of the CRISPR/Cas9 Market. The section of competitive landscape keeps utmost importance in the reports published by DataIntelo. Competitive landscape section consists of key market players functioning in the worldwide industry of CRISPR/Cas9.

The report has also analysed the changing trends in the industry. Several macroeconomic factors such as Gross domestic product (GDP) and the increasing inflation rate is expected to affect directly or indirectly in the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 Market.

Table of Contents 1 Industry Overview of CRISPR/Cas9 2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis 3 Development and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of CRISPR/Cas9 4 Key Figures of Major Manufacturers 5 CRISPR/Cas9 Regional Market Analysis 6 CRISPR/Cas9 Segment Market Analysis (by Type) 7 CRISPR/Cas9 Segment Market Analysis (by Application) 8 CRISPR/Cas9 Major Manufacturers Analysis 9 Development Trend of Analysis of CRISPR/Cas9 Market 10 Marketing Channel 11 Market Dynamics 12 Conclusion 13 Appendix

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About DataIntelo: DATAINTELO has set its benchmark in the market research industry by providing syndicated and customized research report to the clients. The database of the company is updated on a daily basis to prompt the clients with the latest trends and in-depth analysis of the industry. Our pool of database contains various industry verticals that include: IT & Telecom, Food Beverage, Automotive, Healthcare, Chemicals and Energy, Consumer foods, Food and beverages, and many more. Each and every report goes through the proper research methodology, validated from the professionals and analysts to ensure the eminent quality reports.

Contact Info DataIntelo Name Alex Mathews Email [emailprotected] Website https://dataintelo.com Address 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States.

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CRISPR/Cas9 Market Demand Analysis and Projected huge Growth by 2025 - News Parents

Reports Monitors report on the global CRISPR Technology market studies past as well as current growth trends and opportunities to gain valuable insights of the same indicators for the CRISPR Technology market during the forecast period from 2019 to 2024. The report provides the overall global market statistics of the global CRISPR Technology market for the period of 20192024, with 2018 as the base year and 2024 as the forecast year. The report also provides the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the global CRISPR Technology market during the forecast period.

SWOT Analysis of Leading Contenders covered in this report:- Thermo Fisher Scientific, Merck KGaA, GenScript, Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT), Horizon Discovery Group, Agilent Technologies, Cellecta, GeneCopoeia, New England Biolabs, Origene Technologies, Synthego Corporation, Toolgen and more.

Get access to sample report, Click here @https://www.reportsmonitor.com/request_sample/584056

The global CRISPR Technology market was xx million US$ in 2018 and is expected to xx million US$ by the end of 2024, growing at a CAGR of xx% between 2019 and 2024.

This report studies the CRISPR Technology market size (value and volume) by players, regions, product types and end industries, history data 2014-2018 and forecast data 2019-2024; This report also studies the global market competition landscape, market drivers and trends, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porters Five Forces Analysis.

Product Type Segmentation:-

EnzymesKitsgRNALibrariesDesign Tools

Industry Segmentation:-

BiomedicalAgricultural

The CRISPR Technology market report includes an elaborate executive summary, along with a snapshot of the growth behavior of various segments included in the scope of the study. Furthermore, the report sheds light on changing competitive dynamics in the global CRISPR Technology market. These indices serve as valuable tools for existing market players as well as for entities interested in entering the global CRISPR Technology market.

Get a discount on this report@https://www.reportsmonitor.com/check_discount/584056

The report reaches inside into the competitive landscape of the global CRISPR Technology market. Key players operating in the global CRISPR Technology market have been identified, and each one of them has been profiled for their distinguishing business attributes. Company overview, financial standings, recent developments, and SWOTs are some of the attributes of players in the global CRISPR Technology market that have been profiled in this report.

Regional Coverage:-

The report has been prepared after extensive primary and secondary research. Primary research involves the bulk of research efforts wherein, analysts carry out interviews with industry leaders and opinion-makers. Extensive secondary research involves referring to key players product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents to understand the global CRISPR Technology market.

Secondary research also includes Internet sources, statistical data from government agencies, websites, and trade associations. Analysts have employed a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to study various phenomena in the global CRISPR Technology market.

Key Questions Answered in CRISPR Technology Market Report

View this report with a detailed description and TOC @ https://www.reportsmonitor.com/report/584056/CRISPR-Technology-Market

Contact UsJay MatthewsDirect: +1 513 549 5911 (U.S.)+44 203 318 2846 (U.K.)Email: [emailprotected]

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CRISPR Technology Market Analysis with Key Players, Applications, Trends and Forecasts to 2025 | Thermo Fisher Scientific, Merck KGaA, GenScript -...

European Pharmaceutical Review explores how plants can be used for large-scale, glycosylated protein bioproduction for the pharma industry.

Plants can be used to produce large quantities of complex proteins, particularly glycosylated proteins, which are becoming more widely used in a range of therapies. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are among the types of glycosylated proteins that plants can produce, but while there are multiple benefits to their use as bioreactors, there are also some key considerations.

This article explores why and how plants can be used to produce proteins for use in therapies, but also the factors that show this method may not be applicable to all protein products.

For plants to produce synthetic proteins, they must first be expressed somewhere within their genome. This requires some form of recombinant protein expression or genetic engineering, and to achieve optimum yield just implanting the gene is insufficient. To achieve a high level of transcription, which allows for downstream translation and protein modification for stability, the regulatory gene elements including the promoter and polyadenylation site must also be expressed.1

Techniques for gene expression:

There are three commonly used types of expression mechanisms for plant bioproduction: nuclear, chloroplast and transient expression.

Nuclear expression involves genetically modifying the genome in the nuclei of plants cells to express a protein. This is the simplest and most widely used approach in the pharmaceutical industry, as it can be achieved with viral vectors, but a more modern technique is CRISPR-Cas9 technologies.1 A 2018 study showed that in cotton, CRISPR showed no offtarget editing and an editing efficiency of 66.7 to 100 percent at each of multiple sites.2 The nuclear expression techniques, although reliable, are becoming less popular as they typically require more time to develop.

The second method involves expression of a recombinant protein in the chloroplasts requires a particle gun to insert the transgene. There are several benefits to this technique, including the ease of manipulating the chloroplast genome compared with the nucleus and the number of chloroplasts per cell, which increases yield. Using a transgene cassette to precisely target and insert the foreign gene avoids placing it into a poorly transcribed part of the genome, ensuring a high level of expression and little chance of silencing. Transgenes are commonly integrated between the trnltrnA genes in the rrn operon, as this is a transcriptionally active region offering high levels of gene expression.1

The third mechanism, transient expression, is becoming more common as it allows the rapid insertion of proteins, with little time required for the production, modification and optimisation of the expression system. Some companies have begun marketing this kind of expression for the rapid, large-scale production of proteins for therapeutics. The Agrobacteriummediated transient expression technique is purported to have better efficiency than the integrated gene systems and the ability to reach a high percentage of cells in a treated tissue, resulting in higher yields.1

In prokaryotic cells, like Escherichia coli (E. coli), protein size is limited to less than 30 kilodaltons, mainly due to reliability of production and yield. However, in eukaryotic cells, eg, Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) andplant cells, it is easier to produce larger proteins with high yields.1

According to experts, when using cell line or bacterial production methods such as CHO cells and E. coli to produce proteins, once the initial cell line is created it is often difficult to scale up, as glycosylation profiles become variable.3 The inconsistencies in protein product both cost money and result in waste.

On the other hand, dependent on expression mechanisms, plants can reliably maintain the glycosylation profile required even as bioreactor volume increases.

As a result of consistent production capabilities, plants do not require scale-up protocols. This saves both time and money when setting up a bioreactor.

A further advantage is that, if the plant is made to generate the protein through a transient expression system, there is very little time required to set up a production system. One company claims their tobacco plant-based system can be tailored for large-scale fabrication of a protein product in under 12 months, compared to 20-22 months with CHO or E. coli, 3 and one study suggests this could be done in a matter of weeks.1

There are multiple options for plant expression systems, particularly with regards to species, and each is best suited to produce different proteins. Genetic engineering can also be employed to allow customised N-glycosylation to generate different target products.

The plant industry is well established, with conditions for growth often being less complex than that of cell lines or bacteria and, dependent on choice of plant species, cultivation costs can be further reduced.

A techno-economic analysis of the theoretical set-up of a new large-scale biomanufacturing facility, producing mAbs using tobacco plants, found that compared to CHO production platforms, the plant system resulted in significantly reduced capital investment. Moreover, the model calculated that there would be more than a 50 percent reduction in the cost of goods, compared with published values for similar products at this production scale.4

One company has paved the way for the creation of biobetters, using their FastGlycaneering Development Service. iBio has shown that certain methods of plant bioproduction can improve the potency and homogeneity of biological medicines and ensure fully humanised glycosylation patterns.

iBio have also stated that their system, due to its consistencies in upstream processing, is compatible with artificial intelligence (AI). The company aim to implement a new end-to-end manufacturing process using AI and blockchain to reduce costs through optimising both the process and workflows.3

Some of the major challenges include regulatory approval, environmental contamination, protein stability and the immunogenicity of non-human post-translational modifications.1

Environmental concerns are predominantly from the possibility of spreading genetic modifications to food crops through pollination. This is more of a concern with the nuclear expression systems than transient or chloroplast expression. However, this can be overcome with geographical or physical containment, using a less transferable genetic modification method or through using a self-pollenating species.1

A review suggested that companies are unlikely to go through the cost of a shift from an already approved production system to seek regulatory approval for a new one.1 While altering an approved process is often unfeasible, setting up systems for the production of new products in the pipeline could prove to be more cost effective in the long run. Another consideration is the rising need for quick, large-scale vaccine production in response to pandemics and epidemics such as the Covid-19 coronavirus and Ebola which, due to the speed at which a transient expression production system can be constructed, could encourage companies to branch into this type of production.

Protein stability is a concern, as plants have endogenous enzymes that can break down the protein products. Some methods to overcome this include changing plant species and co-expressing peptides to fuse and stabilise the produced proteins together.

Post-translational modifications such as Asparagine-linked glycosylation (N-glycosylation) are one of the key worries, as they can be immunogenic. Particularly likely to cause unfavourable side effects are N-glycan modifications, because they differ in plants and humans.

N-glycosylation is a post-translational modification conducted on many secreted or membrane proteins in plants and mammals. Endogenously, it enables protein folding, stabilisation and protein-protein interactions. It is similarly used in pharmaceutical bioproduction to stabilise products and provide antibodies and other proteins the correct pharmacokinetic properties and immunogenicity.5,6

The plant industry is well established, with conditions for growth often being less complex than that of cell lines or bacteria

While early N-glycosylation and N-glycan modifications are highly conserved between yeast, mammals and plants, later N-glycan modifications differ; they are more simplified in plants than mammals.5,6 So, to use plants as producers of fully humanised proteins, the plant glycosylation machinery is often removed and replaced with human machinery when the plant is modified to express the protein. Of note, chloroplasts have no glycosylation machinery, so cannot perform these modifications without the insertion of foreign DNA; although this can reduce immunogenicity of the products, it can limit which proteins can be produced by chloroplast expression.

Tobacco is the most widely used plant for production of recombinant proteins in the lab. High yield and rapid scale-up, due to large numbers of seeds produced, are the primary benefits. However, proteins stored in the leaves are vulnerable to degradation and must be stored or extracted appropriately, in a timely manner. Tobacco tissues can also contain phenols and toxic alkaloids that must be removed in downstream processing to make products safe.1

Cereals are primarily used due to their seed protein storage capabilities; cereal seeds have protein storage vesicles and a dry intracellular environment. Once dried, the seeds can be stored at room temperature with limited degradation to protein products or loss of activity. Use of food crops is particularly attractive as they offer the opportunity to administer oral vaccines produced in the crop by feeding them to patients with minimal processing. Some edible vaccines have reached Phase I trials.1

Peas are a particularly attractive option, as they have high protein content in their seeds similar to cereals and have lower nitrogen requirements, reducing cultivation costs. However, legumes usually have less leaf biomass than tobacco, meaning they require a larger area to produce the same quantity.1

Plants can be modified through several methods to express proteins and the requisite promoters and transcription controllers, for the production of therapeutic proteins. There are several important considerations, including protein expression methods and plant species; however, the many benefits, including reduced costs, adaptability and speed associated with plant bioproduction systems make them an attractive option.

A particular driver of this bioproduction process is the possibility of using transient expression to produce vast quantities of highly potent, fully humanised vaccines in response to pandemics and epidemics.

iBio

See the rest here:
Using plants as bioreactors to produce proteins for therapeutics - European Pharmaceutical Review

Sifting through a soup of genes sampled from many environments, including human saliva, animal poop, lakes, hospitals, soils and more, researchers have found hundreds of giant viruses - some with abilities only seen before in cellular life.

The international team, led by scientists from University of California, Berkeley, has discovered entire new groups of giant phages (viruses that infect bacteria) and pieced together 351 gene sequences.

Within these they found genes that code for unexpected things, including bits of the cellular machinery that reads and executes DNA instructions to build proteins, also known as translation.

"They have an unusual number of components of the translation machinery that you do not find on a typical virus," microbiologists Basem Al-Shayeb and Jill Banfield from UC Berkeley told ScienceAlert.

The translation process takes place in molecular structures known as ribosomes, and the researchers actually found genes that code for some of their components - ribosomal proteins.

"Typically, what separates life from non-life is to have ribosomes and the ability to do translation; that is one of the major defining features that separates viruses and bacteria, non-life and life," said microbial ecologist Rohan Sachdeva from UC Berkeley.

"Some large phages have a lot of this translational machinery, so they are blurring the line a bit."

The team also found sequences for CRISPR systems, which also happens to be the 'immune system' bacteria use against viruses, the very same system we humans have co-opted for our own gene manipulation purposes.

The newly discovered viruses all have genomes more than 200,000 base pairs long, whereas the average known phage size is more along the lines of 52,000 base pairs.

Some phage genomes identified by the team were true whoppers; the researchers have named one group Whopperphage, and designated the other nine new groups after the word "big" in the different languages of the contributing authors.

"The genomes of these phages are at least four times the size of a typical phage, and the largest is 15 times larger - 735,000 bases of DNA," Al-Shayeb and Banfield said.

These larger phages are thought to infect Bacteroidetes, a group of bacteria widely dispersed in our environment, from soil to our intestines.

The genomes of these hefty phages are large enough to rival those of small bacteria, but the amoeba-infecting pandoraviruses still hold the title of the largest viral genome at 2.5 million base pairs.

"Large phages have been found before, but they were spot findings," Sachdeva told the Innovative Genomics Institute. "What we found in this paper is they are essentially ubiquitous. We find them everywhere."

Like other phages, these chonkers inject their DNA into their bacterial host, hijacking the victim's gene replication equipment to make copies of themselves.

The researchers suspect that while this is happening, the giants also use some of their additional genes to derail early stages of translation inside the bacteria, and divert protein production to suit their own needs. Such control of protein creation has also been observed in animal viruses.

Al-Shayeb explained that giant phages use their CRISPR system for phage-on-phage warfare, by specifically targeting competing viruses that try to infect the same host bacterium. A study from last year shows how some phages use this system to thwart anti-phage measures their host bacteria may deploy.

A huge phage (Subject 26) infecting a bacterium and manipulating its response to other phages. (Jill Banfield Lab/UC Berkeley)

"The sense we have looking at these large genomes is that phages have acquired a lot of different genes and pathways - some of which we can predict, some of which we can't for really taking control of bacterial hosts' function during infection," Banfield told the Innovative Genomics Institute.

As we learn more about the links between our physical and mental health and the microbes we share our bodies and environments with, it is clear that what affects them can also profoundly impact us.

"Phages are also known to transfer genes for bacterial toxins and antibiotic resistance between bacteria, which contribute to disease," Al-Shayeb said.

"Since we have both harmful and useful bacteria living on us and within us, understanding what kinds of phages coexist with them in humans and animals and how they affect those environments is of great value."

The researchers suggest that the interesting CRISPR systems some of these phages possess may have the potential to help us control our own microbiomes, by altering the function of bacteria or eliminating the troublesome ones.

They now hope to grow some of these whopper phages in the lab, to learn more about these phage-associated CRISPR systems and "discover their roles and test for value in genome editing", according to Al-Shayeb and Banfield.

Biochemist Christoph Weigel, who was not associated with the study, suggested on Twitter that the paper provides "strong support" for considering viruses living "virocells".

"These huge phages bridge the gap between non-living bacteriophages, on the one hand, and bacteria and Archaea," explained Banfield.

"There definitely seem to be successful strategies of existence that are hybrids between what we think of as traditional viruses and traditional living organisms."

Whatever else this huge addition to our knowledge of viral biodiversity brings, it's already sparking further discussion on what it means to be alive.

This study was published in Nature.

Read more:
Scientists Discover Giant Viruses With Features Only Seen Before in Living Cells - ScienceAlert