Category Biology/Biotechnology

Treatment of otitis media by transtympanic delivery of antibiotics.

A single-application bioengineered gel, squirted in the ear canal, could deliver a full course of antibiotic therapy for middle ear infections, making treatment of this common childhood illness much easier and potentially safer, finds a preclinical study led by Boston Children’s Hospital in collaboration with investigators at Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts Eye and Ear.

Middle-ear infection, or otitis media, affects 95% of children, prompting 12 to 16 million clinical visits per year in the U.S. alone. It’s the number one reason for pediatric antibiotic prescriptions, but as parents know, getting oral antibiotics into young children several times a day for 7 to 10 days is a daunting task...

Andreas Bäumler and his team discovered how pathogens manipulate the intestinal environment to favor their own growth.

Why do some foodborne bacteria make us sick? A paper published Sept. 16 in the journal Science has found that pathogens in the intestinal tract cause harm because they benefit from immune system responses designed to repair the very damage to the intestinal lining caused by the bacteria in the first place. “The finding is important because it explains how some enteric pathogens can manipulate mammalian cells to get the oxygen they need to breathe,” said Prof. Andreas Bäumler, UC Davis School of Medicine...

Activity with age. Fluorescence in the fat body of fruit flies tracks the activity of transposable elements of DNA. It increases markedly with age. Credit: Jason Wood/Brown University

A new study increases and strengthens the links that have led scientists to propose the “transposon theory of aging.” Transposons are rogue elements of DNA that break free in aging cells and rewrite themselves elsewhere in the genome, potentially creating lifespan-shortening chaos in the genetic makeups of tissues. As cells get older, prior studies have shown, tightly wound heterochromatin wrapping that typically imprisons transposons becomes looser, allowing them to slip out of their positions in chromosomes and move to new ones, disrupting normal cell function...

3-D bioengineered lung-like tissue (left) resembles adult human lung (right). Credit: UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center

By coating tiny gel beads with lung-derived stem cells and then allowing them to self-assemble into the shapes of the alveoli found in human lungs, researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have succeeded in creating three-dimensional lung “organoids.” The laboratory-grown lung-like tissue can be used to study diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which has traditionally been difficult to study using conventional methods. “While we haven’t built a fully functional lung, we’ve been able to take lung cells and place them in the correct geometrical spacing and pattern to mimic a human lung,” said Dr...