Category Health/Medical

CRISPR/Cas9 eliminates HIV-1 expression in PMA/TSA treated, latently-infected human T-cell line.

A CRISPR/Cas9 gene gene editing system designed by scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University is paving the way to an eventual cure for patients infected with HIV. The researchers show they can both effectively and safely eliminate the virus from the DNA of human cells grown in culture.

According to Kamel Khalili, PhD, Prof Laura H. Carnell, “Antiretroviral drugs are very good at controlling HIV infection. But patients on antiretroviral therapy who stop taking the drugs suffer a rapid rebound in HIV replication.” The presence of numerous copies of HIV weakens the immune system and eventually causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

Curing HIV/AIDS – which h...

Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have developed hardware and software to remotely monitor and control devices that mimic the human physiological system. Devices known as organs-on-chips allow researchers to test drug compounds and predict physiological responses with high accuracy in a laboratory setting. But monitoring the results of such experiments from a conventional desktop computer has several limitations, especially when results must be monitored over the course of hours, days or even weeks.

Google Glass, one of the newest forms of wearable technology, offers researchers a hands-free and flexible monitoring system. To make Google Glass work for their purposes, Zhang et al...

This is a confocal micrograph taken from the lesion core after a spinal cord injury. Nuclear EdU (red) shows the presence of newly differentiated cells which produce Schwann cell myelin (P0, green). These peripheral-like Schwann cells remyelinate central axons in the injured spinal cord and are important for spontaneous repair and functional recovery after spinal cord injury. Credit: King’s College London

Researchers have identified a molecular signal, known as ‘neuregulin-1’, which drives and enables the spinal cord’s natural capacity for repair after injury. The findings could one day lead to new treatments which enhance this spontaneous repair mechanism by manipulating the neuregulin-1 signal.

Every year >130,000 people suffer traumatic spinal cord injury and related healthcare costs ar...

A canine retina with xlpra2 shows how a marker of cell division (red) and rod cells (green) colocalize. Credit: Image courtesy of University of Pennsylvania

In a new study, researchers have shown retinal cells in 3 distinct forms of canine early-onset blindness possess an unexpected feature: they temporarily rejuvenate. Further investigation into the reasons for this period of retinal neuron proliferation could lead to molecular targets for intervening in cell death and maintaining functional photoreceptor cells and a working retina.

The findings suggest this feature may be common across many forms of inherited blindness. The study picked up where 2011 work left off...