Healthcare Technology

Germany (OBBeC) - Researchers from nine European countries, coordinated by the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany, have been working for the past four-and-a half years to create a three-dimensional virtual "Kidney Atlas". The aim of this research is to help in the early diagnosis and successful treatment of renal diseases.

Athens, GA (OBBeC) - According to a report from the University of Georgia, a team that includes UGA engineer Peter Kner has developed a microscope that is capable of live imaging at double the resolution of fluorescence microscopy using structured illumination. The research was published in Nature Methods on April 26.

La Jolla, CA (OBBeC) - According to a report from the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham), researchers at the institute have shown that search algorithms used in digital communications can help scientists identify effective multi-drug combinations.

San Francisco, CA (OBBeC) - GE Healthcare has introduced its IN Cell Miner High-Content Manager (HCM) for the effective management of complex data generated by cellular high-content screening and analysis systems.

According to an announcement from Interactive Supercomputing, researchers at The University of Texas' M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are applying new supercomputing technology to biomedical imaging in the quest to detect and eliminate cancer.

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have utilized a newly designed microscope to view cells in a unique way. The scientists of Ernst Stelzer group at EMBL grow cells as cysts in three dimensional matrices to study them using the Single Plane Illumination Microscope.

Phoenix, AZ (OBBeC) - According to a report from  the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), its new supercomputer at the Arizona State University (ASU) can do operations equal to every dollar in the recent Wall Street bailout.

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (OBBeC) - Nonlinear Dynamics, a developer of analysis solutions for proteomics and biomarker discovery, has announced that Boston University's Cardiovascular Proteomics Center (CPC) Core Laboratory have chosen the Progenesis software range for their label free LC-MS and 2D data analyses.

Progenesis LC-MS v1.1 offers users a fast and visual approach for label-free, quantitative LC-MS analysis. The CPC Core Laboratory at Boston University had early access to the technology and collaborated on the final development stages to help fine tune the finished product. In research presented by Dr. David Perlman (presentation MP661) at the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) meeting the Progenesis LC-MS software facilitated the analyses of LC-MS data obtained from whole-heart homogenate and was able to rapidly identify, from this complex biological sample, significant nitrite dose-dependent alterations in the cardiac proteome. These findings were associated with improved heart function under conditions which model myocardial infarction and may directly lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies in the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Progenesis SameSpots v3.0, for 2D and DIGE analysis was released earlier this year and has many high profile users who are benefiting from this exceptional technology. The unique alignment algorithm which is at the foundation of the Progenesis range was initially developed for 2D gel analysis however the algorithm has undergone significant development so the approach can be applied to LC-MS data analysis. In addition to this, intelligent peak modelling has been developed which reduces data by several orders of magnitude but still retains all the relevant quantitation and positional information. This means scientists can analyse large data sets with enough replicates to account for biological variation and are not limited by the analysis software.

Prof. Mark McComb, the director of the CPC Core Laboratory said, "Our laboratory collaborates with a diverse group of investigators on a wide range of clinically relevant projects ranging from highly-focused protein and post-translational modification (PTM) characterization to large-scale studies of changes in protein and PTM expression. As part of our bioinformatics platform, we have adopted Progenesis LC-MS and Progenesis SameSpots because they offer a powerful and sensitive means to identify changes in label-free, quantitative experiments. Furthermore, the software is particularly well designed, such that we may easily train our collaborative groups to interrogate their own data and mine more adequately for low-level changes thus increasing the likelihood of discovering novel findings."

New Haven, CT (OBBeC) - According to a report in Nano Letters, Yale scientists have created nanowire sensors coupled with simple microprocessor electronics that are both sensitive and specific enough to be used for point-of-care (POC) disease detection.

The sensors use activation of immune cells by highly specific antigens — signatures of bacteria, viruses or cancer cells — as the detector. When T cells are activated, they produce acid, and generate a tiny current in the nanowire electronics, signalling the presence of a specific antigen. The system can detect as few as 200 activated cells.

In earlier studies, these researchers demonstrated that the nanowires could detect generalized activation of this small number of T cells. The new report expands that work and shows the nanowires can identify activation from a single specific antigen even when there is substantial background "noise" from a general immune stimulation of other cells.

Describing the sensitivity of the system, senior author Tarek Fahmy,  Yale assistant professor of biomedical engineering, said:. "Imagine I am the detector in a room where thousands of unrelated people are talking — and I whisper, 'Who knows me?' I am so sensitive that I can hear even a few people saying, 'I do' above the crowd noise. In the past, we could detect everyone talking — now we can hear the few above the many."

According to the authors, this level of sensitivity and specificity is unprecedented in a system that uses no dyes or radioactivity. Beyond its sensitivity, they say, the beauty of this detection system is in its speed — producing results in seconds — and its compatibility with existing CMOS electronics.

"We simply took direction from Mother Nature and used the exquisitely sensitive and flexible detection of the immune system as the detector, and a basic physiological response of immune cells as the reporter," said postdoctoral fellow and lead author,Eric Stern. "We coupled that with existing CMOS electronics to make it easily usable."

The authors see a huge potential for the system in POC diagnostic centres in the US and in underdeveloped countries where healthcare facilities and clinics are lacking. He says it could be as simple as an iPod-like device with changeable cards to detect or diagnose disease. Importantly, Stern notes that the system produces no false positives — a necessity for POC testing.

The authors suggest that in a clinic, assays could immediately determine which strain of flu a patient has, whether or not there is an HIV infection, or what strain of tuberculosis or coli bacteria is present. Currently, there are no electronic POC diagnostic devices available for disease detection. "Instruments this sensitive could also play a role in detection of residual disease after antiviral treatments or chemotherapy," said Fahmy. "They will help with one of the greatest challenges we face in treatment of disease — knowing if we got rid of all of it."

Tallahassee, FL (OBBeC) - According to a report from Florida State University, Kevin C. Chen, an assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering, is using high-powered computers to determine how substances known as recombinant immunotoxins can best be modified in order to attack and kill malignant tumours while doing minimal harm to a patient's healthy cells.

"Cancer is a disease of tremendous complexity, so the analysis and interpretation of data demands sophisticated, specialized computational methods," Chen said of his research.

Recombinant immunotoxins, Chen explained, are new drugs that are being tested in clinical trials for certain types of cancer therapy. They consist of tiny fragments of antibody proteins that are fused at the genetic level to toxins produced by certain types of bacteria, fungi or plants.

"Once injected into the body, the antibody portion of the immunotoxin targets specific proteins, called antigens, that are massively expressed on the surface of cancer cells," Chen said. "These cells are subsequently killed by the accompanying toxins. Normal, healthy cells, meanwhile, are not recognized and thus are spared."

That is the theory, at least. In practice, Chen acknowledges that numerous factors can decrease the immunotoxins' effectiveness. Among them:

*The large size of some immunotoxin molecules can hinder their ability to move to the targeted location to bind readily with cancer cell proteins, leading to efforts to reduce their size.
*The immunotoxin molecules' stability in the bloodstream and in the extracellular matrix can affect their length of time in circulation and in tumour tissues, respectively, thereby determining their effectiveness at killing the optimal number of cancer cells.
*The rate at which immunotoxins bind with malignant cells and the relative amount of antigens expressed on the cell surface are especially critical factors, because an imbalance in those two factors may result in over-bombardment of a single cancer cell with excessive numbers of immunotoxins, leaving many other cancer cells unharmed. The opposite scenario also is possible: If not enough immunotoxins bind with malignant cells, too few cells will be killed with each dose.

"Because the level of anticancer drug doses that can be given to any patient is limited by immunogenicity -- the immune response that results -- it is essential to explore how the efficacy of recombinant immunotoxins can be enhanced without resorting to escalating doses," Chen said. "Our computational research has enabled us to quantify and develop models describing many of the factors that influence immunotoxins' behavior in the body. This is essential knowledge that cancer researchers and doctors must have in order to take the next steps forward in developing immunotoxin drugs that might one day be approved as a standard treatment for cancer patients."

Austin, Texas (OBBeC) - A biomedical engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin is using the "grid computing" concept to allow the average person to donate idle computer time in a global effort to fight cancer.

Assistant Professor Muhammad Zaman recently introduced Cellular Environment in Living Systems @Home or CELS@Home for short. According to the report, the program already has more than 1,000 computer users worldwide contributing to the project, and the numbers keep growing.

"We have launched a global effort to recreate the in vivo environment of cancer cells in a computer model. This allows us to perform virtual experiments and study processes that are too costly or technically very difficult to study," says Zaman, who also directs the Laboratory for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics. "By recreating this whole 'system of processes inside a cancer cell' we will be in a position to fully comprehend the problem and hopefully identify targets that will one day translate into anti-cancer drugs."

He says only a background program (or screensaver) needs to be downloaded—at no cost to the user—to contribute to the CELS@Home effort. A computational program then runs whenever the screensaver is activated, requiring no effort on the part of the user to run the program or report the computations.

"It's a completely passive approach," Zaman says. "There are no viruses or no spam that can compromise the performance of their machines."

Among the approximate 1,000 users, there have been no instances of computer problems, he says. Users are from countries such as: Argentina, Australia, China, Denmark, France, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and Venezuela.

Zaman emphasizes the project also will stress dialogue and communication with the worldwide users, which he hopes will number 100,000 people someday.

"We'll soon have forums where contributors from all over the world will be able to provide feedback to us about what are some of the most challenging problems in cancer that they would like to study," he says. "Thus, we are making a global effort to solve a global problem."

Already, the program has yielded enough information in just two months for two journal articles.

"What took months can be done now in days or weeks," Zaman says. "It's amazing."

He says CELS@Home goes beyond traditional grid computing to incorporate a multi-scale systems biology approach.

"Instead of studying one molecule or one gene, it is studying a host of problems in cancer," Zaman says. "Cancer, as we know, is not a disease of a single gene or a single cell, but in fact it is a problem that involves thousands of genes, signals and molecular components. Understanding cancer requires understanding the system in its proper context, not just a tiny bit of the problem."

He says computations may take one day, one week or a month to complete, depending on the user's amount of idle time and computer speed. Any amount of idle time is beneficial, Zaman says. Once a computation is completed, the user will receive another computation, and so on. The user can opt out of the program at any time.