Group items tagged

BY NOW THERE'S little doubt about hydroxychloroquine: It doesn't work for treating Covid-19. But there's a bigger, more important lesson hidden in the story of its failure-a rarely-mentioned, but altogether crucial, error baked into the early research. The scientists who ran the first, promising laboratory experiments on the drug had used the wrong kind of cells: Instead of testing its effects on human lung cells, they relied on a supply of mass-produced, standardized cells made from a monkey's kidney. In the end, that poor decision made their findings more or less irrelevant to human health. Worse, it's possible that further research into novel Covid-19 cures will end up being compromised by the same mistake.

Using two independent single-cell approaches, we identified a shift in the overall immune cell composition in cavefish as the underlying cellular mechanism, indicating strong differences in the immune investment strategy. While surface fish invest evenly into the innate and adaptive immune systems, cavefish shifted immune investment to the adaptive immune system, and here, mainly towards specific T-cell populations that promote homeostasis. Additionally, inflammatory responses and immunopathological phenotypes in visceral adipose tissue are drastically reduced in cavefish. Our data indicate that long-term adaptation to low parasite diversity coincides with a more sensitive immune system in cavefish, which is accompanied by a reduction in the immune cells that play a role in mediating the pro-inflammatory response.

While scientists still don't fully understand the diverse nature of RNA molecules, it is believed that the proteins binding to them, called RNA-binding proteins, are associated with many types of disease formation. Research led by biomedical scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has led to a novel detection method, called CARPID, to identify binding proteins of specific RNAs in living cells. It is expected that the innovation can be applied in various types of cell research, from identifying biomarkers of cancer diagnosis to detecting potential drug targets for treating viral diseases.

Bart Haagmans (Erasmus MC) concludes: "The observations made in this study provide definite proof that SARS-CoV-2 can multiply in cells of the gastrointestinal tract. However, we don't yet know whether SARS-CoV-2, present in the intestines of COVID-19 patients, plays a significant role in transmission. Our findings indicate that we should look into this possibility more closely." The current study is in line with other recent studies that identified gastrointestinal symptoms in a large fraction of COVID-19 patients and virus in the stool of patients free of respiratory symptoms. Special attention may be needed for those patients with gastrointestinal symptoms. More extensive testing using not only nose and throat swabs, but also rectal swabs or stool samples may thus be needed.

But when cognitive science turned its back on behaviourism more than 50 years ago and began dealing with signals and internal maps, goals and expectations, beliefs and desires, biologists were torn. All right, they conceded, people and some animals have minds; their brains are physical minds - not mysterious dualistic minds - processing information and guiding purposeful behaviour; animals without brains, such as sea squirts, don't have minds, nor do plants or fungi or microbes. They resisted introducing intentional idioms into their theoretical work, except as useful metaphors when teaching or explaining to lay audiences. Genes weren't really selfish, antibodies weren't really seeking, cells weren't really figuring out where they were. These little biological mechanisms weren't really agents with agendas, even though thinking of them as if they were often led to insights.

study reveals the Pac-Man-like strategies adopted by different cell types when making long journeys through an organism

Researchers at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) in Japan have designed a small 'body-on-a-chip' device that can test the side effects of drugs s on human cells. The device solves some issues with current, similar microfluidic devices and offers promise for the next generation of pre-clinical drug tests.

Now, a research group under the leadership of professor and virologist Søren Riis Paludan from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, Denmark, has identified a mechanism which is activated in the cells of the immune system when they are attacked by disease. The discovery involves the protein STING, which sends signals to the nucleus of the cell when an infection threatens.

Goal: The purpose of this article is to introduce a new strategy to identify areas with high human density and mobility, which are at risk for spreading COVID-19. Crowded regions with actively moving people (called at-risk regions) are susceptible to spreading the disease, especially if they contain asymptomatic infected people together with healthy people. Methods: Our scheme identifies at-risk regions using existing cellular network functionalities-handover and cell (re)selection-used to maintain seamless coverage for mobile end-user equipment (UE). The frequency of handover and cell (re)selection events is highly reflective of the density of mobile people in the area because virtually everyone carries UEs. Results: These measurements, which are accumulated over very many UEs, allow us to identify the at-risk regions without compromising the privacy and anonymity of individuals. Conclusions: The inferred at-risk regions can then be subjected to further monitoring and risk mitigation.

Common Cold Study and others like it, while scrambling to understand the human immune response to SARS-CoV-2 using animals and cell cultures, along with the latest molecular techniques. They have catalogued antibody and immune-cell responses with uncommon speed, determined which are likely to be the most effective, and designed vaccines and therapies that, in animal studies and small human studies, provoke at least short-term immune responses. But there is no quick and simple experiment that can firmly determine whether immunity will be effective or lasting. It is just too soon to know.