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New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

It will enter clinical trials to prevent and treat the infection next year.

www.bbc.com

But after years of infection, a small number of patients develop powerful weapons called "broadly neutralising antibodies" that attack something fundamental to HIV and can kill large swathes of HIV strains.

Researchers have been trying to use broadly neutralising antibodies as a way to treat HIV, or prevent infection in the first place.

• 'Mind-blowing' cows hold clue to beating HIV
• Antibody helps keep man's HIV at bay for 10 months

The study, published in the journal Science, combines three such antibodies into an even more powerful "tri-specific antibody".

"These super-engineered antibodies seem to go beyond the natural and could have more applications than we have imagined to date.”

Why this Brazilian city uses tilapia fish skin to treat burn victims

In a historic Brazilian city, burn patients look as if they’ve emerged from the waves. They are covered in fish skin — specifically strips of sterilized tilapia -- but why?

www.pbs.org

“It’s a burn cream because there’s silver in it, so it prevents the burns from being infected. But it doesn’t help in terms of debriding a burn or necessarily helping it heal.”,  Dr. Jeanne Lee, interim burn director at the the regional burn center at the University of California at San Diego

“We got a great surprise when we saw that the amount of collagen proteins, types 1 and 3, which are very important for scarring, exist in large quantities in tilapia skin, even more than in human skin and other skins. Another factor we discovered is that the amount of tension, of resistance in tilapia skin is much greater than in human skin. Also the amount of moisture.”, Dr. Edmar Maciel, a plastic surgeon and burn specialist leading the clinical trials with tilapia skin.

Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk

A research team led by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health has unearthed more evidence that casts doubt on the traditional “heart healthy” practice of replacing butter and other saturated fats with corn oil and other vegetable oils high in linoleic acid.

sciencebulletin.org

The findings, reported today in the British Medical Journal, suggest that using vegetable oils high in linoleic acid might be worse than using butter when it comes to preventing heart disease, though more research needs to be done on that front. This latest evidence comes from an analysis of previously unpublished data of a large controlled trial conducted in Minnesota nearly 50 years ago, as well as a broader analysis of published data from all similar trials of this dietary intervention.The analyses show that interventions using linoleic acid-rich oils failed to reduce heart disease and overall mortality even though the intervention reduced cholesterol levels. In the Minnesota study, participants who had greater reduction in serum cholesterol had higher rather than lower risk of death.

This Tiny Disease-Diagnosing Microchip Only Costs a Cent to Make

Diagnosing disease often requires analyzing and detecting single cells with lab tests that cost hundreds of dollars each. Hospitals in a poor country stricken with a disease epidemic like HIV or malaria simply might not have the funds to run all of those tests. Scientists are looking for a cheaper option.

gizmodo.com|Ryan F. Mandelbaum

A team of Stanford researchers created what might be the cheapest, simplest solution yet: An inject-printed microchip that can perform multiple tests and costs only twenty minutes and a penny to make. In case it’s not obvious, this is very cheap.

“Assembling a lab on a chip in 20 minutes for less than a penny is really a breakthrough,” Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego who was not involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “And I don’t use that word too liberally.”

Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100 - BBC News

Facebook's founder and his wife aim to cure, prevent or manage all diseases by the end of the century.

www.bbc.com

Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have pledged $3bn (£2.3bn) to fund medical research over the next decade.

At a press conference in San Francisco, they said their ultimate goal was to "cure, prevent or manage all diseases by the end of the century".

The funds will be distributed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which they created in December 2015.

Mr Zuckerberg said that at present 50 times more money was spent on treating people who are sick than on curing the diseases that would stop them getting ill in the first place, and added that this needed to change.

He outlined three principles that will guide the couple's investments:

• to bring scientists and engineers together
• to build tools and technology that advance research
• to grow the movement to fund more science around the world

Ms Chan added that they had already committed $600m to creating a new research centre called the Biohub, which will bring together engineers, computer scientists, biologists, chemists and other innovators.

The Biohub will initially work on two projects.

The first is the Cell Atlas, a "map" that describes the different types of cells that control the body's major organs.

The second is the Infectious Disease Initiative, which will try to develop new tests and vaccines to tackle HIV, Ebola, Zika and other new diseases.

Mr Zuckerberg predicted that by 2100 the average life expectancy would be beyond 100 years.

Brains of overweight people look ten years older than those of lean peers

Scans show greater shrinkage in volume of white matter in overweight and obese people, although it does not appear to affect cognitive performance

www.theguardian.com|Nicola Davis

The brains of people who are obese or overweight appear to have aged an extra 10 years compared to their lean peers from middle age onwards, brain scanning research has revealed.

The difference, scientists say, corresponds to a greater shrinkage in the volume of white matter, although they don’t know the cause. It might be down to genes causing both brain-shrinking and obesity, or it could be that changes occurring in the brain lead to overeating. Either way, it does not appear to affect cognitive performance.

White matter is tissue, composed of nerve fibres, that aids communication between different regions of the brain. The volume of white matter in a human brain increases during youth and then decreases with age for both lean people and those who are overweight or obese.

But researchers have discovered that this shrinkage differs depending on a subject’s BMI.

Blood protein rejuvenates brain and muscle in old mice - health - 04 May 2014 - New Scientist

www.newscientist.com

Injecting a blood protein called GDF11 reverses the damage caused by ageing in mice. And there are hopes a similar technique could work for Alzheimer's.

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Last year, the protein, called growth differentiation factor 11 (GDF11), was found to have a restorative effect on mouse hearts. If it does a similar job in humans, it could have huge potential for treating a wide-range of age-related diseases, say the researchers behind the latest work.

The idea that an infusion of young blood could regenerate ageing bodies was explored several years ago when the circulatory systems of old mice were physically connected to those of young animals, as if they were conjoined twins. This rejuvenated the stem cells in the bone marrow of the older mice that replenish their blood, and led to a wave of studies comparing the blood of old and young mice to try and identify the youth-giving substance.

The latest results include two studies from Amy Wagers's lab at Harvard University. One explored the potential of GDF11 in muscle regeneration and the other in brain regeneration.

In the brain study, the researchers injected 15-month-old mice – which is just over half their natural life span – with GDF11 daily for a month. The volume of the blood vessels in their brain increased by 50 per cent and the number of brain stem cells by 29 per cent. Both factors are known to improve brain function.

Muscle fibres in old mice injected with GDF11 doubled in size to match that of 2-month old mice. Images from an electron microscope show a striking reordering of muscle fibres from a disordered state to the highly regular appearance of young muscle.

The endurance of the mice also improved, enabling them to spend an average of 57 minutes on a treadmill compared with 35 minutes for untreated old mice.

Wagers says GDF11 has huge potential to rejuvenate heart, brain and muscle tissue. However, she wants to find out more about GDF11 before trying it in patients. "I believe there's still some very important pre-clinical work we need to do, including understanding why GDF11 is lost with age, and whether there is counter-regulation of it that may develop in older mice," she says.

"I think we can answer those questions in the next three to five years and be ready for a trial within that timeframe," she says.