Next time you get sick from the virus Delta 24 RGD, don’t get angry. Well, don’t get anything, you can’t actually get sick from Delta 24 RGD. But it could save your life some day. Researchers recently modified Delta 24 RGD to attack brain tumor stem cells.

A tailored virus destroys brain tumor stem cells that resist other therapies and cause lethal re growth of cancer after surgery, a research team led by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports in the Sept. 18 edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Fueyo and colleagues developed Delta-24-RGD to prey on a molecular weakness in tumors and altered the virus so it could not replicate in normal tissue. They showed in a JNCI paper in 2003 that the virus eliminated brain tumors in 60 percent of mice who received injections directly into their tumors. The virus spreads in a wave through the tumors until there are no cancer cells left, then it dies.

Pretty nifty stuff. Glioblastoma multiforme is a particularly nasty form of cancer with incredibly low survival rates. As mentioned in an earlier post regarding glioblastoma multiforme, the 5 year survivability rate is around 3%, with the average being about 14 months. It is resistant to most forms of conventional treatment. The treatment looks fairly safe, ignoring the tiny odds of an unsafe mutation. I concede there is something inherently scary about releasing a virus designed to shred cells into your brain but I guess the alternative is no picnic.

The virus looks for a special protein marker, retinoblastoma, that is only expressed on tumor cells. Portions of the virus DNA that target normal cells were deleted. Upon entering a tumor cell, the virus begins making vesicles around important organelles and structures. It then devours whatever is inside. The tumor cell literally eats itself alive.

Clinical trials should be…interesting. Lets hope they get all the kinks worked out by then.

Unlike babies, embryonic stem cells thrive when shaken

Georgia Tech and Emory researchers discovered that moderate and controlled physical movement of embryonic stem cells in fluid environments, similar to shaking that occurs in the womb, improves their development and suggests that different types of movement could some day be used to control what type of cell they become.

While you are reading this sentence, each of your eyes are most likely reading different letters at the same time, recent research suggests. They can even cross while reading. Crazy!

Previously, researchers thought that, when reading, both eyes focused on the same letter of a word. But a UK team has found this is not always the case. In fact, almost 50% of the time, each of our eyes locks on to different letters simultaneously.

The team’s results demonstrated that both eyes lock on to the same letter 53% of the time; for 39% of the time they see different letters with uncrossed eyes; and for 8% of the time the eyes are crossing to focus on different letters.

Straight from the department misleading titles, Headshots Do Not Cause Brain Damage

“Thus far, neuropsychological tests and x-ray examinations have not been able to provide an unequivocal answer to the question of whether heading in soccer can cause permanent brain damage. Our research team has tackled the issue from another angle, monitoring instead various neurochemical markers in the spinal fluid,” says Henrik Zetterberg, associate professor of neurochemistry at the Sahlgrenska Academy.

Oh, right, they are talking about soccer. I thought they were talking about headwounds from guns. Because I’m pretty sure headshots cause damage. Ask any Counterstrike player.

Gladstone scientists uncover potential mechanism of memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease. It turns out the overexcitation of Alzheimer’s patients may be the cause rather than the symptom

Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease (GIND) and Baylor College of Medicine have discovered a mechanism by which the protein Amyloid-beta(AB) may impair neurological functions in Alzheimer’s disease. AB, which is known to accumulate in the brains of Alzheimer patients, has long been a focus of research into the causes and treatment of the disease. In a study published in the journal Neuron, Gladstone scientists found that A-beta triggers abnormal overexcitation of the very brain networks that are responsible for learning and memory.

No more long delays in effects, new antidepressant drugs act faster than ever. Typical antidepressant drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. This means the slow the recycling of serotonin, leaving it in the synaptic gap longer. The new drugs are serotonin receptor agonists which effectively make receptors more sensitive. I would be interested to see how long term downregulation of receptors due to increased agonist activity effects the effacy of these drugs.

Studies with rats have revealed the potential in an entirely new class of antidepressants that take effect after only days of treatment versus the weeks required for current drugs. The researchers said that they hope their findings will spur development of such new antidepressant drugs so that clinical testing can begin quickly.

And finally, someone has decided maybe we shouldn’t be drugging our kids up quite so much. Imagine that, raising your kids with consitency is a good thing. People are too quick to turn to medical disorders rather than look at their own parenting skills.

New research suggests simple techniques that give more structure to a preschooler’s day can offer a nondrug alternative to help the tiniest sufferers of ADHD. What helped? Stressing consistent rules and routines, and more praise for good behavior than punishment for bad. Surprisingly, both groups fared equally well, raising questions about how to tell which children need more intense aid.

Straight from the department of “We didn’t see that one coming”, new research suggests that removing ovaries before menopause may lead to memory and movement problems.

Researchers found that women who had one or both ovaries removed before menopause were nearly two times more likely to develop cognitive problems or dementia compared to women who did not have the surgery. In addition, those women who were younger when their ovaries were removed were more likely to develop dementia than women who were older when their ovaries were removed.

“It’s possible that estrogen has a protective effect on the brain and that a lack of estrogen due to ovary removal may increase a woman’s risk of developing memory problems,” said study author Walter A. Rocca, MD, MPH, with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and member of the American Academy of Neurology.

Reuters has a report on how the brain reacts to fear. Subjects were instructed to play a pac-man like game where they tried to evade a predator. When they were caught, subjects received a mild shock. While the subjects were playing the research team was performing brain scans on them to determine how fear affects the brain.

Simultaneous brain scans measuring blood flow showed that when the predator was distant, lower parts of the prefrontal cortex area of the brain behind the eyebrows were active. This region is associated with complex decision-making, such as planning an escape. But when the predator moved closer, activity shifted to the periaqueductal grey area, responsible for quick-response survival mechanisms such as fighting, flight or freezing.

This builds on previous research on mice lacking a functioning prefrontal cortex. These mice did not handles stress as well as their wildtype counterparts. It is theorized that a healthy balance between prefrontal cortex and periaqueductal is required for successful resolution of stress.

People with anxiety problems may have a tendency to use parts of their brain more associated with quick-response survival. This would keep them perpetually “on their toes” and unable to form a long term plan to deal with stress.

Before I leave for New York, I thought I’d leave you with a very interesting paper recently published on PLoS.

Here is the Author Summary:

Spatial Learning Depends on Both the Addition and Removal of New Hippocampal Neurons

The birth of adult hippocampal neurons is associated with enhanced learning and memory performance. In particular, spatial learning increases the survival and the proliferation of newborn cells, but surprisingly, it also decreases their number. Here, we hypothesized that spatial learning also depends upon the death of newborn hippocampal neurons. We examined the effect of spatial learning in the water maze on cell birth and death in the rodent hippocampus. We then determined the influence of an inhibitor of cell death on memory abilities and learning-induced changes in cell death, cell proliferation, and cell survival. We show that learning increases the elimination of the youngest newborn cells during a specific developmental period. The cell-death inhibitor impairs memory abilities and blocks the learning-induced cell death, the survival-promoting effect of learning on older newly born neurons, and the subsequent learning-induced proliferation of neural precursors. These results show that spatial learning induces cell death in the hippocampus, a phenomenon that subserves learning and is necessary for both the survival of older newly born neurons and the proliferation of neural precursors. These findings suggest that during learning, neuronal networks are sculpted by a tightly regulated selection of newly born neurons and reveal a novel mechanism mediating learning and memory in the adult brain.

A new microscopy technique could begin providing valuable 3D data on living cells. There are many different microscopy techniques out there. Unfortunately, the really cool ones require the cell to be dead. Electron, dye contrast, fluorescence can all give excellent results but all require the specimen to be dead. Electron microscopy in particular requires difficult preparation and can occasionally influence the structure of the specimen due to the addition of heavy metals. Phase contrast (think high school light microscope) allows living specimens but cells are generally poor at absorbing light.

That all could change. A new technique from MIT uses the refractive properties of the cell to generate a 3D image. It is essentially a cellular version of a CT scan. Computed Tomography (CT) has been used by clinical medicine for years now but has been relegated to large specimens like your lung or kidney due to resolution and speed. The technique works by taking hundreds of images using x-rays, all at different angles. Each slice of the specimen is then reconstructed on the computer to form a complete 3D model.

The MIT team has successfully managed to shrink CT equipment enough to image specimens on the cellular level. Three dimensional models take about 1/10th of a second, meaning you can watch a cell in real time.

A movie of the 3D models created by this technique can be found here

Decreased blood flow in the brain may be a useful symptom to diagnose depression. A research team in Israel visually confirmed that depression patients often had decreased cerebral blood flow, even more so if the patient was undergoing electroconvulsive therapy (administration of electricity to induce controlled seizures).

The data was gathered using SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography). The images created from SPECT are three dimensional and confirmed previous studies. Depressed patients often had decreased blood flow in the frontal, limbic and subcortical regions of the brain. It is hoped that this imaging technique will be able to diagnose depression before treatment options are chosen, so that the patient may have the highest likelihood of recovery.

“Currently, clinical psychiatry is based almost solely on subjective observer-based judgment. Our findings suggest that objective imaging evaluations could support subjective clinical decisions”

Interesting, effective anti-depressant medication increases blood flow in the brain, which may partially explain why anti-depressants work. It was noted, however, that electroconvulsive therapy did not increase blood flow despite having a track record of helping severe depression patients. Conversely, this may be why electroconvulsive patients have a tendency to relapse after several months.

Maybe this technique will help the over prescription of anti-depressant drugs. I personally know several people that are likely not clinically depressed (just my own guesses) but are on medication regardless. Depression medication is rapidly becoming the single most prescribed medication.