Tag: enzymes

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Analysis, App, Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

72 cent test screens for disease in less than an hour

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A new easy-to-use device can quickly and accurately screen for a variety of diseases, including Zika, Ebola, hepatitis, dengue, and malaria.

The portable device, called enVision (enzyme-assisted nanocomplexes for visual identification of nucleic acids), can also screen for various types of cancers and genetic diseases. EnVision takes between 30 minutes to one hour to detect the presence of diseases, which is two to four times faster than existing infection diagnostics methods. The device also costs less than 75¢—100 times less than tests currently in use.

“The enVision platform is extremely sensitive, accurate, fast, and low-cost. It works at room temperature and does not require heaters or special pumps, making it very portable,” says team leader Shao Huilin, assistant professor from the Biomedical Institute for Global Health Research and Technology (BIGHEART) and biomedical engineering department at National University of Singapore.

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Analysis, Animals, Health & Fitness, Nanotechnology, Science & Technology News

Scientists sober up drunken mice with nanocapsules

Nanocapsules reduced the blood alcohol levels in the drunken mice.

Intoxicated mice were injected with a nanocapsule containing enzymes that are instrumental in alcohol metabolism.  The nanocapsules reduced the blood alcohol levels in the mice. The treatment demonstrates a novel drug delivery technology that could have broad medical applications.

 

 

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Brain, Breakthrough Thinking, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

Skin Test Could Detect Alzheimer’s Disease

Skin Test Could Detect Alzheimer’s Disease

Cultured skin cells (green) from a healthy person (top) and a person with Alzheimer’s disease (bottom).

A novel test that detects enzymes that are dysfunctional in patients with Alzheimer’s disease–and that are found both in the brain and in skin cells–is about to undergo large clinical trials. Researchers at the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute (BRNI), in Morgantown, WV, who developed the diagnostic have also garnered approval from the Food and Drug Administration to test in humans an experimental drug that activates the enzymes–a mechanism that represents a new therapeutic approach to Alzheimer’s.
 

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Analysis, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

Can Burning Excess Fat Be As Easy As Exhaling?

Can Burning Excess Fat Be As Easy As Exhaling?

Mice that were engineered with a fat-burning pathway remained thin compared to normal mice. 

Can burning excess fat be as easy as exhaling? That’s the finding of a provocative new study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who transplanted a fat-burning pathway used by bacteria and plants into mice. The genetic alterations enabled the animals to convert fat into carbon dioxide and remain lean while eating the equivalent of a fast-food diet.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Health & Fitness, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Skin From A Factory

Skin From A Factory 

Skin from a factory — this has long been the dream of pharmacologists, chemists and doctors.

Skin from a factory – this has long been the dream of pharmacologists, chemists and doctors. Research has an urgent need for large quantities of ‘skin models’, which can be used to determine if products such as creams and soaps, cleaning agents, medicines and adhesive bandages are compatible with skin, or if they instead will lead to irritation or allergic reactions for the consumer. Such test results are seen as more meaningful than those from animal experiments, and can even make such experiments largely superfluous.

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Breakthrough Thinking, Ecological Products, Great New Product, Green Friendly, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Rare Microbe To Help Make A Better Biofuel

Rare Bug To Help Make A Better Biofuel

Zymetis is testing genetically modified bacteria that efficiently convert biomass into sugar.  

A tiny microbe found in the Chesapeake Bay is the focus of intense study for a biotech startup in College Park, MD. Zymetis has genetically modified a rare, cellulose-eating bacterium to break down and convert cellulose into sugars necessary to make ethanol, and it recently completed its first commercial-scale trial. Earlier this year, the company ran the modified microbe through a series of tests in large fermenters and found that it was able to convert one ton of cellulosic plant fiber into sugar in 72 hours. The trial, researchers say, illustrates the organism’s potential in helping to produce ethanol cheaply and efficiently at industrial scales. Zymetis is now raising the first round of venture capital to bring the technology to commercial applications.

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Globalism, Health & Fitness, Medical Breakthrough, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Chamomile Tea Could Help Prevent Complications Of Diabetes

Chamomile Tea Could Help Prevent Complcations Of Diabetes

Drinking chamomile tea daily with meals may help prevent the complications of diabetes, which include loss of vision, nerve damage, and kidney damage, researchers in Japan and the United Kingdom are reporting.

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