Source: BBC

Bacteria taken from the scrumptiously named fishing village of Beer on Britain's south coast have proven themselves some of the hardiest organisms on Earth -- or in space for that matter. Bacteria found in rocks taken from the cliffs at Beer have survived a grueling year-and-a-half exposureto space conditions on the exterior of the ISS and returned home alive, becoming the longest-lived photosynthesizing microbes to survive in space. Read more here. 

Source: PopSci

Since last April, 19 cancer patients whose liver tumors hadn’t responded to chemotherapy have taken an experimental drug. Within weeks of the first dose, it appeared to work, by preventing tumors from making proteins they need to survive. The results are preliminary yet encouraging. With a slight redesign, the drug might work for hundreds of diseases, fulfilling the promise that wonder cures like stem cells and gene therapy have failed to deliver.

The biotech company Alnylam announced in June that its drug ALN-VSP cut off blood flow to 62 percent of liver-cancer tumors in those 19 patients, by triggering a rarely used defense mechanism in the body to silence cancerous genes. Whereas conventional drugs stop disease-causing proteins, ALN-VSP uses RNA interference (RNAi) therapy to stop cells from making proteins in the first place, a tactic that could work for just about any disease. “Imagine that your kitchen floods,” says biochemist and Alnylam CEO John Maraganore. “Today’s medicines mop it up. RNAi technology turns off the faucet.” Read more here.

Source: Google news

The Obama administration's expansion of stem cell research has suffered a significant setback with a judge's ruling that blocks important work on treating life-threatening conditions, say private groups pushing for scientific breakthroughs in medicine.

Monday's decision by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth will "drive the best scientific minds into work less likely to yield treatments," says Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

"It will be incredibly disruptive," Tipton added.

Stem cell research holds the potential to address some of the most difficult areas in the medical field — from spinal cord injury to diabetes to Parkinson's, which all have resisted traditional treatment. Read more here. 

Source: Reuters

Scientists have used experimental drugs being developed by Pfizer to reset and restart the body clock of mice in a lab and say their work may offer clues on a range of human disorders, from jetlag to bipolar disorder. Read more here. 

Source: Medical Daily

A new approach to building an "artificial nose" – using fluorescent compounds and DNA – could accelerate the use of sniffing sensors into the realm of mass production and widespread use, say Stanford chemists. If their method lives up to its promise, it could one day detect everything from incipiently souring milk to high explosives. Read more here. 

Source: PopSci

Literally donning an electrode-studded thinking cap can improve your memory by 110 percent,according to a new study by Australian researchers. The method applies electricity to the head to inhibit a specific region of the brain that has been implicated in autism.

The finding is a follow-up to previous research at the same lab that shows certain types of brain stimulation can unlock savant qualities in people who had not previously exhibited them. Read more here. 

Source: Yahoo News

 A gene linked with the immune system may play a role in developing Parkinson'sdisease, researchers said on Sunday, marking a possible advance in the search for effective treatments.

They said a gene in the human leukocyte antigen region or HLA -- which contains a large number of genes related to immune system function -- was strongly linked with Parkinson's disease. Read more here. 

Source: Popsci

American motor engineering prides itself on muscle while German engineering is known for speed and precision, but neither of these century-old crafts can stand up to the multi-millennia advantage that evolution enjoys over them. Now Australian scientists have unlocked the design details of the minuscule motors that drive bacteria, a flagellar engine that converts nearly 100 percent of its energy into rotational power.

These tiny bacterial engines have stumped researchers for decades as they've struggled to understand the mechanisms that drive them to such efficiency and agility (the motors can switch from forward to reverse nearly instantaneously). By comparison, the best F1 engines in the world can only convert about 37 percent of the chemical energy in their fuels into power. Yet the bacteria lose almost no energy as they propel themselves away from toxins and toward nutrients. Read more here. 

Source: St Louis Business Journal

St. Louis biotechnology company Mediomics said Tuesday it received an additional $460,000 in federal funding thanks to the renewal of a second-year grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Mediomics, founded in 2001 by Dr. Yie-Hwa Chang, creates testing applications for academic laboratories, pharmaceutical applications and medical and environmental research markets. It brought in an estimated $1 million in revenue in 2009.

The startup said it is working on kits that can be used to quantify most biologically and therapeutically important macromolecules, including proteins and pathogens.

By 2012, the global market for these so-called biosensors will reach $6.1 billion, the company said. Read more here. 

SynDevRx is developing novel polymer-fumagillin drug conjugates to treat metastatic cancer. Fumagillin analogs are clinically proven anti-tumor agents, but suffer poor physical properties and toxicities, which prevent their clinical development as small molecules. Our conjugates demonstrate significantly improved physical and anti-tumor properties with minimal signs of toxicity in animal testing.

SynDevRx polymer drugs connect poly (hydroxymethacrylamide) (HPMA) to novel fumagillol analogs via proprietary chemistries providing the solubility and pharmacokinetics of the HPMA polymer and enhancing the activity of the fumagillol analogs.

SyndevRx's technology provides a new paradigm for the design and development of polymer drugs. While conventional polymer therapeutics produce drugs with improved physical properties and, in some cases, safety, conventional polymers effectively dilute (i.e. reduce) drug activity thus requiring high polymer-drug doses.  SynDevRx polymer drugs improve the physical properties of the conjugated small molecules and enhance (increase) the activity of the released drug through novel linker chemistries thereby significantly reducing the polymer-drug dose.

SynDevRx polymer drugs were compared to the small molecule fumagillol derivative, TNP-470, in vitro and in vivo. In metastases models, three different conjugates were identified that show comparable activity to TNP-470 at less than 10% of the TNP-470 dose (relative molar dosing). In an A549 lung cancer xenograft model, the same three conjugates showed better activity than TNP-470 at less than 10% of the TNP-470 dose (relative molar dosing) without any observed toxicities at these efficacious doses.  This demonstration of SynDevRx technology not only provides new, effective cancer therapeutics, but also exemplifies a better approach to polymer drug design.