StemCell Therapy

Dublin, March 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "DNA Sequencing - Technologies, Markets & Companies" report from Jain PharmaBiotech has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The value of DNA sequencer market in 2018 is described with estimates for 2023 and 2028. Various methods and factors on which market estimates depend are described briefly. Markets are tabulated according to geographical areas as well as applications. Small sequencers form the basis of SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. Several marketing strategies have been outlined. The report includes profiles of 147 companies involved in sequencing and their 173 collaborations.

The report briefly reviews basics of human genome variations, development of sequencing technologies, and their applications. Current large and small sequencers are described as well as companies developing them. Various applications of sequencing are described including those for genetics, medical diagnostics, drug discovery and cancer.

Next generation sequencing technologies, both second and third generations, are reviewed. Companies developing software for analysis of sequencing data are also included. Selected academic institutes conducting research in sequencing are also listed.

Current market is mostly for research applications and future markets will be other applications related to healthcare.

Key Topics Covered

Executive Summary 1. Introduction2. DNA Sequencing Technologies3. Role of Bioinformatics in Sequencing4. Comparative Analysis of Sequencing Technologies5. Sequencing for Research6. Applications of Sequencing in Healthcare7. Applications of Sequencing in Oncology8. Sequencing in Genetic Disorders9. Sequencing in Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders10. Applications of Sequencing in Infections11. Role of Sequencing in Personalized Medicine12. Current Status and Future Prospects13. Markets for Sequencers14. Companies Involved in Sequencing15. References

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/8bubjr

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

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DNA Sequencing Industry Insights and Outlook to 2028 - Analysis of Applications in Healthcare, Oncology and Infections - Benzinga

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Varian (NYSE: VAR) today announced Medisch Spectrum Twente Hospital in The Netherlands, and Icon Cancer Centre Wahroonga and Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) in Australia treated their first patients with Ethos therapy. Thisartificial intelligence (AI)-driven holistic adaptive therapy solution is designed to deliver an entire adapted treatment in a typical 15-minute timeslot.

Adaptive therapy provides the ability to personalize the patient's treatment based on their anatomy and position at the time of treatment. The goal is to better target the tumor, reduce dose to healthy tissue, and potentially improve overall outcomes.

At Medisch Spectrum Twente Hospital, the first two patients treated were for prostate cancer, at RNSH the first treatment was for head and neck cancer and at Icon Cancer Centre Wahroonga, the first treatment was for prostate cancer. Additionally, since delivering the first Ethos therapy in the world in September 2019, Herlev and Gentofte Hospitalin Denmark has already delivered 100 adaptive fractions for bladder cancer patients.

"Since the launch of Ethos therapy, the response from clinicians globally has been very strong," said Chris Toth, president Varian Oncology Systems. "Ethos therapy was designed to launch a new era of personalized adaptive radiation therapy and we are very pleased to see patients in Australia and The Netherlands now have access to these adaptive treatments. With Ethos therapy recently receiving 510(k) clearance, the first installation in the US is in process and will be treating patients soon."

Clinician Experience

"The future is adaptive," said Erik Van Dieren, head of Medical Physics, Medisch Spectrum Twente Hospital."With Ethos we know adaptive radiotherapy on a daily basis is achievable for a large number of patients due to high accuracy and excellent sparing of the healthy tissue in about 15 minutes treatment time."

"Early Ethos therapy experience from Icon is showing promising results," said Amy Teh, MD, radiation oncologist at Icon Cancer Centre, Wahroonga."In a prostate patient, where the target volume is highly dependent on bladder and rectal positioning, we have used the AI-driven online adaptive workflow on the Ethos platform to effectively and efficiently adapt to the new position of the bladder and rectum each day. This has allowed superior coverage of the true target. This technology marks another step forward in the advancement of radiation therapy taking personalized medicine to another level allowing us to ensure more dose to the tumor target, and less dose to surrounding healthy organs."

"RNSH is very pleased to enter the world of Ethos therapy after recently treating our first patient," said Jeremy Booth, head of Medical Physics, Northern Sydney Cancer Centre, RNSH. "The patient treatment for head and neck cancer was an exceptional experience, uniting our expert team of radiation therapists, medical physicists and radiation oncologists at the console to ensure we safely delivered the best treatment."

"We've found that, with bladder cancer patients, we are seeing the most impact using online adaptation," said Poul Geertsen, MD, PhD, head of Radiotherapy, Department of Oncology at Herlev and Gentofte Hospital. "With Ethos therapy, we are seeing treatment margin reductions of up to 50 percent, which is impressive."

The streamlined workflow of Ethos therapy is enabled by its AI-driven planning and contouring capabilities. Physicians define their clinical intent from pre-defined templates and the initial treatment plan is generated based on the physician's pre-defined clinical objectives. The treatment is adapted in response to changes in the patient's anatomy and the tumor's shape and position, at the time of treatment. The ability of Ethos to enable on-couch adaptive treatment puts the patient at the center of care.

Ethos therapy offers the use of multimodality images (MR, PET, CT) registered with daily iterative CBCT images at the console. By providing an up-to-date view of the patient's anatomy in multiple imaging modality views, Ethos therapy provides clinicians the confidence to make more informed adaptive treatment decisions. The solution is built on Varian's latest treatment delivery technology andprovides fast imaging and treatment delivery without compromising quality.

For more information on Ethos, visit http://www.varian.com/ethos.

About Varian

At Varian, we envision a world without fear of cancer. For more than 70 years, we have developed, built and delivered innovative cancer care technologies and solutions for our clinical partners around the globe to help them treat millions of patients each year. With an Intelligent Cancer Care approach, we are harnessing advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics to enhance cancer treatment and expand access to care. Our 10,000 employees across 70 locations keep the patient and our clinical partners at the center of our thinking as we power new victories in cancer care. Because, for cancer patients everywhere, their fight is our fight. For more information, visit http://www.varian.comand follow @VarianMedSys on Twitter.

Customers were not paid for their testimonials. Individual results may vary

Press Contact

Mark PlungyDirector, Global Public Relations+1 (650) 424-5630 [emailprotected]

Investor Relations Contact

Anshul MaheshwariVice President, Investor Relations+1 (650) 424-5631 [emailprotected]

SOURCE Varian

https://www.varian.com/

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Ethos Therapy Continues Global Expansion - PRNewswire

(MENAFN - GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) Dublin, March 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) Technologies, Markets & Companies to 2028" report from Jain PharmaBiotech has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report deals with therapeutic drug monitoring, a multi-disciplinary clinical specialty, aimed at improving patient care by monitoring drug levels in the blood to individually adjust the dose of drugs for improving outcome. TDM is viewed as a component of personalized medicine that interacts with several other disciplines including pharmacokinetics and pharmacogenetics. One chapter is devoted to the monitoring of drugs of abuse (DoA). Various technologies used for well-known DoA are described. A section on drug abuse describes methods of detection of performance-enhancing drugs.

TDM market is analyzed from 2018 to 2028 according to technologies as well as geographical distribution. The global market for DoA testing was also analyzed from 2018 to 2028 and divided according to the area of application. Unmet needs and strategies for development of markets for TDM are discussed. The report contains profiles of 35 companies involved in developing tests and equipment for drug monitoring along with their collaborations. The text is supplemented with 21 tables, 9 figures and 210 selected references from the literature.

Benefits of the Report

The report contains information on the following:

Key Topics Covered Executive Summary

1. Introduction

2. Technologies for TDM

3. Drug Monitoring Instruments

4. Applications of TDM

5. Drugs Requiring Monitoring

6. Monitoring of Biological Therapies

7. Monitoring of Drug Abuse

8. Markets for TDM

9. Companies

10. References

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/pclxni

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MENAFN1103202000703653ID1099832888

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Global Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Industry Insights, 2018-2028: Unmet Needs and Strategies for Development - MENAFN.COM

Current practices in drug development have led to therapeutic compounds being approved for widespread use in humans, only to be later withdrawn due to unanticipated toxicity. These occurrences are mostly the result of erroneous data generated by in vivo and in vitro preclinical models that do not accurately recapitulate human physiology.

To speed up new drugs to market and reduce animal testing, scientists from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) have come up with a mindblowing solution. They have developed the worlds most sophisticated laboratory model of the human body, a system of miniaturized organs that can be used to detect harmful and adverse effects of drugs before they are prescribed to patients.

Scientists developed this system from many human cell types that are combined into human tissues representing a majority of the organs in the human body, such as the heart, liver, and lungs. Each of these miniature organs is tiny 3D tissue-like structures about one-millionth the size of an adult human organ.

Anthony Atala, MD, of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the studys senior author said,The most important capability of the human organ tissue system is the ability to determine whether or not a drug is toxic to humans very early in development and its potential use in personalized medicine. Weeding out problematic drugs early in the development or therapy process can save billions of dollars and potentially save lives.

During the experiment, this new model shows the potential of quantifying toxicity measure toxicity in many drugs approved for human use. Although toxicity from the recalled drugs was not found initially using standard 2D cell culture systems and animal testing models, and adverse effects were not detected throughout three levels of human clinical trials, this new system can readily detect toxicity, replicating the damage seen in humans.

To create the model, scientists isolated tiny samples of human tissue cells and engineered them into miniature versions of the human organ. These tissue cells can contain blood vessel cells, immune system cells, and even fibroblasts.

Each of these organs, also known as organ tissue equivalents, performs the same functions that they do in the human body. For example, the heart beats about 60 times each minute, the lung breaths the air from the surrounding environment, and the liver breaks down toxic compounds into harmless waste products.

Co-author Aleks Skardal, Ph.D., formerly of WFIRM and now at Ohio State University, said,We knew very early on that we needed to include all of the major cell types that were present in the original organ. To model the bodys different responses to toxic compounds, we needed to include all of the cell types that produce these responses.

Another exciting thing about the model that each system contains media, a substance containing nutrients and oxygen that is circulated among all the organ types, delivering oxygen, and removing waste. The small blood system n these devices use a technology called microfluidics to recirculate test compounds through the organ system and remove the drug breakdown products that each organ is producing.

Co-author Thomas Shupe, Ph.D., of WFIRM, said,Creating little human organs for drug testing was a logical extension of the work we have accomplished in building human-scale organs. Many of the same technologies we have developed at the human-scale level, like including a very natural environment for the cells to live in, also produced excellent results when brought down to the microscopic level.

Additional co-authors include Julio Aleman, Steven Forsythe, Shiny Rajan, Sean Murphy, Mahesh Devarasetty, Nima Pourhabibi Zarandi, Goodwell Nzou, Robert Wicks, Hooman Sadri-Ardekani, Colin Bishop, Shay Soker, and Adam Hall.

Authors Skardal, Shupe, Soker, Murphy, Bishop, and Atala are inventors on patent rights related to this work owned by Wake Forest University Health Sciences. The patents, whose value may be affected by publication, have the potential to generate royalty income in which the inventors would share.

The study is published in the journal Biofabrication.

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Scientists developed the worlds most sophisticated lab model of the human body - Tech Explorist

Medicare now recognizes the important work that primary care physicians do when it comes to preventive screenings in older patients. So instead of only paying doctors for sick visits, the program will pay physicians to perform a preventive annual Medicare wellness visit (AWV).

But physicians should make some adjustments to their practices to ensure they adapt to what is the first of several Medicare changes intended to promote preventive care and improve care coordination and chronic disease management for Medicare patients.

The AMA STEPS Forward module Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV): Streamline Workflow to Perform a Thorough AWV helps physicians understand the AWV, communicate with patients to set expectations about the visit and map out an AWV workflow.

TheAMAsSTEPS Forward open-access modules offerinnovative strategies that allow physicians and their staff to thrive in the new health care environment. These courses can help you prevent physician burnout, create the organizational foundation for joy in medicine and improvepractice efficiency.

The AWV is a primary care visit that involves preventive care, advanced care planning and depression and dementia screening. It gives physicians a chance to focus on safety issues, such as falls, and social needs, such as food insecurity and transportation. Physicians and their teams can update information in a patients chart, such as a medication list, or they can create and maintain a personalized screening and prevention plan.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is recognizing that these visits help enhance a patients quality of life and that they are different from traditional sick visits. Identifying mental health concerns, cognitive impairments and other factors often involves in-depth conversations and non-face-to-face work. And physician offices can set up a system where all members of the care team contribute to the effort, maximizing patient benefit, practice pay and time savings.

Here are three steps to optimize annual wellness visits in your practice.

An annual wellness visit is different from the initial preventive physical examination, known as the IPPE. AWVs are offered to patients 12 months after they enroll in Medicare Part B and they are then covered once every 12 months.

Numerous components are part of the initial AWV, including screening for cognitive impairment and reviewing functional ability and level of safety. Nonphysician members of the care team can perform most of the components; the physicians role is to synthesize the findings and provide recommendations. During subsequent visits, the information is reviewed and updated.

Make clear this visit is not the same as an annual physical and doesnt include a physical exam. Medicare covers the AWV 100%, but any evaluation and management (E/M) work done during the visit is subject to copays, deductibles and coinsurance.

An AWV is covered only once every 12 months, so if a patient has had one elsewhere in that timeframe, they are not eligible for another one from your office.

First, physician offices will need to decide whether to combine AWV and problem-based visits. The STEPS Forward module then offers a sample process map as guidance on how to map out each step of the visit.

For example, if an office chooses to combine an AWV with E&M, the module outlines how to conduct and document the visit using both AWV and E&M templates.

TheCMEmodule, Medicare Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) Streamline Workflow to Perform a Thorough AWV,is enduringmaterial and designated by the AMA for a maximum of0.5AMA PRA Category 1 Credit.

The module is part of theAMA EdHub,anonline platformwith top-quality CME and education that supports the professional development needs of physicians and other health professionals. With topics relevant to you, it also offers an easy, streamlined way to find, take, track and report educational activities.

Learn more aboutAMA CME accreditation.

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3 steps to add annual Medicare wellness visits in your practice - American Medical Association

For the first time ever, CRISPR has been used to edit DNA inside a living human being. Scientists have also tapped the gene-editing tool to accelerate DNA sequencing in hopes of customizing cancer treatments. Plant-based burger startup Beyond Meat blasts critics who claim its products are ultra-processed. Genetic engineering may save the worlds favorite banana from extinction. But how does the public feel about all this genetic tinkering?

On this episode of Science Facts & Fallacies, plant geneticist Kevin Folta and GLP editor Cameron English go beyond the headlines to break down the latest developments from the world of genetics and biotechnology.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Can CRISPR gene editing save the Cavendish banana from extinction?

The Cavendish bananathat delicious, yellow tropical fruit currently populating the produce sections of our grocery storesmay not be available for much longer. A fungal disease known as Tropical Race 4 (TR-4) is wreaking havoc on banana plantations across South America, threatening to wipe out the Cavendish for good. TR-4 spreads rapidly and isnt easily controlled with pesticide applications. Thats why scientists are working feverishly to immunize the banana by cutting a segment of DNA out of its genome that makes it susceptible to TR-4.

More precise cancer treatments may be possible by pairing CRISPR with genetic sequencing

Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have used CRISPR to rapidly sequence particular genes involved in the development of breast cancer, eliminating the DNA replication process usually required for genome sequencing. The development could enable the selection of customized cancer drugs that treat the disease based on the genetic makeup of individual patients.

Beyond Meat goes on the offensive, blasting critics who claim plant-based burgers are ultra-processed

Plant-based burgers have been a hit with consumers so far, achieving nearly a $1 billion in sales in 2019. This development has made the meat industry nervous, and theyve launched expensive marketing campaigns to dissuade the public from chowing down on the beef-free alternatives. The industrys biggest criticism: plant-based meats are ultra-processed, and presumably less nutritious than traditional burgers.

Beyond Meat, maker of the wildly popular Beyond Burger, is having none of this. The company announced in early March it was going on the offensive to counter the marketing assault on its products, arguing that plant-based foods may actually be healthier than meat in some cases.

Targeting blindness with CRISPR: Doctors attempt first editing of genes inside a human body

Gene editing has yielded dozens of important medical treatments for deadly diseases, including cancers like leukemia and lymphoma. Typically, doctors extract immune cells from a patient, edit their DNA, then infuse them back into the persons body to attack the disease. Scientists have now taken this approach a step further by injecting a virus carrying the instructions to produce CRISPR-Cas9 directly into a patients eye, where it is expected to edit out a mutation involved in Leber congenital amaurosis, a genetic condition that causes blindness. Will this groundbreaking procedure work? Is it safe?

Infographic: What the US public thinks about tinkering with human genetics

As all this genetic engineering work begins reshaping intimate aspects of our lives, scientists and policy makers are eager to find out how consumers feel about the technology. Is the public on board, or do they fear a loss of human control? Both.

A majority of people surveyed by Pew (60%) said genetic engineering should be used to prevent serious diseases and produce organs for people who need them (57%), but they were also concerned about using the technology to enhance human performance. 69 percent, for example, said implanting brain chips to improve memory and information processing would be a step too far.

Kevin M. Folta is a professor in the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida. Follow Professor Folta on Twitter @kevinfolta

Cameron J. English is the GLPs senior agricultural genetics and special projects editor. BIO. Follow him on Twitter @camjenglish

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Podcast: Treating blindness with CRISPR; customized cancer drugs; Beyond Meat takes on critics; and saving bananas from extinction - Genetic Literacy...

A Texas-based genetic engineering company claims to have created a vaccine to prevent the coronavirus (COVID-19) and is hoping to have the drug approved and available to the public by the end of the year.

John Price, the CEO of Greffex, told Fox News Monday that he was completely confident in his companys new vaccine.

Were confident in the vaccine, the quality of the vaccine completely. The end result will be what the government wants to do in terms of testing, Price said.

The company had previously created a vaccine to combat MERS and that research helped them develop the new vaccine. MERS has a tremendous number of similarities to the coronavirus, Price explained.

The vaccine is still in the testing stage, and if approved, could be available to the public by years end, he said.

When asked whether there was a way to fast track the approval process, Price answered that it would be a policy decision for the government.

Thats always the $100 million question. The earliest that we think would be the end of the year. The latest would be 18 months. But we think that we could depending on the approval process of the government get something in 2020, he said.

Yesterday was the first time I heard people say its a pandemic, Price added. If its truly a pandemic, then you can pretty much do whatever you want. The process is roughly four weeks for the first animal testing and then you go into human trials. And thats the part that will be determined by the government.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and his team, meanwhile, are working on a separate vaccine which could take up to 18 months to prove safety and effectiveness. The FDA has granted approval for the National Institutes of Health to begin the first stage of clinical testing in that vaccine.

Media-driven panic about the virus has contributed to a jittery and unnerved stock market in recent days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 1,500 points in early trading, Monday.

As of Monday morning, there were approximately 600 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and 22 deaths. There are now 111,362 cases worldwide, according to the John Hopkins tracking map.

By comparison, the CDC estimates that 35.5 million people got sick with seasonal influenza in the United States during the 20182019 season, with an estimated 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness. According to the CDC, there have been 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza, this season.

Unfortunately, the global death rate for COVID-19 is 3.4 percent, which is much higher than the common flu, according to the World Health Organization.

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Genetic Engineering Co. Says Its COVID-19 Vaccine Could Be Approved By End of the Year - American Greatness

WASHINGTON, DC, US The US Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture launched a $7.5 million consumer education initiative focused on highlighting the science behind genetically modified organisms.

The goal of the effort, called Feed Your Mind, is to answer the most common questions consumers have about GMOs, including how they are regulated and whether they are safe and healthy.

Less than a dozen genetically modified crops are grown in the United States, but they often make up an overwhelming majority of the crop grown. More than 90% of soybeans, corn and sugar beets planted in 2018 were genetically modified.

Genetic engineering has created new plants that are resistant to insects and diseases, led to products with improved nutritional profiles, as well as certain produce that dont brown or bruise as easily, said Stephen M. Hahn, MD, commissioner of the FDA.

One educational video from the FDA points out that genetically modified soybeans have healthier oils that may be used to replace oils that contain trans fats. Other materials highlight how reduced bruising and browning may help combat food waste.

Consumers, however, remain uncertain. Concerns that GMOs are unhealthy and harmful are widespread. The number of shoppers avoiding GMOs tripled over the past decade, according to The Hartman Group. Close to half of consumers surveyed last year said they avoid bioengineered ingredients, compared to 15% in 2007.

A study published last year in Nature Human Behavior found more than 90% of participants had some level of opposition to GMO foods. It also found that consumers with the strongest opposition to GMO foods thought they were more knowledgeable about the topic than other participants, despite scoring lower on an actual knowledge test.

While foods from genetically engineered plants have been available to consumers since the early 1990s and are a common part of todays food supply, there are a lot of misconceptions about them, Hahn said. This initiative is intended to help people better understand what these products are and how they are made.

The Feed Your Mind initiative will launch in phases. Materials already released include a new website, fact sheets, infographics and videos. Supplementary science curriculum for high schools, resources for health professionals and additional consumer materials will be released later this year and in 2021.

Read this article:
US agencies launch initiative to boost understanding of GMOs - World Grain

It sometimes feels like society is permanently at loggerheads, divided over any number of issues, from genetic engineering and vaccines to euthanasia and religion, and unable to engage in productive exchanges across ideological divides.

Consequently, if education is to develop the next generation, it must nurture children as future citizens with the capacity to have productive conversations across these barriers of opinion and discipline.

We are often faced with big questions. But beyond the eternal questions concerning how life came into being and its purpose, there are more immediate concerns about which there will need to be decisions from citizens and leaders both now and in the future. How should we respond to climate change? Should government be allowed to quarantine people to prevent the spread of disease? Should euthanasia of terminally ill children be allowed?

Responses to questions such as these can be informed by science, as well as by ethics, philosophy and religion. But how can we generate a well reasoned argument using a range of diverse and often contradictory sources? And how can we develop childrens ability to do so, too? Children, after all, are the future.

First, children need to explore what an argument is, and what a good argument looks like within the subject they are studying. Put simply, an argument is a claim or set of claims supported by evidence and reasons, while a good argument is one justified by strong reasons and evidence that are relevant to the claim. But how do these arguments differ when it comes to the study of science and religious education (RE) in school?

The teaching and learning of arguments in science subjects has been extensively researched over the past 20 years. Academic textbooks and practical resources for teaching have been produced to support it.

But while RE curriculum documents often cite the need for students to produce well reasoned arguments, there has been far less research on and fewer resources for the teaching and learning of arguments within the subject.

One distinguishing feature between arguments in different subject areas is what is considered to be an acceptable reason. In the case of arguments in RE, what counts as a reason can be less defined and evidence-based than in the sciences, particularly when the focus may be on providing a safe space for expressing beliefs and respecting diversity, rather than on constructing persuasive arguments.

So what can be done about this and how can we ensure that children studying the two subject areas can better argue with one another? The Oxford Argumentation in Religion and Science (OARS) project brings the expertise of working science and RE teachers together, in collaboration with academic researchers. The project is exploring potential approaches for cross-curricular work across these disciplines, producing resources to support the teaching and learning of argument and reasoning in schools.

Our project team suggests that there are at least three good reasons to engage in cross-curricular teaching of argument and reasoning.

First, the subject groups can learn useful lessons from each other. Science teachers can draw on the skills of RE teachers for whom discussion, debate and dialogue are core features of their curriculum and daily work. RE teachers, on the other hand, could benefit by drawing on the well established resources and structure for teaching scientific arguments. They may also draw upon science teachers expertise when exploring scientific ideas and worldviews in RE.

Second, for the range of issues that might draw on both scientific and religious arguments for example, abortion, end-of-life decisions, evolution cross-curricular teaching could help develop a students capacity to discern the difference between those based on scientific evidence and those based more on faith and belief. It could also further their ability to accept and learn from other worldviews.

Finally, this work could extend across the whole school curriculum and bring greater coherence between school subjects. Learning about arguments in different subjects can make clear what is distinctive about each subject area (for example, highlighting the features of scientific arguments that make them distinctly scientific, as compared to other subjects). It can also highlight what features of arguments are common across specialities, showing how different subjects across the curriculum are related.

There is no single way that this cross-curricular collaboration could be rolled out in schools. Indeed, our participating teachers are innovative in finding approaches that work within the bounds of their busy, and often different, school lives.

In one example, an RE teacher and a science teacher are exploring the same question in their separate subject lessons: Why should we act on climate change? Students are asked to construct arguments using information that they have been learning in each subject, before combining these separate arguments from religion and science to present a convincing and coherent answer that draws on both disciplines.

We do not have all the answers and our work is ongoing. But we are convinced of the importance of learning how to argue and how to engage with others arguments for the sake of better scientific literacy, better religious literacy, and to create better citizens. Ultimately, it is about having productive discussions about what often appear to be unbridgeable divides and unanswerable dilemmas and to bring people together in the process.

Continued here:
How children can learn to balance science and religion - The Conversation UK

The initiative aims to educate consumers about GMOs, including their production processes, their health information and other safety-related questions.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in collaboration with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), have launched a new initiative to help consumers better understand foods created through genetic engineering, commonly called GMOs or genetically modified organisms.

The initiative, Feed Your Mind, aims to answer the most common questions that consumers have about GMOs, including what GMOs are, how and why they are made, how they are regulated and to address health and safety questions that consumers may have about these products.

While foods from genetically engineered plants have been available to consumers since the early 1990s and are a common part of todays food supply, there are a lot of misconceptions about them, said FDA Commissioner, Stephen M. Hahn, M.D. This initiative is intended to help people better understand what these products are and how they are made. Genetic engineering has created new plants that are resistant to insects and diseases, led to products with improved nutritional profiles, as well as certain produce that dont brown or bruise as easily.

Farmers and ranchers are committed to producing foods in ways that meet or exceed consumer expectations for freshness, nutritional content, safety, sustainability and more. I look forward to partnering with FDA and EPA to ensure that consumers understand the value of tools like genetic engineering in meeting those expectations, said Greg Ibach, Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs at USDA.

As EPA celebrates its 50th anniversary, we are proud to partner with FDA and USDA to push agricultural innovation forward so that Americans can continue to enjoy a protected environment and a safe, abundant and affordable food supply, said EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Assistant Administrator, Alexandra Dapolito Dunn.

The Feed Your Mind GMO initiative is launching in phases. The current materials released include a new website, as well as a selection of fact sheets, infographics and videos. Additional materials including a supplementary science curriculum for schools, resources for health professionals and additional consumer materials will be released later in 2020 and 2021.

To guide development of the Feed Your Mind initiative, the three government agencies formed a steering committee and several working groups consisting of agency leaders and subject matter experts; sought input from stakeholders through two public meetings; opened a docket to receive public comments; examined the latest science and research related to consumer understanding of genetically engineered foods; and conducted extensive formative research. Funding for Feed Your Mind was provided by Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017 as the Agricultural Biotechnology Education and Outreach Initiative.

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FDA, EPA and USDA launch GMO education initiative - New Food

While Beyond Meat debuted in the frozen aisle with beef crumbles and chicken strips (the latter have been dropped), the brand took off after launching refrigerated burgers and sausages designed to sit in the [animal] meat case, with sales in its fresh platform growing 275% in 2019 vs 11.8% growth in frozen.

If the refrigerated plant-based meat category is growing significantly faster, however, the frozen aisle is still the largest section in grocery for plant-based meat and still represents a sizeable opportunity, chief growth officer Chuck Muth told FoodNavigator-USA. Plus, our breakfast sausage patty cooks better from frozen.

The patties (MSRP $4.99 for six) contain 11g protein per serving, with 50% less total fat, 35% less saturated fat and sodium, 33% fewer calories, and 35% less sodium than the leading brand of pork sausage patties, with a base of pea protein and brown rice protein.

Asked about pricing in the plant-based meat segment following rival Impossible Foods move to cut prices to foodservice distributors by 15%, Muth said:

Impossible is quite a bit smaller than us; they are just starting to scale and as they are scaling, they are finding efficiencies and, I assume, bringing their price down accordingly. However their frontline pricing is still significantly higher than ours, so they still have a bit to go, and our pricing is more attractive.

He added:One of our goals is to reduce our pricing, so as we are able to develop more production efficiencies and [increase] capacity, and as we engineer products, we are very much focused on bringing our prices down.

Weve made it our stated goal that at least one of our items will be as cheap or cheaper than animal meat within the next four years or so, and thats the long term goal, to be priced competitively, not just with other plant based meats but with animal meats as well.

So is Beyond Meat sustaining or growing sales velocities in high-profile restaurant chains after the initial excitement or marketing budget wears off?

I think the encouraging thing for us is seeing product expansions in existing chains where we have partnerships, because theyre seeing good results coming in, said Muth, citing the example of Carls Jr and Hardees now offering Beyond Sausage breakfast burritos and egg and cheese biscuits as well as burgers.

He also noted that Dunkin which is rolling out Beyond Sausage sandwiches nationwide after a successful trial had attracted new guests and increased check sizes in part because plant-based products are premium items, but also because customers have proved more likely to pair them with higher-priced beverages such as lattes and cold brew. Its bringing in bigger register rings.

While some big names in QSR have not yet introduced plant-based entrees or breakfast options, they are all monitoring the space closely, he said.

Its more a timing issue than anything, plus they also want something thats unique to them since they are not going to be first to market, so they are thinking about what will differentiate them from the competition. But long term if they see their competitors being successful in this space they are going to have to take a very serious look.

Asked if Beyond Meat were in a position to be able to say yes to every account thats interested, or whether supply constraints were holding the company back, Muth said the firm was expanding in-house extrusion capabilities in the near future and adding more co-packers to its network in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia for downstream patty/sausage formation and packaging.

His comments came as CEO Ethan Brown told analysts last month that Beyond Meat began the year with around $700m in gross revenue capacity, with plans to scale to over a billion by the end of the year.

On the ingredient sourcing front, while Beyond Meat has recently expanded its pea protein sourcing capabilities,it is also exploring multiple other plant-based protein sources for sensory reasons (adding new flavors), nutritional reasons (to balance out amino acid profiles), and supply chain reasons (to diversify), said Muth, who noted that the Beyond Sausage uses a small amount of faba bean protein, while Beyond Beef and Beyond Burgers utilize mung bean and rice protein as well as peas.

As for the innovation pipeline, right now, Beyond Meat is focused on beef, poultry, and pork alternatives including plant-based bacon, said Muth. But down the road wed potentially look at other things.

Quizzed about the brands decision to go on the offensivethis year to tackle the narrative that plant-based meats are highly processed and unhealthy, he said:

We believe in the category and the space and were very positive, you wont hear us bad mouth other plant-based products or brands, but there are a lot of false narratives out there about whats in our products, so we think we have an obligation to talk about whats in our foods, so to understand that things like methyl cellulose [which isused in most plant-based meat products] are in many foods, things like ice cream and baked goods.

We want to make sure that consumers are well informed and to remind people that most foods we eat are processed.

Asked whether it was disingenuous to make a virtue of Beyond Meats all-natural non-GMO credentials [which distinguish it from rival Impossible Foods] given its commitment to science-based messaging and consumer education, he said:

Its not about what we believe, its what our consumers, our shoppers, believe, so were not saying theres anything bad about it [genetic engineering in food production].

Read more:
Beyond Meat rolls out frozen breakfast sausage patties, addresses pricing in plant-based meat sector - FoodNavigator-USA.com

New research from the University of NebraskaLincoln has led to the discovery of a novel gene that improves drought adaptation in wheat a breakthrough that could contribute to increased world food security.

In new research published in Plant Biotechnology Journal, Harkamal Walia, associate professor and Heuermann Chair of Agronomy and Horticulture at Nebraska, and colleagues describe a novel form of a gene obtained from wild wheat that has the potential to improve drought tolerance in cultivated wheat. Introducing this gene into cultivated wheat improved the plant root structure so that it continued to grow in search of water under dry soil conditions.

Wheat is the most widely grown crop in the world and, together with rice, provides more than 50% of the caloric intake of humans globally. Like other crops, wheat is exposed to a wide range of environmental limitations, such as high temperature, disease pressure and drought.

The scavenging nature of wheat root systems during times of drought may have been lost when wild wheats were adopted for agriculture by early humans or as cultivated wheat was bred for improved responsiveness to irrigation and fertilizers during the mid-1900s. This improved responsiveness was key to feeding a booming world population during the 1960s.

As todays producers strive for more crop per drop to feed a world population that is again in the midst of a boom and is expected to grow from about 7.5 billion today to more than 9.6 billion by 2050, it is evident that future crops will need greater drought resilience. The discovery by Walia and his colleagues could represent an important new genetic resource, enabling breeders to recapture this natural survival trait in cultivated wheat. UNL has secured a patent on the discovery via NUtech Ventures, enabling future commercialization of this technology.

The potential impact of the discovery grew substantially when the team found that adding the wild root gene also resulted in plants with larger grains in the absence of drought. Walia and his team were not expecting this, as introducing tolerance to a stress can sometimes result in lost productivity when the stress is absent.

This particular trait may have the opposite effect, which is a benefit in both conditions, Walia said. We are now working to understand the reason behind this surprising finding.

The genetic engineering of wheat plants was performed at Nebraskas Center for Biotechnology.

Walia is one of many researchers worldwide helping to develop a catalog of genes that will contribute to creating more robust plants for the future. Drought response is a complicated trait, Walia said, which involves many genes contributing to survival and productivity when water is limited. He hopes that research in this area will continue to discover new genetic resources that plant breeders and geneticists can use to develop more drought-tolerant crops.

From a genetic improvement perspective, it takes a community to make a crop more adaptive, Walia said. This finding is one piece of a very large puzzle.

The research was spearheaded by doctoral students Dante Placido and Jaspreet Sandhu in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. The work was supported by the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute.

Continue reading here:
UNL team links wild wheat gene to drought tolerance in cultivated wheat - Grand Island Independent

Dublin, March 10, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Cell Therapy - Technologies, Markets and Companies" report from Jain PharmaBiotech has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The cell-based markets was analyzed for 2018, and projected to 2028. The markets are analyzed according to therapeutic categories, technologies and geographical areas. The largest expansion will be in diseases of the central nervous system, cancer and cardiovascular disorders. Skin and soft tissue repair as well as diabetes mellitus will be other major markets.

The number of companies involved in cell therapy has increased remarkably during the past few years. More than 500 companies have been identified to be involved in cell therapy and 309 of these are profiled in part II of the report along with tabulation of 302 alliances. Of these companies, 170 are involved in stem cells.

Profiles of 72 academic institutions in the US involved in cell therapy are also included in part II along with their commercial collaborations. The text is supplemented with 67 Tables and 25 Figures. The bibliography contains 1,200 selected references, which are cited in the text.

This report contains information on the following:

The report describes and evaluates cell therapy technologies and methods, which have already started to play an important role in the practice of medicine. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is replacing the old fashioned bone marrow transplants. Role of cells in drug discovery is also described. Cell therapy is bound to become a part of medical practice.

Stem cells are discussed in detail in one chapter. Some light is thrown on the current controversy of embryonic sources of stem cells and comparison with adult sources. Other sources of stem cells such as the placenta, cord blood and fat removed by liposuction are also discussed. Stem cells can also be genetically modified prior to transplantation.

Cell therapy technologies overlap with those of gene therapy, cancer vaccines, drug delivery, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Pharmaceutical applications of stem cells including those in drug discovery are also described. Various types of cells used, methods of preparation and culture, encapsulation and genetic engineering of cells are discussed. Sources of cells, both human and animal (xenotransplantation) are discussed. Methods of delivery of cell therapy range from injections to surgical implantation using special devices.

Cell therapy has applications in a large number of disorders. The most important are diseases of the nervous system and cancer which are the topics for separate chapters. Other applications include cardiac disorders (myocardial infarction and heart failure), diabetes mellitus, diseases of bones and joints, genetic disorders, and wounds of the skin and soft tissues.

Regulatory and ethical issues involving cell therapy are important and are discussed. Current political debate on the use of stem cells from embryonic sources (hESCs) is also presented. Safety is an essential consideration of any new therapy and regulations for cell therapy are those for biological preparations.

Key Topics Covered

Part I: Technologies, Ethics & RegulationsExecutive Summary 1. Introduction to Cell Therapy2. Cell Therapy Technologies3. Stem Cells4. Clinical Applications of Cell Therapy5. Cell Therapy for Cardiovascular Disorders6. Cell Therapy for Cancer7. Cell Therapy for Neurological Disorders8. Ethical, Legal and Political Aspects of Cell therapy9. Safety and Regulatory Aspects of Cell Therapy

Part II: Markets, Companies & Academic Institutions10. Markets and Future Prospects for Cell Therapy11. Companies Involved in Cell Therapy12. Academic Institutions13. References

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/bzimne

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

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Cell Therapy Insights Report, 2018-2028: Markets, Technologies, Ethics, Regulations, Companies & Academic Institutions - Benzinga

Study lead author Laura Rivera Tarazona, a biomedical engineering doctoral student, worked with Dr. Taylor Ware (left) and Dr. Zachary Campbell on her research that incorporated plant DNA into yeast to give it light-responsive traits.

Combining the powers of the living and the inanimate, an interdisciplinary team from The University of Texas at Dallas has embedded genetically modified yeast into a synthetic gel to create a novel, shape-changing material designed to grow under specific biochemical or physical conditions.

This is definitely a case where the product is more than the sum of its parts, said Dr. Taylor Ware, assistant professor of bioengineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and corresponding author of a paper published in January in Science Advances, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences open-access journal.

The idea to use the reproductive growth of cells to drive shape change within an inanimate container began with an old, reliable standby: bakers yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Yeast was the first eukaryotic organism to have its genome totally sequenced, Ware said. Wonderful tools exist already to modify it genetically. The cells have stiff cell walls, unlike mammalian cells, which make them better for pushing outward on the gel to change its shape.

By genetically modifying the yeast in different ways, the research team created composites that responded to various stimuli.

In proof-of-concept experiments, biomedical engineering doctoral student Laura Rivera Tarazona, lead author of the paper, incorporated plant DNA into yeast to give it light-responsive traits. When the resulting yeast-hydrogel composite was exposed to light, the entire object changed shape as the growing yeast pushed outward on the boundaries of the gel.

The research team also modified the yeast to respond to biochemical stimuli, including amino acids, which are building blocks of proteins.

This combination of animate with inanimate lends itself to interacting with the body in a particularly useful way using cellular mechanisms to drive shape change, Ware said. Given the flexibility of yeast, this composite could be designed to respond to any of countless conditions.

Dr. Zachary Campbell, assistant professor of biological sciences in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and a co-author of the study, said the awesome power of yeast genetics made the project possible.

Weve had the ability to make yeast do amazing biological things for a long time, but its only in the past few years that we have had the ability to create strains where gene activity is precisely controlled by light, Campbell said.

Theres a beauty to taking something thats ordinarily so static and endowing it with this capability to transform into other things.

Dr. Zachary Campbell, assistant professor of biological sciences in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

The researchers believe the shape-changing response has potential applications as a type of reporter both inside and outside the body.

Where I think this research eventually goes is indicating disease states via detection of proteins and other biomolecules, Ware said.

Ware said shape change could also be used to perform mechanical work to open a container or uncover an adhesive, for example.

Our results are in the very early stage, but the fact that were taking a series of molecular events and transducing them into something mechanical is already exciting in itself, Ware said.

Rivera Tarazona uses a microscope as one of the successful projects is displayed on the monitor in the background.

Campbell added that, although the physical transformations in the composite materials are very slow, capitalizing on genetic manipulations to drive minuscule devices could have additional applications, such as releasing drugs from a capsule in response to a precise biological trigger.

Theoretically, you could use these to detect anything you can detect in nature by combining an existing genetic circuit from another cell type with the yeast, he said. This allows access to a dazzling array of physiological cues.

Theres a beauty to taking something thats ordinarily so static and endowing it with this capability to transform into other things.

Other authors of the research included biomedical engineer Hyun Kim PhD19 and Vandita Bhat, a molecular biology doctoral student graduating this spring.

The work was supported by a grant (R01NS100788) from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health, and is partially based on work supported by the National Science Foundation.

More:
Team Creates Shape-Changing Material That Pushes Biological Boundaries - University of Texas at Dallas

The year 2020 marks a milestone in the march of robots into popular culture: the 100th anniversary of the birth of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Asimov coined the word 'robotics', invented the much-quoted Three Laws governing robot behavior, and passed on many myths and misconceptions that affect the way we feel about robots today.

A compulsive writer and homebodypossibly, an agoraphobicAsimov hated to travel: ironically, for a writer who specialized in fantastic tales often set on distant worlds, he hadn't been in an airplane since being flown home from Hawaii by the US Army after being released from service just before a test blast of the atomic bomb on the Bikini Atoll. (Asimov once grimly observed that this stroke of luck probably saved his life by preventing him from getting leukemia, one of the side effects that afflicted many servicemen who were close to the blast.)

By 1956, Asimov had completed most of the stories that cemented his reputation as the grand master of science fiction, and set the ground rules for a new field of study called "robotics," a word he made up. Researchers like Marvin Minsky of MIT and William Shockley of Bell Labs had been doing pioneering work into Artificial Intelligence and Robotics since the early 1950s, but they were not well-known outside of the scientific and business communities. Asimov, on the other hand, was famous, his books so commercially successful that he quit his job as a tenured chemistry professor at Boston College to write full-time. Asimov's 1950 short story collection, I, Robot, put forward a vision of the robot as humanity's friend and protector, at a time when many humans were wondering if their own species could be trusted not to self-destruct.

Born in January 1920, or possibly October 1919the exact date was uncertain because birth records weren't kept in the little Russian village where he came fromAsimov emigrated to Brooklyn in 1922 with his parents. Making a go of life in America turned out to be tougher than they expected, until his father scraped together enough money to buy a candy store. That decision would have a seismic impact on Isaac's future, and on robotics research and the narratives we tell ourselves about human-robot relationships to this day.

As a kid, Isaac worked long hours in the store where he became interested in two attractions that pulled in customers: a slot machine that frequently needed to be dismantled for repairs; and pulp fiction magazines featuring death rays and alien worlds. Soon after the first rocket launches in the mid-1920s, scientists announced that space travel was feasible, opening the door to exciting tales of adventure in outer space. Atomic energythe source of the death rayswas also coming into public consciousness as a potential "super weapon." But both atomic bombs and space travel were still very much in the realm of fiction; few people actually believed they'd see either breakthrough within their lifetimes.

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The genre of the stories in the pulps wasn't new. Fantastical tales inspired by science and technology went back to the publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in 1818, which speculated about the use of a revolutionary new energy source, electricity, to reanimate life. Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, H. G. Welles, and Edgar Rice Burroughs all wrote novels touching on everything from time travel, to atomic-powered vehicles, to what we now call genetic engineering. But the actual term, "science fiction," wasn't coined by any of them: that distinction goes to Hugo Gernsbeck, editor of the technical journal, Modern Electrics, whose name would eventually be given to the HUGO, the annual award for the best science fiction writing.13

Gernsbeck's interest in the genre started with a field that was still fairly new in his time: electrical engineering. Even in 1911, the nature of electricity was not fully understood, and random electrocutions were not uncommon; electricians weren't just tradesmen, but daredevils, taking their lives in their hands every time they wired a house or lit up a city street.14 Gernsbeck, perhaps gripped by the same restless derring-do as his readers, wasn't satisfied with writing articles about induction coils. In 1911, he penned a short story set in the twenty-third century and serialized it over several issues of Modern Electrics, a decision that must have baffled some of the electricians who made up his subscribers. At first, Gernsbeck called his mash-up of science and fiction "scientifiction," mercifully changing that mouthful to "science fiction." He went on to publish a string of popular magazines, including Science Wonder Stories, Wonder Stories, Science, and Astounding. (Gernsbeck's rich imagination didn't stretch far enough to come up with more original titles.)

Asimov's father stocked Gernsbeck's magazines in the candy store because they sold like hotcakes, but he considered them out-and-out junk. Young Isaac was forbidden to waste time reading about things that didn't exist and never would, like space travel and atomic weapons.

Despite (or possibly because of) his father's objections, Isaac began secretly reading every pulp science fiction magazine that appeared in the store, handling each one so carefully that Asimov Senior never knew they had been opened. Isaac finally managed to convince his father that one of Gernsbeck's magazines, Science Wonder Stories, had educational valueafter all, the word "science" was in the title, wasn't it?15

Isaac sold his first short story when he was still an eighteen-year-old high school student, naively showing up at the offices of Amazing Stories to personally deliver it to the editor, John W. Campbell. Campbell rejected the story (eventually published by a rival Gernsbeck publication, Astounding) but encouraged Isaac to send him more. Over time, Campbell published a slew of stories that established Isaac, while still a university student, as a handsomely paid writer of science fiction.

When you read those early stories today, Asimov's weaknesses as a writer are painfully glaring. With almost no experience of the world outside of his school, the candy store, and his Brooklyn neighborhood and no exposure to contemporary writers of his time like Hemingway or FitzgeraldIsaac fell back on the flat, stereotypical characters and clichd plots of pulp fiction. Isaac did have one big thing going for him, though: a science education.

By the early 1940s, Asimov was a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University, as well as a member of the many science fiction fan clubs springing up all over Brooklyn whose members' obsession with the minutiae of fantastical worlds would be familiar to any ComicCon fan in a Klingon costume today. Asimov wrote stories that appealed to this newly emerging geeky readership, staying close enough to the boundaries of science to be plausible, while still instinctively understanding how to create wondrous fictional worlds.

The working relationship between Asimov and his editor, Campbell, turned into a highly profitable one for both publisher and author. But as Asimov improved his writing and tackled more complex themes, he ran into a roadblock: Campbell insisted that he would only publish human- centered stories. Aliens could appear as stock villains but humans always had to come out on top. Campbell didn't just believe that people were superior to aliens, but that some peoplewhite Anglo-Saxons were superior to everyone else. Still a relatively young writer and unwilling to walk away from his lucrative gig with Campbell, Asimov looked for ways to work around his editor's prejudices. The answer: write about robots. Asimov's mechanical beings were created by humans, in their own image; as sidekicks, helpers, proxies, and, eventually, replacements. Endowed with what Asimov dubbed "positronic brains," his imaginary robots were even more cleverly constructed than the slot machine in the candy store.

Never a hands-on guy himself, Asimov was nonetheless interested in how mechanisms worked. Whenever the store's one-armed bandit had to be serviced, Isaac would watch the repairman open the machine and expose its secrets. The slot machine helped him imagine the mechanical beings in his stories.

Although Asimov can be credited with kick-starting a generation's love affair with robots, he was far from their inventor. (Even I, Robot borrowed its title from a 1939 comic book of the same name written by a pair of brothers who called themselves Eando Binder, the name eventually bestowed on the beer-swilling, cigar-smoking robot star of the TV show, Futurama.) But in writing his very first robot story, Asimov was both jumping on a new obsession of the 1920s, and mining old, deep myths going back to ancient Jewish tales of the golem, which was a man made of mud and magically brought to life, as well as stories as diverse as Pygmalion, Pinocchio, and engineering wonders like the eighteenth century, chess-playing Mechanical Turk, and other automatons.

Robots have an ancient history and a surprisingly whimsical one. Automatons have been frog marching, spinet playing, and minuet dancing their way out of the human imagination for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, but it wasn't until the machine age of the early twentieth century that robots appeared as thinking, reasoning substitute humans. The word robotCzech for "mechanical worker"wasn't coined in a patent office or on a technical blueprint, but as the title of a fantastical play by Karel Capek, Rossum's Universal Robots, which was first performed in 1920, the reputed year of Isaac Asimov's birth. In adopting robots as his main characters, and the challenges and ethics of human life in a robotic world as one of his central themes, Asimov found his voice as a writer. His robots are more sympathetic and three-dimensional than his human characters. In exploring the dynamics of human-robot partnershipsas Asimov would do particularly well in detective/robot "buddy" stories, such as his 1954 novel Caves of Steel he invented a subgenre within the broader world of science fiction.

Asimov's humanoid robots were governed by the Three Laws of Robotics. More whimsical than scientific, they established ground rules for an imaginary world where humans and mechanical beings coexisted. Eventually, the Three Laws were quoted by researchers in two academic fields that were still unnamed in the 1940s: artificial intelligence and robotics.

First published by Astounding magazine in 1942 as part of Asimov's fourth robot story "Runaround", the Three Laws stated that:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

According to Asimov's biographer Michael Wilson in Isaac Asimov: A Life of the Grand Master of Science Fiction (New York, Carrol & Graff, 2005), "Asimov was flattered that he had established a set of pseudoscientific laws. Despite the fact that in the early 1940s the science of robotics was a purely fictional thing, he somehow knew that one day they would provide the foundation for a real set of laws."

The Three Laws would continue to appear not only in the world of robot-driven books and filmslike Aliens (1986), where the laws are synopsized by the synthetic human Bishop when trying to reassure the robot-phobic heroine Ellen Ripleybut by some real-world roboticists and AI researchers, who are now considering how to develop a moral code for machines that may one day have to make independent, life-or-death decisions.

Read more from the original source:
Isaac Asimov, the candy store kid who dreamed up robots - Salon

PARIS A second patient has been cured of HIV after undergoing stem cell transplant treatment, doctors said Tuesday, after finding no trace of infection 30 months after he stopped traditional treatment.

The London Patient, a cancer sufferer originally from Venezuela, made headlines last year when researchers at the University of Cambridge reported they had found no trace of the AIDS-causing virus in his blood for 18 months.

Ravindra Gupta, lead author of the study published in The Lancet HIV, said the new test results were even more remarkable and likely demonstrated the patient was cured.

Weve tested a sizeable set of sites that HIV likes to hide in and they are all pretty much negative for an active virus, Gupta told AFP.

The patient, who revealed his identity this week as Adam Castillejo, 40, was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and had been on medication to keep the disease in check since 2012.

Later that year, he was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkins lymphoma, a deadly cancer.

In 2016 he underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat blood cancer, receiving stem cells from donors with a genetic mutation present in less than 1 percent of Europeans that prevents HIV from taking hold.

He becomes only the second person to be cured of HIV after American Timothy Brown, known as the Berlin Patient, recovered from HIV in 2011 following similar treatment.

Viral tests of Castillejos cerebral fluid, intestinal tissue and lymphoid tissue more than two years after stopping retroviral treatment showed no active infection.

Gupta said the tests uncovered HIV fossils fragments of the virus that were now incapable of reproducing, and were therefore safe.

Wed expect that, he said.

Its quite hard to imagine that all trace of a virus that infects billions of cells was eliminated from the body.

Researchers cautioned that the breakthrough did not constitute a generalized cure for HIV, which leads to nearly 1 million deaths every year.

Castillejos treatment was a last resort as his blood cancer would likely have killed him without intervention, according to Gupta.

The Cambridge doctor said that there were several other patients who had undergone similar treatment but who were less far along in their remission.

There will probably be more but they will take time, he said.

Researchers are currently weighing up whether or not patients suffering from drug-resistant forms of HIV might be eligible for stem cell transplants in future, something Gupta said would require careful ethical consideration.

Youd have to weigh up the fact that theres a 10 percent mortality rate from doing a stem-cell transplant against what the risk of death would be if we did nothing, he said.

Commenting on The Lancet study, Sharon Lewin, an infectious disease expert at the University of Melbourne, said the findings could provide comfort to patients.

But she advised caution.

Given the large number of cells sampled here and the absence of any intact virus, is the London patient cured? she said.

Unfortunately in the end, only time will tell.

Continue reading here:
Second patient cured of HIV using stem cell transplant treatment - The Japan Times

MENLO PARK, Calif. and NEW YORK, March 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Forty Seven Inc. (Nasdaq: FTSV) and Rocket Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq: RCKT) announced today that they have entered into a research collaboration to pursue clinical proof-of-concept for Forty Sevens novel antibody-based conditioning regimen, FSI-174 (anti-cKIT antibody) plus magrolimab (anti-CD47 antibody), with Rockets ex vivo lentiviral vector hematopoietic stem cell (LVV HSC) gene therapy, RP-L102. The initial collaboration will evaluate this treatment regimen in Fanconi Anemia (FA), a genetic disease that affects patients capacity to produce blood cells and is associated with an increased risk of leukemia and other neoplasms. RP-L102, Rockets gene therapy approach for FA, involves treatment with patients own gene-corrected blood forming stem cells (hematopoietic stem cells, or HSCs).

Gene therapies for monogenic blood disorders have broad potential. One concern associated with these treatments is the toxicity of pre-therapy conditioning regimens that utilize cytotoxic chemotherapy and/or radiation to destroy existing HSCs and facilitate engraftment of gene-corrected HSCs. Forty Sevens all-antibody based conditioning regimen is designed to address the limitations of current pre-treatment conditioning therapies. These regimens are often associated with serious side effects, including severe infection, cognitive impairment, infertility, endocrine dysfunction, secondary malignancies and organ damage. These toxicities are especially difficult for pediatric patients and are particularly severe for patients with FA, who are more sensitive to the DNA-damaging effects of traditional conditioning agents. Preliminary data demonstrate that RP-L102 may confer efficacy without pre-treatment conditioning. The combination of RP-L102 with Forty Sevens all-antibody conditioning regimen may provide patients an alternate treatment option in situations where conditioning may be advantageous.

We are pleased to enter into this collaboration with Forty Seven, said Jonathan Schwartz, M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Rocket. RP-L102 Process B is currently being evaluated in a registrational trial without the use of conditioning. In parallel, we are assessing incorporation of a non-genotoxic conditioning regimen as a part of Rockets life-cycle management strategy. Forty Sevens novelall-antibodyconditioning regimen could also beapplied to Rockets other lentiviral programs, in which conditioning is more integral to the gene therapy approach.

We are initiating our first in human healthy volunteer study of FSI-174 in the first quarter this year, and are excited to enter into a partnership with Rocket at this time. Rocket is at the forefront of developing gene therapies for high unmet-need diseases, and this collaboration will provide an opportunity to evaluate the benefit of Forty Sevens novel conditioning regimen with Rockets RP-L102 to help FA patients, says Jens-Peter Volkmer, VP of Research at Forty Seven.

This collaboration is in line with our strategy to study our anti-cKIT and anti-CD47, all-antibody conditioning regimen in combination with several different gene therapies, and to establish clinical proof-of-concept in a broad range of transplant indications, said Mukul Agarwal, VP of Corporate Development at Forty Seven.

Maria Grazia Roncarolo, M.D., Scientific Advisor to Forty Seven, commented, The goal of my lifes work is to bring pediatric patients transformative therapies for currently incurable diseases. We believe Rocket Pharmaceuticals commitment to devastating diseases, such as FA, addresses a critical unmet need and Forty Sevens antibody conditioning creates an alternative avenue to deliver this therapy to those patients. We look forward to seeing how this collaboration may help patients in need.

Under the terms of the agreement, Rocket will provide its ex vivo LVV HSC gene therapy platform and Forty Seven will contribute its innovative antibody-based conditioning regimen for the collaboration.

About FSI-174 and MagrolimabFSI-174 is a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting cKIT, which is a receptor that is highly expressed on hematopoietic stem cells. Magrolimab is a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting CD47, which is a dont eat me signal to macrophages and is expressed on all cells. Magrolimab is currently being investigated in Phase 2 clinical trials to treat cancer and has established clinical efficacy in four indications, including myelodysplastic syndrome, acute myeloid leukemia, diffuse large B cell lymphoma and follicular lymphoma, with a favorable safety profile in over 400 patients treated, including some patients treated continuously for over two years. When combined, FSI-174 sends a positive signal to macrophages to target blood forming stem cells for removal and magrolimab disengages inhibitory signals that block phagocytosis. Combination of these antibodies has shown efficient removal of blood forming stem cells, allowing for transplantation in pre-clinical models.

About Fanconi Anemia Fanconi Anemia (FA) is a rare pediatric disease characterized by bone marrow failure, malformations and cancer predisposition. The primary cause of death among patients with FA is bone marrow failure, which typically occurs during the first decade of life. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), when available, corrects the hematologic component of FA, but requires myeloablative conditioning. Graft-versus-host disease, a known complication of allogeneic HSCT, is associated with an increased risk of solid tumors, mainly squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck region. Approximately 60-70% of patients with FA have aFANC-Agene mutation, which encodes for a protein essential for DNA repair. Mutation in theFANC-Agene leads to chromosomal breakage and increased sensitivity to oxidative and environmental stress. Chromosome fragility induced by DNA-alkylating agents such as mitomycin-C (MMC) or diepoxybutane (DEB) is the gold standard test for FA diagnosis. Somatic mosaicism occurs when there is a spontaneous correction of the mutated gene that can lead to stabilization or correction of a FA patients blood counts in the absence of any administered therapy. Somatic mosaicism, often referred to as natural gene therapy provides a strong rationale for the development of FA gene therapy because of the selective growth advantage of gene-corrected hematopoietic stem cells over FA cells1.

1Soulier, J.,et al. (2005) Detection of somatic mosaicism and classification of Fanconi anemia patients by analysis of the FA/BRCA pathway. Blood 105: 1329-1336

About Rocket Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Rocket Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: RCKT) (Rocket) is advancing an integrated and sustainable pipeline of genetic therapies that correct the root cause of complex and rare childhood disorders. The companys platform-agnostic approach enables it to design the best therapy for each indication, creating potentially transformative options for patients contending with rare genetic diseases. Rocket's clinical programs using lentiviral vector (LVV)-based gene therapy are for the treatment of Fanconi Anemia (FA), a difficult to treat genetic disease that leads to bone marrow failure and potentially cancer, Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-I (LAD-I), a severe pediatric genetic disorder that causes recurrent and life-threatening infections which are frequently fatal, and Pyruvate Kinase Deficiency (PKD) a rare, monogenic red blood cell disorder resulting in increased red cell destruction and mild to life-threatening anemia. Rockets first clinical program using adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based gene therapy is for Danon disease, a devastating, pediatric heart failure condition. Rockets pre-clinical pipeline program is for Infantile Malignant Osteopetrosis (IMO), a bone marrow-derived disorder. For more information about Rocket, please visitwww.rocketpharma.com.

For more information, please visit http://www.rocketpharma.com or contact info@rocketpharma.com

About Forty Seven, Inc.Forty Seven, Inc.is a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company that is developing therapies targeting cancer immune evasion pathways based on technology licensed fromStanford University. Forty Sevens lead program, magrolimab, is a monoclonal antibody against the CD47 receptor, a dont eat me signal that cancer cells commandeer to avoid being ingested by macrophages. This antibody is currently being evaluated in multiple clinical studies in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome, acute myeloid leukemia, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

For more information, please visitwww.fortyseveninc.comor contactinfo@fortyseveninc.com.

Follow Forty Seven on social media:@FortySevenInc,LinkedIn

Rocket Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking StatementsVarious statements in this release concerning Rocket's future expectations, plans and prospects, including without limitation, Rocket's expectations regarding the safety, effectiveness and timing of product candidates that Rocket may develop, to treat Fanconi Anemia (FA), Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency-I (LAD-I), Pyruvate Kinase Deficiency (PKD), Infantile Malignant Osteopetrosis (IMO) and Danon Disease, and the safety, effectiveness and timing of related pre-clinical studies and clinical trials, may constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other federal securities laws and are subject to substantial risks, uncertainties and assumptions. You should not place reliance on these forward-looking statements, which often include words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "will give," "estimate," "seek," "will," "may," "suggest" or similar terms, variations of such terms or the negative of those terms. Although Rocket believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, Rocket cannot guarantee such outcomes. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including, without limitation, Rocket's ability to successfully demonstrate the efficacy and safety of such products and pre-clinical studies and clinical trials, its gene therapy programs, the preclinical and clinical results for its product candidates, which may not support further development and marketing approval, the potential advantages of Rocket's product candidates, actions of regulatory agencies, which may affect the initiation, timing and progress of pre-clinical studies and clinical trials of its product candidates, Rocket's and its licensors ability to obtain, maintain and protect its and their respective intellectual property, the timing, cost or other aspects of a potential commercial launch of Rocket's product candidates, Rocket's ability to manage operating expenses, Rocket's ability to obtain additional funding to support its business activities and establish and maintain strategic business alliances and new business initiatives, Rocket's dependence on third parties for development, manufacture, marketing, sales and distribution of product candidates, the outcome of litigation, and unexpected expenditures, as well as those risks more fully discussed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Rocket's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, filed March 6, 2020 with the SEC. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. All such statements speak only as of the date made, and Rocket undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Forty Seven Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking StatementsStatements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as will, may, assess, could, believe, and similar expressions (as well as other words or expressions referencing future events, conditions, or circumstances) are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements include those related to the research and development plans for Rockets and Forty Sevens respective platforms and product candidates, the timing and success of Forty Sevens collaboration with Rocket, Forty Sevens plans to pursue clinical proof-of-concept for FSI-174 plus magrolimab with the LVV HSC gene therapy platform, the focus on diseases that have the potential to be corrected with the combination of RP-L102 and Forty Sevens all-antibody conditioning regimen, the tolerability and efficacy of RP-L102, FSI-174 and magrolimab, the timing and success of any future collaborations between Forty Seven and Rocket, Forty Sevens plans to continue development of FSI-174 plus magrolimab, as well as related timing for clinical trials of the same.

Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The product candidates that Forty Seven develops may not progress through clinical development or receive required regulatory approvals within expected timelines or at all.In addition, clinical trials may not confirm any safety, potency or other product characteristics described or assumed in this press release. Such product candidates may not be beneficial to patients or successfully commercialized. The failure to meet expectations with respect to any of the foregoing matters may have a negative effect on Forty Seven's stock price. Additional information concerning these and other risk factors affecting Forty Seven's business can be found in Forty Seven's periodic filings with theSecurities and Exchange Commissionatwww.sec.gov. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, Forty Seven disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

Forty SevenInvestors:Hannah Deresiewicz, (212) 362-1200hannah.deresiewicz@sternir.com

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Forty Seven and Rocket Pharmaceuticals Announce Research Collaboration for Fanconi Anemia - BioSpace

The first single-cell analysis of the human ovarian cortex revealed six main types of cells, but none of the oogonial stem cells that other researchers say they have isolated, according to a study published earlier this week (March 2) in Nature Communications. These findings are backed by the most advanced technologies, the authors say, and could put to rest a heated debate about the properties of the adult ovary that has raged for more than a decade.

The results of the experiment dont leave a lot of space for different interpretations, says Susana Chuva de Sousa Lopes, a developmental biologist at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands who served on the PhD dissertation committee of coauthor Sarita Panula but was not involved in the research. It seems, she says, that cells previously identified as ovarian stem cells are in fact perivascular cells, which support blood vessel structure and help regulate blood flow.

But the discoverers of ovarian stem cells in adult mammals and other proponents of the cells existence are not convinced, citing methodological weaknesses of the new study.

Until relatively recently, scientific consensus was that a female mammals oocyte pool is fixed at birth. Adult ovaries, it was assumed, are simply unable to generate new eggs. But in 2004, Northeastern University reproductive biologist Jonathan Tilly and colleagues published findings that appeared to upend this understanding of oocyctes by presenting evidence of ovarian stem cells in adult mice.

A few years later, scientists in China claimed to have also found such germ line stem cells in the ovaries of adult mice, and showed that these cells could differentiate into functional eggs that gave rise to viable mouse pups. And in 2012, Tillys group reported the existence of germ cells in samples of human ovarian tissue, claiming that these cells could similarly generate oocytes in vitro and in vivo when injected into mice.

These findings generated a lot of publicity because they suggested that human fertility wasnt fixed after all. But the data has always been criticized, says Fredrik Lanner, an embryonic stem cell researcher at the Karolinska Institute and a coauthor on the newly published study that failed to find such stem cells.

We quite feel certain to say that in the human adult ovary in this cortex region, there is no cell that would be the oogonial stem cell.

Pauliina Damdimopoulou, Karolinska Institute

While some groups have been able to reproduce the results, others have tried and failed. Debates have erupted over methods, techniques, and protocols, and Tilly and his colleagues have published lengthy replies to those who have challenged their work. Today, the field is more or less divided into two camps regarding the existence of ovarian stem cells, says Chuva de Sousa Lopes.

To try to get to the bottom of the issue, Lanner and his collaborators harvested high-quality ovarian tissue samples from 21 healthy patients of reproductive age and isolated the ovarian cortex, the outer layer of the ovary where researchers claim to have found the elusive stem cells. The team used enzymes to break down the ovarian tissues, yielding 24,000 individual cells in total, then performed single-cell transcriptome and cell surface marker profiling, revealing six main cell types: oocytes, granulosa cells, immune cells, endothelial cells, perivascular cells, and stromal cells. None of the single-cell profiles matched those of reported ovarian stem cells.

When Lanner and colleagues stained the cells with an antibody against DDX4, a germ cell marker that is reported to select for oogonial stem cells, they found that they had instead isolated perivascular cells. The team then stained intact ovarian tissue and saw that the antibody similarly identifies perivascular cells. A comparison of the 24,000 cells to existing transcriptome data from both human fetal ovaries and the ovarian medulla, the inner region of the ovary, also failed to reveal any oogonial stem cells.

We quite feel certain to say that in the human adult ovary in this cortex region, there is no cell that would be the oogonial stem cell, says coauthor Pauliina Damdimopoulou, a cell biologist at the Karolinska Institute. She believes that other researchers have succeeded in using the DDX4 isolation technique to select and culture cells, but that what they have found are in fact perivascular cells and not oogonial stem cells.

This study again highlights that the DDX4 isolation technique is not something that can be used to isolate oogonial stem cells, University of Adelaide cell biologist Keith Jones, who was not involved in the work but coauthored a 2016 papersuggesting that the same antibody does not isolate DDX4 positive cells, writes in an email to The Scientist. It brings into question the existence of such stem cells, and leads us back to the dogma that prevailed previously in the fieldthe adult ovary does not contain oogonial stem cells.

Damdimopoulou also notes that she and her colleagues found that small, mature oocytes can slip through the filtration process, and when cultured, may appear as if they had been generated from stem cells. We think [the oocytes] were there all along from the beginning, she says. The formation of new vasculature by perivascular cells surrounding these oocytes, Chuva de Sousa Lopes suspects, could trigger dormant egg cells to become active and then mature, which might explain the results published by other labs.

Perivascular cells dont undergo meiosis, perivascular cells dont express meiotic genes, perivascular cells dont express germ cell genes.

Jonathan Tilly, Northeastern University

Others are not ready to give up on the idea of ovarian stem cells just yet. Deepa Bhartiya, a stem cell biologist at the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health in India who was not involved with the research, has been working with ovarian stem cells since 2010 and says that they can be easily detected. Research with sheep ovarian tissues has shown that simple scraping of [the] ovary surface can show the presence of stem cells amongst the ovary surface epithelial cells, she writes in an email to The Scientist. The problem with the new study out of Sweden, Bhartiya says, is the speed at which the researchers spun their cellsmuch too slow to isolate the stem cells, which due to their small size do not pellet down at lower speeds and are therefore unknowingly discarded. Bhartiya writes that the study used novel techniques, but revealed nothing new: if sample preparation is not properone will get negative data.

Tilly argues that there are numerous methodological problems with the study. He says that at this point four independent groups have reported on the existence of oogonial stem cells, showing that the cells can generate new oocytes in both somatic ovarian tissue and outside the body in culture, and that they can undergo complete meiosis, a germ cell-specific event. Perivascular cells dont undergo meiosis, perivascular cells dont express meiotic genes, perivascular cells dont express germ cell genes, he says.

What the field really needs, says Chuva de Sousa Lopes, is more communication among researchers. The scientists that claim there are stem cells in the ovary and the scientists that are against that are somehow not really talking to each other, she says. I wish there would be more open dialogue, because sooner or later all these populations [of cells] will be clarified . . . and things will be more clear.

M. Wagner et al., Single-cell analysis of human ovarian cortex identifies distinct cell populations but no oogonial stem cells,Nat Commun,doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14936-3, 2020.

Amy Schleunes is an intern atThe Scientist. Email her ataschleunes@the-scientist.com.

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Single-Cell Analysis of Ovarian Cortex Fails to Find Stem Cells - The Scientist

By Tom McLaughlin

Lauren Daniel recalls that, as a clinical psychologist working with pediatric cancer patients at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), she would often arrive in the mornings to do therapy sessions and find that her patients were still sleeping.

It was then difficult for her to sit down with them, she remembers, but the predicament was understandable, since they were frequently woken up throughout the night for a variety of reasons, including vital checks, to urinate, and to get pumps and other medical equipment serviced.

For someone to wake them up during the day, it was torture for them, says the assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers UniversityCamden. They dont want to talk to you at that point.

Daniels understanding and concern would spark a career research interest in the sleep patterns of children with cancer and the connection to patients psychosocial health outcomes.

The RutgersCamden researcher is now leading an international team of sleep researchers to establish research priorities for better understanding the role of sleep in pediatric cancer. The team calls on other researchers to join them in their collaborative efforts in their paper, A call to action for expanded sleep research in pediatric oncology: A position paper on behalf of the International Psycho-Oncology Society Pediatrics Special Interest Group, in the journal Psycho-Oncology.

We are excited to put the call out there, says Daniel, who notes that three of the participating researchers spoke at the 2019 International Psycho-Oncology Society World Congress.

Daniel explains that the pediatric cancer population is thankfully small at any one center, so it is incredibly valuable for researchers to collaborate in pooling data across multiple centers.

The RutgersCamden researcher notes that research on adult cancer patients shows a bidirectional relationship linking negative health outcomes with disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms, as well as compelling evidence showing that improved sleep improves health outcomes in adults. However, she says, little is known about these effects on pediatric cancer patients.

It is essential to increase our understanding because sleep and circadian rhythms are vital components of health and quality of life, write the researchers in their paper. In children without cancer, sleep and circadian disturbances respond well to intervention, suggesting that they may also be modifiable in children with cancer.

In addition to Daniels work with the research group, she recently received a $50,000 grant from the New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research to lead the pilot program Disrupted Sleep and its Association with Symptom Burden and Reduced Engagement in Supportive Care in Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Patients.

Daniel will work with medical professionals and psychologists on the study at CHOP to collect data on an intervention to improve sleep in pediatric cancer patients undergoing stem cell transplants.

Lauren Daniel

I am grateful for the opportunity to branch out into a new area of research and continue the work that we are doing for patients at CHOP, says Daniel.

The researchers are currently studying how sleep affects the day-to-day symptoms and coping abilities of patients in the peritransplant period, the early stage when cells are starting to graft and grow. The researchers ultimately hope to determine what they can alter to improve sleep patterns of patients and encourage changes in nursing practices accordingly in order to improve psychosocial outcomes.

Even if we can make modest gains, we hope to improve the psychosocial health outcomes in addition to medical outcomes for patients, says Daniel, who adds that there isnt a lot of psychosocial research on these patients, in part because these children are already going through intensive research.

Daniel notes an earlier study found that patients need to be woken up an average of 12 times per night.

In their forthcoming study, says the RutgersCamden researcher, pediatric patients will wear a wristwatch to measure their motion for a two-week period after receiving transplant cells and be asked to complete daily surveys on what their sleep experience was like the night before. Their symptoms, such as nausea, fatigue, anxiety, and depression, will then be assessed every five days. Researchers will also extend the intervals between vital checks and determine the effects on their symptoms.

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Researcher Calls on Others Worldwide to Join Efforts to Understand Role of Sleep in Pediatric Cancer - Rutgers-Camden NewsNow

As coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) continues to infect more people worldwide, it has also increased the cases of stress and anxiety caused by a coronavirus. People are so scared of going to public places and if someone sneezes near to them, it gives them a little panic attack.

Considering the fast and uncontrollable spread of coronavirus, it is justified that people are under stress. Psychologist finds the occurrence of stress and anxiety in response to any threat as a normal human reaction. But this added stress is extremely harmful to people who are already at risk of certain diseases i.e. heart patients, blood pressure patients, stress and anxiety patients, pregnant women, and immunocompromised patients.

Here are a few suggestions for people, written as per psychological science to deal with the coronavirus related stress and anxiety.

It is a proven scientific fact that the US is going through a rapid increase in intolerance., which makes it difficult for people to cope up with stress. A study based on the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 shows that it was extremely hard for the people to accept the uncertainty of this pandemic situation and as a result that they experience anxiety.

The solution to this problem is by changing the behavior towards small things in routine. Building the patience level is something that not only helps to overcome the anxiety of coronavirus but helps a person to tackle all uncertain situations in life.

Also read- Can Scientists Cure HIV With Stem Cell Therapy?

Although it might not be the first thing that a stressed person would like to hear it is necessary to keep up the struggle in all forms. Distract yourself and involve in various activities that would keep you busy. Watch Netflix, read a book, write something, experiment with cooking, play with your pets, or anything that you like. Engaging yourself in an activity that you like is much likely to reduce the tress and pressure created by anything including the coronavirus outbreak.

One way to overcome the coronavirus related stress is by connecting to the goodness in life and finding meaning in it. Be it relationships, spirituality or anything, focus on what makes you happy and how you have given years to something. It would help you to feel important and life would suddenly look worth it.

It is understandable if someone is fearing what to do if coronavirus shows up in his town. Ending up at quarantine for days doesnt seem like a very good idea but human minds typically estimate the worst situation out of everything. There is plenty of research that explains peoples behavior as they overestimate their conditionsin event of any negative thing. Also, they underestimate their own responsesthat how would they adjust to any difficult situation. But mind it that you are way more resilient than you consider yourself, do not let the anxiety of it shaken you.

Also read- What does Your Period Blood Color Show?

In addition to the common psychological conditioning, you must remember that its a virus-borne disease that could be avoided if you follow a good self-care practice. Follow personal hygiene practices as prescribed by the CDC. Eat healthily, sleep regularly and spend time in exercise. Avoid meeting people unnecessarily and stay away from a person who exhibits any signs of flu or cold.

Prioritizing your behavior with others during this coronavirus outbreak. The coronavirus related stress could be tackled with a combination of psychological and practical approaches together.

It is normal to feel stressed because of the coronavirus outbreak. Disease in all forms is fearful and it is risky for people who are weak or already suffering from a disease. If you think that self-help plans are not working on you, it is better to get professional help. Contact your nearest mental health professional. He might prescribe you with Cognitive behavioral therapyand/orcertain medicines after evaluating your case. All in all, it would lead to successful anxiety treatment.

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6Ways to Tackle Coronavirus Related Stress and Anxiety - TheHealthMania