Posts Tagged ‘drugs’
Video: Nanorockets Could Deliver Drugs Within the Body
Replicating a tiny rocket inside the body brings some, well, health concerns. And those are valid; traditional rocket fuels like hydrazine are extremely toxic, highly flammable and dangerously unstable, all of which make it a pretty lousy candidate for a substance you'd like spurting out of a tiny rocket inside your body. Instead, the research team made rolled up metal nanotubes coated with platinum, so that platinum side would be on the inside, and put them in a weak hydrogen peroxide solution. The platinum catalyzed the peroxide, speeding its decomposition into water and oxygen, which forced gas bubbles out of the tube, generating thrust, even in bodily fluids such as blood, saliva or urine.
The rocket can travel up to 200 times its own length per second, and the researchers are able to control its speed by changing the temperature of the fluid. They can also steer the nanorocket using a magnetic field, to precisely direct the drugs to where they are needed.
While using peroxide is infinitely better than toxic rocket fuels, at 0.25 percent peroxide, it's still not completely safe. Researchers would like to dilute the solution further, or even better, create rockets that can be powered by glucose, or another substance already in the body.
Check out the rockets in action in the video below:
Controversy Should Not Stop Us From Developing Memory-Erasing Drugs, Neuroethicist Argues
The field of memory-altering drugs has been marching forward for years, and we’ve seen several recent developments that can change our recollection of fear or trauma. In one example, rats given a brain injection had their ; in another, researchers recently learned that a drug that suppresses stress hormones can interfere with the .
These types of drugs would have several uses, like helping military personnel overcome post-traumatic stress syndrome and return home to lead healthy lives; helping crime victims rehabilitate; and treating psychological disorders that might stem from some type of childhood trauma.
But many ethicists argue these kinds of drugs should not be developed. People have memories for a reason, and changing or erasing them alters something that makes us all human. Not to mention that a tool that can erase memories could easily be abused by people doing things they’d like to forget themselves, or that they would like others to forget.
Now neuroethicist and Brooklyn Law School professor Adam Kolber argues in this week’s issue of that this debate should stop. These drugs should be developed and made available as quickly as possible, he writes.
“Thoughtful regulation may some day be appropriate, but excessive hand-wringing now over the ethics of tampering with memory could stall research into preventing post-traumatic stress in millions of people. Delay could also hinder people who are already debilitated by harrowing memories from being offered the best hope yet of reclaiming their lives.”
He acknowledges concerns that changing one’s memories could change one’s identity, that giving people too much power to change their minds could “make their lives less genuine.” He also notes that soldiers may be less hesitant to kill if they knew they could erase the experience afterward. But still, he argues that memory-altering or memory-erasing treatments could do much more good than harm.
Of course, other neuroscientists disagree with his claims. The debate has mushroomed into the neuroscience blogosphere, with the British blogger noting that some people who experience bad things do it as part of a profession — rescue workers, for instance, would certainly know they might be exposed to traumatic experiences, and their choice to do so in the name of helping others is an expression of their identities. Kolber, for his part, responds on his own blog with other examples — like patients who remember their surgeries (about 20,000 to 40,000 people in the U.S., apparently).
Over at iO9, Kolber explains how these drugs could be used and how doctors and patients would decide when it's right to use them. for his full responses, and to read Kolbert's full commentary (login required).
Do you think memory-erasing drugs are a good idea? If you could fill a prescription for eternal sunshine pills, would you?
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Genome of Marijuana Sequenced and Published
The genetic sequence has been published only in its raw state, not yet assembled into a more usable form. When the process is completed, though, it should be possible to isolate the genes responsible for the creation of the pharmaceutically active compounds by the plant, including THC, CBD, and some 60 other cannabinoids. Understanding these genes and their expression will make possible a fine degree of control over the production of these compounds, with significant implications for both the medical and recreational users of the drug. Particular drug-producing genes could be isolated and concentrated in particular strains of the plant, or even inserted in other species.
The genome of C. sativa is roughly 400 million base pairs long; the human genome has 3 billion.
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Lab-Grown Human Cells Could Replace Animals For Cosmetics Testing
In the US, animals are still regularly used as test subjects in studies of the toxicity and allergy sensitivity of cosmetics, detergents and oils. But animal testing for cosmetics was in 2009. Cosmetics manufacturers thus have no way to test their products for allergy sensitivity. (Animals are still used in a wide range of other tests, however.)
Banning cosmetics testing is good news for animals, but it can be problematic for people who suffer from allergic contact dermatitis, in which itching or eczema results from prolonged exposure to certain chemicals. Tests can help pinpoint the source of the “sensitizing” chemical, or the chemical that makes one’s skin sensitive to reaction. But those tests require animal or human subjects.
Now researchers at Lund University in Sweden may have found a workaround, by studying the genes of human cells. Their research is published in the open-access journal , published by BioMed Central.
They used genome-wide profiling to study how a human leukemia cell line responded to known cosmetics chemicals. They were able to define 200 genes that served as a biomarker for allergic sensitivity. By comparing the biomarker to the chemicals’ behavior, they were able to predict the potency required to induce sensitivity, the researchers write.
“This simple and robust cell-based assay has the potential to completely replace or drastically reduce the utilization of test systems based on experimental animals,” the .
What’s more, it will be more accurate anyway, because it measures the response of human genes, rather than animal analogues. And that could mean good news for animals on this continent, too.
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Analytical Method Used for Stock Market Helps Pinpoint A Possible Achilles Heel for HIV
HIV's strongest sections could be its greatest weaknesses
HIV has been so difficult to fight in part because it is such an adept mutant. It produces sloppy copies of itself as it replicates, leading to many variations that can withstand drugs and vaccines. And it can produce 100 billion new virus particles every day, as Ed Yong points out over at , which leads to lots and lots of copies. Broad-spectrum drugs or vaccines can’t do very much against a target that morphs so quickly.
But not all the pieces of HIV mutate with such abandon, according to this new study. Some groups of amino acids known as HIV sectors are somewhat less fickle, staying the same while the rest of the virus morphs, according to researchers at the Ragon Institute, a research group bridging MIT, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. Researchers believe these sites must remain unchanged for the virus to survive and replicate properly.
Researchers led by HIV research pioneer Bruce Walker and MIT chemical engineering professor Arup Chakraborty say this stalwart section of the virus can be turned against it. If the immune system can be trained to attack all the amino acid portions in an HIV sector, the virus will either have to mutate to thwart the attack — thereby undermining its structural integrity, crippling itself — or not mutate, which would render it helpless against drugs or vaccines.
This new targeted approach came from Chakraborty, who thought Walker and colleagues were too limited in their search for solutions, Yong reports. The team turned to random matrix theory, developed in the 1950s to solve nuclear physics problems and which has been used to analyze stocks, as the notes. It can pinpoint correlations between groups of objects, so it can assess how one stock is linked to other groups of stocks, for instance.
Working with HIV proteins taken from a massive database, the team used random matrix theory to analyze HIV’s genetic code and find groups of amino acids whose mutations were coordinated. The segment that mutated the least was dubbed sector 3, on an HIV sector known as Gag, which makes up HIV’s honeycombed inner shell. If the shell mutates, the honeycomb won’t lock together, and the virus would collapse.
“Multiple mutations within this sector are very rare, indicating previously unrecognized multidimensional constraints on HIV evolution,” the authors write in a on their research, which is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Incidentally, a rare group of patients who can fight HIV without drugs — known as “elite controllers” — use their own immune systems to attack sector 3.
All this suggests a new way of thinking about HIV treatment, the WSJ and others point out. Perhaps HIV drugs should dispense with the full-on assault and opt for targeted strikes instead.
Buoyed by this research, other teams are reportedly already planning new animal studies to test just that.
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Drug Suppresses Recall of Bad Memories, Leaves Non-Bad Memories Intact
The drug is actually not a new creation: Metyrapone is often used to diagnose adrenal insufficiency, but these researchers found that its effect on stress hormones might be its most useful attribute. Metyrapone decreases the levels of cortisol, which is a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal gland in response to stress. These early trials suggest that by messing around with the levels of cortisol in a person's body at the time of a stressful event, memories of that event might be impaired--possibly permanently. It's a very different technique than the neurological manipulations . There is a sort of reverse of this process that's used to increase memory--at least, in .
The researchers conducted a trial in which men were given a dosage of metyrapone and taught a story with both neutral and negative elements. The subjects were then asked to remember as much of the story as possible at two separate occasions: immediately after they learned it, and four days later. They found that the men who received a dose of metyrapone were unable to remember the negative elements of the story in as much detail as the neutral elements, while the placebo group could remember both neutral and negative elements equally well.
While these tests are certainly in the very early stages, the research shows serious promise, especially as they might provide the ability to treat post-traumatic stress syndrome--though with metyrapone no longer being manufactured, it may be tricky to continue the research.
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We Need a League Of Performance-Enhanced Athletes
The use of performance enhancers in sports is inevitable. Celebrating it instead of banning it would make competition safer, more honest, and more fun
It’s only natural that when we discover our heroes have injected chemicals into their veins for a competitive edge (and I’m not saying Lance has, only that it’s looking increasingly difficult for him to prove that he hasn’t) we find them tainted and strip them of medals and put an asterisk by their names. Doping is ugly for fans but it goes beyond betrayal. Performance enhancers turn a contest between athletes into a competition among scientists and engineers. This is the best argument against enhancers. It’s also the best argument for them.
Let’s pretend, for a minute, that a separate league exists. Let’s call it the Asterisk League or, better, the League of Extraordinary Medicine. Drugs are legal but regulated. Athletes get educated about the risks, long term and short, of everything they introduce into—or onto—their bodies. Fans know exactly who is taking what and tracking their performance accordingly. Labs and scientists are inexorably linked to athletes’ rise and fall. Chemist versus chemist doesn’t sound like it would make great television, but the field would quickly advance to the point were records were broken daily and feats of crazy strength became the norm. Chemist versus chemist would become superhuman versus superhuman. Broadcasts could include expert scientists in the booth describing the limits of the human body and how these chemical enhancements get around that, or don’t. The League of Extraordinary Medicine is more honest, its regulation more sensible, since outlawing drugs just does not work—we’ve got a forever War on Drugs to prove it. And our tests for drugs still aren’t very good.
Through this openness the league creates an environment where cutting-edge science is discussed daily, and celebrated, alongside athletic triumph. Better still: legitimizing enhancement would make the enhancements better. More drugs hit the market, more treatments become available, and this would trickle down to non-athletes. Would all this openness and advancement foster a more honest, inviting, even wholesome environment? Maybe. Creating a separate league where drugs are legal would, without a doubt, make competition safer for athletes. Matthew Herper, who has covered science and health (and, by extension, athletes and drugs) for a decade at Forbes, says .
“To me, the most obvious solution has always been to legalize those drugs that work, and to experimentally monitor new entrants, including dietary supplements, for both efficacy and safety. Biological improvement would be treated much as athletic equipment like baseball bats and running shoes. This could improve both athlete’s performance and their health, and would be a lot better than having everybody trying whatever additive they can sneak, attempting to stay ahead of drug tests, and trusting anecdotes as a way of measuring safety and efficacy.”
But perhaps most importantly, by keeping advances off the field, we’re holding back possibilities. A few years ago I visited Hugh Herr, the director of biomechatronics at MIT’s Media Lab, who had just invented a robotic ankle that would soon revolutionize prosthetics. We ended up discussing the ankle a little bit, but mostly we talked about science in sports. Herr is an athlete. As a young man he was a world-class rock climber. A week before my visit, he had been busy trying to convince the International Association of Athletics Federations to allow South African runner Oscar Pistorius to compete in the Olympics. Pistorius has no legs below his knees and runs using Cheetah Flex-Foot carbon fiber limbs which, arguably, gives him an unfair advantage. Herr is also a double amputee, and walks and climbs using prosthetics. That day in his lab, while he showed me his improved ankle and described his work with veterans, Herr told me that he sees no reason why we can’t make “disabled” people stronger and faster than the rest of us. In fact, we already are: just look at Pistorius. The IAAF agreed and, weeks later, decided to ban the South African from competition.
One of the best arguments for pushing, even uncomfortably, the boundaries of science and the human form was voiced by Joe Rosen, a controversial plastic surgeon. Rosen (the subject of a in Harper’s) sees endless possibilities when the human form and science meet. But this makes people very uncomfortable. A colleague asked: “If a patient came to you and said, ‘I want to you to give me wings,’...would you actually do it?”
“Who here doesn’t try to send their children to the best schools, in the hopes of altering them?” Rosen responded. “Who here objects to a Palm Pilot, a thing we clasp to our bodies, with which we receive rapid electronic signals? Who here doesn’t surround themselves with a metal shell and travel at death defying speeds? We have always altered ourselves, for beauty or for power, and so long as we are not causing harm what makes us think we should stop?”