Life Sciences Thought Leaders

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News Medical's "Thought Leaders" series is a selection of articles written by national and international experts and trusted advisers in the life sciences industry. All the articles are written by experts who have been invited as recognised leaders in their fields to provide a "state of the art" contribution.

Genetic test to predict IBD severity in children

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic relapsing inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract with abdominal pain and diarrhea being the most common symptoms. It can be challenging to diagnose as gastrointestinal complaints mimicking IBD are common.

26 Jul 2017

Could the mTOR pathway be used to protect against cancer?

The mTOR pathway is probably the main pathway in humans and other animals that drives growth. That is, the accumulation of mass and adding mass to make an organism bigger by both making more cells, and making cells grow and become bigger.

22 Jun 2017

Could a blood test predict how cancer spreads in children?

Traditionally, we use biopsies to try to predict how cancer spreads. There are a number of molecular markers that are used, but biopsy is a limited approach. Now, the current trend is to use liquid biopsy, which is basically a blood sample.

21 Jun 2017

Can liver damage caused by a low protein diet be repaired?

Proteins are an important component of our diet and help to build muscles; they take part in the structure of hormones and they are vital to the whole body’s metabolism. The most important consequence is that the liver loses its capacity to produce proteins (such as albumin) and to metabolise (inactivate or activate in some cases) medicaments for instance.

8 Jun 2017

Analyzing single-cell RNA data in pre-malignant tumors

RNA sequencing is basically the isolation of RNA from cells and the use of reverse transcriptase to turn the RNA into DNA. You can then use your standard DNA sequencing technologies to quantify the cDNA that you obtained from the reverse transcription reaction.

12 May 2017

Using nanodiamonds to see smaller

Many of the most fundamental, life governing biological processes take place at size and time scales that remain invisible with current imaging technologies. Understanding how the molecules that underlie these processes move, interact and change could pave the way for new treatments, cures and the development of novel drug therapies.

From LuciGem 7 Apr 2017

Benefits of compact MRI

The kind of research I'm interested in is a technique called diffusion MRI and this technique is sensitive to the microstructure of the tissue. Particular clinical applications that it is used for are cancer and looking at neurodegenerative diseases.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 3 Mar 2017

Advances in optogenetics

Optogenetics is a way of introducing information into the brain using light, it targets specific cells or connections across the brain. It is fast, like brain signaling, and helps you communicate with neural circuitry in a language more similar to what is normally used within the brain.

From Pittcon 2 Mar 2017

Using spherical nucleic acids to track and treat disease

Spherical nucleic acids are structures that are made by taking a nanoparticle template and using chemistry to arrange short strands of DNA or RNA on the surface of those particles. The spherical core of the nanoparticle creates a spherical arrangement of DNA or RNA, similar to tiny little balls of nucleic acids.

From Pittcon 1 Mar 2017

Decoding the exposome through breath biomarkers

The human exposome is probably best defined as “everything that is not the genome.” This is a bit tongue in cheek, but basically, the exposome is comprised of all of the chemicals in your body from the environment, food, consumer products, their metabolites, the endogenous “housekeeping” chemicals, the cellular wastes from energy production, as well as all of the messenger compounds and life supporting chemicals.

From Pittcon 24 Feb 2017

Routine small animal MR imaging using the ICON

I’m an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Complutense University, Madrid. Until five years ago I had been working here at the university, part time with a private clinic, where I worked in MRI and MR spectroscopy for clinical applications.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 22 Feb 2017

Targeting RNA repeats

RNA repeats are stretches of code in the body that incrementally repeat. For example, in the most common cause of adult-on-set muscular dystrophy a RNA has a repeat of r(CUG) and this three letter code can repeat thousands of times.

20 Feb 2017

Carving a career in science

I was interested in a whole range of subjects, but the one that really grasped me from a young age was biology and, in particular, human biology. I was really fascinated with how the human body worked and I still am; that's something that has stayed with me.

15 Feb 2017

Exosome isolation using ultracentrifugation

In the outpatient clinic and in the laboratory our current research studies aim at understanding the mechanisms of release and clearance and the biological functions of exosomes and membrane particles in the plasma of individuals who develop emphysema, a form of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease characterized by enlargement of airspaces and loss of alveoli.

From Beckman Coulter Life Sciences - Centrifugation 9 Feb 2017

Single molecule detection of proteins in single cells

We developed this technology almost 10 years ago. It was developed after a key experiment was carried out by David Rissin, who was a PhD candidate in my laboratory at the time.

From Pittcon 3 Feb 2017

Advanced NMR-based methods for studying RNPs and drug design

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a powerful analytical tool widely used in chemical research to investigate the structure and dynamics of molecules.

From Bruker BioSpin - NMR, EPR and Imaging 24 Jan 2017

Characterizing the brain, cell by cell

My group develops approaches to study cell-to-cell signaling in the brain – how the cells of the brain talk to each other. The brain is heterogeneous, probably more so than any other organ in our body, and many of its functions depend on the unique characteristics of these cells.

From Pittcon 23 Jan 2017

Impact of IBS on patients

The report reveals a quite alarming situation about the economic impact of IBS on healthcare system, society and patients themselves. In particular, it disclosed that there are a lot of hidden costs related to the utilization of healthcare resources by means of patients, frequently not recognized as IBS...

16 Jan 2017

Could pathogen infection really lead to Alzheimer’s?

New concepts of infectious disease are evolving with the realization that pathogens are key players in the development of progressive chronic diseases that originally were not thought to be infectious. Infection is well-known to be associated with numerous neurological diseases for which...

12 Jan 2017

Childhood obesity starts in the womb?

There is incontrovertible evidence that some harmful drugs and toxins can affect lifelong health. For example, if women take certain drugs in pregnancy, such as thalidomide, there are well documented effects on lifelong health. These have obvious and dramatic effects on the child...

11 Jan 2017