Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies have produced encouraging clinical outcomes, demonstrating their therapeutic potential in mitigating tumour development. However, another form of T-cell immunotherapy based on T-cell receptors (TCR) has also shown great potential in this field. Here, Nikki Withers speaks to Miguel Forte who elaborates on the process and explains why he is excited about seeing an idea translate into an industrial proposition.

STIMULATING the natural defences of a persons immune system to kill cancer cells, known as immunotherapy, has become a novel and exciting approach to treat cancer. For example, the role of T cells in cell-mediated immunity has inspired the development of several strategies to genetically modify T cells, such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, to target cancer cells. In recent years, CAR T-cell therapy has received much attention from researchers and the press alike, and the landmark approval and clinical successes of Novartis Kymriah (the first FDA-approved treatment to include a gene therapy step in the United States) and Gilead/Kite Pharmas Yescarta (the first CAR T-cell therapy for adults living with certain types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma) has prompted a surge of further research. However, this approach which involves isolating cells from a patient, bioengineering them to express CARs that identify and attach to tumour cells and injecting them back into the patient has several limitations, according to Miguel Forte, former CEO of Zelluna Immunotherapy and currently CEO of Bone Therapeutics.

Forte has been working on a T-cell immunotherapy approach that primarily focuses on the T-cell receptors (TCRs). Similar to CAR therapies, TCR therapies modify the patients T lymphocytes ex vivo before being injected back into the patients body. However, they differ in their mechanisms for recognising antigens. CAR T-cell therapy can be compared to a policeman, with a photograph of the criminal, being able to identify them on the street, explained Forte. It is an artificial way of guiding those cells to the cancer when the cancer cells are in suspension. The difficulty with CAR is that it cannot always penetrate and deliver an effect in solid tumours. TCR therapy, which utilises the natural mechanisms that T cells use to recognise the antigen and therefore the cancer, is better suited to penetrate the tumour ie, the policeman is able to go inside the building where a criminal is hiding.

It is obviously more costly at the beginning of the development when you are fine tuning your process, compared to when you progress to a larger scale as you approach the market

Of note, this approach targets the TCR- peptide/major histocompatibility complex (MHC) interaction, which enables eradication of tumour cells. Intracellular tumour-related antigens can be presented as peptides in the MHC on the cell surface, which interact with the TCR on antigen-specific T cells to stimulate an anti-tumour response. Imagine you, or the cells, are not just a soldier in an army but a captain that can bring other immune cells into the mix. TCRs and these cells, once they go in, have a direct kill activity and an immunostimulatory activity to other cells to have a more comprehensive effect of killing the tumour cells. Forte concluded that this approach is scientifically appealing and could bring value to a large array of solid tumours.

The benefits of TCR therapies are evident; however, as with all new approaches, it is not without its challenges. The first relates to the manufacturing of these therapies; the process requires extracting patient material, changing it and then returning it to the patient. Unlike drug discovery with small molecules where you have an inert, well-defined, chemically-established component, with biologics you go up a notch in terms of complexity, Forte explained, adding that while small molecules are unidimensional, biologics are three-dimensional and, thus, more complex and challenging to manufacture. You need to remember that your product, the cells, are a living being. It is something that replicates, changes and responds to its environment. This makes it a lot more challenging to characterise and define the right specifications of the product. The initial challenge is to put in place a consistent and reliable manufacturing process.

Generating the necessary pre-clinical data can also prove challenging; studies are easier to conduct in animal models when you are working with chemical entities rather than human cells, according to Forte. Finally, when the product does get to clinic, there are elements of manufacturing, supply and logistics that can prove challenging; however, companies are starting to provide solutions for this. Working in cell and gene therapy we need to apply what we have done with other products, explained Forte. You need to adapt to the complexity and diversity of the product you have in hand. Here, you have a live product. Something that responds. It is similar to having a child; you can modulate it, but you can never fully control the behaviour of something you are shaping.

Bringing a new drug to market, from drug discovery through clinical trials to approval, can be a costly process, especially when developing cell-based therapies. These are more expensive than developing chemistry or biologics, but when biologics started to be developed, they were also very expensive, explained Forte. We are now seeing a reduction of those costs as more companies are developing products and consequently more solutions are surfacing.

Forte was involved in developing his first cell therapy product about 10 years ago. At this time, it was difficult; a lot of solutions you had to build in house. Nowadays, you can import this from solutions already available so you can concentrate on the specificity; for instance, the viral vector for gene editing your cells or the cytokine concentration for the expansion of your cells. He added that as these therapies grow, so too does the competition, resulting in reduced costs. However, the price and return on investment must correlate with benefit. It is obviously more costly at the beginning of the development when you are fine tuning your process, compared to when you progress to a larger scale as you approach the market.

The well-publicised success story of Emily Whitehead a six-year-old leukaemia patient who was one of the first patients to receive CAR T-cell therapy is a prime example of the success of immunotherapy treatments. Even though these patients may need to continue medications, they can live a relatively normal life. The gene- edited cells remain in the individual and continue to control the cancer by restoring the immune systems capabilities, said Forte. He hopes that similar results will be seen with TCR therapies: Hopefully, a significant fraction of patients will have a clinical and biological response that will reduce the tumour bulk, give them a quality life and remain doing so by controlling the cancer for a significant amount of time.

Forte concluded that the possibilities for TCR- based immunotherapies are exciting and hopefully products will be developed that will deliver an immediate and sustained effect in cancer patients.

About the author

MIGUEL FORTE

Miguel is currently the CEO of Bone Therapeutics and visiting Professor at the Lisbon University in Portugal. He also serves as Chief Commercialization Officer and Chair of the Commercialization Committee of the International Society of Cellular Therapy (ISCT) and is Member of Board of Directors of ISCT and ARM. Miguel was CEO of Zelluna Immunotherapy until the end of 2019. Miguel holds a masters degree from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, Portugal, a PhD in Immunology from the University of Birmingham, UK, an accreditation as Specialist in Infectious Diseases and a certificate on Health Economics of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Technologies (HEP). He is Fellow of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine of the RCP in the UK.

See the article here:
TCR therapy an attractive alternative to CAR T for immunotherapy - Drug Target Review

GUWAHATI: An IIT-Guwahati team of researchers have started experiments, exploring the possibilities to clone the immunogenic proteins of SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the novel coronavirus disease, to be used as diagnostics and possible vaccine for the novel coronavirus infected patients.

Most importantly, they have developed a viral vector system to deliver foreign antigens that could be useful in future treatment for COVID-19 or novel coronavirus infected patients, said associate professor Sachin Kumar from the Biosciences and Bioengineering (BSBE) department of IIT-G, who is leading the group of researchers working on viral diseases.

Recently, the research group has developed recombinant vaccines against Japanese Encephalitis and classical swine fever virus which got published in the journal Vaccine and Archives of virology. By developing these vaccines, Kumar said that the IIT-G lab could substantially contribute to the research and development towards severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus -2 (SARS-CoV-2) which is popularly known as the novel coronavirus. Earlier, the virus from the same coronavirus family came in between 2002-2004 as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or coronavirus -1.

Now, the lab at IIT Guwahati is exploring the possibilities to clone the immunogenic proteins of SARS-CoV-2 to be used as diagnostics and vaccinate the novel coronavirus infected patients. Although it is just a proof of concept and the work requires a thorough validation in cell culture and animal model before coming to any conclusion. Similarly, the development of rapid detection and portable diagnostic kits for various viruses and microorganisms is also being pursued at the institute, Kumar told TOI.

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IIT Guwahati researchers exploring ways to find COVID-19 vaccine - Times of India

For Toby Ord, humanity is still in its adolescence and a crucial research goal must be to ensure it reaches maturity and realises its full potential.

Now senior research fellow at the University of Oxfords Future of Humanity Institute,Dr Ord studied both philosophy and computer science at the University of Melbourne before moving to Oxford to focus on philosophy. In 2009, while working on global health and poverty, he set up the societyGiving What We Can.This, he toldTimes Higher Education,enables members to pledge to give at least a 10th of their income to where they think it can do the most good. To date, just over 4,500 people have donated almost 100 million. His own contribution has gone to people in the poorest countries suffering from easily preventable diseases. He has also been consulted on such issues by the World Health Organisation, theUKs Department for International Development and No 10.

Yet, although he continues to work in this area, Dr Ord has now turned most of his attention to the even larger topic explored in his forthcoming book,The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.

We can trace its origins back to his PhD. His supervisor and mentor, the philosopher Derek Parfit, ended his celebrated 1984 bookReasons and Personsby reflecting on a devastating nuclear war. If it killed 99 per cent of the human race, this would obviously be an unimaginable tragedy, yet we might eventually be able to rebuild some sort of civilisation. But if it destroyed all humanity, it would have an utterly different significance.

With that last 1 per cent, Dr Ord explained, we would lose not only [many millions of] people but the entire future of humanity and all the trillions who could come to existHumanity has survived for 2,000 centuries so far. Theres nothing stopping us, other than [a number of existential risks], surviving for thousands moreWe need to be proactive about [that] and avoid developing the kind of things which take us close to the brink.

That is the precipice we have to get past, and Dr Ords book assesses the level of existential threat posed by everything from asteroids to unaligned artificial intelligence. Yet he felt the topic had been largely neglected by researchers.

When it comes to something like climate change, he explained, a huge amount of work is being done, but only a fraction of it looks at the worst outcomes. How bad could they be? Could they realistically pose a threat to the collapse of civilisation or even human extinction? Is there any realistic chance that the warming will be a very extreme 10 degrees?...For each particular risk, people dont pay special attention to [the small chance of something occurring] that could destroy not only all the lives of the people today but all the people to come and the entire future of humanity.

Our lack of forward planning is vividly illustrated inThe Precipice.On the significant risk of engineered pandemics, it points out, the international body responsible for the continued prohibition of bioweapons (the Biological Weapons Convention) has an annual budget of just $1.4 million [1.1 million] less than the average McDonalds restaurant. Furthermore, we can state with confidence that humanity spends more on ice cream every year than on ensuring that the technologies we develop do not destroy us.

In the case of his own fellowship, Dr Ord writes, money from the European Research Council and a philanthropist has allowed [him] years of uninterrupted work on a topic I consider so important.

This had provided him with a safety net, he admitted, to work on topics which are less academically fashionable and might be seen as too big for the profession. It is hard to place journal articles about them, compared to something thousands of people have already written about where there are clear technical questions.

There were also issues around the culture of science. Although Dr Ord said that he understood the case for openness and transparency, we also had to take greater account of information hazards.

In nuclear physics, he went on, there is an awareness that we have to be careful about publishing ideas which could cause nuclear proliferation. With the increasing power of bioengineering, it could be that subfield needs [similar safeguards]. We should be open to different ways of doing things. Its not just an inherent right of academic freedom that we can publish whatever we want.

matthew.reisz@timeshighereducation.com

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Focus on existential threats, philosopher tells researchers - Times Higher Education (THE)

Mucus is a protective, slimy secretion produced by goblet cells and which lines organs of the respiratory, digestive, and reproductive systems. Slime production is essential to health, and an imbalance can be life-threatening. Patients with diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and ulcerative colitis produce too much mucus, often after growing too many goblet cells. Loss of goblet cells can be equally devastating - for instance during cancer, after infection, or injury. The balance of slime creation, amount, and transport is critical, so doctors and medical researchers have long sought the origins of goblet cells and have been eager to control processes that regenerate them and maintain balanced populations.

Recently, a group of bioengineers at the University of Pittsburgh discovered a case of goblet cell regeneration that is both easily accessible and happens incredibly fast on cells isolated from early developing frog embryos.

Lance Davidson, William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering at Pitt, leads the MechMorpho Lab in the Swanson School of Engineering where his researchers study the role of mechanics in human cells as well as the Xenopus embryo - an aquatic frog native to South Africa.

The Xenopus tadpole, like many frogs, has a respiratory skin that can exchange oxygen and perform tasks similar to a human lung, explained Davidson. Like the human lung, the surface of the Xenopus respiratory skin is a mucociliated epithelium, which is a tissue formed from goblet cells and ciliated cells that also protects the larva against pathogens. Because of these evolutionary similarities, our group uses frog embryonic organoids to examine how tissue mechanics impact cell growth and tissue formation.

Studying this species is a rapid and cost-effective way to explore the genetic origins of biomechanics and how mechanical cues are sensed, not just in the frog embryo, but universally. When clinicians study cancer in patients, such changes can take weeks, months, or even years, but in a frog embryo, changes happen within hours.

In this project, we took a group of mesenchymal cells out of the early embryo and formed them into a spherical aggregate, and within five hours, they began to change, Davidson said. These cells are known to differentiate into a variety of types, but in this scenario, we discovered that they changed very dramatically into a type of cell that they would not have changed into had they been in the embryo.

The lab surprisingly uncovered a case of regeneration that restores a mucociliated epithelium from mesenchymal cells. They performed the experiment multiple times to confirm the unexpected findings and began to look closely at what microenvironmental cues could drive cells into an entirely new type.

We have tools to modulate the mechanical microenvironment that houses the cells, and to our surprise, we found that if we made the environment stiffer, the aggregates changed into these epithelial cells, explained Davidson. If we made it softer, we were able to block them from changing. This finding shows that mechanics alone can cause important changes in the cells, and that is a remarkable thing.

Davidsons group is interested in how cells, influenced by mechanics, may affect disease states. The results detailed in this article may drive new questions in cancer biology, prompting researchers to consider whether certain kinds of invasive cancer cells might revert to a resting cell type based on the stiffness or softness of their surroundings.

When applying these results to cancer biology, one might ask, If tumors are surrounded by soft tissues, would they become dormant and basically non-invasive? Or, If you have them in stiff tissues, would they invade and become deadly? said Davidson. These are major questions in the field that biomechanics may be able to help answer. Many researchers focus solely on the chemical pathways, but we are also finding mechanical influencers of disease.

Hye Young Kim, a young scientist fellow at Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and former member of the MechMorpho Lab, will continue this work at the Center for Vascular Research located at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). She will study how cell motility changes during regeneration and how epithelial cells assemble a new epithelium. Davidson and his lab will explore how this novel case of mechanical cues are sensed by mesenchymal cells and how these mechanical induction pathways are integrated with known pathways that control cell fate choices.

"Frog embryos and organoids give us unparalleled access to study these processes, far more access than is possible with human organs, he said. The old ideas that regeneration is controlled exclusively by diffusing growth factors and hormones is giving way to the recognition that the physical mechanics of the environment such as how rubbery or fluid the environment - play just as critical a role."

Reference:Kim, H. Y., Jackson, T. R., Stuckenholz, C., & Davidson, L. A. (2020). Tissue mechanics drives regeneration of a mucociliated epidermis on the surface of Xenopus embryonic aggregates. Nature Communications, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14385-y

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Using Regenerative Biology To Restore Mucus Production - Technology Networks

Heres a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial.

From observations of a distant star-forming galaxy, to a new documentary featuring Imperial bioengineering, here is some quick-read news from across the College.

Astronomers, including some from Imperial, have spotted the light of a massive galaxy seen only 970 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy, called MAMBO-9, is the most distant dusty star-forming galaxy that has ever been observed without the help of a gravitational lens.

Gravitational lensing is when the light of a galaxy is bent by the mass of a galaxy in front of it, making it easier to find, but distorting the details. Now, ten years after its light was first observed, the team have identified MAMBO-9 as a very dusty star-forming galaxy and determined how far away it is, providing its age. They were also able to measure its mass as ten times more than all the stars in the Milky Way.

Read more from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

In a talk delivered to mark Disability History Month, entrepreneur Elizabeth Takyi discussed her late dyslexia diagnosis and how employers can better support those with the learning difference.

Having left a job due to her dyslexia, Elizabeth wondered how many other people had struggled to reach their full potential because of the learning difference. Elizabeth went on to set up Aspire2Inspire Dyslexia, which offers support to dyslexic adults who want to return to education or work.

Elizabeth stressed that dyslexia does not look the same for everyone: "Support should be tailored to the individual, tackling the barriers they feel are affecting them most. Make no assumption about their capabilities, or aspirations."

Imperial Business 2020, Imperial College Business Schools annual magazine, is out now. It looks at the theme of sustainable business, from air pollution to the newly launched sustainability research centre.

It explores the impact of machine learning and how data science can help solve many of the worlds most pressing challenges. Also included are profiles of Professor Maurizio Zollo, the new Head of the Department of Management and Scientific Director of the Leonardo Centre, and Dr Harveen Chugh, entrepreneurship expert and one of Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40.

The 2020 issue of Imperial Business is available around the Business School, you can also read Imperial Business magazine online.

A new book by Imperials Professor Sir Gordon Conway, Dr Katrin Glatzel, Program Head of the Malabo Montpellier Panel (and Imperial Visiting Researcher), and Dr Ousmane Badiane, Director for Africa at the International Food Policy Research Institute, explores the concept of sustainable intensification (SI) for African farmers.

Food for All in Africa lays out ideas and methods for sustainably transforming Africas agriculture sector and the livelihoods of millions of smallholders, by producing more with less, using fertilisers and pesticides more prudently, adapting to climate change, improving natural capital, adopting new technologies, and building resilience at every stage of the agriculture value chain.

Pick up a copy of Food for All in Africa.

Dr Claire Higginsfrom ImperialsDepartment of Bioengineering, featured in a new BBC4 documentary Secrets of Skin on Sunday 15 December.

The episode included new work from her research group that could inspire re-engineering of stump skin for more comfortable prosthetics using skin from the sole of the foot as a template.

Dr Higgins, who led the new research, said: It was a great experience to work with the BBC and have the opportunity to showcase our work to such a large audience.

Want to be kept up to date on news at Imperial?

Sign up for our free quick-read daily e-newsletter, Imperial Today.

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New galaxy observations and secrets of skin: News from the College | Imperial News - Imperial College London

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 24, 2019 NTT Research, Inc., a division ofNTT, today announced its plan to move to a facility in Sunnyvale in mid-2020 to better accommodate a growing number of researchers, including medical scientists it expects to hire for its Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab. These priorities follow six months of progress in all three labs at NTT Research since its official launch in July 2019.

To recap, NTT Research has signed anIndustrial Partnershipbetween its Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab and the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley; set upjoint research agreementsbetween its Physics and Informatics (PHI) Lab and six universities (CalTech, Cornell, Michigan, MIT, Stanford and Swinburne), one US Federal Agency (NASAs Ames Research Center) and one private quantum computing software company (1QBit); and reached anotherjoint research agreementbetween the MEI Lab and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The need for a larger facility, in part, reflects this activity.

We are aiming for a research-friendly space to hire more excellent scientists, said Kei Karasawa, NTT Researchs Vice President of Strategy. We need both private offices as well as collaboration space to accelerate research with partners, whether professors, NTT colleagues or other stakeholders in our three research domains.

NTT Research has already hired more than 20 scientists, about half of whom are university professors and senior researchers. With the PHI and CIS Labs both on pace in terms of staffing, NTT Research plans to focus on talent acquisition for the MEI Lab in the new year. The ultimate target for the entire organization is about 50 scientists.

Based on the joint agreement between the MEI Lab and TUM, NTT Research will send two of its researchers to Munich in Q1 2020. The initial phase of that long-term research project involves screening and optimizing materials that can eventually be used for three-dimensionally transformable and implantable electrodes. The project leader in Germany is Dr. Bernhard Wolfrum,Professor of Neuroelectronicsat TUM in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Munich School of BioEngineering (MSB).

The MEI Lab is directed by Hitonobu Tomoike (M.D., Ph.D), former Director of the Sakakibara Heart Institute, Director Emeritus at the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center in Japan, and former Professor of Cardiology at Yamagata University. Dr. Tomoike is known for his work in precision medicine involving bio-sensors and analytics.

One goal of the MEI Lab is to explore the potential of bio digital twin. Already applicable in the field of business transformation it is one of NTT Ltd.sIntelligent Business: 2020 technology trends bio digital twin in the medical domain is the idea of scanning an individual and creating a replica, which medically-guided supercomputing and artificial intelligence (AI) can then examine, diagnose and treat as a roadmap to caring for a human. In a smart world, our digital twin will be second-nature technology, Dr. Tomoike said.

In addition to the move to Sunnyvale and the plan to hire more scientists for the MEI Lab, NTT Research expects to announce several more joint research agreements in early 2020. Throughout the year, NTT Research scientists will continue to submit papers and attend conferences in the United States and around the world.

About NTT Research

NTT Research opened its Palo Alto offices in July 2019 as a new Silicon Valley startup to conduct basic research and advance technologies that promote positive change for humankind. Currently, three labs are housed at NTT Research: the Physics and Information Science (PHI) Lab, the Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab, and the Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab. The organization aims to upgrade reality in three areas: 1) quantum information, neuro-science and photonics; 2) cryptographic and information security; and 3) medical and health informatics. NTT Research is part of NTT, a global technology and business solutions provider with an annual R&D budget of $3.6 billion.

Source: NTT Research

See more here:
NTT Research to Expand its Silicon Valley Footprint in 2020 - HPCwire

publication date: Nov. 15, 2019

Michael A. Teitell

Director, UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center

The Latta Endowed Chair in Pathology,

Professor, Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Pediatrics, and Bioengineering

As one of the cancer hospitals serving Los Angeles County, the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Center has to face the challenge of providing the most sophisticatedand most expensivecare to a largely underserved population.

LA County is large and diverse. We have over 10 million individuals, and about 76% of the total would be considered as underrepresented groups, said Michael A. Teitell, director, UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Latta Endowed Chair in Pathology, and professor at the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Pediatrics, and Bioengineering.

We really try to serve all patients from all walks of life who need specialized services, Teitell said. So, here we have financial assistance policies that we follow that are in compliance with our state law in California for patients who are in need of financial assistance. We have institutional staff in relation to CAR T therapy who work closely with commercial and governmental payers to try to obtain funding on a case-by-case basis.

In a conversation with The Cancer Letter, Teitell spoke about the role of immunotherapyincluding CAR T, which can cost over $450,000 for a single dosein the care UCLA delivers at its hospitals and local practices within its catchment area.

Continue reading Teitell: How immunotherapy became the fourth pillar of cancer care at UCLA

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Teitell: How immunotherapy became the fourth pillar of cancer care at UCLA - The Cancer Letter

September 5, 2017 - By Michael Collier

Shares of Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd (SHE:000078) closed at 6.12 yesterday. Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd currently has a total float of shares and on average sees shares exchange hands each day. The stock now has a 52-week low of 5.29 and high of 7.78.

Amid numerous setbacks in the past, China has still proven itself to have one of the most important economies not just in Asia but in the whole world. Trade and commerce is richly flourishing in the nation and the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) is one of the reasons it does. It is also the best place to show full potential for Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd and its colleagues.

The SSE, one of Chinas primary stock exchanges aside from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, is a non-profit organization that is administered by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). As of February, the SSE boasts with a market capitalization of $3.50 trillion, making it the fifth largest stock exchange in the world. In Asia, it is the second biggest stock exchange. The second biggest market in the world increased the chances of Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd to catch attention of investors.

The SSE was established in 1866 but it had to close on December 5, 1941 when Japan invaded Shanghai. Operations did not resume until December 19, 1990.

Shortly after the relaunch of the SSE, the SSE Composite Index began operating on July 15, 1991 as the primary index measuring all stocks on the SSE based on market capitalization. It tracks companies using the Paasche weighted composite price index formula. Measuring more than 1,000 companies listed on the SSE means that the SSE Composite Index is a broad indicator of the Chinese economy. As a result, it had to have three sub-indices: 1) the SSE 380, which monitors the 380 most active companies; 2) the SSE 180, which monitors the 180 most active companies; and 3) the SSE 50, which monitors the 50 most active companies. Of course, in order to be included in the SSE 50, a company needs to first be included in the SSE 180 and the SSE 380. Similarly, in order for it to be included in the SSE 180, it first needs to be included in the SSE 380. The smaller the index, the clearer of a representation it is of the Chinese economy.

The SSE Composite Index has last seen its all-time high of 6,092.06 in October 2007, shortly before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis broke out; and its all-time low of 99.98 in December 1990 during the relaunch period of the SSE.

Companies listed on the SSE are classified into two types: 1) A shares, which are traded in yuan; and 2) B shares, which are traded in US dollar (USD). In the past, only domestic traders had been allowed to trade A shares. Foreign investors had been limited to B shares. However, the restriction was lifted in 2002, giving the Chinese economy more opportunities to grow immensely with greater foreign investments. It means more possibilities for Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd.

The regular trading session on the SSE starts at 9:30 and ends at 11:30 in the morning and starts at 1:30 and ends at 3:00 in the afternoon. There is also a pre-market trading session that starts at 9:15 a.m. and lasts for 10 minutes.

China is Asias largest economy, which is why there is no better way to bet on the Asian trade and commerce environment than to invest on SSE stocks. Traders look on the liquidity of Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd.

More important recent Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd (SHE:000078) news were published by: Businesswire.com which released: Provision Asia and Shenzhen Hairong International Medical Development Form on June 03, 2016, also Businesswire.com published article titled: Research and Markets: Report on Health Food Industry in China 2015-2019, Marketwatch.com published: 20.05 on May 20, 2011. More interesting news about Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd (SHE:000078) was released by: Marketwatch.com and their article: 24.59 with publication date: March 10, 2011.

Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co.,Ltd is a China firm principally engaged in pharmaceutical and food manufacturing and pharmaceutical commercial distribution businesses. The company has market cap of $. The Companys main products include anti-tumor products, cardiovascular drugs, marine drugs, respiratory drugs, anti-infective products and other pharmaceuticals, as well as healthcare products, health food and medical instrument. It currently has negative earnings.

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By Michael Collier

Link:
Shenzhen Neptunus Bioengineering Co. Ltd (000078) Is Yet to See Trading Action on Sep 5 - MoneyMakingArticles

Once again, Congress is poised to approve a second continuing resolution (CR) to keep the U.S. government running when the current resolution expires Nov. 21. As some congressional leaders noted, it is unlikely Congress will reach agreement on any of the 12 fiscal year (FY) 2020 spending bills by the expiration date, raising serious concerns that funding will remain flat for government agencies into, or even through, 2020. The current CR keeps the U.S. government open but operating at FY2019 spending levels. Even more ominous is the threat of another government shutdown should negotiations between Congress and the White House again collapse. Either scenario presents serious consequences for scientific research if federal agencies delay the rollout of new programs such as the National Quantum Initiative (NQI), a coordinated multiagency effort to support research and training in quantum information science.

Without an FY2020 spending package, several federal agencies that support science risk the loss of funding increases approved by House or Senate appropriators 10 percent for the Department of Energys Office of Science, 5 percent for the National Nuclear Security Administrations Inertial Confinement Fusion Program, 6 percent for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 7 percent for the National Science Foundation, and 6 percent for the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

Worse yet is the possibility of another partial government shutdown as memories of last 2019 Januarys 35-day shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, remind us that even minor disruptions in government funding could have a detrimental impact on important research.

During the 2019 shutdown, many researchers, including members of The Optical Society (OSA), who were awaiting grant funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA, or other agencies affected, suddenly found their research projects on hold. Early career scientists rely on grants to establish themselves and faculty members use grant money to hire and train graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and other laboratory staff. Postdoctoral researchers from outside the U.S. either had to wait in limbo for the situation to be resolved or look for work in other countries. Those who rely on government data for their research and access to resources found themselves with limited options to continue their work.

For U.S. government scientists, the situation was similarly dire. They were not allowed to work or use government email accounts. Research projects by U.S. government scientists on cybersecurity, climate monitoring, quantum computing and more, came to a halt. Plans to attend or even register for scientific meetings had to be cancelled and scientific instruments in the field were temporarily abandoned. Work on research papers for scientific journals also stopped, meaning critical publishing deadlines were missed and, in some cases, never rescheduled.

The global science enterprise likewise suffers when collaborations with U.S. scientists wither for lack of funding or when international research projects are suddenly missing a U.S. partner. Researchers outside the U.S. face even greater hurdles obtaining visas to attend scientific meetings in the U.S., during a shutdown, leaving organizers of scientific meetings with a substantial loss of attendees.

We urge the Congress and the White House to move swiftly in approving an FY2020 spending package that provides significant funding increases to support advanced manufacturing, quantum information science, artificial intelligence, solar energy, space exploration, medical imaging and many other areas that will benefit the U.S. and societies worldwide. Congress must act to secure adequate spending increases that will enable our scientific enterprise to support and attract the brightest minds in the pursuit of new discoveries and technologies.

Elizabeth A. Rogan is CEO The Optical Society (OSA).

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For science's sake, the government must approve FY20 spending bills | TheHill - The Hill

Its a cool time for young people interested in changing health care. Tech is more accessible, and it no longer takes multiple degrees to make a difference. Thats certainly the case for a team of University of Maryland bioengineering undergraduate students, who just took home the top prizea $20,000 awardin theDesign by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) competition by the National Institutes of Healths (NIH) National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB).

The teamwhich was made up of seven students in UMDs class of 2020were up against 41 entries from teams across the country that had designed prototypes of products to advance technology and improve human health. UMDs winning prototype, a wearable EEG monitor, is intended to help diagnose Alzheimers disease.

Dhruv Patel, who led the UMD team along with Chris Look, says that he was inspired to look for innovation in Alzheimers after his grandfather was diagnosed with the disease.

I pursued research into the disease and how current mechanisms fail to diagnose it in an earlier stage, says Patel. I saw there was improvement to be made, and so I set out to make that improvement.

To create their prototype, the students used an OpenBCI portable EEG monitor as their base, then plugged in clinical data obtained from international medical institutions into machine learning tools to enable the device to tell healthy brain waves apart from an Alzheimers patients brain waves. In one of the tests the students designed, the monitor-wearer hears two different tonesone at a high frequency, the other lowand then the EEG monitor reads their responsive brain waves to determine whether they are reading as an Alzheimers patient would.

The devicewhich won first place ahead of a brain surgery mapping tool by the second place team from Arizona State University and a cornea transplant device by the third place team from Johns Hopkins Universitycaught the attention of the judges because it both addressed a widespread problem in health care and has the potential to make a big difference in how that problem is approached in the future.

Such a device that can easily be used by a clinician to determine that an individual is inflicted with Alzheimers disease before the patient displays clinical symptoms can both guide the clinician in the treatment of the patient and allow the patient and their family time to prepare, says NIBIBs program director for interdisciplinary training Zeynep Erim.The impact for society is immense.

Patel says that the $20,000 award will be invested in their newly filed LLC, Synapto. Patel and his Synapto co-founder, Look, are planning to pursue a patent for their technology within the next year. They also plan to continue collecting data from medical institutions around the globe to improve their devices accuracy in identifying Alzheimers brain waves, before eventually moving into clinical trials.

Correction: A former version of this story incorrectly identified Zeynep Erim as Erim Zeynep.

Associate Editor

Caroline Cunningham joined Washingtonian in 2014 after moving to the DC area from Cincinnati, where she interned and freelanced for Cincinnati Magazine and worked in content marketing. She currently resides in College Park.

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Auckland, March 20, 2017

The Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI) of the University of Auckland hopes to develop new international strategic partnerships and investor opportunities for medical technology (medtech).

The Institutes Strategic Partnership Specialist Dr Diana Siew said that she would focus on promoting Medtech Core and Consortium for Medical Device Technologies (CMDT), the latter founded by her with ABI Director Distinguished Professor Peter Hunter to reduce the isolation of medical technology research institutions in New Zealand.

CMDT is a partnership led of the University of Auckland with the Canterbury University, Otago University, Auckland University of Technology, Victoria University of Wellington and Callaghan Innovation.

High Achiever

ABI announced today the appointment of Dr Siew as its Strategic Partnership Specialist, stating that she has a strong innovation, research management and relationship management background in New Zealands medical technology sector.

She will continue in her role as the Co-Chair of CMDT and Associate Director of Medtech Core. She is an alumnus of the University of Auckland with a doctorate in Chemistry with several years of experience in New Zealands Medtech environment, including previous roles with Industrial Research Ltd and Callaghan Innovation.

Feedback from multinationals was that they found it hard to work in New Zealand with its large number of different research organisations in the medical health technology space. They sometimes did not know where to start to find all the people for a particular focus, Dr Siew said.

CMDT partners have developed Consortium as a national network to highlight New Zealands medtech activity and connect companies, the research industry, health providers and government stakeholders.

It is the NZ Inc front for medtech research in this country and makes it easier for multinational companies to work in New Zealand.

Trust and Transparency

Medtech Core is a translational research pipeline of new technologies for the medtech sector. ABI has created a high level of trust in the network and transparency between the partners.

Earlier this month, the CMDT partners hosted a workshop for a group of Japanese researchers, companies and funders to support a collaboration between the two countries, focused on developing new technologies for elderly care.

While working at Callaghan Innovation, Dr Siew established Standing Trial Population Centres that support fast early-stage validation studies of medical devices and digital health systems to accelerate technology development for both health and economic outcomes.

Quick validation

This platform accelerates the ability of a medtech company to get quick validation for prototypes and concepts that on which they are working. This reduces the time and expense in identifying clinical expertise and recruiting patients, she said.

It is an easy access tool for multinationals to see the four main areas where the Standing Trials Population Centres operate in technologies for elderly care, rehabilitation innovation and remote community care, and design and development for new devices.

Waikato District Health Boards Institute of Healthy Ageing and AUT are key partners to two of the Standing Trials Populations Centres.

Another initiative developed by Dr Siew for medtech is a showcase on the latest technologies available in New Zealand.

These Technology Innovation Knowledge and Interchange (TIKI) tours focus on the latest innovations for busy clinicians in health boards and other health organisations. The TIKI tours are intended to be a discussion platform between clinicians at district health boards and New Zealand health tech innovators. It is about alerting clinicians to what technologies are coming out both from industry and research institutions, so that they are aware of these for use in our health system, Dr Siew said.

*

Photo Caption:

Diana Siew

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Jonathan Himmelfarb, co-director of the UWs Center for Dialysis Innovation and also director of the UWs Kidney Research Institute. (UW Photo)

Dialysis can be a life-saving treatment forthe millions of people across the globe who face kidney failure. But despite the importance of this treatment, the technology behind it is still essentially the same as when the process was pioneered at the University of Washington in Seattle in the early 60s.

Now, a new UW center is hoping to revolutionize the technology again. The Center for Dialysis Innovation brings together researchers from around the university with the goal of greatly improving dialysis technology, and it just received a $15 million grant from nonprofit dialysis providerNorthwest Kidney Centers to pursue that goal.

Northwest Kidney Centers says the grant will support startup projects within the Center for Dialysis Innovation, with the goal of one day developing dialysis technology that can completely restore kidney health.

Dialysis is currently the only treatment for kidney failure, short of a kidney transplant. Today, over 450,000 people in the U.S. are on dialysis, and the life expectancy for those patients is only 3 to 5 years.

We are excited about the Center for Dialysis Innovation because it brings together creative, entrepreneurial, can-do minds from a wide range of fields including nephrology and bioengineering. This team also wants to involve people living with kidney disease to help direct the centers focus, said Joyce Jackson, CEO of Northwest Kidney Centers, said in a pressrelease.

Their aim is to develop revolutionary dialysis technologies, including a wearable dialysis system that is low-cost, and energy- and water-efficient. This would not only sustain users lives, but give them more vitality and productivity. This work is desperately needed, she said.

The $15 million will be delivered to the center over the next five years. It is the first outside funding the center has receivedand makes up over half of its goal budget of $25 million.

The Center for Dialysis Innovation opened last Novemberand brings together researchers from the UWsKidney Research Institute and the universitys department of biomaterials and bioengineering. It is led by co-directors Jonathan Himmelfarb, director of the UWs Kidney Research Institute, and Buddy Ratner, a professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering.

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Patients could one day self-administer vaccines using a needleless, pill-sized technology that jet-releases a stream of vaccine inside the mouth, according to a proof-of-concept study conducted at UC Berkeley.

The study did not test vaccine delivery in people, but demonstrated that the technology, called MucoJet, is capable of delivering vaccine-sized molecules to immune cells in the mouths of animals. The technology is a step toward improved oral vaccine delivery, which holds the promise of building immunity in the mouth's buccal region of cells, where many infections enter the body. When patients hold the MucoJet against the inside of their cheek, the device releases a jet stream that directly targets the buccal region. This region is rich in immune cells but underutilized in immunology because of the challenge of efficiently penetrating the thick mucosal layer in this part of the oral cavity with existing technologies, such as the oral spray often used for influenza vaccination.

In laboratory and animal experiments, the research team showed that the MucoJet can deliver a high-pressure stream of liquid and immune system-triggering molecules that penetrate the mucosal layer to stimulate an immune response in the buccal region. The jet is pressurized, but not uncomfortably so, and would remove the sting of needles.

"The jet is similar in pressure to a water pick that dentists use," said Kiana Aran, who developed the technology while a postdoctoral scholar at Berkeley in the labs of Dorian Liepmann, a professor of mechanical and bioengineering, and Niren Murthy, a professor of bioengineering. Aran is now an assistant professor at the Keck Graduate Institute of Claremont University.

The portable technology, designed to be self-administered, stores vaccines in powder form and could one day enable vaccine delivery to remote locations, but years of further study are needed before the device would be commercially available.

The study will be published March 8 in the journal Science Translational Medicine and is available for download on EurekAlert!.

MucoJet is a 15-by-7-milimeter cylindrical, two-compartment plastic device. The solid components were 3D-printed from an inexpensive biocompatible and water-resistant plastic resin. The exterior compartment holds 250 mililiters of water. The interior compartment is composed of two reservoirs separated by a porous plastic membrane and a movable piston. One interior compartment is a vaccine reservoir, containing a 100-ml chamber of vaccine solution with a piston at one end and a sealed 200-micrometer (m) diameter delivery nozzle at the other end. The other interior compartment is the propellant reservoir, which contains a dry chemical propellant (citric acid and sodium bicarbonate) and is separated from the vaccine reservoir at one end by the built-in porous membrane and movable piston and is sealed at the other end from the exterior compartment with a dissolvable membrane

To administer the MucoJet, a patient clicks together the interior and exterior compartments. The membrane dissolves, water contacts the chemical propellant and the ensuing chemical reaction generates carbon dioxide gas. The gas increases the pressure in the propellant chamber, causing the piston to move. The free-moving piston ensures uniform movement of the ejected drug and blocks the exit of fizz from the carbon dioxide through the nozzle. When the pressure in the propellant chamber is high enough, the force on the piston breaks the nozzle seal of the vaccine reservoir. The vaccine solution is then ejected from the MucoJet nozzle, penetrates the mucosal layer of the buccal tissue, and delivers the vaccine to underlying vaccine targets, called antigen-presenting cells.

To test the MucoJet's delivery system, researchers designed a laboratory experiment in plastic dishes using mucosal layers and buccal tissues from pigs. They tested the MucoJet's ability to deliver ovalbumim, an immune stimulating protein, across the mucosal layer. The experiments showed an eightfold increase in the delivery of ovalbumin over the course of three hours compared to a control experiment of administering ovalbumim with a dropper (similar to how oral vaccines, such as for the flu, are administered today).

The researchers then tested different pressures of the vaccine jet and found that increasing the MucoJet output pressure increased the ovalbumin delivery to the tissue, indicating that the delivery efficiency improves with increased pressure.

"The pressure is very focused, the diameter of the jet is very small, so that's how it penetrates the mucosal layer," Aran said.

The researchers then tested the MucoJet's ability to deliver ovalbumim to buccal tissue in rabbits. The MucoJet delivery resulted in a sevenfold increase in the delivery of ovalbumin compared to control experiments with droppers. Animals treated with ovalbumin by MucoJet had key antibodies in their blood that were three orders of magnitude higher than in the blood from rabbits treated with ovalbumin by a dropper.

The study did not compare the MucoJet to vaccine delivery with a needle, but data suggests that the MucoJet can trigger an immune response that is as good or better than delivery with a needle, especially for mucosal pathogens.

The next step in MucoJet's development is to test the delivery of a real vaccine in larger animals. The researchers hope the MucoJet can be available in five to 10 years. They also hope to engineer a version of the MucoJet that can be swallowed and then release vaccines internally.

The researchers are considering other shapes, sizes and designs to simplify vaccine administration procedures and increase patient compliance, especially for children. For example, the MucoJet could be fabricated into a lollipop.

"Imagine if we could put the Mucojet in a lollipop and have kids hold it in their cheek," Aran said. "They wouldn't have to go to a clinic to get a vaccine."

Link:
Oral delivery system could make vaccination needle-free - Science Daily

(University of California San Diego) Theres a new tool that could revolutionize the fight against cancer. Researchers at UC San Diego have discovered that a blood test could detect the disease in its early stages.

Bioengineers at UC San Diego discovered this blood test by accident. The author of the study that was just released says the blood test can detect cancer and where a tumor is growing in the body. Its a discovery that could change how quickly doctors can make a cancer diagnosis.

In a bioengineering lab at UC San Diego, whats being called the holy grail of early cancer detection might have been discovered.

I think the potential is enormous, says Kun Zhang, PhD, UCSD Bioengineering Professor.

Researchers looked at the blood of cancer patients and found out that not only could they detect cancer, they could also locate where the tumor is growing in the body. The hope is the blood test can be used to cut out invasive procedures such as biopsies. Since the disease will be discovered so early, it will eliminate the need for chemotherapy and radiation.

Many of these therapies cannot completely cure cancer, adds Zhang, They can manage the disease for a certain period of time, and then you relapse, and it goes beyond your control.

Early detection can also help patients with fast growing cancers such as lung and colon, which are usually diagnosed when its too late.

If theres a way to detect there cancers early on when they are highly localized, then maybe a surgical procedure can completely get rid of these cancer cells, says the bioengineering professor.

Zhang says the blood test wouldnt be available to the public for a few more years. The next step is a large clinical study and then it would have to be approved by the FDA. .

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Revolutionizing the fight against cancer - CW6 San Diego - CW6 News

Almost every woman in engineering Ive talked to knows the pressure of having to prove herself.

She knows what its like to be meticulously perfect in her calculations, and to accept that regardless of her intelligence, her work will be checked again by someone who doesnt trust her.She knows that at the end of the day, mistakes hold more weight than they should.

I say almost every woman because I am one of the few that has rarely experienced this. Im lucky. Im an anomaly.

Bioengineering at Santa Clara University has a relatively large percentage of female students, compared to the other engineering disciplines. Im not intimately familiar with gender tensions in the classroom because there arent any in the classes I take, and I rarely feel the need to prove that I am better than the men I work with.

My mentors dont expect me to make mistakes, and are genuinely surprised when I do. Im not pressured to be perfect, but at the same time, the expectations for the work I do are just as high as anyone elses. The psychological effects of this are subtle, but theyve shaped how I perceive my own abilities, goals, and expectations.

Because Im held to an equal standard, I believe that I am equal. For that reason, I have my mentors to thank for my experiences as a woman in engineering. I realize that theyve given me what they didnt have, and I owe them much of who I am today.

It wasnt that easy for my mentors, and for many women today. My mentors have had to fight expectations to get where they are, and to defy the underlying notion that women just arent as smart and thats why they dont hold as many positions in engineering.

However, its not an IQ problem. Its an expectation that women just cant compete at the same level. This expectation is subtle, and its ingrained whether we realize it or not.

Its unintentional, intangible, and ever-present. Yet its effects are far reaching; being constantly undervalued and coddled teaches young girls that its okay to strive for less than the best, and to settle for goals that theyve been told are more realistic than the ones they would like to reach.

The women that inspire me hold me to a higher standard, and expect me to reach for whats unreachable. In doing so, they gave me the confidence to pursue engineering and taught me that I need to do the same forthe next generation.

We cant treat little girls differently from the boys that radiate confidence because its hard to be confident when youre expected to under perform. Instead, expect them to set impossible goals, and dont wait on the sidelines for them to fail. Expect them to compete at the same level, and be disappointed when they dont.

If we change our expectations, I guarantee you the next generation will meet them.

Shiyin Lim, a sophomore at Santa Clara University majoring in bioengineering, is part of Blue Marble Space Institute of Sciences Young Scientist Program focusing on research in space biosciences. She wrote this for The Mercury News.

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March 8, 2017 The MucoJet could one day make vaccine delivery needless. Credit: Stephen McNally/UC Berkeley

Patients could one day self-administer vaccines using a needleless, pill-sized technology that jet-releases a stream of vaccine inside the mouth, according to a proof-of-concept study conducted at UC Berkeley.

The study did not test vaccine delivery in people, but demonstrated that the technology, called MucoJet, is capable of delivering vaccine-sized molecules to immune cells in the mouths of animals. The technology is a step toward improved oral vaccine delivery, which holds the promise of building immunity in the mouth's buccal region of cells, where many infections enter the body. When patients hold the MucoJet against the inside of their cheek, the device releases a jet stream that directly targets the buccal region. This region is rich in immune cells but underutilized in immunology because of the challenge of efficiently penetrating the thick mucosal layer in this part of the oral cavity with existing technologies, such as the oral spray often used for influenza vaccination.

In laboratory and animal experiments, the research team showed that the MucoJet can deliver a high-pressure stream of liquid and immune system-triggering molecules that penetrate the mucosal layer to stimulate an immune response in the buccal region. The jet is pressurized, but not uncomfortably so, and would remove the sting of needles.

"The jet is similar in pressure to a water pick that dentists use," said Kiana Aran, who developed the technology while a postdoctoral scholar at Berkeley in the labs of Dorian Liepmann, a professor of mechanical and bioengineering, and Niren Murthy, a professor of bioengineering. Aran is now an assistant professor at the Keck Graduate Institute of Claremont University.

The portable technology, designed to be self-administered, stores vaccines in powder form and could one day enable vaccine delivery to remote locations, but years of further study are needed before the device would be commercially available.

The study will be published March 8 in the journal Science Translational Medicine and is available for download on EurekAlert!.

MucoJet is a 15-by-7-milimeter cylindrical, two-compartment plastic device. The solid components were 3D-printed from an inexpensive biocompatible and water-resistant plastic resin. The exterior compartment holds 250 mililiters of water. The interior compartment is composed of two reservoirs separated by a porous plastic membrane and a movable piston. One interior compartment is a vaccine reservoir, containing a 100-ml chamber of vaccine solution with a piston at one end and a sealed 200-micrometer (m) diameter delivery nozzle at the other end. The other interior compartment is the propellant reservoir, which contains a dry chemical propellant (citric acid and sodium bicarbonate) and is separated from the vaccine reservoir at one end by the built-in porous membrane and movable piston and is sealed at the other end from the exterior compartment with a dissolvable membrane

To administer the MucoJet, a patient clicks together the interior and exterior compartments. The membrane dissolves, water contacts the chemical propellant and the ensuing chemical reaction generates carbon dioxide gas. The gas increases the pressure in the propellant chamber, causing the piston to move. The free-moving piston ensures uniform movement of the ejected drug and blocks the exit of fizz from the carbon dioxide through the nozzle. When the pressure in the propellant chamber is high enough, the force on the piston breaks the nozzle seal of the vaccine reservoir. The vaccine solution is then ejected from the MucoJet nozzle, penetrates the mucosal layer of the buccal tissue, and delivers the vaccine to underlying vaccine targets, called antigen-presenting cells.

To test the MucoJet's delivery system, researchers designed a laboratory experiment in plastic dishes using mucosal layers and buccal tissues from pigs. They tested the MucoJet's ability to deliver ovalbumim, an immune stimulating protein, across the mucosal layer. The experiments showed an eightfold increase in the delivery of ovalbumin over the course of three hours compared to a control experiment of administering ovalbumim with a dropper (similar to how oral vaccines, such as for the flu, are administered today).

The researchers then tested different pressures of the vaccine jet and found that increasing the MucoJet output pressure increased the ovalbumin delivery to the tissue, indicating that the delivery efficiency improves with increased pressure.

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"The pressure is very focused, the diameter of the jet is very small, so that's how it penetrates the mucosal layer," Aran said.

The researchers then tested the MucoJet's ability to deliver ovalbumim to buccal tissue in rabbits. The MucoJet delivery resulted in a sevenfold increase in the delivery of ovalbumin compared to control experiments with droppers. Animals treated with ovalbumin by MucoJet had key antibodies in their blood that were three orders of magnitude higher than in the blood from rabbits treated with ovalbumin by a dropper.

The study did not compare the MucoJet to vaccine delivery with a needle, but data suggests that the MucoJet can trigger an immune response that is as good or better than delivery with a needle, especially for mucosal pathogens.

The next step in MucoJet's development is to test the delivery of a real vaccine in larger animals. The researchers hope the MucoJet can be available in five to 10 years. They also hope to engineer a version of the MucoJet that can be swallowed and then release vaccines internally.

The researchers are considering other shapes, sizes and designs to simplify vaccine administration procedures and increase patient compliance, especially for children. For example, the MucoJet could be fabricated into a lollipop.

"Imagine if we could put the Mucojet in a lollipop and have kids hold it in their cheek," Aran said. "They wouldn't have to go to a clinic to get a vaccine."

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Oral delivery system could make vaccination needle-free - Medical Xpress

WASHINGTON The coronavirus outbreak threatens to inflict "carnage" on refugees around the world who often live in cramped conditions, lack access to clean water and are in countries with failing or stretched medical systems, humanitarian aid groups say.

From Syria to Bangladesh to Uganda, the risk posed to people who have fled war and persecution is potentially dire, and only urgent international action can avert a catastrophe, aid organizations told NBC News.

As of Tuesday, only 10 cases had been reported among refugees and displaced persons, and all of those were patients in Germany, according to the U.N. refugee agency. But in the absence of extensive testing at refugee camps in the Middle East, Africa or Asia, it's unclear whether the fast-moving virus has already reached them, medical experts and humanitarian workers said.

"We don't know, and that's largely because we haven't done any testing," said Muhammad Zaman, a professor of bioengineering at Boston University. "We need to know how acute the problem is before we come up with an intervention."

Given the fast-moving nature of the epidemic, if COVID-19 hasn't already spread to refugees, it's only a matter of time, Zaman added.

Beyond the potentially tragic consequences for refugees, failing to counter the spread of the virus among large refugee communities near the border of Europe or elsewhere could undercut any success in containing the outbreak and enable it to spread further, aid officials said.

Experience with the Ebola virus and other outbreaks has shown that governments need to include refugees and displaced persons in their plans to counter epidemics and to ensure that the refugees have the same access to medical treatment, said Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR.

"If we keep them safe, it's keeping all of us safe," he told NBC News.

The UNHCR has issued an initial appeal to governments for $33 million to help provide hygiene kits, protective gear, water sanitation and training for health workers to protect refugees from the coronavirus.

The two main tactics recommended to halt the spread of the virus hand-washing and social distancing are sometimes impossible for refugees to follow at crowded camps.

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Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, warned that the epidemic could cause devastating consequences at crowded refugee camps and in countries with damaged health care systems.

"Millions of conflict-affected people are living in cramped refugee and displacement sites with desperately poor hygiene and sanitation facilities," Egeland said in a statement.

"There will also be carnage when the virus reaches parts of Syria, Yemen and Venezuela where hospitals have been demolished and health systems have collapsed. "

Refugee advocates are especially concerned about nearly 1 million Syrians who have fled an offensive by Russia and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad in recent weeks. Many of them are sleeping in bombed-out structures, in tents or out in the open.

As coronavirus cases and deaths spike in Iran and rise in Iraq and Lebanon, the Syrians fleeing toward the Turkish border are particularly vulnerable, said Hardin Lang, vice president for programs and policy at Refugees International.

The crowded conditions could turn temporary camps into "a tinderbox for the spread of the disease," Lang said.

The World Health Organization "is preparing for contagion across Syria," WHO spokesperson Hedinn Halldorsson told NBC News, and the organization has sent testing kits to northwest Syria and other items.

The population of northwest Syria is especially vulnerable because of the spread of the epidemic in neighboring countries, porous borders, the damaged health care system and a recent outbreak of H1N1 virus, Halldorsson said. The presence of H1N1 could undermine "timely COVID-19 diagnosis and put an added strain on laboratories," she added.

Last week, Doctors Without Borders issued an urgent appeal to evacuate thousands of refugees from "squalid" camps on the Greek island of Lesbos, where it said authorities are not prepared for a potential COVID-19 outbreak.

It would be "impossible to contain an outbreak" at the camps on Lesbos and other Greek islands, said Dr. Hilde Vochten, medical coordinator in Greece for Doctors Without Borders. "To this day, we have not seen a credible emergency plan to protect and treat people living there in case of an outbreak."

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

In Yemen, five years of war have pummeled the country's medical system, with hospitals and infrastructure bombed by the Saudi-led coalition or seized by Houthi rebels. As a result, the "response capacity of the health system is all but completely wiped out," said Rayan Koteiche of Physicians for Human Rights.

Because of Yemen's broken health sector, the country had a dramatic surge of cholera, a disease that had been virtually eradicated from the planet, in 2017.

Given the threat of COVID-19 now spreading across the Middle East, the situation in Yemen is "beyond worrying," Koteiche said. He co-authored a report released Wednesday that documented 120 attacks on medical facilities and health workers by both the Saudi-led coalition and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels over the past five years.

Decisions by governments in recent days to shut national borders also threaten to deprive people fleeing violence and persecution from getting medical treatment or securing food, said Elinor Raikes of the International Rescue Committee.

Colombia recently closed its border with Venezuela, and "many Venezuelans who cross the border on a daily basis for food, work and health care are now stranded without access to basic lifesaving needs," Raikes said.

Aid groups also worry that the coronavirus will provide ammunition to anti-migrant, anti-refugee political voices that will use it as an excuse to shut the door on people fleeing war and persecution, even though there is no link between the coronavirus and refugees.

"We're already concerned about the weaponization of public concern over the COVID-19 by politicians and leaders that are already pushing an agenda to seal borders to deny access to refugees and asylum-seekers. You are already hearing calls to close borders," Lang said.

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With global travel increasingly restricted and the virus spreading, international aid organizations face difficult decisions about how many staff members to keep in place. Aid groups usually rotate personnel in and out every few months, but sending staff in now from Western countries where the epidemic has taken root carries the risk of spreading the disease to refugee communities.

Refugees International, which is based in Washington, D.C., has decided to suspend travel to refugee camps to avoid any risk of spreading the coronavirus, Lang said.

The UNHCR said Tuesday that it has suspended the resettlement of refugees to third countries partly because of the restrictions and uncertainty surrounding international travel and partly out of concern that the refugees could be exposed to the epidemic by flying to other countries.

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Coronavirus could cause 'carnage' among the world's refugees, aid groups say - NBC News

In Depth Market Research on Global Butane-2,3-diol Market with Industry Analysis, Trends, Competition and Forecast by 2026.

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Segmentation by Product Types:Content 90%-95%Content95%

Segmentation by Applications:Chemical SolventFood and Beverage AdditiveOthers

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Covid-19 Impact on Butane-2,3-diol Market | Volume, Analysis, Future Prediction, Industry Overview and Forecast 2026 | Lanzatech, Yancheng Hongtai...

At least two Indian American post-graduate students were named among the 2017 class of Gates Cambridge Scholars at the University of Cambridge, the university announced in a Feb. 8 news release.

A total of 36 scholars were named including Sarita Deshpande and Angela Madira.

Deshpande is currently studying bioengineering with a concentration in cellular and tissue engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

As an undergraduate student, she engaged in neuroscience and bioengineering research, which fostered her passion to study ocular pathology in the scope of neuroscience, she said in her scholar bio.

She will study M.Phil in medical science at Lucy Cavendish College in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences.

During the scholar year, she will study the aetiology of glaucoma and the mechanisms of cell death, which can provide further insight into developing novel therapeutic options.

"I am honored and excited to join the dynamic group of scholars that make up the Gates Cambridge community," she said.

Madira, who was also named an Amgen Scholar in 2015, will be just 17 when she starts her M.Phil in health, medicine and society at Newnham College, becoming the first genuine millennial Gates Cambridge Scholar.

She began her B.Sc. in biochemistry at California State University in Los Angeles at the age of 12 and is about to publish a paper on the removal of dermoid cysts based on clinical research at the L.A. Children's Hospital.

Her M.Phil dissertation will focus on the efficacy and ethics of existing mammalian research models.

She hopes to target the philosophy of cognitive psychology through the multispecies interactions between humans and animals, particularly scientists and their test subjects. She plans to become a pediatric neurosurgeon.

My undergraduate career has led me to a unique journey committed to unlocking the secrets of the human brain while constantly contemplating the meaning of ethics in the fields of research and medicine, she said in her profile. I have had the opportunity to study neuroscience from a molecular, physiological, and clinical perspective. In the future, I hope to use this knowledge to explore neurological disorders in children.

The Gates Cambridge U.S. Scholars-elect, who will take up their awards beginning in October, are from 34 universities, including three which have never before had a Gates Cambridge Scholar Mississippi State University, California State University Los Angeles and Loyola University in New Orleans.

The scholars will study and research subjects ranging from collaborative songwriting to improving health outcomes, spider behavior, voter analytics to cancer therapeutics targeting the side effects associated with chemotherapy, the university said.

The prestigious postgraduate scholarship program which fully funds postgraduate study and research in any subject at the University of Cambridge was established through a $210 million donation to the University of Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000.

Since its 2001 inception, there have been more than 1,600 Gates Cambridge Scholars from 104 countries who represent more than 600 universities globally and 80 academic departments and all 31 colleges at Cambridge.

The 36 U.S. Scholars-elect will join 54 Scholars from other parts of the world, who will be announced in early April after interviews in late March and will complete the class of 2017.

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Two Indian American Post-grads Named Gates Cambridge Scholars - India West