It’s also pretty staggering to claim that a substance is an antidote to obesity, diabetes, and even aging, yet investors have poured US$60 million into a biotech company working on resveratrol, which they apparently believe to be that substance.

Other therapeutic advances:

• First responders may be able to save limbs from amputation using a temporary vascular bypass shunt to re-route blood around the damaged area of the limb.
• A nano-engineered gel shows doubly great promise as both a rapid blood stanching agent and a neuronal growth agent. Trials and FDA approval may take from five to ten years, but if successful it would be a major advance in wound care, surgery, and the surgical treatment of damaged spinal cord and brain tissue.
• A way has been found to convert one blood type into another. If successful in eventual clinical trials, it will alleviate shortages of blood for transfusion.

Source article

Afid Therapeutics, a biotech startup founded by a Michigan State University professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, claims that its “triple mode viral sequestration agents” have been shown in tests conducted by an unidentified “specialized, independent third party testing organization” to block viral infections, including flu and SARS, in mammalian cells.

The professor, who is said to be a world authority on carbohydrate chemistry, claims the agents bind to chemical structures on the virus that normally allow viruses into cells.

Resveratrol

Source article

Source article

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a young biotechnology company, has raised a hoped-for US$60 million in an initial public offering. The company is working on resveratrol, a substance found in red wine and shown to extend the lifespan of yeast and prevent obese mice from developing health problems. Sirtris is currently testing a modified version of the substance in Type 2 diabetics.

Bypass for Limb Salvage

Source article

A medical device to save the arms and legs of United States military personnel from amputation has won marketing clearance by the US Food and Drug Administration. The military hopes the Temporary Limb Salvage Shunt will reduce the number of arm and leg amputations and improve the quality of life of other patients who suffer injuries, according to the Chief of Military Vascular Surgery at the US Air Force’s largest medical facility.

The military plans to use the devices in Iraq in one or two soldiers per week. The product was developed by the Scottish division of a Japanese company with offices in Michigan. It works by temporarily connecting the ends of a severed blood vessel, providing a bridge or shunt around the damaged area and restoring blood flow to the injured limb until the patient can be transported to a surgical center.

Six percent of the 14,120 soldiers injured in Iraq between March 2003 and August 2005 — equivalent to 28 soldiers per month — had arm or leg amputations, according to the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies in Washington.

Nanogel Stops Bleeding, Helps Nerve Regeneration

Source article

An MIT neuroscience researcher has “stumbled upon” a synthetic material which, applied to a wound or surgical site, not only stops bleeding almost instantly but also appears to accelerate healing of damaged brain and spinal tissue, reports Kevin Bullis in Technology Review . The material is engineered from 16-amino-acid nanoscale peptides that self-assemble into a gel-like fibrous mesh. Each peptide “looks like a comb, with water-loving teeth projecting from a water-repelling spine. In a salty, aqueous environment–such as that inside the body–the spines spontaneously cluster together to avoid the water, forming long, thin fibers that self-assemble into curved ribbons. The process transforms a liquid peptide solution into a clear gel.”

In hamster experiments, the gel allowed neurons in a vision-related tract of the brain to grow across a lesion and reestablish connections with neurons on the other side, restoring the hamsters’ sight. Serendipitously, it was noticed that the gel quickly stanched bleeding from the incisions made in the hamsters’ brains. The hamsters survived for months without apparent side effects. The body breaks down the peptides “within a few weeks,” so they need not be removed from the wound. Other advantages over existing methods such as cautery are that it is faster and easier to apply, does not damage tissue, and could protect wounds from the environment while supplying amino-acid building blocks to accelerate healing. It also has a long shelf life.

In the operating room, surgeons should be able to apply a layer of it and then operate through it, avoiding or at least minimizing the need for suctioning and cleaning of the site to give the surgeon a clear view. Procedures would be faster — reducing complications — and could be less invasive, since the gel could be applied at the end of an endoscope. Given early and successful large animal and human trials, the gel could be approved for use as a blood-stanching agent in humans in three to five years. Its approval for use as a neuronal growth agent in (e.g.) brain-damaged stroke victims will take at least five to ten years, the researcher says.

Changing Blood Types

Source article

University of Copenhagen scientists have developed a way of converting one blood group into another. The technique potentially enables blood from groups A, B, and AB to be converted into group O negative, which can be safely transplanted into any patient. A, B, and AB blood can only be given to patients with the same type, while O negative can be given to anyone.

The technique uses bacterial enzymes to cut sugar molecules from the surface of red blood cells, thereby changing their type, an approach long hampered by the lack of suitable enzymes – a problem which the Danish research overcame.