Narrow Results

Seven autopsied cases were studied for the evaluation of individual history of exposure to environmental contaminants based on the elemental profile of hilar gland by PIXE and lung tissue by AAS. The results well characterized their occupational history, especially from Cr, Al, Si and As detection. Moreover, it might be possible that these analyses would provide data to suspect the chemical form of each element in deposited particles of lung parenchyma, since the solubility could reflect the different profile of element between hilar gland and lung parenchyma. In addition to these retrospective analyses using the materials obtained from autopsies, it is possible to assess the individual risk using small quantity of hilar gland or lung tissue obtained by biopsy or surgical resection.

Sepsis is associated with the highest risk of progression to acute lung injury or acute respiratory distress syndrome. Shen-Fu has been advocated to treat many severely ill patients. Our study was designed to investigate the effect of Shen-Fu on endotoxin-induced acute lung injury in vivo. Adult male Wistar rats were randomly divided into 6 groups: controls; those challenged with endotoxin (5 mg/kg) and treated with saline; those challenged with endotoxin (5 mg/kg) and treated with Shen-Fu (1 mg/kg); those challenged with endotoxin (5 mg/kg) and treated with Shen-Fu (10 mg/kg); increase challenged with endotoxin (5 mg/kg) and treated with Shen-Fu (100 mg/kg); saline injected and treated with Shen-Fu (100 mg/kg). TNF-α, IL-6, and NF-kappa B were investigated in the lung two hours later. Myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity and wet/dry weight ratio were investigated six hours later. Intravenous administration of endotoxin provoked significant lung injury, which was characterized by increment increase of MPO activity and wet/dry lung weight ratio, and TNF-α and IL-6 expression and NF-kappa B activation. Shen-Fu (10,100 mg/kg) decreased MPO activity and wet/dry weight ratio and inhibited TNF-α and IL-6 production, endotoxin-induced NF-kappa B activation. Our results indicated that Shen-Fu at a dose of higher than 10 mg/kg inhibited endotoxin-induced pulmonary inflammation in vivo.

INDIA – Bioven starts BV-NSCLC-001 Phase III trial in NSCLC.

INDIA – Initiative in Chemical Biology and Therapeutics.

PHILLIPPINES – Asia–Pacific Analysis: The slow road to green energy.

SINGAPORE – Takeda progressing well in Asia with New Drug Applications.

SINGAPORE – NTU and University of Warwick boost brainpower in global neuroscience research.

THAILAND – Thai PhD. student awarded Monsanto's Beachell–Borlaug International Scholarship for rice improvement research.

EUROPE – Open access will change the world, if scientists want it to.

UNITED STATES & CANADA – Verisante places Aura Beta Units for safety, verification testing in B.C., Alberta and Ontario clinics.

UNITED STATES & CANADA – Life Technologies sets new worldwide standard for criminal forensic testing with introduction of GlobalFilerTM Express Kit.

UNITED STATES & CANADA – How immune cells can nudge nerves to regrow.

UNITED STATES & CANADA – Improved Genomic Target Selection Using IDT Oligos.

UNITED STATES & CANADA – US team uncover non-invasive method for diagnosing epilepsy.

INDIA – Lack of access to technology ‘hampers detection of substandard drugs’.

JAPAN – Daiichi Sankyo announces development of nucleic acid treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy utilizing proprietary technology.

SINGAPORE – IBN creates unlimited source of human kidney cells.

SINGAPORE – Dyesol and Singapore's NTU sign agreement.

THE PHILIPPINES – Global biotech/GM crop plantings increase 100-fold from 1996.

AUSTRALIA – Phosphagenics further expands pain portfolio.

AUSTRALIA – Primary Health Care signs Australia distribution agreement for iGeneScreen™ prenatal test.

AUSTRALIA – Folic acid in pregnancy linked with reduced autism risk.

AUSTRALIA – Phylogica and Bio-Link collaborate to commercialize anti-inflammatory Phylomers.

AUSTRALIA – ABRAXANE^® plus gemcitabine improves survival in Phase III study of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer.

CANADA – Verisante Technology, Inc. announces first sales of aura, a revolutionary medical device for the detection of skin cancer.

EUROPE – Project eyes robust medical technology for poor countries.

UNITED KINGDOM – Asthma sufferers have more lung fungi.

UNITED KINGDOM – Pioneering drug discovery gets major funding to move to next stage.

UNITED STATES – Gilead's sofosbuvir for hepatitis C meets primary endpoint in fourth pivotal Phase III study.

UNITED STATES – Eleven Biotherapeutics publishes data on EBI-005, a novel IL-1 inhibitor protein for topical treatment of dry eye disease.

UNITED STATES – Phase I/II trial of ADXS-HPV in anal cancer conducted by Brown University Oncology Group.

UNITED STATES – Scopolamine: An old drug with new psychiatric applications.

UNITED STATES – New bioengineered ears look and act like the real thing.

UNITED STATES – To trap a rainbow, slow down light.

UNITED STATES – AB SCIEX responds to milk contamination concerns with new method to detect dicyandiamide.

Concert Pharmaceuticals announces completion of enrollment in Phase II CTP-499 clinical trial for the treatment of diabetic kidney disease.

NanoLogix bacteria detection plates break longevity records using Anthrax.

AngioLight lands strategic partnership with Medical Technologies Innovation Asia.

BioScience Managers expands Asia Pacific presence.

Simbionix signs an agreement with the Laparoscopic Surgical Skills Foundation.

The Institute for Systems Biology and AB SCIEX partner to help make medical care more predictive and personalized.

Alchemia appoints Charles Walker as Chief Executive Officer.

Anergis expands management team.

Novozymes acquires enzyme business from Canadian Iogen Corporation.

AUSTRALIA – HIV trial validates novel drug mechanism.

SINGAPORE – IBN engineered artificial human livers for drug testing and discovery.

SINGAPORE – Scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore catch evolving germs and cancer cells early.

SINGAPORE – DocDoc and Chatter Buzz Media enter strategic partnership to launch Asia's first healthcare Content Marketing Network.

UNITED STATES – New method developed to expand blood stem cells for bone marrow transplant.

UNITED STATES – Fibrocell/UCLA study on human skin cells yields promising results.

UNITED STATES – Metal stents are effective treatment for blocked bile ducts.

UNITED STATES – Pain drug may prevent preemie lung damage.

UNITED STATES – Gene x3 helps corn grow in acidic soil.

UNITED STATES – Cancer Genetics selected by Gilead Sciences, Inc. to provide clinical trial services for chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

UNITED KINGDOM – DaTSCAN™ SPECT imaging demonstrates impact on the diagnosis of patients with clinically uncertain dementia.

AFRICA – Failing vaccine strategies need to be revamped.

AFRICA – RegeneCure's membrane implant shows 40% accelerated healing time of severe bone fractures.

Lab-grown meat: Better for you and the environment.

Regenerative medicine: The future of healing.

Accurate and automated lung segmentation in high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) is highly challenged by the presence of pathologies affecting lung parenchyma appearance and borders.

The algorithm presented employs an anatomical model-driven approach and systematic incremental knowledge acquisition to produce coarse lung delineation, used as initialization for the graph-cut algorithm. The proposed method is evaluated on a 49 HRCT cases dataset including various lung disease patterns. The accuracy of the method is assessed using dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and shape differentiation metrics (d_mean, d_rms), by comparing the outputs of automatic lung segmentations and manual ones.

The proposed automatic method demonstrates high segmentation accuracy (DSC = 96.64%, d_mean = 1.75 mm, d_rms = 3.27 mm) with low variation that depends on the lung disease pattern. It also presents good improvement over the initial lung segmentation (ΔDSC = 4.74%, Δd_mean = -3.67 mm, Δd_rms = -6.25 mm), including impressive amelioration (maximum values of ΔDSC = 58.22% and Δd_mean = -78.66 mm) when the anatomy-driven algorithm reaches its limit.

Segmentation evaluation shows that the method can accurately segment lungs even in the presence of disease patterns, with some limitations in the apices and bases of lungs. Therefore, the developed automatic segmentation method is a good candidate for the first stage of a computer-aided diagnosis system for diffuse lung diseases.

Understanding alveolar mechanics is important for preventing the possible lung injuries during mechanical ventilation. Alveolar clusters with smaller size are found having lower compliance in two-dimensional studies. But the influence of alveolar shape on compliance is unclear. In order to investigate how alveolar morphology affects their behavior, we tracked subpleural alveoli of isolated mouse lungs during quasi-static ventilation using two- and three-dimensional imaging techniques. Results showed that alveolar clusters with smaller size and more spherical shape had lower compliance. There was a better correlation of sphericity rather than circularity with alveolar compliance. The compliance of clusters with great shape change was larger than that with relatively slight shape change. These findings suggest the contribution of lung heterogeneous expansion to lung injuries associated with mechanical ventilation.