Science and Health News

Researchers of the University of Tübingen and DZIF in collaboration with the biotech company Sanaria Inc. have demonstrated in a clinical trial that a new vaccine for malaria called Sanaria® PfSPZ-CVac has been up to 100 percent effective when assessed at 10 weeks after last dose of vaccine. For the trial, Professor Peter Kremsner and Dr. Benjamin Mordmüller of the Institute of Tropical Medicine and the German Center for Infection Research used malaria parasites provided by Sanaria. The vaccine incorporated fully viable – not weakened or otherwise inactivated – malaria pathogens together with the medication to combat them.

Scientists are one step closer to mimicking the way biological systems interact and process information in the body — a vital step toward developing new forms of biorobotics and novel treatment approaches for several muscle-related health problems such as muscular degenerative disorders, arrhythmia and limb loss.

Strokes are usually, but not always, debilitating. This case report documents the extraordinary resilience of a woman in Argentina who endured multiple strokes. Despite these traumas her daily functioning continued in many ways as though nothing had happened. In addition to being an inspiring individual story of resilience, this episode highlights how much we still have to learn about the way the adult brain functions.

Clinical trials for genome editing of the human germline – adding, removing, or replacing DNA base pairs in gametes or early embryos – could be permitted in the future, but only for serious conditions under stringent oversight, says a new report from the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.  The report outlines several criteria that should be met before allowing germline editing clinical trials to go forward.  Genome editing has already entered clinical trials for non-heritable applications, but should be allowed only for treating or preventing diseases or disabilities at this time.

For the past several years, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been developing a class of walking «bio-bots» powered by muscle cells and controlled with electrical and optical pulses. Now, Bioengineering Professor Rashid Bashir’s research group is sharing the recipe for the current generation of bio-bots. Their how-to paper is the cover article in Nature Protocols.

Chemists at the Moscow Lomonosov State University (MSU) have come up with a range of biosensors based on what’s known as Prussian Blue (PB). The MSU website quoted Elena Karpova, one of the key developers and a postgraduate at the university’s Department of Chemistry, as saying that «the new biosensors could be used in an array of wearable devices, which are getting so popular these days, for noninvasive monitoring of glucose and lactic acid.»

Biologists at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics in the town of Pushchino outside Moscow appear to have found a way of slowing down ageing processes in the human body by administering melatonin, popularly known as a sleep hormone, portal Hi-news.ru reported, citing Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, an international scientific journal.

A research paper titled «Strehler-Mildvan correlation is a degenerate manifold of Gompertz fit» by our scientific team has been published in the new issue of Journal of Theoretical Biology. It states that Strehler-Mildvan correlation has no real biological reasoning behind it and, therefore, there are no limitations to anti-aging interventions.