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Newswise — ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Planning a holiday meal can be hectic, and some families will be managing an extra stressor: accommodating the dietary restrictions of teens on gluten-free, vegan or other special diets. For a variety of reasons, many teens choose diets that go beyond cutting calories and reducing portion sizes – instead, these special diets restrict entire food groups. That could mean added costs and new logistical challenges for families, suggests a new national poll. One in six parents say their teen has tried a diet that is vegetarian (9 percent), gluten-free (6 percent), vegan (4 percent) or paleo (2 percent) at some point in the past two years, according to the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health at the University of Michigan. The diet changes weren’t always harmonious. Roughly half of parents in the Mott poll said the special diets caused conflicts at holiday and family gatherings. “Teen diets that limit food options can impact the whole family,” says poll co-director Sarah Clark, M.P.H. “That can lead to conflict at the holidays if the diet doesn’t include the mainstays of the family’s traditional meal, and the teen refuses to eat Granny’s famous mac & cheese, or the turkey Aunt Emma spent all day preparing.” Other difficulties are everyday challenges, like finding a suitable place for the whole family to dine out (61 percent), extra time spent preparing diet-friendly food (55 percent), the stress of family members eating different meals (54 percent) and the added expense of buying special diet foods (50 percent). “Parents can work with teens to minimize any burden on family members, such as asking the teen to prepare his or her own meals, or finding diet-compliant versions of the family’s favorite foods,” says Clark. Too little health advice? Parents gave a variety of reasons for why their teen tried the special diet: 32 percent said it was health-related, while 29 percent said it was because another family member was on the same diet. Other motives included a friend’s suggestion (17 percent) and the diet’s environmental impact (14 percent). More than half of parents say they did their homework when their teen started a special diet — with nearly half suggesting that their teen began taking vitamins or supplements in tandem. Just 17 percent brought their teen to a health care provider to discuss whether the diet was healthy. “Parents may not recognize this as a situation that would benefit from advice from a health care professional,” says Clark. About half of parents (52 percent) think the special diet had a positive impact in their teen feeling healthier, while 41 percent believe it made no difference. On the other hand, 7 percent say the diet negatively impacted their teen’s health. “There are situations where diets that restrict certain food groups can result in teens not getting enough protein, iron, calcium or other essential parts of a healthy diet,” said Clark. “Advice from a dietician or nutritionist can help families weigh the risks and benefits to determine practical options for teens looking for a healthier lifestyle.” The Mott Poll report was based on responses from a nationally-representative group of 910 parents who had at least one child between the ages of 13 and 18.

Newswise — ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Young adults have access to an outpatient procedure that can stop progressive vision loss. Corneal cross-linking strengthens the cornea if it’s been weakened by keratoconus, other corneal disease or, rarely, as a complication of LASIK surgery. What’s new and exciting, says cornea specialist Shahzad I. Mian, M.D., is the option to prevent vision loss before patients with keratoconus need corrective lens and, even more significantly, to reduce the need for corneal transplants. Keratoconus tends to be diagnosed among teens and young adults and progresses for 10 to 20 years before slowing. The earlier it can be treated, the better the outcome. “Up to now, treatments have been focused on management of symptoms, often with specialized contact lens and, if patients don’t see better, then corneal transplants,” Mian says. “We can now offer a treatment that, if provided early in the disease, can help maintain better vision.”What to expect from corneal cross-linking Keratoconus causes the cornea — the front window of the eye — to be distorted and shaped like a cone. The abnormal shape can cause vision changes, such as light sensitivity, glare and irritation, and can lead to frequent changes in glasses and contact lens prescriptions for nearsightedness. The cornea contains tiny fibers of protein called collagen, and these fibers help hold the cornea in place and keep it from distorting. Corneal cross-linking involves removing the front layer of the cornea and administering an eye drop of liquid riboflavin (vitamin B12) to the surface of the eye. Ultraviolent light is then delivered to the eye at differing levels of time and intensity. The eye drop helps the cornea absorb the ultraviolet light and stiffen. The procedure lasts 60 to 90 minutes. Patients will see results after six months to one year.

Newswise — Researchers have made significant progress in the development of a potential vaccine to protect against HIV infection. For the first time, researchers have shown that a combined approach – using a common cold virus to introduce a vaccine into the body, as well as an injection of a DNA-based vaccine – results in the immune system actively protecting against HIV in the gut and bodily cavities. The laboratory studies, conducted so far in mice and now published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, represent an important step forward in attempts to introduce a first line of defense against HIV at the site of infection. "With sexual activity being one of the primary methods of HIV transmission, it's necessary to try to protect those parts of the body that are most likely to encounter the virus first," says senior author Dr Branka Grubor-Bauk, from the Discipline of Surgery at the University of Adelaide and Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research, Queen Elizabeth Hospital. "A possible reason why previous HIV vaccine trials have not been successful is because of this lack of a frontline protection. "In mice, we delivered a rhinovirus (or common cold virus) inside the nose, and this virus had been altered to include HIV proteins. At the same time, the mice also received an injection into the skin containing a DNA-based vaccine. This approach resulted in very specific responses in the immune system," Dr Grubor-Bauk says. "Importantly, this vaccine approach encompasses two different arms of the immune system: white blood cells that attack the HIV virus, and specific antibodies that recognize and shut down HIV-positive cells." The Head of the Virology Group conducting this research is Professor Eric Gowans, also from the University's Discipline of Surgery, based at the Basil Hetzel Institute. "There's an element of HIV known as Tat that helps the virus to replicate quite rapidly. One of the beauties of our vaccine approach is that the antibodies inhibit the Tat effect, preventing HIV from replicating itself," Professor Gowans says. "Overall, we found that infection was considerably reduced in the mice we studied. The findings of our work now support the need for further testing of this targeted approach to an HIV vaccine," he says. This study was supported with funding from The Hospital Research Foundation and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). The findings are announced ahead of World AIDS Day (Thursday 1 December 2016). Media Contacts: Dr Branka Grubor-BaukSenior Research Officer, Virology GroupDiscipline of Surgery, The University of Adelaideand Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research, The Queen Elizabeth Hospitalbranka.grubor@adelaide.edu.au Professor Eric GowansHead, Virology GroupDiscipline of Surgery, The University of Adelaideand Basil Hetzel Institute for Translational Health Research, The Queen Elizabeth Hospitaleric.gowans@adelaide.edu.au SEE ORIGINAL STUDY

Newswise — SAN DIEGO – A new study in rats could begin to explain why allergies during pregnancy are linked to higher risks for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism in children. Researchers at The Ohio State University found significant changes in the brain makeup of fetuses and newborn rats exposed to allergens during pregnancy. Animals that lived to adulthood after allergen exposure before birth showed signs of hyperactivity and antisocial behavior and decreased anxiety, found a research team led by Kathryn Lenz, an Ohio State assistant professor of psychology. “This is evidence that prenatal exposure to allergens alters brain development and function and that could be an underappreciated factor in the development of neurodevelopmental disorders,” said Lenz, who presented her research Nov. 16 in San Diego at Neuroscience 2016, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Though there are established links between allergies and ADHD and autism – as well as between inflammation and risk of autism, schizophrenia and ADHD – the cellular-level changes that could contribute to those connections largely remain a mystery. Autism and ADHD are both three to four times as common in boys than in girls, Lenz said. And so she and her collaborators set out to look for sex differences in the rats as well. “We’re really interested in figuring out unknown factors in psychological disorders and in differences between male and female brain development as it relates to autism, ADHD and other disorders,” Lenz said. To study the effects of allergies on offspring, researchers sensitized female rats to ovalbumin (found in egg whites) before pregnancy. Then, 15 days into their pregnancies, they exposed them to the allergen, prompting an immune response in the animals. They analyzed whether prenatal allergen exposure changed the number and behavior of immune cells in the developing brain of offspring. They explored possible changes in young rats’ physical activity, anxiety-like behavior, ability to learn and sociability. And they examined the density of dendritic spines in the juvenile animals’ brains. The spines protrude from neurons and are vital to cellular-level communication in the brain. Rats exposed to allergens before birth had higher levels of immune cells called mast cells in the brain and lower numbers of immune cells called microglia, regardless of the animals’ gender. Animals with allergic mothers were hyperactive, but had lower levels of anxiety-like behavior. When they interacted with other juvenile rats, the males in the allergen group were less likely to roughhouse with their peers. “Young rats engage in social play and males are more rough and tumble and usually play much more than females,” Lenz said. “The males born to the allergen-exposed mothers looked more like females. They were more socially reserved. They were really hyperactive, but socially disengaged. That looks a bit like ADHD.” And when the researchers looked at the animals’ ability to be mentally flexible, the rats born to allergic mothers had a tougher time, Lenz said. “They have to use rules to find a reward – a Cheerio in a terracotta pot – and the rules we give them keep shifting,” Lenz said, explaining that in one test the treat might be in a pot covered in sandpaper and in another test it might be in a pot covered in velvet. The rats in the allergen group weren’t as capable of adapting to the changing parameters of the test, and the males had deficits that were more significant than the females. Early data from the study shows that the dendritic spines – the points of synaptic connection between cells in the frontal cortex of the animals’ brains – were decreased in males with allergy exposure and increased in their female counterparts. The study was supported by The National Institute of Mental Health. Lenz’s collaborators at Ohio State were undergraduate students Annemarie Krug and Aarohi Joshi and laboratory technician Anabel Galan. #

Newswise — WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – What’s the best way to stop type 2 diabetes? Find it before it becomes a problem. “The phrase I use is prevention by detection,” said Joseph Aloi, M.D., section chief of endocrinology and metabolism at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It’s no secret that diabetes – elevated blood glucose levels caused by the body’s failure to produce enough insulin (type 1) or properly use it (type 2) to process sugars – has reached epidemic proportions in the United States. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 29 million people in this country have diabetes, with type 2, formerly known as adult-onset diabetes, accounting for more than 90 percent of those cases. If left unchecked, diabetes can lead to serious complications, including heart disease, kidney failure, stroke, blindness and the loss of toes, feet and legs. What’s less known is that nearly three times as many Americans – roughly 86 million – have prediabetes, a condition where blood sugar levels are above normal but still below the threshold for type 2. Prediabetes generally doesn’t produce noticeable symptoms, so the vast majority of people with the condition – nine out of 10, according to the CDC – don’t even know they have it. But the progression from prediabetes to type 2 is not inevitable, and there’s a common blood test called the A1C that can determine whether a person’s blood glucose levels require attention. “Prediabetes is a great opportunity to prevent diabetes,” Aloi said. “The A1C test really helps you hone in on whether there’s a problem, and if there is, to start addressing it. It’s a simple, inexpensive test that doesn’t require any special preparation but can provide a lot of good information.” Formally the glycated hemoglobin test, the A1C measures the percentage of glycosylated hemoglobin – think sugar-coated red blood cells – in the bloodstream, which indicates a person’s average blood glucose level over the previous three months. The A1C provides a more accurate assessment than a fasting plasma glucose test, which uses a blood sample taken from a person who has abstained from food and drink for at least eight hours. “The fasting test is a snapshot of what your blood sugar level is at that one specific time, which may or may not be representative of what’s really going on,” Aloi said. “The A1C test, on the other hand, is sort of a report card for the past 90 days, and that’s a more valuable indicator.” So who should get tested? Various institutions and organizations offer different recommendations but generally agree that you should at least discuss blood glucose screening with a doctor if you have any of the common risk factors for diabetes, even if you don’t have any symptoms. As these risk factors include being over age 40, being overweight or obese, being physically inactive, having a family history of type 2 diabetes, having high blood pressure, having low HDL (good) or high LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, and being of African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Asian-American or Pacific Islander descent, “almost everyone” should be tested, Aloi said. “I believe my job is to help people make correct choices, and to do that they need to have good information,” he said. “And part of that is screening for prediabetes and diabetes.” Should testing reveal elevated blood glucose levels, the development of type 2 diabetes can in the majority of cases be prevented or delayed though lifestyle changes such as weight loss, healthier eating and increased physical activity. There are also anti-diabetes medications, such as metformin, which helps the body use insulin more efficiently. “We can’t get rid of your genes or other things that may predispose someone to diabetes and we don’t have a cure, but we do know ways to control it,” Aloi said. “For most patients, especially if we’re catching prediabetes, the changes they need to make can be small but still effective. “Losing 10 to 12 pounds and walking 20 minutes a day can be better than medicine. Sometimes restricting carbohydrates or adding more fiber to the diet helps a lot, and for younger patients simply eliminating sugary drinks might be enough.” And while advanced type 2 diabetes can be also managed – or even put into remission – through treatment, the early identification of blood sugar problems is vital. “You’re obviously better off preventing the complications from occurring than trying to treat them,” Aloi said. “I think it’s extremely important to identify the people who are at risk of diabetes and to tell them: This is the track you’re on. You should get out of the way of the train.”

Newswise — E-cigarette use among teenagers is growing dramatically, and public health experts are concerned that these devices may be a gateway to smoking. Now, new research indicates that even if these young e-cigarette users do not become tobacco smokers, e-cigarettes may harm their health.In “Electronic-cigarette Use and Respiratory Symptoms in Adolescents,” published online ahead of print in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, lead author Rob McConnell, MD, professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and colleagues report an association between e-cigarette use and persistent cough, bronchitis and congestion or phlegm in the Southern California Children’s Health Study. “E-cigarettes are known to deliver chemicals toxic to the lungs, including oxidant metals, glycerol vapor, diketone flavoring compounds and nicotine,” Dr. McConnell said. “However, there has been little study of the chronic health effects of e-cigarettes. The Children’s Health Study provided an opportunity to examine bronchitic symptoms common among smokers to see if the risk was also increased in users of e-cigarettes.” The researchers analyzed responses to a 2014 questionnaire completed by 2,086 study participants. Investigators categorized respondents as never e-cigarette users (76%), past users (more than 30 days earlier, 14.4%) and current users (at least once within the past 30 days, 9.6%). The study found that when compared to those who never tried e-cigarettes, the risk of the respiratory symptoms was • approximately 85 percent higher among past users, and• double among current users These associations remained statistically significant for past users after being adjusted for smoking and secondhand tobacco smoke exposure and sociodemographic factors. The researchers also looked at wheeze, a narrowing of the airways often caused by an asthma exacerbation, but did not find a significant association with e-cigarettes after adjusting for the same confounding factors. “The Food and Drug Administration recently banned the sale of e-cigarettes to children under 18 years of age, and California just prohibited sale to young adults under 21,” Dr. McConnell said. “Our results suggest that these regulations and an environment that discourages the initiation of any tobacco product may reduce the burden of chronic respiratory symptoms in youth. However, because e-cigarettes are relatively new, additional study is needed to fully understand their long-term effects.” Begun in 1992, the Southern California Children’s Health study has enrolled more than 11,000 children in one of the largest and most detailed studies of the long-term effects of air pollution on the respiratory health of children. The National Institutes of Health and the Hastings Foundation funded this study.Contact for article: Rob McConnell, MD Via Zen Vuong, USC Media RelationsPhone: 213-300-1381Email: zvuong@usc.edu Share via Twitter“Researchers find #e-cigarettes pose harm to teens beyond being gateway to smoking.” Follow UsATS - @atscommunityAJRCCM - @ATSBlueEditor About the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM):The AJRCCM is a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Thoracic Society. The Journal takes pride in publishing the most innovative science and the highest quality reviews, practice guidelines and statements in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. With an impact factor of 12.996, it is the highest ranked journal in pulmonology. Editor: Jadwiga Wedzicha, MD, professor of respiratory medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute (Royal Brompton Campus), Imperial College London, UK. About the American Thoracic Society:Founded in 1905, the American Thoracic Society is the world's leading medical association dedicated to advancing pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. The Society’s 15,000 members prevent and fight respiratory disease around the globe through research, education, patient care and advocacy. The ATS publishes three journals, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology and the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.The ATS will hold its 2017 International Conference, May 19-24, in Washington, DC, where world-renowned experts will share the latest scientific research and clinical advances in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine.

Newswise — Depression has been known to be associated with poor cardiovascular outcomes, but if patients who are depressed attend cardiac rehabilitation after heart surgery, their risk of death is significantly reduced, according to a new study. The study, conducted by researchers at Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, found that patients who were moderately to severely depressed had a higher risk of death after cardiovascular surgery than patients with mild to no depression. However, if those moderately to severely depressed patients attended rehabilitation after surgery, their risk of death was moderately reduced. “We know the presence of moderate to severe depressive symptoms prior to cardiovascular surgery is a major risk factor for death, but our study shows that if those patients attend cardiac rehabilitation, their risk for death decreases significantly,” said the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute’s Viet Le, MPAS, PA, lead author of the study. Results of the study will be presented at the 2016 American Heart Association’s Scientific Session in New Orleans on Sunday, November 13, at 5 pm, CST. Le says several benefits of cardiac rehabilitation may play a role in reducing the risk for death in heart patients after cardiovascular surgery. “We think cardiac rehab helps patients to manage their expectations as they return to work and life,” he said. “This comes from having a support group of fellow patients who may be further along in their rehab, as well as having exercise and activity protocols managed by experienced staff who can encourage consistent follow-up as well as ‘slow’ an overly enthusiastic patient. Getting patients out of their home after surgery, where they may overthink the effects of the disease, to a place where their job is to heal can enhance not only their physical recovery but their emotional health.” The research indicates that patients who attend rehabilitation after surgery reduced their risk of death by nearly half, Le said, but further study is required to determine whether other factors contribute to this result, as well. The Intermountain Medical Center Heart research team compiled information from 118 patients undergoing heart surgery who completed a nine-question patient health questionnaire (PHQ)-9 during an outpatient visit before their surgery. Patients were categorized based on their results of their survey as having no to mild depressive symptoms or moderate to severe depressive symptoms. Following each patient’s completion of the last questionnaire, patients were followed post-surgery to determine the association of pre-surgery PHQ-9 depressive symptoms and death. At the conclusion of the study, death occurred in 6.1 percent in patients with no to mild depressive symptoms and in about 25 percent of heart patients with moderate to severe depressive symptoms, showing that depressive symptoms were significantly associated with death. Among patients with moderate to severe depression however, attending cardiac rehabilitation significantly decreased their risk of death by 74 percent (HR=0.26, p=0.02). Other Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute researchers involved in the study include: Tami L. Bair, Jose Benuzillo; Heidi T. May, PhD; Kirk U. Knowlton, MD; Donald L. Lappé, MD; and Joseph B. Muhlestein, MD. Intermountain Medical Center is the flagship facility for the Intermountain Healthcare system, which is based in Salt Lake City. ###

Newswise — Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is a rare and devastating condition that is a concern for all parents. SIDS claims the lives of about 3,500 babies each year in the United States, with the greatest risk in the first 12 months of life. Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a recommendation that infants sleep in their parents’ room, close to the parents’ bed — but on a separate surface designed for infants — for at least 6 months, and preferably up to 1 year of age. Such a sleeping arrangement decreases the risk of SIDS by as much as 50 percent, according to the AAP. The AAP recommendations go on to recommend placing the crib/bassinet close to the parent’s bed so that the infant is within view and reach, which in turn will facilitate feeding, comforting, and monitoring the infant. Since these recommendations have come out, I have heard an uproar from fellow pediatricians’, parents and colleagues saying, “Really?” “What about the parent’s sleep and daytime performance?” “If these guidelines are followed isn’t the lack of sleep of the parents likely to cause more harm than good?” What is interesting is that these are not new recommendations (this recommendation was also in the AAP’s 2011 guidelines); however, the wording is stronger and there is now an added timeline. So why the change? One of the authors of the new guidelines has stated in an interview with the New York Times that the recommendations were updated “to be on the prudent side”. It is known that the first 6 months are a particularly critical time for infants because the rates of SIDS and other sleep-related deaths, particularly those occurring in bed–sharing situations, are highest in the first 6 months of life. In addition, while the rate of SIDS has plateaued over the last few years, the rates of other sleep-related infant deaths, such as accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed and ill-defined deaths have increased. Risk factors for these different categories of death are strikingly similar to those of SIDS. Therefore public health efforts are doubling down on environmental risks such as prone and side-sleep positioning, bed sharing, and soft bedding in hopes of decreasing these other types of sleep-related deaths. Ultimately, this decision is a personal one, but understanding why this recommendation was made can help parents make an informed choice. Following is a summary of the AAP’s recommendations for safe infant sleeping and to reduce the risk for SIDS. More complete information can be found here.• Place your baby to sleep on his back for every sleep.• Place your baby to sleep on a firm sleep surface.• Keep soft objects, loose bedding, or any objects that could increase the risk of entrapment, suffocation, or strangulation out of the crib.• Place your baby to sleep in the same room where you sleep but not the same bed.• Breastfeed as much and for as long as you can. This helps reduce the risk of SIDS.• Schedule and go to all well-child visits. Your baby will receive important immunizations.• Keep your baby away from smokers and places where people smoke. • Do not let your baby get too hot. • Offer a pacifier at nap time and bedtime. • Do not use home cardiorespiratory monitors to help reduce the risk of SIDS.• Do not use products that claim to reduce the risk of SIDS. Learn more about Valley’s Pediatric Sleep Disorders and Apnea Center.

Newswise — Virginia Tech scientists have developed a new cancer drug that uses gold nanoparticles created by the biotech firm CytImmune Sciences to deliver paclitaxel — a commonly used chemotherapy drug directly to a tumor. Because of the direct targeting, the new effort not only increases the effectiveness of paclitaxel, it also dramatically reduces devastating side effects such as hair loss, nausea, and nerve pain. CytImmune earlier this year asked David Kingston, a University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry with the Virginia Tech College of Science, to create a paclitaxel derivative that binds to gold-based nanoparticles while in the blood stream, only releasing the drug once it’s inside a cancerous tumor. Paclitaxel chemotherapy is widely used to treat breast, ovarian, lung, and colon cancer. “Paclitaxel side effects occur because the drug is given intravenously and thus is distributed throughout the body, and not just to the tumor,” said Kingston, who joined the Virginia Tech Department of Chemistry in 1971. “In addition, the solvent used to allow infusion has its own toxicity. Paclitaxel could be a much more effective drug if it could be targeted directly to the tumor. This would allow each dose to be given without causing significant side effects, and would thus increase the potential for cures.” In other words, for now, delivery of a paclitaxel equals a shotgun with pellets. The blast of killing a tumor results in great collateral damage. Kingston and his team say their delivery method is like a finely tuned rifle, using CytImmune’s gold-based nanoparticles as the delivery bullet. The gold nanoparticles are decorated with both paclitaxel and tumor necrosis factor – a cell-signaling protein commonly called TNF. Gold nanoparticles are known to cling around cancerous tumors. TNF thus binds to the tumor blood vessel cells, ultimately killing them and reducing the high pressure inside the tumor, which prevents paclitaxel from reaching the cancer cells to kill them. Now, the slowly released paclitaxel that is bound to the gold nanoparticles can reach its targeted cancer cells to kill them. In early lab tests in treating mouse melanoma, a 2.5 milligram dose of paclitaxel delivered on Kingston’s gold nanoparticles vehicle was essentially as effective as a dose of 40 milligrams of paclitaxel by itself.The delivery method is expected to soon move toward clinical trial, said Kingston. Findings by Kingston and his team – including Jielu Zhao, a 2016 doctoral graduate in chemistry, now a chemist at Proctor and Gamble, and Shugeng Cao, a former post-doctorate researcher also in chemistry, now an associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo — were recently published in the scientific journal Bioconjugate Chemistry. Zhao and Cao carried out the actual synthesis of the paclitaxel derivatives with the designed linkers to allow them to bond to the gold nanoparticles, with Kingston supervising. “This approach has the potential to be a game-changer in nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems,” said Kingston, “since it combines the power of drug targeting by tumor necrosis factor, with the advantages of nanoparticle delivery, including the low toxicity of nanoparticle drugs to normal, healthy tissue.” “By combining the tumor blood vessel destroying activity of TNF with the cancer killing effect of paclitaxel onto CytImmune’s tumor-targeted, ‘stealth’ gold nanoparticles, Dr. Kingston’s team and CytImmune’s team may have potentially created a new cancer drug that is far more effective and less toxic to the human body,” said Lawrence Tamarkin, chief executive officer at CytImmune. Work on the new drug was split between Virginia Tech’s main Blacksburg campus and CytImmune’s Rockville, Maryland, headquarters. Kingston has teamed with CytImmune in the past on tumor-targeting nanomedicine. Virginia Tech previously has used gold nanoparticles in unrelated anti-cancer research, including the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine which in experiments used gold nanoparticles to collect around tumors found inside a dog, and then utilized a non-ablative laser to target the gold nanoparticles, and thus the tumors. In essence, the veterinary approach killed cancer cells by heating them, versus Kingston’s approach directly targeting paclitaxel to tumors via the gold nanoparticles.    

Newswise — An experimental drug that targets abnormally high levels of a protein linked to cancer growth appears to significantly reduce the proliferation of prostate cancer cells in laboratory cell cultures and animals, while also making these cells considerably more vulnerable to radiation, according to results of a study led by Johns Hopkins scientists. The findings, published Sept. 12 in Cancer Research, could advance the search for novel combination treatments that make more effective and safer use of radiation against prostate cancer, the most common nonskin cancer in men and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men in the United States. Of the nearly 200,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer each year in the United States, radiation is a first-line therapy considered for all but the most advanced disease. However, some of these cancers become resistant to the effects of radiation over time, according to Venu Raman, Ph.D., an associate professor of radiology and radiological science and of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and member of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. In a search for ways of extending the value of radiation and limiting the collateral damage to healthy tissue that necessarily high doses of radiation may inflict, Raman worked with Phuoc Tran, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of radiation oncology and molecular radiation sciences, oncology, and urology, and also a member of the Kimmel Cancer Center. They and colleagues from Johns Hopkins and University Medical Centre Utrecht had earlier discovered that a protein called DDX3 appears to be "dysregulated" in many cancers, including breast, lung, colorectal, sarcoma and prostate. The researchers found that the more aggressive the cancer, the higher the expression of this protein, which helps maintain cellular stability. The researchers then developed a molecule referred to as RK-33 that was designed to disrupt DDX3's function by locking on to a portion of the protein. They showed in previous studies with cell cultures that when adding RK-33 to malignant lung and other cancerous cells that highly express DDX3, proliferation slowed or halted, and the cells' ability to form colonies was impaired. Additionally, RK-33 appeared to be a radiosensitizer, making the destructive effects of radiation more pronounced. In the new study, the researchers began by examining prostate cancer tissue samples from University Medical Centre Utrecht. Of the 23 samples with a Gleason score greater than seven, eight had high DDX3 expression.As with results of their earlier studies, the investigators found that the higher the expression of this protein, the more aggressive the cancer, which is determined by how the cells invade other tissue types and their ability to form tumors in laboratory models of cancers. When the researchers used gene engineering techniques to knock out DDX3 expression in laboratory-grown cell cultures that highly expressed this protein, cell proliferation was half that of cell cultures with high DDX3 expression. Incubating cultured cells with RK-33 had a similar effect, knocking down DDX3 expression in cells that highly express this protein and hampering their ability to multiply. When researchers combined the drug with radiation, the effects were synergistic, they report, killing from two to four times more cells than radiation alone.Next, the researchers tested the effects of RK-33 and radiation in mice that had been injected with human prostate cancer cells that highly express DDX3. The animals formed tumors within a few weeks. Together, Raman says, this dual-mode treatment produced cell-killing results that paralleled their experiments in cell cultures. Raman adds that the experimental drug appeared to have no toxicity in the mice, suggesting that it could be a promising drug to test in humans. Compounds based on RK-33, he says, might have value in treating a broad array of cancers that highly express DDX33 or as a supplement to radiation, making conventional doses more effective or improving the killing ability of lower doses."A lot of work still needs to be done to develop this into a chemotherapy drug," Raman cautions. "But based on our findings, we think it could fill an unmet need in making the most common treatment for prostate cancer more effective." Other Johns Hopkins researchers who participated in this study include Min Xie, Farhad Vesuna, Saritha Tantravedi, Guus M. Bol, Marise R. Heerma van Voss, Katriana Nugent, Reem Malek and Kathleen Gabrielson. SEE ORIGINAL STUDY