Drug & Treatment Development News - 02

Published 11/7/2022

Here are some recent articles that caught my eye:

AI Model Accurately Predicts Patient Response to Drug Compounds (1)

“Researchers at the CUNY Graduate Center have created an artificial intelligence model, Context-aware Deconfounding Autoencoder (CODE-AE), that can screen drug compounds to accurately predict efficacy in humans. In tests, the model was able to theoretically identify personalized drugs that could better treat more than 9,000 cancer patients.”

Novel Machine Learning Method Classified Macrophages (2)

Macrophages can act as pro- or anti-inflammatory agents. Classifying macrophages allows scientists to directly distinguish between macrophage states and could be used as a diagnostic tool or to highlight the role of a particular cell type in a disease environment

Epigenetic Changes linked to Parkinson's Disease Differ in Men and Women (3)

The epigenetic changes linked to Parkinson’s disease – a nervous system disorder that afflicts nearly 1 million Americans – are different in men and women, according to a new Rutgers study published in NPJ Parkinson’s Disease.

In a postmortem analysis of brain neurons, researchers found more than 200 genes with different epigenetic markers in diseased and healthy brains – but the affected genes were almost entirely different in men and women.

New Research Proposes a Set of Conditions That Could be the Starting Point for Ulcerative Colitis (4)

Increased levels of the enzyme alpha 1-6 fucosyltransferase – also known as FUT8 – in the colon alters mucins in a way that may allow gut bacteria easier access to colonic epithelial cells.

A Potential New Target for Developing Antibiotics (5)

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS, endotoxin) has been a focus of drug therapy for a long time but has proven refractory to all attempts to target it. WaaL is the enzyme that attaches sugar molecules to the “rough” endotoxin, resulting in “smooth” endotoxin. It has been known for decades, but this innovative structural analysis may provide new insights into the treatment of increasingly antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria.

Ancient Viral DNA Plays a Role in Human Disease and Development (6)

HERVs, (human endogenous retroviruses) make up approximately 8% of the human genome. Like modern HIV, these ancient retroviruses had to insert their genetic material into their host’s genome to replicate. This kind of viral genetic material isn’t normally passed down from generation to generation. But some ancient retroviruses gained the ability to infect germ cells, such as egg or sperm, that do pass their DNA down to future generations. By targeting germ cells, these retroviruses became incorporated into human ancestral genomes over the course of millions of years and may have implications for how researchers screen and test for diseases today.

New MRI Technique Tracks Brain Activity at Millisecond Timescales (7)

A new approach to magnetic resonance imaging could allow neuroscientists to noninvasively track the propagation of brain signals on millisecond timescales, according to a study published yesterday (October 13) in Science.

The technique, called “direct imaging of neuronal activity” (DIANA), uses existing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology to take series of quickfire, partial images, and combines those images to create a high-resolution picture of which bits of the brain are active, and when.

Articles

1- Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News: AI Model Accurately Predicts Patient Response to Drug Compounds

2- Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News: Novel Machine Learning Method Classifies Macrophages

3- Rutgers: Epigenetic Changes Linked to Parkinson’s Disease Differ in Men and Women

3- NPJ: Parkinson’s disease-associated, sex-specific changes in DNA methylation at PARK7 (DJ-1), SLC17A6 (VGLUT2), PTPRN2 (IA-2β), and NR4A2 (NURR1) in cortical neurons

4- News-Medical.Net: Research proposes a set of conditions that could be the starting point for ulcerative colitis

5- Drug Discovery News: A potential new target for developing antibiotics

6- Nature Reviews Microbiology: Origins and evolutionary consequences of ancient endogenous retroviruses

7- The Scientist: New MRI Technique Tracks Brain Activity at Millisecond Timescales

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