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Embryology

4-H Gives Incarcerated Youth Freedom to Try Their Hands at Growing Vegetables – AgNet West

Youth up to 17 years of age who have been arrested or adjudicated for breaking the law are housed at juvenile detention facilities. In Sonora, while the young people are being detained, the staff at Mother Lode Regional Juvenile Detention Facility strive to create a safe environment for the residents to make positive changes in their lives.

To teach the youths about the food system, JoLynn Miller, UC Cooperative Extensions 4-H youth development advisor for Tuolumne County, and volunteers began visiting weekly in 2016 to help the residents develop a garden at the detention facility. With grants from a local community group, the youths have learned how to grow their own vegetables and prepare them to eat.

The youth enjoy the educational aspect of the 4-H program and are excited whenever we harvest a new vegetable, Edgar Ortega, juvenile corrections officer, wrote in a letter. When the vegetables are ready, some of the youth along with the help and supervision of the staff make a new culinary experience for their peers.

Bonnie Plants donated tomato, garlic, fava bean, onion and basil seedlings.Miller trained volunteers who work with youth at the facility in the same positive youth-development concepts that 4-H volunteers use in 4-H club activities.

The youth planned and built the raised beds using power drills, Miller said, acknowledging that it is rare for power tools to be allowed for use by residents in a detention facility. They worked with the correctional officers to install drip irrigation in the garden.

At the end of last season, Miller gave the residents a cooking lesson using green tomatoes and basil from the garden. We made fried green tomatoes and pesto, she said.

We sincerely appreciate the efforts 4-H volunteers provide to enrich the lives of all youth in our community, said Dan Hawks, chief probation officer in Sonora.Not only do these projects provide real-world, hands-on instruction and skills to incarcerated youth, but it also provides them with an opportunity to reap the rewards of their own efforts.There is no lesson that can match the sense of accomplishment youth realize when they are able to harvest and consume crops they planted and tended themselves.

Lessons include mindfulness

In addition to teaching the residents gardening and cooking, Miller provided their teacher and staff with other 4-H curriculum, including mindfulness.

The mindfulness program helps the youth develop coping skills and become more cognitively aware of themselves and their surroundings, Ortega said in his letter. The youth are open-minded about the different techniques and lessons of the program and, at times, I catch them practicing the different mindfulness technique on their own. I know the mindfulness program is great for our youth because in their own home environments they dont always have a role model to teach them proper coping skills.

The garden wasnt an instant success. Using seeds Miller found in the UC Cooperative Extension office, their first lesson was persistence despite delayed satisfaction. We tried for two summers to grow in the garden beds and not even zucchini would grow. The placement was bad, she said. The plants needed more sun.

Community group funds garden

The 4-H advisor and the youths began seeking funding to buy supplies for the project. With some coaching from Miller, the youths applied for a grant from Farms of Tuolumne County, which advertised a total of $1,500 to be split between awardees.

The youth came up with a budget to build the beds of their dreams, but it was $2,200, Miller said. They asked for it anyway, knowing they may only get enough money to build one bed. Because residents are not allowed to leave the juvenile correctional facility, the Farms of Tuolumne County Board of Directors visited the facility to hear the teenagers present their vision for the garden project. Impressed, the board gave them the full $2,200 requested.

The Farms of Tuolumne County Board of Directors admires the enthusiasm of the young people who are part of this garden project, the dedication of the staff, and the hard work and commitment of JoLynn Miller, said Marian Zimmerly, FOTC chief financial officer. The board believes this project can be a positive influence on the young people who find themselves in the facility. FOTC is honored to lend its support.

Like many community groups, Farms of Tuolumne County is suffering financially during the coronavirus pandemic, yet approved another $750 for the garden and other 4-H agriculture projects at Mother Lode Regional Juvenile Detention Facility, saying, The FOTC Board of Directors continues to view the garden project at the Juvenile Detention Center as very worthy of support.

Participants appreciate lessons

The residents have expressed their appreciation to the 4-H program. Thx for everything you showed us, one resident wrote to Miller and her 4-H volunteers. Ive learned a lot since I first got here. I learned how to farm, make compose [sic] and a whole other bunch of stuff. I was never really interested in gardening until I came here. I really wanna learn more about gardening.

Despite the constraints caused by the pandemic, Miller plans to continue the 4-H partnership with Mother Lode Regional Juvenile Correctional Facility on the garden project and other agricultural educational activities.

As the pandemic began, Miller was given permission to use Zoom to deliver embryology lessons and science experiments using eggs. She is projected onto a big screen in a meeting room while the officer on duty walks around the room with an iPad, using its camera and microphone to connect her with the students at different tables doing experiments such as egg dissection and testing egg strength.

She was allowed to bring five-week-old chicks into the facility to let the youth see, touch and hold them as a capstone to the project. Miller plans to continue meeting with the youths via Zoom to discuss projects and drop off approved project supply kits for them to use.

Wed like to finalize a project we started last fall where we brought in baby goats, Miller said. Theyve since been harvested, and we want to have our UC Cooperative Extension nutrition, family, consumer sciences advisor Katie Johnson provide a nutrition lesson with the residents making goat tacos.

As time permits, officers take the youths outside to water plants and harvest crops in the garden.

4-H services are a priceless resource

I feel the programs and workshops provided by 4-H services are a priceless resource to the youth of our facility, wrote William Neilsen, senior juvenile corrections officer. It allows us to diversify programing and provide hands-on and -off educational opportunities within our facility that teach the youth about agricultural resources otherwise unavailable to the youth here. These programs inherently teach the youth responsibility and life skills and the youth gain a wealth of knowledge from these services.

Additionally, I strongly believe there is a therapeutic resource provided to staff and youth alike. As we progress forward, I am happy and excited in the continued partnership we have with the UCCE 4-H program of Tuolumne County.

Ortega added, 4-H provides the youth an opportunity to develop life skills that will transition to their own home environments.

By Pamela Kan-Rice

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4-H Gives Incarcerated Youth Freedom to Try Their Hands at Growing Vegetables - AgNet West

Cell Biology

Coronavirus’ Weird Trip Inside Cells Might Be Its Undoing, Scientists Say – HealthDay News

MONDAY, Aug. 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The COVID-19 coronavirus uses an unusually complex method to replicate itself inside human cells, and experts say the somewhat clunky process could be exploited to stop the virus in its tracks.

All viruses hijack the biological processes of an infected cell to pull together the different proteins needed to make copies of themselves.

But the COVID-19 virus -- SARS-CoV-2 -- makes a stop along the way that's a head-scratcher for scientists.

It's widely known now that the virus infects cells using a spiky receptor "that is widely distributed to multiple tissue types," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. "This may explain its ability to impact multiple organ systems beyond the respiratory tract, to which other coronaviruses are largely restricted."

After infection, the coronavirus -- which is 1/100th the size of an average human cell -- uses two-thirds of its genetic material inside the cell to replicate. The hijacked cell reads the virus' genetic map and starts making the proteins needed to assemble new copies of SARS-CoV-2.

At this point, things get weird.

Instead of emerging straight from the cell's membrane, new SARS-CoV-2 viruses stop at a pancake-like structure inside the cell called the Golgi complex.

The Golgi complex acts as a kind of post office for the cell, sorting and processing proteins and sending them along to their final destination after encasing them in a protective coating called a vesicle.

SARS-CoV-2 viruses slip through the Golgi membrane, fully assembling there and using a piece of the membrane to form its protective outer envelope. The Golgi complex then encases each virus in a vesicle and ships it to the cell surface.

Thus, SARS-CoV-2 emerges from the cell as a fully complete virus, unlike other types of virus that assemble themselves as they emerge by stealing a piece of the cell membrane on the way out, said researcher Carolyn Machamer, a professor of cell biology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"We're trying to understand the benefit for the virus, because it's a very inefficient way of getting out of the cell," she said. "Viruses are so streamlined, and they can mutate. If the process wasn't advantageous, the virus would be doing it a different way."

What makes this mystery harder to understand is that the Golgi complex is acidic, and potentially could damage the spiky proteins that the COVID-19 virus uses to infect healthy cells.

But the coronavirus appears to have figured out a way to neutralize the pH of the Golgi body so it can obtain its vesicle coating without damaging these spikes, the researchers said.

Ultimately, each infected cell can release millions of copies of a virus before the cell finally breaks down and dies.

These extra steps -- the trip through the Golgi complex and then emergence from the cell -- are promising targets for future drugs aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19, Machamer said.

Current COVID-19 drugs like remdesivir work by blocking the replication process inside the cell, or help the body's organs and systems by reducing inflammation.

"We don't have anything for the later steps, where the virus assembles and then makes it way out of the cell," Machamer said.

Adalja agreed.

"Treatments for SARS-CoV-2 attack various points of the cycle it takes in entering and traversing cells, as do treatments for all viruses," he said.

These traits in SARS-CoV-2 replication have been seen in other viruses, but have come together in a unique way for the new coronavirus, researchers said.

Some viruses also use the Golgi complex in the assembly process, the most well-known being the German measles virus, rubella. Others like West Nile and hepatitis C emerge fully formed from the cell like SARS-CoV-2, but use a different method of assembly, Machamer said.

In this video, Johns Hopkins outlines the cellular processes involved:

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about COVID-19.

SOURCES: Amesh Adalja, M.D., senior scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security; Carolyn Machamer, Ph.D., professor, cell biology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

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Coronavirus' Weird Trip Inside Cells Might Be Its Undoing, Scientists Say - HealthDay News

Cell Biology

New Research Explains Why Cancer Cells Often Spread to the Lymph Nodes First – BioSpace

A study published in Nature last week explains why certain kinds of cancer cells often spread to the lymph nodes before various organs within the body. Researchers from the Childrens Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have discovered melanoma cells that pass through the lymph nodes and pick up a protective coating. This allows them to survive oxidative stress within the blood, and travel to organs further in the body, where they eventually become tumors.

"Previous research has focused on how cancer cells metastasize through the blood, but very little was known about how these cells compare to cells that metastasize through lymphatics," said Sean Morrison, Ph.D., the director of CRI and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "Our data suggest that passing through the lymphatics can promote the survival and spread of melanoma cells by protecting the cells from the oxidative stress they normally experience during metastasis."

Using mice, the researchers looked at how melanoma cells acted when injected intravenously or into the lymphatic system. They discovered that cancer cells that were injected into the lymph nodes had a higher chance of survival, compared to those that were injected directly into the blood.

The researchers believe that this difference can be explained by the high levels of oxidative stress cancer cells go through when they move through the blood.

"After further analysis, we discovered that the oxidative stress in the blood causes the cancer cells to undergo a specific form of cell death called ferroptosis," said Jessalyn Ubellacker, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the Morrison lab. "In contrast, cancer cells in lymph experience lower levels of oxidative stress and are protected from ferroptosis."

The lymphatic system is specifically designed to protect the body against foreign invaders. However, experts know little about how the activation of immune cells in the lymph nodes can occur without damaging the lymphatic system. This week, an article published in Nature Communications shed light on research conducted by experts at the Moffitt Cancer Center that may finally provide some answers.

"Acidosis is a potent inhibitor of effector T cell functions," said Robert Gillies, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Cancer Physiology at Moffitt. "Oxygen levels are reported to be low in lymph nodes and that hypoxic tissue is acidic. We wanted to determine if lymph nodes were also acidic."

The researchers believe that there is a novel acidic niche within lymph nodes that plays a critical role in regulating T cell activation. They used fluorescence and magnetic resonance imaging to discover that T cells were the source of acidity. These results ultimately pointed to localized acidosis as a key component of the adaptive immune response.

The findings by the researchers also demonstrated the potential role for the lymph node microenvironment in shaping T cell biology. T cells that are activated by antigen-presenting cells produce an acidic environment, which is balanced by the capacity to generate lactic acid.

"The low extracellular pH of lymph nodes does not impair the T cell's activation, but it does suppress the cytokine production, which is likely what protects lymph nodes from being attacked by the immune system," Gillies explained.

The physiological mechanism can be exploited by cancers, resulting in malignant tissue and tumors within the body. By manipulating acidity in combination with immunotherapies, this may be able to be managed.

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New Research Explains Why Cancer Cells Often Spread to the Lymph Nodes First - BioSpace

Cell Biology

New type of taste cell discovered in mice – UB News Center

Researchers Kathryn Medler (left), University at Buffalo associate professor of biological sciences, and Debarghya Dutta Banik, a UB PhD graduate who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Indiana University School of Medicine, pictured in 2019 at UB. Credit: Douglas Levere / University at Buffalo

Multitasking taste cells can sense bitter, sweet, sour and umami stimuli, challenging scientists understanding of how taste buds work

Release Date: August 20, 2020

BUFFALO, N.Y. Some taste cells are multitaskers that can detect bitter, sweet, umami and sour stimuli, a new study finds.

The research challenges conventional notions of how taste works. In the past, it was thought that taste cells were highly selective, capable of discerning only one or two types of the five basic stimuli (only sweet, for instance, or only salty and sour). Though many cells are indeed specialists, the discovery of a subset of cells that can respond to up to four different tastes suggests that taste science is more complex than previously thought.

The study was published on Aug. 13 in the journal PLOS Genetics. The research was done on mice, which have a very similar taste system to humans, says Kathryn Medler, PhD, associate professor of biological sciences in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, who led the study with first author Debarghya Dutta Banik.

This changes the way weve been thinking about how taste cells function and how taste information is collected in a taste bud and sent back to the brain, Medler says. Our data fills in a lot of holes. Other research has suggested that taste cells can be broadly responsive, but we were able to isolate individual taste cells and describe how they work. I cannot definitively state that humans have these broadly responsively taste cells, but based on the high degree of similarity between the mouse and human taste systems, I predict that these cells are very likely present in humans.

Most taste cells selectively respond to a specific stimulus type while broadly responsive cells respond to multiple taste qualities. Credit: Jhanna Flora and Kathryn Medler

It is currently believed that taste cells are very specific about what stimuli they detect. The surprising thing with this new cell population is that individual cells can detect bitter, sweet, umami as well as sour stimuli, says Dutta Banik, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in anatomy, cell biology and physiology in the Indiana University School of Medicine. Dutta Banik did the research while pursuing his doctorate at UB. It was surprising to know that individual taste cells can respond to so many taste qualities.

What happens when these multitasking cells are silenced?

Researchers Ann-Marie Torregrossa, University at Buffalo assistant professor of psychology, and Kathryn Medler, UB associate professor of biological sciences, pictured in 2019. Credit: Douglas Levere / University at Buffalo

Taste cells are critical to survival: They help us decide whether a food is a good source of nutrients or a potential poison.

Beyond identifying the multitasking taste cells, the new study describes some of their traits. Scientists showed that the cells detect sour stimuli using one signaling pathway, and sweet, bitter and umami stimuli using a different pathway.

Experiments also showed that when broadly responsive taste cells are silenced, mice have trouble tasting sweet, bitter and umami stimuli. This was the case even when the more selective taste cells those that specialize in detecting individual stimuli remained active, says study co-author Ann-Marie Torregrossa, PhD, assistant professor of psychology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and associate director of the Center for Ingestive Behavior Research.

We did a series of taste tests, says Torregrossa, who led the behavioral aspects of the study. When the animals were missing the function of either the broadly responsive cells or of the traditional taste cells, they responded to sweet, bitter and umami solutions as if they were water. This is very exciting because it suggests they needed both cells to taste the solution normally. When we did the same taste tests with animals that had both cells, they as you would expect licked the sweet solution avidly and avoided the bitter.

Researcher Debarghya Dutta Banik works with an imaging system. In the new study, this set-up was used to locate taste cells through fluorescent microscopy. Dutta Banik, a postdoctoral fellow at the Indiana University School of Medicine, is pictured in 2019 at the University at Buffalo, where he completed his PhD. Credit: Douglas Levere / University at Buffalo

This shows that both of these cell populations are important for sending the taste information to the brain, Dutta Banik says.

The groundbreaking findings highlight how much scientists still have to learn about taste, including how taste buds work and send information to the brain.

Compared to other sensory systems, we know surprisingly little about how taste is coded and processed, Torregrossa says. This study identifies a new population of cells that are contributing to normal taste function, which could be a large piece in the puzzle.

The study's co-authors also included Eric D. Benfey, Amy R. Nelson, Zachary C. Ahart, Barrett T. Kemp and Bailey R. Kemp in the UB Department of Biological Sciences; and Laura E. Martin, Kristen E. Kay and Gregory C. Loney in the UB Department of Psychology. The research received support from the UB North Campus Imaging Facility, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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New type of taste cell discovered in mice - UB News Center

Cell Biology

Doctors found a new drug that might block coronavirus infections – BGR

Scientists from all over the world have come up with all sorts of ways to fight the novel coronavirus, targeting the pathogen with various existing drugs and new compounds in an attempt to prevent it from infecting cells. Some of these drugs failed in key tests, with hydroxychloroquine being the most prominent failure so far. Others have shown some efficacy, like remdesivir, dexamethasone, and blood thinners. Several new treatments are still in testing and could yield results in the coming months. Its not just vaccines the world needs to end the pandemic, after all. Effective COVID-19 therapies that can significantly reduce complications and deaths are also needed to help those people who will continue to get infected.

Researchers are now studying vacuolin-1 and apilimod, two similar drugs that might be able to block the novel coronavirus from infecting cells.

The drugs arent brand new, Harvard Medical School explains. But theyve been repurposed for treating COVID-19.

Vacuolin-1 and apilimod were developed years ago and they target an enzyme called PIKfyve kinase. This enzyme has a role in the COVID-19 infection, which is why the drugs might work. Tomas Kirchhaused, professor of cell biology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS and professor of pediatrics at Boston Childrens, discovered vacuolin-1 16 years ago. Apilimod was developed by LAM Therapeutics. The two drugs are similar and they can both block the Ebola virus, researchers found a few years ago. Those studies were continued once the novel coronavirus arrived, as Kirchhausen realized that the kinetics of cell entry in Ebola and COVID-19 are similar.

Published in PNAS, a study on the matter explains that PIKfyve kinase inhibitors could prevent infection from either SARS-CoV-2 or the Zaire ebolavirus.

Our findings show that targeting this kinase through a small-molecule antiviral against SARS-CoV-2 may be an effective strategy to lessen the progression or seriousness of COVID-19, study co-senior author Kirchhausen said. Within a week, we knew apilimod worked extremely well in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection in human cells in the lab. We found that like apilimod, vacuolin-1 is a very strong inhibitor for viral infection in the lab.

Separately, a paper in Nature published a list of 12,000 clinical-stage or FDA-approved small molecules that could inhibit the replication of the novel coronavirus. Apilimod was one of the drugs included on that list.

AI Therapeutics tested apilimod in Phase 1 and 2 trials for the treatment of autoimmune conditions, but that drug failed to show any efficacy. However, the tests proved the compound did not produce significant side effects even after more than a year of high doses.

The company received FDA approval this spring to see if apilimod can reduce the severity of COVID-19, using data from Kirchhausens early study that was initially published in pre-print form in bioRxiv, as well as other drug screens. AI Therapeutics then announced the start of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with apilimod in late July the LAM-002 study.

The drug will be tested on 140 COVID-19 patients, with the company looking to assess its safety, tolerability, and efficacy at reducing the viral load in patients.

Chris Smith started writing about gadgets as a hobby, and before he knew it he was sharing his views on tech stuff with readers around the world. Whenever he's not writing about gadgets he miserably fails to stay away from them, although he desperately tries. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

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Doctors found a new drug that might block coronavirus infections - BGR

Cell Biology

Commitment to Education and Mentoring: How Memorial Sloan Kettering Continued Summer Internships During the Pandemic – On Cancer – Memorial Sloan…

While numerous summerinternships in the United States and abroad were cancelled this year due to the pandemic, Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) has kept many internship programs running both virtually and in-person. This summer, more than 300 interns from around the world were enrolled in MSK internship programs and many more students were involved in frequent online seminars and lectures provided by MSK.

Education is one of the core pillars of MSKs mission to lead in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure of cancer and associated diseases. MSK is dedicated to training the next generation of scientists and healthcare professionals, so when it became apparent in early March that hosting summer interns in-person was going to be uniquely challenging, MSK leaders quickly shifted to modify many of our student summer programs rather than cancel them outright.

At MSK, we are acting on our deep commitment to continue educating studentsduring the pandemic, said Laura Liberman, MD, FACR, Director of the Office of Faculty Development (OFD). Now, more than ever, we see why its vital to train the next generationof scientists and healthcare professionals and to teach them how to communicate clearly and accurately about science and health.

Some programs were modified to make them available to even more students. The Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP) Summer Student Program, designed for high school students who are interested in pursuing careers in the biomedical sciences, shifted to a virtual seminar series open to everyone by registering here. This series, which ends August 28, includes one-hour lectures held up to three times a week from leading doctors and scientists at MSK and other institutions.

A new program was created to focus on COVID-19 specifically. The MSK CARES (Coronavirus Academic Research Experience Summer) Program engaged past interns from the Summer Clinical Oncology Research Experience (SCORE) in literature review and analysis during the pandemic. These 14 SCORE alumni volunteered to join this brand new research program where they explored many aspects of COVID-19, including fatality rates, testing, vaccine development, telehealth, disparities among patient populations, and more. Check out their final presentations here and here.

Throughout the year, MSK hosts more than 25 different student programs that give high school students, college students and recent graduates the opportunity to work alongside our world-renowned staff in a variety of different areas. Some examples of student programs include the Clinical Assistance Program (CAP) for nursing students, Summer Support Internship/Employment Program for students interested in healthcare/hospital administration, Chemical Biology Summer Program (ChBSP) for chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical biology undergraduate students, Summer Exposure Program (SEP) designed to expose underserved high school students to clinical and research opportunities in oncology, and many more programs found here. There are internship opportunities in clinical research, molecular biology, chemical biology, computational biology and medicine, nursing, information technology, healthcare administration, office management, and more.

Get to know a few of our students who joined us this summer:

Anthony Martinez Benitez is a senior at Hunter College, majoring in human biology and minoring in chemistry. When he was seven years old, he and his family moved from El Salvador to Hempstead, NY, where they still reside. He first became interested in pre-med in high school after attending a summer pipeline program at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University. However, Anthonys specific passion for research started after he participated in our Clinical Oncology Open Learning (COOL) Scholars Program. After learning about the many types of physiological and psychological effects on cancer patients through this program, he was inspired to seek out research laboratories that focus on studying the advancement of cancer. This brought Anthony to apply to the SCORE Program this summer. He has been working virtually from home, and presented his final project on the STAG2 gene, which is found to be commonly mutated in bladder cancer (and several other types of cancer). In his free time, Anthony volunteers at a local hospital. After he graduates, he hopes to join one of MSKs research labs to continue to gain research experience and someday become a physician-scientist.

Rachelle Monteau is a pre-med student at CUNY in the highly competitive Sophie Davis Biomedical Education Program, a seven-year BS/MD program that specifically recruits students from underrepresented populations into medicine. Rachelles parents are originally from Haiti, but they now live in Queens, where she has been conducting her internship virtually this summer. Inspired by her father who is a physician assistant, she hopes to bring her medical training to underrepresented communities in the United States and abroad when she graduates. Rachelle was also accepted to our SCORE Program this summer, where she worked with her mentor, Fumiko Chino, MD, on her final project focused on racial trends in liver cancer mortality.

Kathleen Navasis a senior at UC Berkeley, double majoring in data science andMCB (Molecular and Cell Biology) with a focus on immunology. Shes spent her whole life living in the Bay Area, but in late June she travelled to New York City for the first time to work inThe Quaid Morris Lab. Out of a cohort of thirteen inourComputational Biology Summer Program (CBSP), she is one of three interns working on-site. Kathleen is focusing on multiple projects, including investigating how new onset autoimmunity can inform cancer outcome predictions. While she admits that its a strange time to live in New York City (but a great time to jog across town and sightsee unusually empty locations, including Times Square!), she will be staying through the fall to continue working on her research.

Amelia Tran lives in Vietnam and has been conducting herinternship from there this summer working opposite hours on East Coast time! She is a senior at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts majoring in statistics. This summer, she was an intern in the Quantitative Sciences Undergraduate Research Experience (QSURE) program, where she learned about the role of statistics in biomedical settings. She is grateful that her internship was not cancelled, and found that the program was still well organized and professional, even though it was all virtual. She and her fellow QSURE interns still keep in touch over WhatsApp.

For more information about internships and student and new-grad careers at MSK, please visit: https://careers.mskcc.org/students-new-grads/.

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Commitment to Education and Mentoring: How Memorial Sloan Kettering Continued Summer Internships During the Pandemic - On Cancer - Memorial Sloan...

Cell Biology

Forging molecular bonds with green light – Science Codex

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researchers have created a new molecular coupling tool employing both green light and pH triggers that has potential for use in applications such as drug delivery and 3D cell culture platforms.

Their research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers designed photoreactive molecules that enabled them to couple together, using green light as the fuel, polymers commonly used in medical and industrial applications. They then controlled the molecules' photoreactivity by changing pH (the measure of how acid or alkaline a substance is).

It is the first time pH has been used as an on/off switch for a green light-activated, catalyst-free chemical process.

The green light used was also the longest wavelength of light (up to 500 nanometres) employed to date to control a catalyst-free photochemical bond-forming reaction.

To demonstrate the application potential of this photochemical innovation, the team produced a range of hydrogels with varying mechanical properties. Hydrogels are commonly used in contact lenses, tissue engineering scaffolds, as drug delivery carriers, and for cell biology studies.

The research was conducted by lead author and QUT PhD chemistry researcher Kubra Kalayci, Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow Dr Hendrik Frisch, Research Fellow Dr Vinh Truong, and ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik from QUT's Soft Matter Materials Laboratory in the Science and Engineering Faculty Centre for Materials Science.

Professor Barner-Kowollik said scientists were constantly seeking to move further away from using harsh UV light to activate chemical reactions.

"Our photochemical innovation is another example of what is called red-shifting - moving through the colours of light in the spectrum, from blue to green towards red, to light that has longer wavelengths," he said.

"In the past, most of these types of photochemical reactions were triggered by harsh UV (ultra-violet) light. But that prevents applications in a biological context because UV light has so much energy it kills cells.

"Dentistry is an example of one of the areas that has shifted. Initially dentists were using UV lamps. Now anyone who has had a filling probably knows that the dentist uses a little lamp with longer wavelength blue light for curing.

"The longer the wavelength of light the better, in principle. The radiation is less harmful, so it can be used for biological applications, and it allows for deeper light penetration. For dentistry, that means better and more uniform curing.

"But it is also more difficult to do, because the longer the wavelength of light the less energy you have to drive the chemical reaction.

"Adding an additional stimulus with the green light, such as we have with varying the pH as a reversible on-off switch for the reaction, provides the opportunity for better regulation. This is especially important for drug delivery systems, where the drug needs to be released under a specific pH, as pH varies throughout the human body.

"This is also a catalyst-free reaction. It means there's no helper molecule to make it happen. That's important for biological application as well because in many cases helper molecules contain metal, and you don't want something that could leach out, or something that is found to be cytotoxic or carcinogenic."

To investigate the new green light-pH coupling tool's suitability for biomaterials engineering, Ms Kalayci said the research team created hydrogels with different properties.

"These showed that green light allowed higher penetration depths, resulting in fabrication of thicker hydrogels," she said.

Dr Truong said cells cultured inside the hydrogels "showed the process for creating the gels was non-toxic, and the cells also remained viable for several days".

The team believes the new coupling tool has a range of other potential applications.

"For example, in the context of personalised medicine," Dr Truong and Dr Frisch said. "You might want to use our reaction to attach a cancer drug to a specific part of a molecule to deliver the drug in a way that is suited to a particular patient."

Professor Barner-Kowollik said it was also another step towards achieving "molecular surgery".

"What chemists hope to do is be able to 'operate' on one part of a molecule without affecting anything else," he said.

"So, for example, if you had a protein, a large complex molecule, we'd like to be able to use light like a chemical scalpel and very delicately go in and change part of that molecule without affecting any other part. That provides many potential applications."

Applications could include, Dr Truong said, "looking at the selective crosslinking of DNA to study the underlying mechanism of a cancer, looking for avenues for targeted treatment, or creating dynamic hydrogel scaffolds to study cell interactions for tissue regeneration therapy.

"Using light, we are providing chemical tools to be able to achieve these aims."

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Forging molecular bonds with green light - Science Codex

Cell Biology

Online Peer Support: Supportiv Whitepaper Reveals Evidence-Based Solution To Mental Health Epidemic – PR Web

Supportiv Peer Support Whitepaper

BERKELEY, Calif. (PRWEB) August 24, 2020

During the COVID-19 pandemic, employers and health insurers are grappling with mental well-being issues that have long affected their employees and members, but have now risen to a boiling point: loneliness, social isolation, anxiety, depression, and day-to-day stress are all peaking. To cost-effectively solve these long-standing mental health and wellness challenges, look to evidence-based, scalable, affordable solutions like peer support.

Supportiv, the peer support network, has released a whitepaper synthesizing 120 existing research studies on the unique role peer support can play in improving individual mental health and physical health outcomes. Positive clinical outcomes from the novel mental health solution are discussed in the paper, written by Dr. Rosemary Ku, a physician with dual board certifications in Internal Medicine and Preventative Medicine.

Dr. Ku completed her undergraduate education in Neuroscience and Molecular/Cell Biology at Princeton, and her MD at Columbia University. In addition, shes an expert on the intersection of public health and novel technology solutions, having earned an MBA from Columbia, and a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley. As she summarizes in the paper:

The healthcare system is designed to intervene when conditions become severe and is not equipped to address the challenges of daily life struggles. Peer support has been identified as an effective intervention to fill this gap, instill greater emotional well-being, and improve health outcomes for a wide range of mental and physical health issues. By increasing social connectedness and providing both emotional and tactical support for day-to-day stressors, peer support is a low-cost, effective service that can serve as a standalone offering or complementary to disease management programs.

What is not widely known are the studied outcomes of peer support vis-a-vis traditional forms of mental health care. The whitepaper cites a meta-analysis of randomized control trials (RCTs) that compared peer support to traditional care for depression, in which peer support was significantly more effective for reducing depression scores. Further, peer support was as effective as group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The magnitude of improvement seen from peer support was similar to those of psychotherapy and antidepressant medications.

The whitepaper addresses accessibility advantages of online peer support networks, in a time when low-cost, accessible, flexible, and scalable care is critical to employers, health plans, individual end users, and U.S. public health system.

Online peer support has the potential to integrate with other value-adding features, unlike its in-person counterpart. For example, Supportivs 24/7 digital peer-to-peer support chat platform surfaces resources, self-help tips, referrals and recommendations, all in real-time inside. By typing a few words in response to the question: Whats your struggle? users are matched in under a minute to topic-specific peer-to-peer small group chats that are professionally moderated for safe, anonymous support. Users receive instant compassion from others who relate to their struggles, as well as practical self-help tools on topics from communication conflict, parenting challenges, or burnout to loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

When evaluating an online peer support program, be sure your selection operates on evidence-based principles, notes Dr. Ku. Some further relevant considerations include:

Online peer support can help people process, cope, or heal from emotional struggles in ways that traditional mental healthcare options simply cannot achieve. Uses come away feeling more hopeful and empowered to take action.

Supportiv has already enabled over 550,000 users to feel less lonely, anxious, stressed, misunderstood, and hopeless through its moderator-guided chats with AI-driven content and resource recommendations. The peer support network is available 24 hours a day at http://www.supportiv.com.

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Online Peer Support: Supportiv Whitepaper Reveals Evidence-Based Solution To Mental Health Epidemic - PR Web

Cell Biology

Using engineered off-the-shelf therapeutic T cells to fight cancer – News-Medical.net

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Aug 20 2020

Personalized cancer treatments are no longer just options of the future. In the past few years, researchers have made significant progress in 'teaching' the body's immune T cells to recognize and kill specific cancer cells, and human clinical trials have shown that this approach can successfully eliminate tumors.

Cancer patients today can be a part of the following clinical scenario: a patient comes to the hospital where physicians and scientists analyze his or her tumor to identify cancer-specific markers that would serve as targets for the novel therapy. Blood is drawn from the patient and sent to Baylor College of Medicine's Center for Cell and Gene Therapy where the immune T cells are transformed into cells with a mission to identify and kill cells with the tumor-specific tags. The final cells are infused back into the patient to complete their job.

At the Center, we genetically engineer the patient's T cells to arm them with the tools they need to identify the patient's tumor-specific markers and eliminate the cancer."

Dr. Maksim Mamonkin, assistant professor of pathology & immunology and member of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor

Although this treatment can effectively eliminate tumors, the 'training' of the T cells is complex and expensive. "Sometimes, the trained T cells are not highly potent because the patient already received a number of treatments that weakened the immune cells we work with," Mamonkin said.

In addition, the process to manufacture the therapeutic T cells is time consuming. "Sometimes it takes weeks to get the T cells ready, and in this time the patient may take a turn for the worse," Mamonkin said.

"Now that we know that this type of cell immunotherapy has a lot of promise, the next step is to streamline it, make it more accessible and make sure that the resulting T cells have the highest potency," said Mamonkin, who also is a member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Researchers are developing ready-to-use, off-the-shelf therapeutic T cells. These are genetically engineered T cells that are manufactured from normal, healthy donors. The cells are expanded and well characterized, and have shown to be effective at killing cancer cells. The cells are cryo-preserved - stored frozen in liquid nitrogen - until it's time to use them. In this scenario, a cancer patient comes to the hospital and the tumor markers are identified. Then, with the identity of the tumor-specific tags in hand, the physician goes to a room filled with large below-zero freezers searching for the one that holds little containers with healthy immune T cells that have been genetically engineered to recognize and destroy cells with the patient's cancer-specific markers. These 'off-the-shelf,' ready-made cells are thawed, prepared and infused into the patient several days later.

"This approach solves two limitations of the original approach: it avoids the time-consuming, elaborate steps of training and expanding the patient's cells and results in therapeutic T cells of higher potency," Mamonkin said. "However, the novel approach presents a new set of limitations."

One of the limitations of the off-the-shelf approach emerges when the therapeutic T cells enter the patient's body. The patient's own immune system recognizes the cells as foreign, such as it happens with organ transplants, and may reject the therapeutic cells.

"This is a major problem because rejection not only would reduce the duration of the T cells activity against the tumor, but also would preclude giving subsequent doses of cells. The immune system would reject subsequent doses of the cells right way," said first author, Feiyan Mo, graduate student in Mamonkin's lab. "To solve this problem we thought that the best defense was a good offense." The researchers gave the therapeutic T cells a tool that would enable them to fight back the attack of the patient's immune cells against them. They genetically engineered the therapeutic T cells to express a receptor called alloimmune defense receptor, or ADR. ADR recognizes a specific molecule, called 4-1BB, that is only expressed on the patient's activated T cells and natural killer (NK) cells that would attack them. 4-1BB is not expressed on resting T and NK cells that do not turn against the therapeutic T cells.

"Both experiments in the lab and animal models with blood cancers or solid tumors showed that ADR protected off-the-shelf therapeutic T cells from being rejected," Mo said. "Not only did they resist rejection, but they also expanded more and persisted longer than therapeutic T cells without ADR." The researchers are optimistic that this approach may also work in patients. They plan to conduct clinical trials on 2021.

"If successful, this approach can be extended to targeting other disease-causing T-cells, such as those rejecting transplanted organs, mediating graft-versus-host disease or perpetuating autoimmunity," said Mamonkin. "We are very excited to develop this concept for several applications beyond cancer therapy." This technology has been licensed to Fate Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that plans on integrating ADR into their clinical products.

"The BCM Ventures team is very pleased to partner with Fate Therapeutics in a licensing relationship to support their implementation of the ADR technology developed in the Mamonkin laboratory here at BCM. This approach promises to enhance the effectiveness of off-the-shelf cell therapies, and it will now be used more extensively in the clinical setting which stands to benefit patients," said Michael Dilling, director of Baylor Licensing Group. "BCM has been an innovator in the development of cell therapies and the commercial sector increasingly looks to BCM as a source for new innovations."

Feiyan Mo, who took the lead on this work, has received an NIH NCI F99/F00 Predoctoral-to-postdoctoral Fellowship Award to help facilitate the translation of ADR to the clinic and continue postdoctoral studies in cancer biology. She is a Baylor graduate student and is co-mentored by Drs. Mamonkin, Malcolm Brenner and Helen Heslop. Are you interested in learning all the details of this work? Find them in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Source:

Journal reference:

Mo, F., et al. (2020) Engineered off-the-shelf therapeutic T cells resist host immune rejection. Nature Biotechnology. doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-0601-5.

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Genetics

Landmark piglets ready to hog the spotlight – The Pig Site

After years of extensive collaborative efforts from many organisations, new life and new genetics are being introduced to American Large Black Hog herds thanks to 25 half-British Large Black piglets born at Purdue University.

Solid black, deep-bodied swine with lop ears that cover their eyes, Large Blacks have long been prized for their docile nature, superior mothering abilities and succulent pork. Despite these qualities, the Large Black Hog is in global danger of extinction. Fewer than 150 purebred animals were registered in the United States in 2019. Through partnerships with breeders, universities, private donors, USDA, industry leaders and food organisations, The Livestock Conservancy is working to save this unique breed for future farming generations.

Small populations, like the Large Black, can quickly lose genetic diversity and suffer from inbreeding depression. This can lead to declines in fitness traits, including reproductive ability. To infuse new genetics into this US heritage swine population, The Livestock Conservancy imported frozen semen from two Large Black boars from the UK in 2015. Importation was made possible by a significant gift from an anonymous donor, several additional private donations, as well as partnerships with the USDAs National Animal Germplasm Program (NAGP), Large Black Hog Association, Gloucestershire Old Spots America, British Pig Association, and Deerpark Pedigree Pigs of the UK.

The Livestock Conservancy and NAGP subsequently conducted inseminations during several on-farm trials. Despite efforts of the best swine reproduction specialists in the US and participating farmers who have worked with this breed for decades, none of these attempts produced live piglets. The experts soon realised heritage breed pig reproductive cycling is different from commercial pigs, where artificial insemination is common.

Dr Kara Stewart, assistant professor of Animal Sciences at Purdue University with a specialty in reproductive physiology, and graduate student Katharine Sharp, began exploring methods to control and synchronise ovulation of Large Black sows to identify ideal times for insemination. Thawed semen is only viable for a short time period, so predictable timing of ovulation and insemination is critical to the successful use of frozen semen. Twenty Large Black female pigs were donated to The Livestock Conservancy from breeders across the nation and were transported from their home farms to Purdue University in 2018 to launch this research.

"When I heard that The Livestock Conservancy was having trouble finding enough girls for this research project, I thought I would donate four sisters that were weaned and ready to go," said Felicia Krock, registrar and secretary of the Large Black Hog Association and a member of The Livestock Conservancy. "I thought if there were issues with the bloodline it would raise its ugly head through the use of three of my girls who were full siblings and one who was a half sibling to them. This was such a great opportunity to enhance the survivability of a very special breed."

For nearly two years, Purdue scientists studied female reproduction for the breed, first using less expensive frozen semen from US pigs to test their insemination protocols. The researchers refined a Large Black sow cycling protocol that allowed them to predict ovulation, thaw semen at just the right time, and inseminate the females. Each insemination trial at Purdue saw greater improvements in the rate of conception and number of live births. Pigs produced from these trials were used in further research projects to document growth and meat characteristics for the endangered breed.

The next, and most expensive, step was using the frozen, imported semen to create half-British and half-American piglets. The hard work paid off. Half-British piglets were born in May 2020 from five sows. The little boars and gilts are being distributed across the US to broaden the genetic base for the Large Black breed.

Preservation of heritage breeds is important to help maintain the genetic diversity of our livestock, said David Burgett, a member of both The Livestock Conservancy and the Large Black Hog Association, who recently received a few of the piglets at his Illinois farm. Having dwindled to such a small population, the Large Black Hog, through years of inbreeding with the limited number of bloodlines available in the United States, was in danger of losing some of the diverse traits inherent to specific blood lines. With the importation of British bloodlines comes the responsibility to work together as members of the Large Black Hog Association to improve the herd, to promote the breed and the characteristics that make it unique and so desirable, and build the population back up to avoid its extinction. We are grateful that we had this chance to participate in the joint project with The Livestock Conservancy and Purdue University to improve the future, and promote the survival of the Large Black Hog.

A second breeding with imported semen will be conducted this fall to produce more piglets. Researchers plan to share their research results and techniques with farmers, enabling them to do on-farm artificial insemination and produce their own Large Black breeding stock. These new techniques for using frozen semen on heritage breed pigs will allow Large Black boar semen to be more widely exchanged among the nations breeders to keep their herds genetically healthy. The new frozen semen protocols may be useful for other heritage pig breeds, as well.

The Livestock Conservancys Swine Initiative with Large Black pigs illustrates the power of collaboration and technology to advance rare breed conservation.

Click here to learn more about Large Black pigs.

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Landmark piglets ready to hog the spotlight - The Pig Site