Showing posts with label medical research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medical research. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Medical Research

Today's News about Medical Research





Davis Announces the Jonny Wade Pediatric Cancer Research Act with the Wade Family and HSHS St. John’s Children’s Hospital Doctors
Source: Rodney Davis (R-IL, 13th)
April 24, 2019
U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) yesterday announced the introduction of the Jonny Wade Pediatric Cancer Research Act (H.R. 2234) at HSHS St. John’s Children’s Hospital and toured the pediatric oncology floor. Davis was joined by the Wade family from Jerseyville who lost their 8-year-old son, Jonny Wade, to brain cancer Christmas Eve 2015 and doctors from HSHS St. John’s Hospital and SIU Medicine.

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CONGRESSMAN BOYLE LEADS CONGRESSIONAL EFFORT TO INCREASE FUNDING FOR LUNG CANCER RESEARCH
Source: Brendan Boyle (D-PA, 2nd)
April 24, 2019
Congressman Brendan F. Boyle (PA-02) led a bipartisan letter urging the Appropriations Committee to increase funding for lung cancer research, especially with regard to the disease’s disproportionate impact on young women who have never smoked. Boyle released the following statement upon the submission of his letter.

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Tuesday, April 23, 2019

American Cures Act And American Innovation Act Reintroduced



Fly and Stay Cheap!


by: Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-IL)

Washington, D.C. - April 23, 2019 - (The Ponder News) -- U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and U.S. Representatives Bill Foster (D-IL-11) and Lauren Underwood (D-IL-14) today were joined by researchers from Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine to announce their bicameral legislation to restore the United States’ commitment to breakthrough scientific and biomedical research. The American Cures Act and the American Innovation Act would create a mandatory fund to provide steady, predictable funding for breakthrough research at America’s top research agencies, allowing the United States to remain a leader in development and discovery for decades to come.

“The American Cures and Innovation Acts will allow America’s smartest scientists and researchers to spend less time figuring out how to cut their budgets and more time finding new ways to produce clean energy and clean water, as well as develop news cures and treatments for Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease.” said Durbin. “In the last two centuries, U.S. government support for scientific research has helped split the atom, put a man on the moon, create the Internet, and map the human genome. Today we face new hurdles, but continuing to support scientific research is the smartest investment we can make for our health, our future, and our economy.”

“It’s more important than ever that we defend America’s place as a world leader in scientific progress,” Congressman Foster said. “Since World War II, investments in science and technology have helped the U.S. lead the world in new innovations, grow the economy, create millions of jobs, and provide critical advancements to our national security. As we confront new challenges, we need to make sure our scientists have the resources they need to perform their work at the highest levels and help us maintain our role as global leaders in research and innovation.”

“Biomedical and life science research create breakthrough treatments and lifesaving cures, while supporting high-quality jobs and billions in economic output. Federal investment has slipped in recent years, and robust, sustained funding is needed. The American Cures Act will ensure our country’s investment and innovation in world-class life sciences and biomedical research continues, led by Illinois,” said Congresswoman Underwood.

The American Cures Act—of which Representative Underwood is the lead House sponsor—would provide annual budget increases of five percent plus inflation at America’s top four biomedical research agencies: the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Defense Health Program, and the Veterans Medical and Prosthetics Research Program.

The American Innovation Act—of which Representative Foster is the lead House sponsor—would provide annual budget increases of five percent for cutting edge research at five important federal research agencies: The National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the Department of Defense Science and Technology Programs, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Scientific and Technical Research, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science Directorate. This steady, long-term investment would allow the agencies to plan and manage strategic growth while maximizing efficiencies.

President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2020 budget request would devastate funding for medical and scientific research by proposing to cut funding at the National Institutes of Health by $5 billion (or 12 percent), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by $750 million (or more than 10 percent), the National Science Foundation by nearly a billion dollars (12 percent), and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science by $1.1 billion (or more than 16 percent) from FY19 funding levels.

Research and development (R&D) funding in the United States has been lagging in recent decades. In 1960’s the United States invested 17 percent of its discretionary budget on research and development—that number is now down to 9 percent. Between 1960 and 1980, federal R&D spending as a share of GDP averaged 1.52 percent per year. However, federal R&D investments now average just under 0.8 percent year. This steady decline has led to a cumulative $1.5 trillion research investment deficit. Meanwhile, China’s research intensity (GDP expenditures on R&D) has increased sharply since the early 2000s – if this trend continues, China will soon surpass the U.S.

The American Cures Act is supported by: the American Heart Association, Research!America, the National Association of Veterans’ Research and Education Foundations, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Arthritis Foundation, ZERO – The End of Prostate Cancer, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, as well as many Illinois health and hospital systems, including Advocate Aurora Health, University of Chicago Medicine, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Loyola University Health System, Sinai Health System, Northwestern Medicine, and AMITA Health.

The American Innovation Act is supported by: Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, American Geophysical Union, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Task Force on American Innovation.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Mad-cow Disease Could be Transmittable by Touch

Washington, D.C. - November 27, 2017  (The Ponder News) -- National Institutes of Health scientists and collaborators at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, have detected abnormal prion protein in the skin of nearly two dozen people who died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). The scientists also exposed a dozen healthy mice to skin extracts from two of the CJD patients, and all developed prion disease. The study results, published in Science Translational Medicine, raise questions about the possible transmissibility of prion diseases via medical procedures involving skin, and whether skin samples might be used to detect prion disease. Researchers from NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) were co-leaders of the study, which included multiple collaborating groups. They stress that the prion-seeding potential found in skin tissue is significantly less than what they have found in studies using brain tissue.

CJD is an incurable — and ultimately fatal  —  transmissible, neurodegenerative disorder in the family of prion diseases. Prion diseases originate when normally harmless prion protein molecules become abnormal and gather in clusters and filaments in the human body and brain. The reasons for this process are not fully understood.  The accumulation of these clusters has been associated with tissue damage that leaves sponge-like holes in the brain. Human prion diseases include fatal insomnia; kuru; Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome; and variant, familial and sporadic CJD. Sporadic CJD is the most common human prion disease, affecting about one in one million people annually worldwide. Other prion diseases include scrapie in sheep; chronic wasting disease in deer, elk and moose; and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, in cattle.

Most people associate prion diseases with the brain, although scientists have found abnormal infectious prion protein in other organs, including the spleen, kidney, lungs and liver. Sporadic CJD is known to be transmissible by invasive medical procedures involving the central nervous system and cornea, but transmission via skin had not been a common concern.

Using a test for prion diseases known as Real-Time Quaking-Induced Conversion (RT-QuIC), scientists analyzed skin tissue from 38 patients — 23 who had died from CJD, and 15 who died of other causes. They also collected brain tissue from the 23 CJD patients and from seven individuals who died of other causes. RT-QuIC correctly detected abnormal prion protein in each CJD patient sample tested and in none of the non-CJD group. The scientists noted that in the CJD group, the “seeding potential” for normal prion protein to convert to abnormal was 1,000 to 100,000 times lower in skin than brain tissue.

The scientists then exposed humanized laboratory mice to either brain or skin extracts from two of the CJD patients. All 12 mice inoculated with brain tissue developed prion disease, as did all 12 inoculated with skin extracts, though disease in the skin group took about twice as long — roughly 400 days —  to develop. The group also reported that brain degeneration in both groups of infected mice was similar.

The study authors say the results should generate discussion about potential surgical instrument contamination and risk associated with procedures involving CJD patients.

“Perspective is important when interpreting these outcomes,” said Byron Caughey, Ph.D., a senior investigator at NIAID’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) who helped oversee the study. “This study used humanized mice with tissue extracts directly inoculated into the brain, so the system was highly primed for infection. There is no evidence that transmission can occur in real-world situations via casual skin contact. However, the results raise transmission questions that warrant further study.”

The study also raises the possibility of using RT-QuIC with skin tissue samples as a diagnostic test for human and animal prion diseases. The test is widely used with samples of brain and spinal-fluid for the diagnosis of CJD, but such samples are not always available.

“Our objective has always been to facilitate RT-QuIC testing using the most broadly available and least-invasive sample possible, whether that is blood, skin, nasal brushings, or other samples,” Dr. Caughey said. His research group has developed RT-QuIC over the past decade at RML, where he also has trained many international colleagues to use and advance the test.

Dr. Caughey’s group is continuing its development of RT-QuIC applications, including further studies of when and where the pathological prion protein appears in skin, and how to effectively inactivate its infectious forms.

NIAID conducts and supports research — at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide — to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses.

NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases.


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