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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2023 at 11:54am

Biology behind new drug used to treat triple-negative breast cancer uncovered

How TTP488 (azeliragon), an experimental drug, impairs aggressive, triple-negative breast cancer from metastasizing has been uncovered at the cellular level, according to researchers.

Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) account for about 10–15% of all diagnosed breast cancers and are comprised of cancer cells that don't have estrogen or progesterone receptors, nor do they produce a protein called HER2 in significant quantities. TNBC's are more common in women younger than age 40 or those who are Black; for those cancers that metastasize, the five-year survival rate is only 12%. TNBCs have eluded effective treatment for decades. This discovery pinpoints some of the signaling pathways and cellular mechanisms through which a receptor that sits on the surface of TNBC cells, called the receptor for advanced glycation end-products (RAGE), regulates its deadly metastatic spread. Armed with this knowledge, the researchers were able to test the effectiveness of TTP488 in both the lab and in mice to show that the drug could be helpful in people.

Melinda Magna et al, RAGE inhibitor TTP488 (Azeliragon) suppresses metastasis in triple-negative breast cancer, npj Breast Cancer (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41523-023-00564-9

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2023 at 11:35am

Toothpaste containing synthetic tooth minerals can prevent cavities as effectively as fluoride: Clinical trial

Brushing twice a day keeps the dentist away—but can we improve on the toothpaste we use to maintain clean teeth, preventing medical issues that spiral from poor dental health? Most toothpastes use fluoride, a powerful tool for oral hygiene. However, fluoride can pose health problems in some cases, especially for children who consume too much fluoride by swallowing most of their toothpaste: children normally use only a tiny dose of toothpaste to avoid these problems, but that reduces toothbrushing efficacy.

In the search for alternatives, a team of international scientists and  clinicians have identified a hydroxyapatite toothpaste that works just as well as fluoride toothpaste to protect against cavities.

Hydroxyapatite is a safe and effective alternative to fluoride in caries prevention for daily use.

Hydroxyapatite is a calcium phosphate mineral found in the skeleton. It's known to be very safe for human consumption and has previously been shown to help with oral conditions like periodontitis. It can both inhibit the demineralization of teeth, a key step towards a cavity, and contribute to remineralization, which reinforces damaged tooth surfaces.

In a trial study  scientists found that nearly 90% of patients in both groups had no new cavities. There was no statistical difference in efficacy between the patients using a hydroxyapatite toothpaste and the control group using a fluoride tooth paste: both worked equally well.

Caries-preventing effect of a hydroxyapatite-toothpaste in adults: A 18 months double-blinded randomized clinical trial, Frontiers in Public Health (2023). DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1199728. www.frontiersin.org/articles/1 … bh.2023.1199728/full

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2023 at 11:25am

What's more, the fact that both the freshwater and marine hairworm species had lost the genes for cilia indicates that this evolutionary change happened in the deep past to the two species' common ancestor. "It is likely that the loss happened early on in the evolution of the group, and they just have been carrying on like that.

The finding opens the door to several new questions. It's not clear how the lack of cilia have affected hairworms, or if the hairworms' parasitic behavior could be related to the missing cilia. There are plenty of other parasitic organisms that aren't missing these specific genes, so we cannot say that the genes are missing because of their parasitic lifestyle. 

 Tauana J Cunha, Rampant loss of universal metazoan genes revealed by a chromosome-level genome assembly of the parasitic Nematomorpha, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.07.003. www.cell.com/current-biology/f … 0960-9822(23)00908-9

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 19, 2023 at 11:23am

'Mind controlling' parasitic worms are missing genes found in every other animal, researchers find

In a world full of bizarre animals, hairworms are some of the strangest. Hairworms are parasitic worms that manipulate the behavior of their hosts in what's sometimes called "mind control."

A new study in the journal Current Biology reveals another strange trait shared by different hairworm species—they're missing about 30% of the genes that researchers expected them to have. What's more, the missing genes are responsible for the development of cilia, the hair-like structures present in at least some of the cells of every other animal known.

Hairworms are found all over the world, and they look like skinny strands of spaghetti, a couple inches long. Their simple bodies hint at their parasitic lifestyle— they have no excretory, respiratory, or circulatory systems, and they spend almost their entire lives inside the bodies of other animals.

One of the coolest things, maybe the thing that they are most known for, is that they can affect the behavior of their hosts and make them do things that they wouldn't do otherwise.

There are a few hundred species of freshwater hairworms. Their eggs hatch in water, and the hairworm larvae get eaten by tiny water-dwelling predators like mayfly larvae, which in turn get eaten by bigger, land-dwelling predators like crickets.

After growing into adulthood inside of their new hosts' bodies, the hairworms manipulate the hosts' behavior, causing them to jump into water. There, the worms swim out of their hosts' butts and seek out mates, knotting themselves together, to begin the cycle anew.

There are also five species of hairworms that live in marine environments and parasitize water-dwelling creatures like lobsters, but it's not clear if those ones also have host manipulation capabilities— there's no pressure for the worms to get back to the water, since the hosts already live there.

Researchers d sequenced them. But when they compared the hairworms' genetic codes to those of other animals, they found something striking.

"What they found was very surprising: both hairworm genomes were missing about 30% of a set of genes that are expected to be present across basically all groups of animals.

The large majority of the missing genes were exactly the same between the two species. This was just implausible by chance.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2023 at 11:11am

Policymakers need to win public support for energy demand reduction mechanisms. The reality is decarbonization on the supply side, where energy is generated and distributed, will not be enough to deliver the emission reductions that are needed.

"So, energy demand will have to be reduced. That is the inescapable reality. Experts on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate that reducing energy demand could produce between 40% and 70% of the emissions reductions that need to be found by 2050.

This research is indicating that public support for energy demand reduction is possible if the public see the schemes as being fair and deliver climate justice.

Milena Büchs, Emissions savings from equitable energy demand reduction, Nature Energy (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-023-01283-y. www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01283-y

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2023 at 11:11am

Cap top 20% of energy users to reduce carbon emissions, say scientists

Consumers in the richer, developed nations will have to accept restrictions on their energy use if international climate change targets are to be met, warn researchers.

The big challenge is to identify the fairest and most equitable way that governments can curtail energy use, a process known as energy demand reduction. In the paper, "Emissions savings from equitable energy demand reduction," in the journal Nature Energy, the research team analyzed several scenarios to identify a potential solution.

One option is to cap the top 20% of energy users while allowing those people who use little energy and have poverty-level incomes to be able to increase their consumption levels and improve their quality of life.

Across any population there will be a range—or distribution—of values for how much energy individuals use. The values are sorted into 100 percentiles—for example, the 50th percentile represents the value that is exactly in the middle of the energy distribution, which half the population fail to reach and the other half exceeds.

Under the energy demand reduction scheme, the top-level energy users would see their energy use restricted to the value of energy use at the 80th percentile. In the scenario modeled, that would be 170.2 gigajoules (GJ) per person per year, compared to the mean energy use of the top 20% of consumers of 196.8 GJ per person per year.

Using data from 27 European states, the researchers modeled how effective this energy demand reduction strategy would be. They found it would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 11.4% from domestic energy sources; 16.8% from transport and 9.7% from total energy consumption.

Allowing people in poverty to increase their energy use would reduce these emissions savings by relatively small amounts—1.2 percentage points for domestic energy; 0.9 for transport; and 1.4 for total energy consumption. It would enable the less well-off to meet unmet needs, perhaps where they may have been unable to adequately heat their home.

Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2023 at 11:02am

New method used to develop RNA therapy for the treatment of rare diseases

Having a rare genetic disease is actually pretty common. Rare diseases affect approximately 1 in 10 individuals. What makes them rare is that these 1 in 10 people affected have an estimated 7,000 different conditions, with treatments available for only about 5% of them.

Rare disease research  has accelerated the treatment potential for one such disease, ataxia-telangiectasia, with antisense oligonucleotides.

In a paper, "A framework for individualized splice-switching oligonucleotide therapy," published in Nature, the researchers detail their methods to identify treatment potential for one rare disease and illustrate how the process could tackle other untreatable conditions. A Clinical Briefing published in the same journal issue summarizes the work done by the team.

The research is based on splice-switching antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs). ASOs are short sequences of synthetic nucleic acids, a chain of nucleotides adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T), connected in a specific sequence. The specific sequence is called "antisense" because it complements an RNA target sequence, binding with it to alter its function.

The alteration can induce degradation, modulation of splicing, prevention of translation, or in this case, paste a correction over a mis-splicing event. By correcting mis-spliced RNA, the normal production of downstream proteins can resume the role they would carry out in a healthy individual.

Jinkuk Kim et al, A framework for individualized splice-switching oligonucleotide therapy, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06277-0

Clinical Briefing: A framework for identifying targets for individualized therapy in genetic disease, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-023-01994-y

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 18, 2023 at 10:17am

THEY ARE WORLD FAMOUS  INDIAN SCIENTISTS FROM CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY. 

A rare picture of top Indian Scientists who are acclaimed for their contribution to Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics.

Seated (L to R): 

Meghnad Saha (Astrophysicist)

Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (Biologist & Physicist), 

Jnan Chandra Ghosh (Chemistry, Electrolysis and Ionization)

Standing (L to R):

Snehamoy Dutt (Physicist) 

Satyendranath Bose 

(Bose Einestein theory) 

Debendra Mohan Bose (Physicist) 

N R Sen (Physicist & mathematician)

Jnanendra Nath Mukherjee

(Chemistry, Colloid Chemistry) 

N C Nag (Biologist)

Comment by Deepak Menon on July 17, 2023 at 1:15pm

26.7 Billion Years old Galaxy! WOW! Now believable. Exactly how brilliant was Paul Dirac to have postulated or hypothised that Coupling constants are fundamental physical constants that govern the interactions between particles. Further - according to Dirac, these constants might have varied over time.
What an extraordinary brain Dirac had!

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on July 17, 2023 at 12:35pm

New research puts age of universe at 26.7 billion years, nearly twice as old as previously thought

Our universe could be twice as old as current estimates, according to a new study that challenges the dominant cosmological model and sheds new light on the so-called "impossible early galaxy problem."

The newly-devised model stretches the galaxy formation time by a several billion years, making the universe 26.7 billion years old, and not 13.7 as previously estimated.

For years, astronomers and physicists have calculated the age of our universe by measuring the time elapsed since the Big Bang and by studying the oldest stars based on the redshift of light coming from distant galaxies. In 2021, thanks to new techniques and advances in technology, the age of our universe was thus estimated at 13.797 billion years using the Lambda-CDM concordance model.

However, many scientists have been puzzled by the existence of stars like the Methuselah that appear to be older than the estimated age of our universe and by the discovery of early galaxies in an advanced state of evolution made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope. These galaxies, existing a mere 300 million years or so after the Big Bang, appear to have a level of maturity and mass typically associated with billions of years of cosmic evolution. Furthermore, they're surprisingly small in size, adding another layer of mystery to the equation.

Zwicky's tired light theory proposes that the redshift of light from distant galaxies is due to the gradual loss of energy by photons over vast cosmic distances. However, it was seen to conflict with observations. Yet now it 's found that "by allowing this theory to coexist with the expanding universe, it becomes possible to reinterpret the redshift as a hybrid phenomenon, rather than purely due to expansion.

In addition to Zwicky's tired light theory, researchers no introduce the idea of evolving "coupling constants," as hypothesized by Paul Dirac. Coupling constants are fundamental physical constants that govern the interactions between particles. According to Dirac, these constants might have varied over time. By allowing them to evolve, the timeframe for the formation of early galaxies observed by the Webb telescope at high redshifts can be extended from a few hundred million years to several billion years. This provides a more feasible explanation for the advanced level of development and mass observed in these ancient galaxies.

Researchers now suggest that the traditional interpretation of the "cosmological constant," which represents dark energy responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe, needs revision. Instead, he proposes a constant that accounts for the evolution of the coupling constants. This modification in the cosmological model helps address the puzzle of small galaxy sizes observed in the early universe, allowing for more accurate observations.

R Gupta, JWST early Universe observations and ΛCDM cosmology, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2023). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad2032

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