Science
The Times of India
Killer cells to cure leukemia in 3 weeks
LONDON: Scientists claim to have developed "serial killer" cells that can wipe out leukemia within three weeks, a breakthrough they say could lead to new and effective treatments for the fatal blood cancer.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Centre in the US engineered a technique that involved leukemia patients being treated with their own T cells - a type of white blood cell - that have been genetically modified to attack and destroy tumours within their bodies.
The treatment was so powerful that tumours were "blown away" in under a month with few side effects, the Daily Mail reported.
After removing the patient's T cells, the researchers reprogrammed them to attack tumours by binding to a protein expressed by cancerous cells.
In most forms of cancer these crucial cells are unable to distinguish tumour cells from healthy tissue, which allows the cancer to spread unchecked. But they managed to reprogramme them to attack tumour cells by inserting a "secret ingredient" - a protein called a chimeric antigen receptor .
When this protein is on the surface of the T cells, it will bind with another protein, called CD19, which is found in leukemia tumour cells. By doing this it not only kills the cancer cells, but causes other T cells to rapidly multiply so they can attack the tumour too.
Professor Carl June, senior author of the study, said, "The infused T cells are serial killers. On average each fused T cell led to the killing of thousands of tumour cells - and overall, destroyed at least one kilo of tumour in each patient."
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Science
The Times of India
From cold to HIV, this drug can fight any viral infection
LONDON: In what might be the greatest medical discovery since penicillin, scientists have developed a broad-spectrum drug which they claim can cure everything - from the common cold to HIV to almost any other virus one can think of.
A team of researchers at the the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US created the drug, known by the acronym DRACO, which homes in on infected cells and makes them self-destructive .
Its hit list includes human rhinoviruses - the bugs that causes colds in adults and in children - flu, polio, a stomach bug and deadly dengue fever.
But DRACO is also expected to zap measles and German measles, cold sores, rabies and even HIV - and could be on pharmacy shelves in a decade, the Daily Mail reported.
Lead researcher Mike Rider said, "It's certainly possible that there's some virus that we aren't able to treat but we haven't found it yet." In lab tests, DRACO killed 15 viruses.
It also saved the lives of mice given a dose of flu that would have killed them.
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Academics working on censor-proof technology for web
"It would make it appear as if they were making a secure web connection to some innocuous site on the Internet, say a banking site or social media site or anything that isn't being blocked," Goldberg said.
Many people in countries where there are Internet restrictions find ways to connect to outside servers, known as proxies, that can give them unlimited Internet access.
However, the developers of Telex say government monitors eventually can detect what is happening then cut off access to proxy servers being used.
Goldberg said the difference with his group's idea is it would use routers "in the middle of the network" rather than computer servers that are identifiable by their IP addresses.
He added that even if governments could locate the Telex stations and cut off access to them, the stations would be placed "in strategic positions around the Internet in such a way that if you block every flow that passes though this Telex station, you will cut off a lot of the Internet."
Goldberg speculated that even countries that censor some websites would be reluctant to cut off significant portions of the Internet that are currently available because of economic implications and also because it would upset their citizens.
Goldberg admitted that such a plan is contingent upon getting the co-operation of major Internet service providers who would allow the Telex stations to work in conjunction with their technology.
"It might take government incentives," he said, noting some companies might be reluctant to co-operate in something that annoys government officials in China, which is quickly emerging as an economic superpower. "We do see that the U.S. government, for example, funds anti-censorship research and anti-censorship deployments."
A recent case of Internet censorship in China involved the removal of information on a court decision deporting Chinese fugitive Lai Changxing from Canada to China, which was posted by the Canadian Embassy in China on social networking site Sina Weibo but then taken down by Chinese officials.
Currently, Telex is operational on a demonstration basis. The researchers say it has been able to give a client in Beijing access to YouTube, which is banned in China.
Goldberg declined to speculate on how long it might take to have Telex deployed on a significant basis.
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