Tag Archives: Baylor College of Medicine

Tattoo therapy for chronic disease?

It’s good to wake up to something truly new. In this case, it’s using tattoos and nanoparticles for medical applications. From a Sept. 22, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily,

A temporary tattoo to help control a chronic disease might someday be possible, according to scientists at Baylor College of Medicine [Texas, US] who tested antioxidant nanoparticles created at Rice University [Texas, US].

A Sept. 22, 2016 Rice University news release, which originated the news item, provides more information and some good explanations of the terms used (Note: Links have been removed),

A proof-of-principle study led by Baylor scientist Christine Beeton published today by Nature’s online, open-access journal Scientific Reports shows that nanoparticles modified with polyethylene glycol are conveniently choosy as they are taken up by cells in the immune system.

That could be a plus for patients with autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, one focus of study at the Beeton lab. “Placed just under the skin, the carbon-based particles form a dark spot that fades over about one week as they are slowly released into the circulation,” Beeton said.

T and B lymphocyte cells and macrophages are key components of the immune system. However, in many autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, T cells are the key players. One suspected cause is that T cells lose their ability to distinguish between invaders and healthy tissue and attack both.

In tests at Baylor, nanoparticles were internalized by T cells, which inhibited their function, but ignored by macrophages. “The ability to selectively inhibit one type of cell over others in the same environment may help doctors gain more control over autoimmune diseases,” Beeton said.

“The majority of current treatments are general, broad-spectrum immunosuppressants,” said Redwan Huq, lead author of the study and a graduate student in the Beeton lab. “They’re going to affect all of these cells, but patients are exposed to side effects (ranging) from infections to increased chances of developing cancer. So we get excited when we see something new that could potentially enable selectivity.” Since the macrophages and other splenic immune cells are unaffected, most of a patient’s existing immune system remains intact, he said.

The soluble nanoparticles synthesized by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour have shown no signs of acute toxicity in prior rodent studies, Huq said. They combine polyethylene glycol with hydrophilic carbon clusters, hence their name, PEG-HCCs. The carbon clusters are 35 nanometers long, 3 nanometers wide and an atom thick, and bulk up to about 100 nanometers in globular form with the addition of PEG. They have proven to be efficient scavengers of reactive oxygen species called superoxide molecules, which are expressed by cells the immune system uses to kill invading microorganisms.

T cells use superoxide in a signaling step to become activated. PEG-HCCs remove this superoxide from the T cells, preventing their activation without killing the cells.

Beeton became aware of PEG-HCCs during a presentation by former Baylor graduate student Taeko Inoue, a co-author of the new study. “As she talked, I was thinking, ‘That has to work in models of multiple sclerosis,’” Beeton said. “I didn’t have a good scientific rationale, but I asked for a small sample of PEG-HCCs to see if they affected immune cells.

“We found they affected the T lymphocytes and not the other splenic immune cells, like the macrophages. It was completely unexpected,” she said.

The Baylor lab’s tests on animal models showed that small amounts of PEG-HCCs injected under the skin are slowly taken up by T lymphocytes, where they collect and inhibit the cell’s function. They also found the nanoparticles did not remain in T cells and dispersed within days after uptake by the cells.

“That’s an issue because you want a drug that’s in the system long enough to be effective, but not so long that, if you have a problem, you can’t remove it,” Beeton said. “PEG-HCCs can be administered for slow release and don’t stay in the system for long. This gives us much better control over the circulating half-life.”

“The more we study the abilities of these nanoparticles, the more surprised we are at how useful they could be for medical applications,” Tour said. The Rice lab has published papers with collaborators at Baylor and elsewhere on using functionalized nanoparticles to deliver cancer drugs to tumors and to quench the overproduction of superoxides after traumatic brain injuries.

Beeton suggested delivering carbon nanoparticles just under the skin rather than into the bloodstream would keep them in the system longer, making them more available for uptake by T cells. And the one drawback – a temporary but visible spot on the skin that looks like a tattoo – could actually be a perk to some.

“We saw it made a black mark when we injected it, and at first we thought that’s going to be a real problem if we ever take it into the clinic,” Beeton said. “But we can work around that. We can inject into an area that’s hidden, or use micropattern needles and shape it.

“I can see doing this for a child who wants a tattoo and could never get her parents to go along,” she said. “This will be a good way to convince them.”

The research was supported by Baylor College of Medicine, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, National Institutes of Health, the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center, John S. Dunn Gulf Coast Consortium for Chemical Genomics and the U.S. Army-funded Traumatic Brain Injury Consortium.

That’s an interesting list of funders at the end of the news release.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Preferential uptake of antioxidant carbon nanoparticles by T lymphocytes for immunomodulation by Redwan Huq, Errol L. G. Samuel, William K. A. Sikkema, Lizanne G. Nilewski, Thomas Lee, Mark R. Tanner, Fatima S. Khan, Paul C. Porter, Rajeev B. Tajhya, Rutvik S. Patel, Taeko Inoue, Robia G. Pautler, David B. Corry, James M. Tour, & Christine Beeton. Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 33808 (2016) doi:10.1038/srep33808 Published online: 22 September 2016

This paper is open access.

Here’s an image provided by the researchers,

Polyethylene glycol-hydrophilic carbon clusters developed at Rice University were shown to be selectively taken up by T cells, which inhibits their function, in tests at Baylor College of Medicine. The researchers said the nanoparticles could lead to new strategies for controlling autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis. (Credit: Errol Samuel/Rice University) - See more at: http://news.rice.edu/2016/09/22/tattoo-therapy-could-ease-chronic-disease/#sthash.sIfs3b0S.dpuf

Polyethylene glycol-hydrophilic carbon clusters developed at Rice University were shown to be selectively taken up by T cells, which inhibits their function, in tests at Baylor College of Medicine. The researchers said the nanoparticles could lead to new strategies for controlling autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis. (Credit: Errol Samuel/Rice University)

Nanoscale antioxidants

A Feb. 10, 2015 news item on Azonano features injectable nanoparticles that act as antioxidants useful in case of injury, in particular, brain injury,

Injectable nanoparticles that could protect an injured person from further damage due to oxidative stress have proven to be astoundingly effective in tests to study their mechanism.

Scientists at Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School designed methods to validate their 2012 discovery that combined polyethylene glycol-hydrophilic carbon clusters — known as PEG-HCCs — could quickly stem the process of overoxidation that can cause damage in the minutes and hours after an injury.

A Feb. 9, 2015 Rice University news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describe the benefits in more detail,

The tests revealed a single nanoparticle can quickly catalyze the neutralization of thousands of damaging reactive oxygen species molecules that are overexpressed by the body’s cells in response to an injury and turn the molecules into oxygen. These reactive species can damage cells and cause mutations, but PEG-HCCs appear to have an enormous capacity to turn them into less-reactive substances.

The researchers hope an injection of PEG-HCCs as soon as possible after an injury, such as traumatic brain injury or stroke, can mitigate further brain damage by restoring normal oxygen levels to the brain’s sensitive circulatory system.

“Effectively, they bring the level of reactive oxygen species back to normal almost instantly,” said Rice chemist James Tour. “This could be a useful tool for emergency responders who need to quickly stabilize an accident or heart attack victim or to treat soldiers in the field of battle.” Tour led the new study with neurologist Thomas Kent of Baylor College of Medicine and biochemist Ah-Lim Tsai of UTHealth.

The news release goes on to describe the antioxidant particles and previous research,

PEG-HCCs are about 3 nanometers wide and 30 to 40 nanometers long and contain from 2,000 to 5,000 carbon atoms. In tests, an individual PEG-HCC nanoparticle can catalyze the conversion of 20,000 to a million reactive oxygen species molecules per second into molecular oxygen, which damaged tissues need, and hydrogen peroxide while quenching reactive intermediates.

Tour and Kent led the earlier research that determined an infusion of nontoxic PEG-HCCs may quickly stabilize blood flow in the brain and protect against reactive oxygen species molecules overexpressed by cells during a medical trauma, especially when accompanied by massive blood loss.

Their research targeted traumatic brain injuries, after which cells release an excessive amount of the reactive oxygen species known as a superoxide into the blood. These toxic free radicals are molecules with one unpaired electron that the immune system uses to kill invading microorganisms. In small concentrations, they contribute to a cell’s normal energy regulation. Generally, they are kept in check by superoxide dismutase, an enzyme that neutralizes superoxides.

But even mild traumas can release enough superoxides to overwhelm the brain’s natural defenses. In turn, superoxides can form such other reactive oxygen species as peroxynitrite that cause further damage.

“The current research shows PEG-HCCs work catalytically, extremely rapidly and with an enormous capacity to neutralize thousands upon thousands of the deleterious molecules, particularly superoxide and hydroxyl radicals that destroy normal tissue when left unregulated,” Tour said.

“This will be important not only in traumatic brain injury and stroke treatment, but for many acute injuries of any organ or tissue and in medical procedures such as organ transplantation,” he said. “Anytime tissue is stressed and thereby oxygen-starved, superoxide can form to further attack the surrounding good tissue.”

These details about the research are also noted in the news release,

The researchers used an electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy technique that gets direct structure and rate information for superoxide radicals by counting unpaired electrons in the presence or absence of PEG-HCC antioxidants. Another test with an oxygen-sensing electrode, peroxidase and a red dye confirmed the particles’ ability to catalyze superoxide conversion.

“In sharp contrast to the well-known superoxide dismutase, PEG-HCC is not a protein and does not have metal to serve the catalytic role,” Tsai said. “The efficient catalytic turnover could be due to its more ‘planar,’ highly conjugated carbon core.”

The tests showed the number of superoxides consumed far surpassed the number of possible PEG-HCC bonding sites. The researchers found the particles have no effect on important nitric oxides that keep blood vessels dilated and aid neurotransmission and cell protection, nor was the efficiency sensitive to pH changes.

“PEG-HCCs have enormous capacity to convert superoxide to oxygen and the ability to quench reactive intermediates while not affecting nitric oxide molecules that are beneficial in normal amounts,” Kent said. “So they hold a unique place in our potential armamentarium against a range of diseases that involve loss of oxygen and damaging levels of free radicals.”

The study also determined PEG-HCCs remain stable, as batches up to 3 months old performed as good as new.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Highly efficient conversion of superoxide to oxygen using hydrophilic carbon clusters by Errol L. G. Samuel, Daniela C. Marcano, Vladimir Berka, Brittany R. Bitner, Gang Wu, Austin Potter, Roderic H. Fabian, Robia G. Pautler, Thomas A. Kent, Ah-Lim Tsai, and James M. Tour. Published online before print February 9, 2015, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1417047112 PNAS February 9, 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

Cell biology journal conceptualizes science papers’ content with multimedia for a combined print and online experience

Strictly speaking this isn’t visualizing data and scientific information (which I’ve mentioned before)  so much as it is augmenting it. The biology journal Cell  is now including online multimedia components that can be accessed only by a QR code in the journal’s  hardcopy version. From the May 26, 2011 news item on physorg.com,

On May 27th the top cell biology journal, Cell, will publish its latest issue with multimedia components directly attached to the print version. The issue uses QR code technology to connect readers to the journal’s multimedia formats online thereby improving the conceptualization of a paper’s scientific content and enhancing the reader’s overall experience.

Readers of the hardcopy issue who take advantage of the code will experience an author-narrated walk through a paper’s figures. In all, the issue will use QR codes to include seventeen “hidden treasures” for readers to discover. Readers can simply scan the QR codes with a smart phone or tablet to uncover animated figures, interviews, videos, and more. The multimedia formats offered by Cell include: Podcasts, Paperclips, PaperFlicks, and Enhanced Snapshots. Even the journal’s cover shows a simple QR code which allows readers of the hardcopy issue to see an animated cover.

Here’s the animated cover, which is titled, Malaria Channels Host Nutrients,

I find this development interesting in light of moves to provide information via graphical abstracts and/or video abstracts. For example, the publisher Elsevier offers authors of papers for their various science journals instructions on preparing graphical abstracts (from Elsevier’s authors’ graphical abstracts webpage),

A Graphical Abstract should allow readers to quickly gain an understanding of the main take-home message of the paper and is intended to encourage browsing, promote interdisciplinary scholarship, and help readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests.

Authors must provide an image that clearly represents the work described in the paper. A key figure from the original paper, summarising the content can also be submitted as a graphical abstract.

Elsevier provides examples of good graphical abstracts such as this one,

Journal of Controlled Release, Volume 140, Issue 3, 16 December 2009, Pages 210-217. Hydrotropic oligomer-conjugated glycol chitosan as a carrier of paclitaxel: Synthesis, characterization, and in vivo biodistribution. G. Saravanakumar, Kyung Hyun Min, et.al., doi:10.1016/j.jconrel.2009.06.015

For an example of a video abstract, I’m going back to Cell which offers this one from Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers discussing their work on octopus arm movements and visual control,

http://www.youtube.com/user/cellvideoabstracts?blend=21&ob=5

I have a suspicion that the trend to presenting science to the general public and other experts using graphical and video abstracts and other primarily ‘visual’ media could  have quite an impact on the sciences and how they are practiced. I haven’t quite figured out what any of those impacts might be but if someone would like to  comment on that, I’d be more than happy to hear from you.

Meanwhile, it seems to be a Cell kind of day so I’ve decided to embed the Lady Gaga Bad Project parody by the Hui Zheng Laboratory at Baylor Medical College in Texas for a second time,

Happy Weekend!

Lady Gaga parody with a science edge

A friend alerted me to a video on Youtube video, Zheng Lab – Bad Project (Lady Gaga parody) and since it’s Friday and I usually blog about science in one form or another, I think it’s worth a whirl.

There is a real lab, the head researcher is Hui Zheng and she and her team study Alzheimer’s Disease (at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas). Note: There’s a brief segment with mice where they’ve sped up the motion (this team does some animal testing).

This is partly an experiment on my part as I’m using Youtube’s new embed code, which required adopting a new and somewhat bewildering strategy. ETA Feb.3.11: I started playing with the sizing and had to go back to using the old embed code.