When will we have an HIV vaccine?

Today is the 1st of December, international AIDS day. The human immunodefeciency virus (HIV) is a subgroup of retrovirus (a lentivirus to be exact) that causes HIV infection and acquired immunodefeciency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS is a condition in humans in which progressive failure of our immune system allows potentially life-threatening infections and even cancers to thrive. Currently there are two types of HIV that have been characterised : HIV-1 with high virulence and high infectivity which is common globally, and HIV-2 with low virulence and accordingly low infectivity which is prelevant for West Africa. According to WHO since the beginning of the epidemic almost 78 million people have been infected with HIV and around 39 million people have died from HIV. By the end of 2013 approximately 35 million people worldwide were infected with HIV virus.

Despite of intense research existing treatments from HIV are far from being satisfying. Current advance of combined HIV treatment includes multiple antiretroviral drugs which help to keep the disease in a chronic state where it does not progress into AIDS. However any disease and in particular HIV is easier and cheaper to prevent than to treat. Currently we have preventive vaccines against such diseases as polio, chicken pox, measles, rubella and many others. We often forget how many lives these maladies took before the vaccines were developed. But what about AIDS ?

We are what we eat: how our diet can affect our genome

As I did my PhD in the diabetes research, I am more than anyone conscious about nutrition. Balanced diet is a basis of healthy life. We all know obvious things: avoid fat, preservatives, junk food, salt, reduce meat, etc. But today I would like to speak about something else. Today I would like to speak about how what we eat can affect our genome. Let’s talk about epigenetics. 

Epigenetics describes the cellular processes that determine whether a certain gene will be transcribed and translated into its corresponding protein. In the end it all breaks down to simple chemistry. Your DNA is nothing more than a chemical molecule which can me modified by adding to it an extra chemical group e.g. a methyl group. These small chemical modifications however can have a great impact. Modifications in our DNA will affect the way our proteins are being synthesized. Subsequently, this can affect our whole body metabolism and trigger numerous diseases such as obesity and cancer.

There is accumulating evidence in the scientific literature that the nutrients consumed by us can have a greater impact on our health than we assumed. We all know how women should not smoke tobacco and drink alcohol during pregnancy, avoid raw and smoked meat and fish. But there is much more than that! For instance, if we take mice with complete lack of methylation on agouti gene (prone to diabetes and cancer) and feed them during pregnancy with methyl rich diet (choline, folic acid, betaine and vitamin B12 supplements), they will very likely give a healthy offspring. This experiment demonstrates the importance of womb microenvironment and it’s influence on our health. 

Organ-on-a-chip - alternative to animal testing?

Constant search for the alternatives to animal testing keep pushing biotechnological research forward. Scientist is currently developing new mock organs that can fit in a palm of a hand.

Organ-on-a-chip is a multi-channel 3-D microfluidic cell culture chip that simulates the activities, mechanics and physiological responses of entire organs and organ systems. The convergence of labs-on-chips (LOCs) and cell biology has permitted the study of human physiology in an organ-specific context, introducing a novel model of in vitro multicellular human organisms. 

A lab-on-a-chip is a device that integrates one or several laboratory functions on a single chip that deals with handling particles in hollow microfluidic channels. Advantages in handling particles at such a small scale include lowering fluid volume consumption (lower reagents costs, less waste), increasing portability of the devices, increasing process control (due to quicker thermo-chemical reactions) and decreasing fabrication costs. Additionally, microfluidic flow is entirely laminar (i.e., no turbulence). Consequently, there is virtually no mixing between neighboring streams in one hollow channel. In cellular biology convergence, this rare property in fluids has been leveraged to better study complex cell behaviors, such as cell motility in response to chemotactic stimuli, stem cell differentiation, axon guidance, subcellular propagation of biochemical signaling and embryonic development.

3D organ models and their application in Biotech industry

3D printing is currently the main innovation driver in many areas such as manufacturing, art, engineering, medicine and education. Due to the recent advances in this area it became possible to combine biocompatible materials, cells and supporting components into complex 3D functional living tissues. Today 3D bioprinting is being applied to regenerative medicine in order to supply for the need of tissues and organs suitable for transplantation. However in comparison to non-biological printing 3D bioprinting includes additional challenges such as the choice of materials, cell types, growth and differentiation factors as well as technical challenges related to the sensitivities of living cells and tissue construction. Addressing these issues requires complex approach with the integration of engineering, biomaterials science, cell biology, physics and medicine. Remarkably 3D bioprinting has already been used for generation and transplantation of several tissues (multilayered skin, bone, vascular grafts, tracheal splints, heart tissues and cartilaginous structures) as well as development of high-throughput 3D-bioprinted tissue models for research, drug discovery and toxicology.

Currently we are facing a major crisis in healthcare as our lifespan increases and so is the demand for organ transplantation, whereas the number of the organs available for the transplantation is clearly insufficient to provide for existing needs. 3D bio printing can indeed be an elegant solution.

In this brilliant TED talk Anthony Atala is discussing current challenges and advances in 3D printing of human organs.

S V Murphy, A Atala 3D bioprinting of tissues and organs Nature Biotechnology 2014

Photo credit http://www.3ders.org/articles/20120629-future-of-medicine-3d-printing-new-organs.html