3D printed chip for personalised screening of drug to treat oral cancer
Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally and the burden continues to increase day-by day. Scientists in every corner of the globe are in search of a magical solution to cure cancer. Currently, the type of treatment or drug used is different for different types of cancer, because the major challenge in cancer treatment is that various subtypes of tumours develop different levels of resistance to drugs, allowing them to survive against chemotherapy. In this regard, a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH), India have developed a 3D stem-like spheroids-on-a-chip for personalised screening of the best drug to treat oral cancer for individual patient. In their experiment, they isolate oral tumour stem-like cells from three patients at different stage of cancer and the cells were grown to form spheroids on the designed chip. The 3D printed spheroids were tested with three cancer treating drugs, viz., paclitaxel, 5-fluorouracil, and cisplatin, either singly or in combination. It was observed that spheroids from one patient was completely resistant to all the three drugs while cells from other two patients responded well to single or a combination of these three drugs. Hence, the finding of this study will be worthy to identify an effective drug against cancer at personalized level.
Sources:
- Mehta, V., et al. 3D stem-like spheroids-on-a-chip for personalized combinatorial drug testing in oral cancer. Nanobiotechnol. 22, 344 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12951-024-02625-y
Development of first notochord forming human stem cell model
Scientists at the Francis Crick Institute have created the first human stem cell model that can form notochord, a rod-shaped tissue present in the developing embryo which acts like a GPS system and guides cells where to form the spine and nervous system. Although various in vitro models were generated earlier, they lack the notochord signals for formation of human trunk. In this research, at first chicken embryos were used to understand the exact mechanism, i.e., the timing and sequence of the molecular signals needed to form the notochord naturally that acts as navigation system in formation of spine and nervous system. By using this map as a guide, the team identified the crucial factors required to create a three-dimensional model of human trunk development that undergoes morphogenetic movements, producing elongated structures with a notochord and ventral neural and mesodermal tissues. The scientists assume that the findings of this study could help to identify birth defects affecting the spinal cord and spine.
Sources:
- The Francis Crick Institute. “Building a backbone: Scientists recreate the body’s ‘GPS system’ in the lab.” ScienceDaily, 18 December 2024. sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241218131316.htm
- Rito, T et al. Timely TGFβ signalling inhibition induces notochord. Nature (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08332-w
A Wingless fly
Hermetia illucens, the black soldier fly (BSF), has large-scale industrial farming potential as this fly is an organic waste recycler as well as it is a rich source of protein and lipids that can be used as animal feed for livestock or as a biofuel. Moreover, the BSF has the ability to inhibit pathogenic microbes present in the waste as well as it can degrade antibiotics. However, the major problem in farming of this fly at industrial scale is the mass escape of insects. To address this issue, researchers from multiple institutes of China have used binary transgenic CRISPR/Cas9 system and generated special mutants of BSF which are wingless and lacks mating ability. Thus, these mutant BSFs are less likely to escape and even if they manage to escape will be unable to mate successfully. The findings of this study will felicitate the large-scale breeding of BSF for industrial applications as well as future functional genomic studies in BSF and other non-model insects.
Source:
Kou, Z. et al. Wingless strain created using binary transgenic CRISPR/Cas9 alleviates concerns about mass rearing of Hermetia illucens. Commun. Biol. 7, 1652 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-07254-7
Artificial intelligence-guided lipid nanoparticles for gene delivery
Today, the horizon of artificial intelligence (AI) has been expanded to all the fields of science and its application can be observed in forms of life, i.e., human, animal and plants. In medical and veterinary sciences also, AI has been extensively used in disease diagnosis, drug discovery, animal behaviour study and in many other fields. Recently, a team of scientists from different institutes of USA, have used AI to identify promising lipid nanoparticles for gene delivery to lungs. Ionizable lipid nanoparticles are the leading non-viral technology used to deliver messenger RNA. Therefore, to identify the pest lipid nanoparticles, the team has created a dataset of lipid nanoparticles by using neural networks, a deep-learning method. Then they screened and evaluated around 1.6 million lipid nanoparticles and identified two potent lipid nanostructures, viz., FO-32 and FO-35. Both the nanostructures were efficient in delivering mRNA to the lungs and out of the two, the FO-32 was better in performance. Thus, the outcomes of this study would help to treat pulmonary diseases more efficiently in future through gene therapy as well as these two lipid nanostructures may be promising candidates for nanoparticle-based gene therapy.
Source:
Witten, J. et al. Artificial intelligence-guided design of lipid nanoparticles for pulmonary gene therapy. Nature Biotechnology (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-024-02490-y
N.B. The image is taken from this url –https://www.pravda.ru/news/science/2137153-3d-bioprinting-innovation/
