When people look back on the beginning of the 21^st century, they might think this was the time of the antioxidants. Antioxidants supplements are being sold everywhere, usually without a doctor prescription, as a way to halt aging, heart diseases and whatever else is promised on the label. But current research, published online in the medical journal Stem Cells, reveals antioxidants also have their downside, possibly causing genetic abnormalities in cells.

The researchers attempted to counter the oxidation problem of cells growing in a Petri dish culture, by adding high doses of antioxidants directly to the cells. “That’s when we made the serendipitous discovery that there is a ‘danger zone’ for the cells exposed to antioxidants to develop genetic abnormalities that predispose to cancer.” Says Eduardo Marban, M.D., Ph.D., one of the authors of the study.

What does this actually mean for the healthcare industry (or perhaps the nutritional supplements one)? Not much… yet. The study was performed invitro, so the translation into clinical conclusions is by no means automatic. However, this study joins previous ones which showed evidence of harmful effect of antioxidants when taken in large doses. Most sane persons do not swallow more than one multivitamin pill a day, but this information might have benefit for the ‘supplemental junkies’ or even athletes. Should antioxidants be monitored more carefully by the government? I’m not quite sure that’s necessary. After all, Acamol isn’t monitored in any way, and people are not prone to poisoning themselves with overdoses. All the same, if you want to learn more about the legislation of drugs (at least in Europe), there’s a seminar about the “Europe Legislation for Oncology Drugs: From Research to Market” given by Beatrice Janin Jacquat, Medican Director, Includeconsulting, Switzerland, in the ILSI-BioMed Week next month.

 Source: Eurekalert

The paper online

The program of ILSI-BioMed Week 2010

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One year ago, a group of researchers at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem reported a sharp rise in the diagnoses of a certain metabolic disorder. To those of us who live in Jerusalem, fear not. Other than the Holyland story, nothing really happened in the Israeli capital in the last year. The only change is that the lab at Hadassah changed the supplier of its pipette tips. No more, no less.

You might find it hard to believe that the mere changing of a plastic supplier can affect the diagnosis of a medical disorder. It turns out more and more, though, that plastics can seriously influence the outcome of biomedical experiments and tests.  The most recent example was published just two days ago in BioTechniques by Lewis et al, and caught attention from Nature’s news crew who began circulating the announcement to the scientific community around the globe. It’s might important, too, as the discovery relates to protein and DNA extraction and PCR reactions, which most of the biologists do at one point or another in the research.

To sum up the results briefly, Lewis et al bring evidence that chemicals can leach out of polypropylene tubes and into the solution inside. Those chemicals absorb at wavelengths between 220 and 260 nanometers, which means they’re highly likely to distort a spectrometer reading of the amount of DNA in the solution, perhaps by as much as 300%, according to the researchers.

How to get over the problem? Lewis et al report they are using only tubes which are low in additives. This is another potential problem, obviously, since some of the additives are there for a reason: to harden the plastic, make it more heat resistant or preserving it over time. But if your research is truly important to you, I’d say it’s the right choice.

In the BioMed-ILSI week (two months from now), Prof. Daniel Cohn from the Casali Institute of Applied Chemistry in the Hebrew University will give a lecture on June 15th about Novel Biomedical Polymers and Medical Devices. It might be interesting to learn his views about this problem, and what’s more, perhaps he has an insight on the additives in question – and whether they can be found in implantable polymers as well.

The Incident in Hadassah

BioTechniques Journal

A News Article in Nature on the Matter

The Program of ILSI-BioMed week

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Kindly watch the below video. It opens up slow, and it goes on even slower, but… well, it’s only three minutes!

So what do we have here? Two nerdy looking scientists, having a painfully-mock argument about the virtues of the Nanodrop spectrophotometer as opposed to using the old fashioned spectrophotometer. Let me stress that I’m all for the Nanodrop device, as it truly is one of those machines that make your life incredibly easier if you’re working with DNA / RNA. I mean it. But the really interesting thing is that this excruiatingly lame commercial actually received more than 63,000 views, and I’m going to assume that most of the viewers who typed a search for ‘spectrophotometer’ were exactly the target-audience for this device. All this – from a commercial that probably took less than an hour to film, an hour more to add special effects and sound, and a day or two figuring out how to upload it to Youtube.

The lesson? Web-commercials can be quite powerful, when considered cost vs. effect. Just please make sure you hire better actors than these two lads.

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The Human Genome Project was first launched in 1990 by the US government, and a working draft of the genome was issued ten years later. At 1998, a similar venture was launched by Craig Venter and his firm Celera Genomics, who made use of a faster sequencing method to reach an initial working draft in only two years. It’s clear that genetic sequencing technology is being developed at a rapid pace, and now a new research sheds light on what may be the high-speed sequencing technology of the future: using carbon nanotubes for the diagnosis of each individual’s genetic makeup.

The new technique, as published in the current issue of Science is based on threading single-stranded ribbons of DNA through a carbon nanotube, producing voltage spikes that provide information about the passage of DNA bases as they pass through the tube. The single-stranded DNA is drawn into the opening of the nanotube and translocated from the anode side of the nanotube to the output cathode side, due to the negative charge carried by the DNA molecule.

The bright side is that this method can be used with thousands of carbon nanotubes at the same time, through which will pass millions of DNA segments, to give an accurate reading of the entire genome in less than an hour. This vision, however, is still very far from reaching home base. For one thing, carbon nanotubes are still quite costly to manufacture. For another, the entire process of threading the DNA through the nanotubes has still been demonstrated only in the lab and under carefully controlled conditions. Last but not least, even in the labs nobody has yet managed to utilize this method to actually sequence a DNA segment. In short, the future is still far, far away.

Source

The paper in Science

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