Digits Sprouting, BioElectronics bubble and other news…

I have been busy planning for BioBeer V next week, but I also wanted to post a few news-worthy articles I have read recently.

Major General Weightman

The first one actually came from Major General Weightman’s talk at the Ft Detrick Alliance Annual Meeting I attended at the Ceresville Mansion on Wednesday.  MG Weightman was the Keynote speaker and gave a very interesting talk on the different activities he commands.  The topic I found most interesting was the research going on in regenerative medicine.  Specifically, he talked about a Mandated project (I believe it was one of the congressionally mandated projects, but may be wrong) to develop technology to regenerate a human digit (finger or toe) in the next 5 years.  This is the stuff of scienc fiction, but it is within our grasp.  I will send you off to read on your own, from the sensationalized Fox News post (a nude mouse growing a human ear?),  from a

From Fox news. The Caption is "a Marines ear grows from a mouse". Fantastic.

recent article on the Army’s web site, growing fingers from “pixie dust, or a more factual article from The Tartan, Carnegie-Mellon’s student newspaper (much of the research is going on in Pittsburgh).

In another story I read in the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch section, NCI’s Nanotechnology Lab (NCL) is partnering with a Cincinnati company to develop nanotechnology directed against HPV:

PDS Biotechnology Corporation Progresses Development of Nanotechnology Cancer Therapies

Last update: 3:00 p.m. EST Nov. 6, 2008
CINCINNATI, Nov 06, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — PDS Biotechnology Corporation today announced that the company has been selected as a collaborator of the US National Cancer Institute’s Nanotechnology Characterization Lab (NCL) to complete preclinical development of Versamune(TM)-HPV prior to filing of the Investigational New Drug Application. The NCL will perform selected physical, chemical and biological studies on behalf of the company at its facilities at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Frederick, Maryland. Dr. Frank Bedu-Addo, President of the Corporation stated that, “PDS Biotechnology Corporation’s partnership with the NCL provides significant value to the company. The invaluable expertise of the NCL’s scientists will provide the company with additional expert resources and technologies, and will facilitate rapid development of the product.”
Versamune(TM)-HPV is an immunotherapy drug which has demonstrated significant promise in curing HPV infection and HPV-related cancer in preclinical animal and human model studies. Cancers caused by infection with the human papilloma virus (HPV) include cervical, head and neck and anal cancers. No cures exist for these cancers. Based on promising in vivo and in vitro efficacy data, PDS Biotechnology Corporation was awarded in August 2008, a phase I SBIR grant by the US National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute to develop Versamune(TM)-Melanoma to treat melanoma, which is the most aggressive form of skin cancer.

[ Side note, my SIL is moving from Hopkins to Ohio State.  She happens to be a major player in the HPV world, as indicated in this Press release.  Her husband and my BIL works for NCI-Frederick, so presume everyone will be moving back to the Buckeye State some time soon]

Photo by Sam Yu, Frederick News-Post

In today’s FNP there is yet another article about BioElectronics.  Now it appears that they have signed a nice contract to use their patch on animals.  I have ranted about the benefits and my personal experience using the patch before.  It is a fine product and frankly I am surprised it is taking this long to gain popularity.  the thing practically sell itself.

I also read an interesting article in the “free” print version of Genome Technology I got in the mail yesterday.  Unfortunately, it’s in the ProteoMonitor section of the print edition, which requires a paid subscription to access on-line.  If you have your paper copy, it is on page 51 in the November 2008 edition.  The title is “New Method for Cheap, Stable Protein Arrays” and it talks about developments coming out of NCI-Frederick from my former LTI colleagues in Deb Chattergee’s lab, James Hartley (no releation, although he was the insipration for BioBeers and the blog) and Kala Sitaraman.  You can read the whole,article on PLoS One, so I don’t really understand why GT doesn’t make it available for “free”.  From the PLoS One Abstract: “We describe a novel, simple and low-cost protein microarray strategy wherein the microarrays are generated by printing expression ready plasmid DNAs onto slides that can be converted into protein arrays on-demand. The printed expression plasmids serve dual purposes as they not only direct the synthesis of the protein of interest; they also serve to capture the newly synthesized proteins through a high affinity DNA-protein interaction.”

From the BioInfoBank web site, looks like Kala & Deb have another very interesting article coming out in Methods Mol Biol. 2009 ;498 :229-44 “High-throughput Protein Expressin using Cell-free System”

That abstract states

“One of the main challenges in this post genomic era is the development and implementation of efficient methods of protein synthesis. A clear understanding of the role of genes in an organism is to comprehend the biological functions of all of its proteins. Acquiring this knowledge will depend in part on the success of rapid synthesis and purification of proteins. The future of structural genomics and functional proteomics depends on the availability of abundantly expressing, soluble proteins in a high-throughput manner. Conventional cell based methods of protein expression is rather laborious, time consuming and the ways to fail are numerous including solubility, toxicity to the host and instability (e.g. proteolysis). Cell-free or in vitro protein synthesis, on the other hand allows the expression and analysis of protein synthesis, may solve many of these problems. It is a simple open system which lends itself for manipulations and modifications to influence protein folding, disulfide bond formation, incorporation of unnatural amino acids, protein stability (by incorporating protease inhibitors in the system) and even the expression of toxic proteins. Cell-free synthesis can also be used as a reliable screening methodology for subsequent protein expression in vivo. Furthermore, this technology is readily amenable to automation. Here, we present a protocol for expressing recombinant proteins with high yield in a standard 96-well plate format using E. coli cell-free extract in a batch mode.”

Invitrogen just never got the point of what they were giving up by letting people like this go when they shut down Maryland operations and LTI R&D.  Oh well…

And finally FredCoBio’s rant on the breaking news the president elect Obama may overturn the “Bush Stem Cell Legislation”.  I was interviewed by Ike Wilson of the FNP on the topic, but haven’t seen a story printed.  So for the record, these are the reasons Obama should rescind the Bush Stem Cell legislation:

1.  Although the Bush legislation only affects Embryonic stem cell research, it is having an impact on all stem cell research. Most current research & therapeutic applications involve Adult (not embryonic, cells from human embryos) stem cells. Frederick County has some of the largest suppliers of stem cells in the world (Lonza, International Stem Cells and Invitrogen) and one of the largest research institutions (NCI-Frederick), so this suppression of stem cell research hit really hard right here at home in FredCOBio land.

2.   The Bush legislation specifically restricts access to Embryonic Stem research (but only to research institutions using NIH funds) to a few cell lines that were established by the NIH in the 90’s. There are issues in the research community with the quality of these cell lines, as well as the small fraction of the population these limited cell lines represent. As you know, every person has different DNA, different genes and we are moving rapidly towards a “personalized” approach to medicine through genomics research. In order to understand how differences among individuals are a result in differences in the DNA (the genetic make-up or genotype) as this relates to disease potential and treatment for medical conditions, it will be necessary to look at large populations of cells. The more we are learning about Genomics, the more we’re convinced that genomics will give answers to many questions regarding human health and wellness.

3.  The legislation only restricts research labs who are using NIH funding to using stem cell lines “approved” by the NIH. So, that means there is no law against anyone making embryonic stem cells, as long as they are not using NIH money. This means research institutions like the NIH, John Hopkins, NCI are restricted in their ability to do research, but big Pharma companies (who don’t use NIH grants) are free to conduct ES research because they do not get any NIH funding. Therefore, research in the US is falling behind other countries (like SE Asia, India, Japan and most parts of Europe)and these countries will likely own most of the patent discoveries and make most of the money off products/therapeutics in the future.

4.  Embryonic stem cell research is important is the case of Cancer research. We think that cancer behaves in some ways like embryonic stem cells. A single cancer cell may generate a whole tumor mass containing many different types of cells (like its own blood vessels to feed its growth) in a manner similar to how an single-celled embryo changes into heart, lung, blood, skin, and brain cells in the first two weeks after fertilization.

Rant accomplished.  A penny for your thoughts?