StemCell Therapy

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ASC Therapeutics in partnership with the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) and the Clinic for Special Children (CSC), will present safety and efficacy results of a dual-function gene replacement vector therapy in murine and bovine models of classic Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD) as a podium presentation on Tuesday, May 17 (Room 201, 3:45 PM 4:00 PM ET, abstract number: 461) at the 25th Annual Meeting of The American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) held May 16-19, 2022 in Washington D.C.

The research group at UMMS, led by Guangping Gao, PhD, director of the Horae Gene Therapy Center at UMMS, and Dan Wang, PhD, assistant professor of RNA therapeutics, developed murine and bovine models for MSUD with collaborating clinical expert, Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, from the Clinic for Special Children.

Three animal models were generated to test safety and efficacy: two murine models representing two common genetic forms of MSUD and a newborn calf naturally homozygous for a mutation that causes MSUD. All animals exhibited severe biochemical abnormalities hours after birth and die within 10 days if left untreated.

The partnership designed a dual-function AAV9 gene replacement vector that was administered via intravenous (IV) injection. Surviving mice grew and behaved similar to normal littermates and had normal or nearly normal biochemical markers with unrestricted diet for 16 weeks.

As compared to MSUD patients, MSUD calves exhibit a similar phenotype and are closely matched for size and metabolic rate. Without treatment they exhibit cerebral edema by day of life 3 and die soon after. In October 2021, a MSUD calf was born and developed biochemical signs of MSUD shortly after birth. The calf was administered the AAV9 gene therapy vector at 40 hours of life. Following AAV therapy, biomarker measurements indicated a significant restoration of the missing enzymatic activity. At 70 days after treatment, the calf was transitioned to a normal unrestricted diet and continues to thrive 100 days post-infusion with stable biochemical markers.

These data provide early demonstration of the safety and efficacy of the MSUD AAV9 gene therapy replacement vector as a one-time treatment for the most common and severe forms of MSUD.

The MSUD gene therapy development leverages the combined AAV gene therapy expertise at UMass Chan Medical School, such as AAV vector design, rodent and large animal modeling, large-scale vector production, and in vivo pre-clinical testing, Drs. Gao and Wang commented.

Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, Medical Director at the Clinic for Special Children in Pennsylvania, a collaborating clinical expert, added, An innovative collaboration between the Clinic for Special Children and UMMS Horae Gene Therapy Center has allowed us to thoughtfully streamline the process of developing AAV gene replacement vectors. Within just three years of project inception, we have safely corrected an otherwise fatal MSUD phenotype in both mice and a newborn calf using a novel dual-function BCKDHA-BCKDHB vector, which has the potential to address 70-80% of reported MSUD cases in humans. The newborn calf with MSUD may represent the largest non-human experimental animal ever treated with AAV-mediated gene replacement. The calf provides unique insights that can directly inform the design of a clinical trial, which we hope to pursue through an alliance with ASC Therapeutics.

Dr Ruhong Jiang, CEO at ASC Therapeutics, said, The significant progress achieved through our research collaboration with Professors Gao, Wang and Strauss underlines the intrinsic value of bringing together teams from academia and industry that are highly specialized in complex gene therapies.

About Maple Syrup Urine Disease

Maple syrup urine disease (MSUD) is a rare genetic disorder affecting degradation of the branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) leucine, isoleucine, and valine and their ketoacid derivatives. MSUD is caused by biallelic mutations in one of three genes that encode subunits of the branched-chain ketoacid dehydrogenase complex (BCKDC), namely BCKDHA, BCKDHB, and DBT. Dietary BCAA restriction is the mainstay of treatment but has insufficient efficacy, and affords no protection against episodic and life-threatening encephalopathic crises. Severe (classic) MSUD is fatal without treatment. MSUD affects approximately 1 per 185,000 births worldwide.

About ASC Therapeutics

ASC Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company pioneering the development of gene replacement therapies, in-vivo gene editing and allogeneic cell therapies for hematological, metabolic, and other rare diseases. Led by a management team of industry veterans with significant global experience in gene and cell therapy, ASC Therapeutics is developing multiple therapeutic programs based on four technology platforms: 1) In-vivo gene therapy of inherited blood clotting disorders, initially focusing on ASC618, a second generation gene replacement treatment for hemophilia A; 2) In-vivo gene therapy in metabolic disorders, initially focusing on Maple Syrup Urine Disease; 3) In-vivo gene editing, initially focusing on ASC518 for hemophilia A; and 4) Allogeneic cell therapy, initially focusing on a Decidua Stromal Cell-based therapy for steroid-refractory acute Graft-versus-Host Disease. To learn more please visit https://www.asctherapeutics.com/.

About the Clinic for Special Children

The Clinic for Special Children (CSC) is a non-profit organization located in Strasburg, PA, which provides primary care and advanced laboratory services to those who live with genetic or other complex medical disorders. Founded in 1989, the organization provides services to over 1,200 individuals and is recognized as a world-leader in translational and precision medicine. The organization is primarily supported through community fundraising events and donations. For more information, please visit http://www.ClinicforSpecialChildren.org

About the University of Massachusetts Medical School

The University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), one of five campuses of the University system, is comprised of the School of Medicine, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, the Graduate School of Nursing, a thriving research enterprise and an innovative public service initiative, Commonwealth Medicine. Its mission is to advance the health of the people of the Commonwealth through pioneering education, research, public service and health care delivery with its clinical partner, UMass Memorial Health Care. In doing so, it has built a reputation as a world-class research institution and as a leader in primary care education. For more information, please visit https://umassmed.edu/

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ASC Therapeutics, U Mass Medical School, and the Clinic for Special Children Announce Podium Presentation of Safety and Efficacy in Murine and Bovine...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A new examination of the way different tissues read information from genes has discovered that the brain and testes appear to be extraordinarily open to the use of many different kinds of code to produce a given protein.

In fact, the testes of both fruit flies and humans seem to be enriched in protein products of these rarely-used pieces of genetic code. The researchers say the use of rare pieces of code may be another layer of control in the genome that could be essential to fertility and evolutionary innovation.

A decade after solving the structure of DNA as a double helix of the bases A,C, T and G, Francis Crick went on to decode the intermediate step by which three of these letters are translated into a codon, the recipe for a single amino acid, the building block of protein.

What was striking at the time and still somewhat puzzling is that this layer of lifes code used 61 different three-letter codons to produce just 20 amino acids, meaning many codons were being used to describe the same thing.

Were taught in our biology classes that when you change from one version of the codon to the other, and it doesn't change the amino acid, that's called a silent mutation. And that implies that it doesn't matter, said Don Fox, an associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology in the Duke School of Medicine.

Yet when researchers have sequenced all these different organisms, they found a hierarchy, Fox said. Some codons are really frequent and some are really rare. And that distribution of codons can vary from one kind of tissue in an organism to another.

Fox wondered if the rarities play a role in how, say, a liver cell does liver things and how a bone cell does bone things.

Fox and his team, headed by PhD student Scott Allen, wanted to zoom in on the rare codons, using their preferred model Drosophila melanogaster, the laboratory fruit fly. A growing body of work has shown that dissimilar tissues have varying codon bias that is, different frequencies of synonymous codons occurring in different tissues. Rare codons are known to slow down and even stop protein production and genes with a lot of these rare codons make a lot less protein, Fox said.

Fox was collaborating with colleague Christopher Counter, the George Barth Geller Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at Duke to understand a gene called KRAS, which is known to be a bad actor in pancreatic cancer especially, and which carries a lot of rare codons. Why, they wondered, would a cancer mutation have slowed down protein production, when normally a cancerous mutation makes more of something.

It turns out, the way KRAS is designed, it should be very hard to make any of it, Fox said.

Foxs team developed a new way of analyzing tissue-specific codon usage to look at where and how rare codons can be used in the fruit fly, which has perhaps the best-known genome in science. They ran a series of experiments to vary which codons were included in the KRAS gene and found that rare codons had a dramatic effect on how KRAS controls signaling between cells.

I realized from this cancer collaboration that we could take similar approaches and apply them to my primary research question, which is how tissues know what they are, Fox said.

In further experiments, they found that testes in flies -- and in humans -- are more tolerant of a high diversity of codons, but fly ovaries are not. The fly brain was also more tolerant of diverse codons. The work appeared May 6 in the open access journal eLife.

One particular gene with a high number of rare codons, RpL10Aa, is evolutionarily newer and helps to build the ribosome, the protein-assembly machinery in the cell. Fox said it appears that this genes rare codons serve to limit its activity to just the more tolerant testes, and that, in turn, may be something critical to fertility.

The way the testes seem to permit almost any gene being expressed, perhaps that makes it a breeding ground, if you will, for new genes, Fox said. The testes seems to be a place where younger genes tend to first be expressed. So we think it's sort of this more permissive tissue, and it lets new genes take hold.

What we think were seeing is that rare codons are a way to limit the activity of this evolutionarily young gene to the testes, Fox said. That would make rare codons yet another layer of control and fine-tuning in the genes.

The editors of eLife said the work breaks new ground in identifying codon usage as a basis for tissue-specific gene expression in animals.

This research was supported by the American Cancer Society, (RSG-128945) the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health (R01-CA94184, P01-CA203657, R35-GM140844, R01-HL111527)

CITATION: "Distinct Responses to Rare Codons in Select Drosophila Tissues," Scott R Allen, Rebeccah K Stewart, Michael Rogers, Ivan Jimenez Ruiz, Erez Cohen, Alain Laederach, Christopher M Counter, Jessica K Sawyer, Donald T Fox. eLife, May 6, 2022. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.76893 https://elifesciences.org/articles/76893

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Fly Researchers Find Another Layer to the Code of Life - Duke Today

NEW YORK A program at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center is educating Hispanic and Latina women in California about their genetic risk for breast cancer and the importance of genomic profiling for family members.

Through an effort called Tu Historia Cuenta, which translates to "your story matters," UC Davis has discussed breast cancer genetic risks with 1,000 Hispanic women and Latinas, according to Laura Fejerman, leader of the program and codirector of the cancer center's Women's Cancer Care and Research Program (WeCARE). Encouraged by the interest in the educational sessions offered by Tu Historia Cuenta, Fejerman and her colleagues now want to expand the program's reach and make it easier for women with a family history of breast cancer to get genetic counseling and testing.

For now, the program administers a survey to the women who attend the educational sessions and, based on their answers, identifies those who might benefit from genomic profiling. Session attendees are asked to fill out the survey by their community health educator, called promotores in Spanish. The surveys are scrubbed of identifying information and shared with the researchers, who flag the women who have a family history of cancer and should receive genomic testing.

The promotores then reach out to the high-risk women about getting tested for mutations in genes such as BRCA1/2 that confer a higher risk of breast, ovarian, and other cancers. The promotores continue to follow up with these high-risk women every three months.

In this way, the researchers and promotores have identified 62 high-risk women and recommended they undergo further screening, which is consistent with the rate of pathogenic variants seen among Hispanic and Latina breast cancer patients in the population, according to Fejerman, who also codirects the Latinos United for Cancer Health Advancement initiative at UC Davis. Research that Fejerman coauthored this year found that about 7 percent of Latinas with breast cancer harbor pathogenic variants in ATM, BARD1, BRCA1, BRCA2, CHEK2, PALB2, PTEN, RAD51C, and TP53.

Additionally, Fejerman and colleagues from the University of Texas, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, University of California, and University of Southern California published research this month that shed more light on the types of breast tumors Hispanic and Latina women tend to develop. They found, for example, that Hispanic and Latina women have higher rates of aggressive breast cancer like HER2-positive and triple-negative disease. Hispanic women with Indigenous American ancestry in particular are more likely to have HER2-positive tumors, their research showed. However, compared to their white and Black counterparts, Hispanic and Latina women are at lower risk of developing breast cancer overall.

Tu Historia Cuenta design

Fejerman and her colleagues started planning the Tu Historia Cuenta program in 2020. They developed two sets of educational materials, in partnership with nonprofit The Latino Cancer Institute: one set for training promotores on hereditary breast cancer risk and another set that is the basis of hour-long education sessions that the promotores host with Latina and Hispanic women at community-based education sessions.

To be part of the program, promotores do not need formal health education training, but they must attend the eight-hour workshop the researchers have developed about breast cancer, genetic risk, and genetic counseling. After completing the workshop, promotores go out into the community to conduct hour-long sessions about hereditary breast cancer risk and genetic screening.

According to Fejerman, the promotores' training and community education sessions have largely taken place online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The educational sessions include an eight-minute video showing the journey of a fictional patient who goes to her doctor after finding a lump in her breast and undergoes medical exams and genomic profiling to discover she carries a BRCA1 mutation. The session attendees also hear a presentation about breast cancer and receive a brochure that explains breast cancer and hereditary cancer risks and provides resources for additional information. The information is presented in plain language for an audience with low health literacy, and all sessions and materials are in Spanish.

After the session, the attendees receive a questionnaire to complete that asks about their sociodemographic status; general cancer screening history, such as a mammogram or cervical cancer screening; prior exposure to genetic testing, like prenatal screening or previous cancer risk assessment; and their family history of breast cancer.

"The rationale for the program was that Hispanic Latinas are doing genetic testing at lower rates than non-Hispanic white women. They're about four times less likely to get genetic testing," Fejerman said. "We felt like this was a group where there is a lack of information and lack of understanding of what it means to carry a mutation that increases your risk."

After the first three classes, Fejerman and her colleagues published a study detailing the participants' demographics, insurance status, family history of cancer, and knowledge of cancer and genetics. Of 33 session attendees, 30 percent had no insurance and only 12 percent said they were fluent in English, highlighting some key barriers to healthcare access in this community.

In this study, 15 percent said they had a family history of ovarian cancer and 21 percent said they had at least three members on the same side of the family with breast, prostate, or pancreatic cancer.

The researchers also administered a knowledge assessment questionnaire before the educational sessions, which the attendees filled out. Based on their answers, 47 percent of participants (7 participants) were not able to correctly answer a multiple-choice question to define what a gene is, and 27 percent (4 participants) answered incorrectly, or didn't know, whether genetic tests could be performed with either a blood or saliva test. The participants took the same test after the session and the number of incorrect or don't know answers dropped to 7 percent (1 participant) for the same questions about genes and genetic testing.

While the program has reached more than 1,000 Hispanic and Latina women to date, there are still barriers to receiving genetic counseling after the education program. The promotores follow up regularly with session participants who said in the survey that they have a family history of cancer, but beyond that the onus is on the patient to reach out to their doctor or find a clinic and set up an appointment.

"The promotores call regularly to check in [with the high-risk women], but most of them are now asking for help to access services," Fejerman said. "We thought many of them would have some sort of clinic where they can go and talk to a doctor about their strong family history of cancer, based on what they learned from participating in the program, but that hasn't happened for most of them. That follow through is hard. Now, I'm writing grants now to include genetic counseling and testing as part of the program."

Barriers remain

The next iteration of the Tu Historia Cuenta may make it even easier for high-risk Hispanic and Latina women to access genetic counseling to assess their family risk for breast cancer. The program is currently funded through the University of California, San Francisco Mount Zion Funds and the California Breast Cancer Research Program, but Fejerman hopes to secure more funding this year to continue the education effort and potentially expand the program.

She is exploring grants that could potentially support the integration of a clinical trial within the program, through which eligible women could get genetic testing, and reaching out to nonprofits that provide support for cancer screening in underserved populations. Fejerman is also looking for support among her colleagues at the UC Davis Womens Cancer Care and Research Program in expanding the program.

Lack of insurance coverage is a major barrier to healthcare access in the Hispanic community. Many have no insurance or rely on Medicaid, which may not cover genetic testing. The language barrier presents challenges, as well. While many clinics have some Spanish speakers, Fejerman noted that there are far fewer genetic counselors who are bilingual and speak Spanish.

"There were people in the classes who already knew they had mutations, but they still felt like they needed a class to understand," Fejerman said. "They saw the opportunity to take the class in Spanish, and they took it. That means this person had gone through breast cancer or had gone through testing and still didn't feel like they understood it."

This population may also not know their family's history with cancer because they came to the US from other countries, where close relatives still reside. In the study conducted on participants of the first three educational sessions, none of the surveyed individuals were born in the US, and these women had lived in the US for an average of 17 years.

That presents several challenges, Fejerman said. Families may lose touch after many years apart in different countries, and someone may not know if their grandmothers or aunts also had breast cancer. The distance also affects the utility of cascade testing. If a Latina in the US is found to carry a BRCA1/2 mutation, she may be able to get more regular screening, but a family member in Mexico may not have the same access, Fejerman said.

"If you're an immigrant, sometimes you lose contact with family or you may only have a phone call every once in a while," Fejerman explained. "You probably don't want to use that short time to ask family members about cancer."

Fejerman noted that programs to educate Hispanic and Latina women work best when paired with other efforts to improve access, like assistance navigating the healthcare system and more robust efforts to include Hispanic and Latino patients in clinical research.

"When precision medicine became more common, that's when we started thinking that Latinos were going to be left behind in the conversations about precision medicine because of the lack of awareness and knowledge on genetics," Fejerman said. "They wouldn't be able to make informed decisions about cancer care because they were already behind on regular prevention information like mammograms or colonoscopies, and then we added the complexity of genetics and genomics."

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UC Davis Looks to Expand Genetic Breast Cancer Risk Education, Outreach for Hispanic Women - Precision Oncology News

BEIJING & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CANbridge Pharmaceuticals Inc. (HKEX:1228), a leading China-based global biopharmaceutical company committed to the research, development and commercialization of transformative rare disease and rare oncology therapies, announced the presentation of the initial data from its gene therapy research agreement with the Horae Gene Therapy Center, at the UMass Chan Medical School, at the ASGCT 25th Annual Meeting, in Washington DC, today.

In work led by Jun Xie Ph.D., in the lab of Guangping Gao, Ph.D., researchers concluded that a novel second-generation scAAV9 gene therapy, expressing co-hSMN1 from an endogenous hSMN1 promoter, demonstrated superior potency, efficacy and safety in mice with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), compared to the benchmark vector, scAAV9-CMVen/CB-hSMN1, which is similar to the vector used in the gene therapy approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of SMA.

The novel second-generation gene therapy showed superior efficacy to the benchmark vector in SMA mice along several endpoints, including extended lifespan, restored muscle function and better neuromuscular junction innervation, without the liver toxicity shown in the benchmark-treated animals. Specifically, the second-generation gene therapy significantly extended the lifespan of SMA mice in a dose-dependent manner, with all doses showing improved survival, compared to both the benchmark gene therapy vector high dose and to untreated SMA mice. The second-generation gene therapy also restored muscle function in SMA mice significantly better than the benchmark vector. This was observed in both the righting test, in which second-generation gene therapy-treated SMA mice were able to right themselves faster than the benchmark vector-treated mice, and in the grid test, in which they demonstrated better muscle function. In addition, the second-generation vector restored the innervation of the neuromuscular junctions in SMA mice to close to that of wild-type mice, and significantly better than in SMA mice treated with the benchmark vector.

Finally, SMA mice treated with the second-generation gene therapy showed higher SMN1 expression in the central nervous system and lower peripheral tissue than the benchmark vector-treated mice, in a pattern that was similar to that of healthy carrier mice. Furthermore, the benchmark vector produced liver damage in four out of seven SMA mice, eight days post-injection, compared to no liver toxicity in mice treated with the second-generation gene therapy vector, or in healthy carrier mice, suggesting that the second-generation gene therapy has the potential to reduce liver toxicity and overcome current therapeutic limitations.

This is the first data to be presented from the gene therapy research collaboration between CANbridge and the Gao Lab at the Horae Gene Therapy Center.

What differentiates our novel second-generation gene therapy vector from the benchmark vector is the genetic engineering of a codon-optimized SMN1 transgene under the control of the endogenous SMN1 promoter, which enables highly efficient and regulated gene expression across tissues, with the potential to improve both efficacy and safety, while at a lower dose than is currently used in patients, said Yunxiang Zhu, Ph.D., Vice President, Head of Global Research, CANbridge Pharmaceuticals, and a study author. These data encourage us to support the continued development of this second-generation vector as a potential best-in-class gene therapy for SMA.

We are seeking to develop a next-generation gene therapy for SMA that leverages the advances in gene therapy that have occurred since the first gene therapy was developed, over a decade ago, said Guangping Gao, Ph.D., Co-Director, Li Weibo Institute for Rare Diseases Research, Director, the Horae Gene Therapy Center and Viral Vector Core, Professor of Microbiology and Physiological Systems and Penelope Booth Rockwell Professor in Biomedical Research at UMass Chan Medical School, and a lead study author. Dr. Gao is also a former ASCGT president.

Presentation Details:

Title: Endogenous Human SMN1 Promoter-driven Gene Replacement Improves the Efficacy and Safety of AAV9-mediated Gene Therapy for Spinal Muscular Atrophy in Mice

Poster #: M-144

Category: Neurologic Diseases: AAV Vectors- Preclinical and Proof-of-Concept Studies

Category: Neurologic Diseases I

Session Date and Time: Monday, May 16, 5:30-6:30 PM EDT

Authors: Qing Xie, Hong Ma, Xiupeng Chen, Yunxiang Zhu, Yijie Ma, Leila Jalinous, Qin Su, Phillip Tai, Guangping Gao, Jun Xie

Abstracts are available on the ASGCT website: https://annualmeeting.asgct.org/abstracts

About the Horae Gene Therapy Center at UMass Chan Medical School

The faculty of the Horae Gene Therapy Center is dedicated to developing therapeutic approaches for rare inherited disease for which there is no cure. We utilize state of the art technologies to either genetically modulate mutated genes that produce disease-causing proteins or introduce a healthy copy of a gene if the mutation results in a non-functional protein.

The Horae Gene Therapy Center faculty is interdisciplinary, including members from the departments of Pediatrics, Microbiology & Physiological Systems, Biochemistry & Molecular Pharmacology, Neurology, Medicine and Ophthalmology. Physicians and PhDs work together to address the medical needs of rare diseases, such as Alpha 1-Antitrypsin Deficiency, Canavan Disease, Tay-Sachs and Sandhoff diseases, Retinitis Pigmentosa, Cystic fibrosis, Lou Gehrig's disease, TNNT1 nemaline myopathy, Rett syndrome, N-Gly 1 deficiency, Pitt-Hopkins syndrome, Marple Syrup Urine Disease, Sialidosis, GM3 synthase deficiency, Huntington's disease, ALS and others. More common diseases such as cardiac arrhythmia and hypercholesterolemia are also investigated. The hope is to treat a wide spectrum of diseases by various gene therapeutic approaches. Additionally, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School conducts clinical trials on site and some of these trials are conducted by the investigators at the Gene Therapy center.

About CANbridge Pharmaceuticals Inc.

CANbridge Pharmaceuticals Inc. (HKEX:1228) is a China-based global biopharmaceutical company committed to the research, development and commercialization of transformative therapies for rare disease and rare oncology. CANbridge has a differentiated drug portfolio, with three approved drugs and a pipeline of 11 assets, targeting prevalent rare disease and rare oncology indications that have unmet needs and significant market potential. These include Hunter syndrome and other lysosomal storage disorders, complement-mediated disorders, hemophilia A, metabolic disorders, rare cholestatic liver diseases and neuromuscular diseases, as well as glioblastoma multiforme. CANbridge is also building next-generation gene therapy development capability through a combination of collaboration with world-leading researchers and biotech companies and internal capacity. CANbridge global partners include: Apogenix, GC Pharma, Mirum, Wuxi Biologics, Privus, the UMass Chan Medical School and LogicBio.

For more on CANbridge Pharmaceuticals Inc., please go to: http://www.canbridgepharma.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

The forward-looking statements made in this article relate only to the events or information as of the date on which the statements are made in this article. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the data on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. You should read this article completely and with the understanding that our actual future results or performance may be materially different from what we expect. In this article, statements of, or references to, our intentions or those of any of our Directors or our Company are made as of the date of this article. Any of these intentions may alter in light of future development.

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CANbridge-UMass Chan Medical School Gene Therapy Research Presented at the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) Annual Meeting - Business...

Despite what many of us might like to believe, COVID-19 has not gone away. South Africa recently identified two new subvariants of Omicron designated BA.4 and BA.5. These subvariants have now spread to several other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States. Should we be concerned about them? Medical News Today assessed the evidence and spoke to experts in the U.S. and the U.K. to find out.

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omicron the list of SARS-CoV-2 variants continues to expand. And no sooner have we got used to one variant than another appears.

Latest on the list are the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which were identified recently in South Africa, one of the few countries that are still sequencing large numbers of COVID-19 tests.

South Africa has seen a rapid increase in positive tests for COVID-19, and authorities believe that BA.4 and BA.5 are responsible. The National Institute of Clinical Diseases in South Africa reports that BA.4 and BA.5 are Omicron viruses with a new combination of mutations.

Scientists in this country first detected BA.4 on January 10, 2022, and it has since spread throughout South Africa, now making up 35% of positive tests. BA.5 was identified on February 25, and now accounts for 20% of cases in several South African regions.

Both subvariants are similar to Omicron BA.2, which is currently dominant in the U.K., continental Europe, and the U.S.

BA.4 and BA.5 have identical mutations on their spike protein the part of the virus that attaches to receptors on human cells that differentiate them from BA.2. Each subvariant has its own different mutations in other areas of the virus.

We have learned that the [COVID-19-causing variants] are more mutable than we initially thought. Periodically we get major new variants thats a big shift. But we also get little, what we call drift variants. You can think of them as members of the same family [] theyre like cousins.

Prof. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN

So far, BA.4 and BA.5 have been identified in several countries in addition to South Africa. According to a report from the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA), with data up to April 22, BA.4 was present in Austria, the U.K., the U.S., Denmark, Belgium, Israel, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, and Botswana.

On the same date, health authorities had identified BA.5 in Portugal, Germany, the U.K., the U.S., Denmark, France, Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Israel, Norway, Pakistan, Spain, and Switzerland.

Few countries are sequencing large numbers of positive tests, despite the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) stating on May 4 that testing and sequencing remain absolutely critical.

In many countries were essentially blind to how the virus is mutating. We dont know whats coming next.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General

He is not alone in his concern about the lack of sequencing. Prof. Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London (UCL) and director of the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit, told Medical News Today that [w]e are opening ourselves up to a serious new wave particularly in winter that we would not be able to spot in time.

Although the numbers recorded for both variants are currently low, the actual case numbers are likely to be much higher. Without sequencing of positive tests, the variants that cause COVID-19 cannot be identified.

On May 12, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reclassified BA.4 and BA.5 as variants of concern. This followed a sharp rise in cases in Portugal, where the Portuguese National Institute of Health estimated on May 8 that BA.5 was responsible for around 37% of all positive cases.

The ECDC reports that although there is no evidence yet of increased severity over previous variants, BA.4 and BA.5 do appear to be more transmissible.

The Omicrons are an extraordinarily contagious family. There are some data that say these subvariants are even more contagious. [] Do they have the capacity to produce more severe disease? At the moment, if anything, Omicron seems to be on the milder side.

Prof. William Schaffner

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have also designated BA.4 and BA.5 as variants of concern.

The U.K. has not yet followed suit. However, the UKHSA published a risk assessment of the two subvariants comparing them with Omicron BA.2. This suggests that the new subvariants may be better at evading the immune system than BA.2, but that the data is insufficient to draw firm conclusions.

In South Africa, which has identified the greatest number of cases, symptoms and severity seem similar to those of disease caused by Omicron BA.2. So far, the number of hospitalizations there has increased only slightly.

Some good news from GAVI the vaccine alliance is that although antibodies from previous Omicron infection do not seem to afford much protection against the new variants, antibodies from vaccination appear to be much more effective.

Prof. Schaffner agreed that vaccines should protect against severe disease from the new variants: These are slightly different mutations of the spike protein are they so different that they cannot be responsive to our vaccines? The answer is no.

However, he is concerned that vaccine fatigue may be having an effect:

Of course, vaccines dont prevent disease vaccination prevents disease. And the issue, at least in [the U.S.], is can we persuade people to come forward yet again to be vaccinated? There is clearly vaccine fatigue out there.

He added that [t]he more people we can vaccinate around the world [the more we can] reduce the chance of these rogue variants popping up.

Prof. Jonathan Stoye, FRS, principal group leader, and international affairs ambassador at the Francis Crick Institute in London, U.K., agreed: It does not seem unreasonable to ask whether a greater emphasis should not be placed on attempting to provide and deliver a vaccine which can be administered to all the worlds unprotected people, particularly those in lower and middle-income countries.

It is likely that BA.4 and BA.5 will spread further, and that they will not be the last new variants.

Prof. Pagel expressed concern that lack of testing and sequencing may mean that variants are not detected early: [I]n England, for instance, we are only really doing PCR tests on hospital admissions [] [and] because admissions are skewed towards older populations, it will take longer for variants to show up if they spread first among children and young people as has been typical so far.

These concerns were echoed by Prof. Schaffner, who said that [w]e require a coordinated international surveillance system, and critical to that is the sequencing of viruses. Number one: To detect these minor subvariants. Its always better to know than not [to] know.

And then, of course, the sequencing is utterly important to pick up that rare event when we would get another rogue strain that could evade the protection of our vaccines, he added.

It is likely that COVID-19, in whatever form, will be with us for some years to come the key question is, can we keep it under control as we try to get life back to normal?

As weve moved from pandemic phase to endemic, how will we cope? Are we going to come to some sort of fraught truce with this virus? We havent figured out how to do that yet.

Prof. William Schaffner

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Omicron BA.4 and BA.5: What to know about the new variants - Medical News Today

PITTSBURGH, May 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Krystal Biotech, Inc. (the Company) (NASDAQ: KRYS), the leader in redosable gene therapy, is pleased to present new data entitled GEM-3: phase 3 safety and immunogenicity results of beremagene geperpavec (B-VEC), an investigational, topical gene therapy for dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (DEB) at the Society for Investigative Dermatology 2022 Annual Meeting, taking place May 18-21 in Portland, Oregon.

Krystal Presentation

GEM-3: phase 3 safety and immunogenicity results of beremagene geperpavec (B-VEC), an investigational, topical gene therapy for dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (DEB)M. Peter Marinkovich, MD, FAADPoster Session 1Date & Time: Thursday, May 19, 4:30-6:30pm PDT

ePoster Presentation: Session 2, Genetic Disease, Gene Regulation, and Gene TherapyDate & Time: Friday, May 20, 5:54-6:00pm PDT

The poster and ePoster will be available to conference attendees. To register for the conference, please visit SID 2022 Annual Meeting | Society for Investigative Dermatology. The Company will be present at Booth 218 to educate about DEB and the mechanism of the disease. Following the presentation, materials will be available to view online on the Investor section of the Companys website.

About Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (DEB)DEB is a rare and severe disease that affects the skin and mucosal tissues. It is caused by one or more mutations in a gene calledCOL7A1, which is responsible for the production of the protein type VII collagen (COL7) that forms anchoring fibrils that bind the dermis (inner layer of the skin) to the epidermis (outer layer of the skin). The lack of functional anchoring fibrils in DEB patients leads to extremely fragile skin that blisters and tears from minor friction or trauma. DEB patients suffer from open wounds, which leads to skin infections, fibrosis which can cause fusion of fingers and toes, and ultimately an increased risk of developing an aggressive form of squamous cell carcinoma which, in severe cases, can be fatal.

About B-VECB-VECis an investigational non-invasive, topical, redosable gene therapy designed to deliver two copies of theCOL7A1gene when applied directly to DEB wounds. B-VEC was designed to treat DEB at the molecular level by providing the patients skin cells the template to make normal COL7 protein, thereby addressing the fundamental disease-causing mechanism.

TheU.S. Food and Drug Administration(FDA) and theEuropean Medicines Agency(EMA) have each granted B-VEC an orphan drug designation for the treatment of DEB. The FDA has also granted B-VECfast track designation and rare pediatric designation for the treatment of DEB. In addition, in 2019, the FDA granted Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) to B-VEC for the treatment of DEB and the EMA granted PRIority MEdicines ("PRIME") eligibility for B-VECto treat DEB.

About Krystal Biotech, Inc.Krystal Biotech, Inc. (NASDAQ: KRYS) is a pivotal-stage gene therapy company leveraging its proprietary, redosable gene therapy platform and in-house manufacturing capabilities to develop life-changing medicines for patients with serious diseases, including rare diseases in skin, lung, and other areas. For more information please visit http://www.krystalbio.com, and follow @KrystalBiotech on LinkedIn and Twitter.

CONTACTS:Investors and Media:Meg DodgeKrystal Biotechmdodge@krystalbio.com

Source: Krystal Biotech, Inc.

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Krystal Biotech to Present Additional Data on B-VEC from the GEM-3 Phase 3 Study at the Society for Investigative Dermatology Annual Meeting -...

Mounjaro delivered superior A1C reductions versus all comparators in phase 3 SURPASS clinical trials

While not indicated for weight loss, Mounjaro led to significantly greater weight reductions versus comparators in a key secondary endpoint

Mounjaro represents the first new class of diabetes medicines introduced in nearly a decade and is expected to be available in the U.S. in the coming weeks

INDIANAPOLIS, May 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Mounjaro (tirzepatide) injection, Eli Lilly and Company's (NYSE: LLY) new once-weekly GIP (glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide) and GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) receptor agonist indicated as an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes. Mounjaro has not been studied in patients with a history of pancreatitis and is not indicated for use in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus.

As the first and only FDA-approved GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist, Mounjaro is a single molecule that activates the body's receptors for GIP and GLP-1, which are natural incretin hormones.1

"Mounjaro delivered superior and consistent A1C reductions against all of the comparators throughout the SURPASS program, which was designed to assess Mounjaro's efficacy and safety in a broad range of adults with type 2 diabetes who could be treated in clinical practice. The approval of Mounjaro is an exciting step forward for people living with type 2 diabetes given the results seen in these clinical trials," said Juan Pablo Fras, M.D., Medical Director, National Research Institute and Investigator in the SURPASS program.

Mounjaro will be available in six doses (2.5 mg, 5 mg, 7.5 mg, 10 mg, 12.5 mg, 15 mg) and will come in Lilly's well-established auto-injector pen with a pre-attached, hidden needle that patients do not need to handle or see.

The approval was based on results from the phase 3 SURPASS program, which included active comparators of injectable semaglutide 1 mg, insulin glargine and insulin degludec. Efficacy was evaluated for Mounjaro5 mg, 10 mg and 15 mg used alone or in combination with commonly prescribed diabetes medications, including metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, sulfonylureas and insulin glargine. Participants in the SURPASS program achieved average A1C reductions between 1.8% and 2.1% for Mounjaro 5 mg and between 1.7% and 2.4% for both Mounjaro 10 mg and Mounjaro 15 mg. While not indicated for weight loss, mean change in body weight was a key secondary endpoint in all SURPASS studies. Participants treated with Mounjaro lost between 12 lb. (5 mg) and 25 lb. (15 mg) on average.1

Side effects reported in at least 5% of patients treated with Mounjaro include nausea, diarrhea, decreased appetite, vomiting, constipation, indigestion (dyspepsia), and stomach (abdominal) pain. The labeling for Mounjaro contains a Boxed Warning regarding thyroid C-cell tumors. Mounjaro is contraindicated in patients with a personal or family history of medullary thyroid carcinoma or in patients with Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia syndrome type 2.1

"Lilly has a nearly 100-year heritage of advancing care for people living with diabetes never settling for current outcomes. We're not satisfied knowing that half of the more than 30 million Americans living with type 2 diabetes are not reaching their target blood glucose levels," said Mike Mason, president, Lilly Diabetes. "We are thrilled to introduce Mounjaro, which represents the first new class of type 2 diabetes medication introduced in almost a decade and embodies our mission to bring innovative new therapies to the diabetes community."

Mounjaro is expected to be available in the United States in the coming weeks. Lilly is committed to helping people access the medicines they are prescribed and will work with insurers, health systems and providers to help enable patient access to Mounjaro. Lilly plans to offer a Mounjaro savings card for people who qualify. Patients or healthcare professionals with questions about Mounjaro can visit http://www.Mounjaro.com or call The Lilly Answers Center at 1-800-LillyRx (1-800-545-5979).

Tirzepatide is also under regulatory review for the treatment of type 2 diabetes in Europe, Japan and several additional markets. A multimedia gallery is available on Lilly.com.

About the SURPASS clinical trial programThe SURPASS phase 3 global clinical development program for tirzepatide began in late 2018 and included five global registration trials and two regional trials in Japan. These studies ranged from 40 to 52 weeks and evaluated the efficacy and safety of Mounjaro 5 mg, 10 mg and 15 mg as a monotherapy and as an add-on to various standard-of-care medications for type 2 diabetes. The active comparators in the studies were injectable semaglutide 1 mg, insulin glargine and insulin degludec. Collectively, the five global registration trials consistently demonstrated A1C reductions for participants taking Mounjaro across multiple stages of their type 2 diabetes journeys, from an average around five to 13 years of having diabetes.2-8

*p<0.001 for superiority vs. placebo or active comparator, adjusted for multiplicityp<0.05 for superiority vs. semaglutide 1 mg, adjusted for multiplicity

About Mounjaro (tirzepatide) injection1Mounjaro (tirzepatide) injection is FDA-approved as an adjunct to diet and exercise to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus. As the first and only FDA-approved GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist, Mounjaro is a single molecule that activates the body's receptors for GIP (glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide) and GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1). Mounjaro will be available in six doses (2.5 mg, 5 mg, 7.5 mg, 10 mg, 12.5 mg, 15 mg) and will come in Lilly's well-established auto-injector pen with a pre-attached, hidden needle that patients do not need to handle or see.

PURPOSE AND SAFETY SUMMARY WITH WARNINGSImportant Facts About MounjaroTM (mown-JAHR-OH). It is also known as tirzepatide.

WarningsMounjaro may cause tumors in the thyroid, including thyroid cancer. Watch for possible symptoms, such as a lump or swelling in the neck, hoarseness, trouble swallowing, or shortness of breath. If you have a symptom, tell your healthcare provider.

Mounjaro may cause serious side effects, including:

Inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis). Stop using Mounjaro and call your healthcare provider right away if you have severe pain in your stomach area (abdomen) that will not go away, with or without vomiting. You may feel the pain from your abdomen to your back.

Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). Your risk for getting low blood sugar may be higher if you use Mounjaro with another medicine that can cause low blood sugar, such as a sulfonylurea or insulin. Signs and symptoms of low blood sugar may include dizziness or light-headedness, sweating, confusion or drowsiness, headache, blurred vision, slurred speech, shakiness, fast heartbeat, anxiety, irritability, or mood changes, hunger, weakness and feeling jittery.

Serious allergic reactions. Stop using Mounjaro and get medical help right away if you have any symptoms of a serious allergic reaction, including swelling of your face, lips, tongue or throat, problems breathing or swallowing, severe rash or itching, fainting or feeling dizzy, and very rapid heartbeat.

Kidney problems (kidney failure). In people who have kidney problems, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting may cause a loss of fluids (dehydration), which may cause kidney problems to get worse. It is important for you to drink fluids to help reduce your chance of dehydration.

Severe stomach problems. Stomach problems, sometimes severe, have been reported in people who use Mounjaro. Tell your healthcare provider if you have stomach problems that are severe or will not go away.

Changes in vision. Tell your healthcare provider if you have changes in vision during treatment with Mounjaro.

Gallbladder problems. Gallbladder problems have happened in some people who use Mounjaro. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get symptoms of gallbladder problems, which may include pain in your upper stomach (abdomen), fever, yellowing of skin or eyes (jaundice), and clay-colored stools.

Common side effectsThe most common side effects of Mounjaro include nausea, diarrhea, decreased appetite, vomiting, constipation, indigestion, and stomach (abdominal) pain. These are not all the possible side effects of Mounjaro. Talk to your healthcare provider about any side effect that bothers you or doesn't go away.

Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects. You can report side effects at 1-800-FDA-1088 or http://www.fda.gov/medwatch.

Before using

Review these questions with your healthcare provider:

How to take

Learn moreFor more information, call 1-800-LillyRx (1-800-545-5979) or go towww.mounjaro.com.

This information does not take the place of talking with your healthcare provider. Be sure to talk to your healthcare provider about Mounjaro and how to take it. Your healthcare provider is the best person to help you decide if Mounjaro is right for you.

MounjaroTM and its delivery device base are trademarks owned or licensed by Eli Lilly and Company, its subsidiaries, or affiliates.

Please click to access full Prescribing Informationand Medication Guide.

TR CON CBS MAY2022

About LillyLilly unites caring with discovery to create medicines that make life better for people around the world. We've been pioneering life-changing discoveries for nearly 150 years, and today our medicines help more than 47million people across the globe. Harnessing the power of biotechnology, chemistry and genetic medicine, our scientists are urgently advancing new discoveries to solve some of the world's most significant health challenges, redefining diabetes care, treating obesity and curtailing its most devastating long-term effects, advancing the fight against Alzheimer's disease, providing solutions to some of the most debilitating immune system disorders, and transforming the most difficult-to-treat cancers into manageable diseases. With each step toward a healthier world, we're motivated by one thing: making life better for millions more people. That includes delivering innovative clinical trials that reflect the diversity of our world and working to ensure our medicines are accessible and affordable. To learn more, visitLilly.comandLilly.com/newsroomor follow us onFacebook,Instagram, Twitterand LinkedIn. P-LLY

Lilly Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements (as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) about Mounjaro (tirzepatide 2.5 mg, 5 mg, 7.5 mg, 10 mg, 12.5 mg and 15 mg) injection as a treatment to improve glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes, the timeline for supply of Mounjaro to become available, and certain other milestones and ongoing clinical trials of Mounjaro and reflects Lilly's current beliefs and expectations. However, as with any pharmaceutical product or medical device, there are substantial risks and uncertainties in the process of research, development and commercialization. Among other things, there can be no guarantee thatMounjarowill be commercially successful,that future study results will be consistent with results to date, or that we will meet our anticipated timelines for the commercialization of Mounjaro. For further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see Lilly's most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Lilly undertakes no duty to update forward-looking statements to reflect events after the date of this release.

References

PP-TR-US-0125 05/2022 Lilly USA, LLC 2022. All rights reserved.

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SOURCE Eli Lilly and Company

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FDA approves Lilly's Mounjaro (tirzepatide) injection, the first and only GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist for the treatment of adults with type 2...

Sitting atop each kidney and measuring only around two centimeters long, the adrenal glands are tiny but mighty. These glands produce steroid hormones, including those involved in stress response, blood pressure maintenance, and fertility. When their development goes awry, it can cause a life-threatening condition called primary adrenal insufficiency, also known as Addisons disease. Many of the genetics involved in this and other adrenal gland disorders remain unknown.

Research on adrenal glands has often relied on insights made using mouse models. Now, a new study led by the School of Veterinary Medicines Kotaro Sasaki, which examined the developmental origin of the glands in humans and nonhuman primates, finds key developmental differences. This new understanding may inform diagnostics and treatment for Addisons disease and other endocrine system disorders.

The work was published in the journal Science Advances.

While some genetic causes of primary adrenal insufficiency have been identified, the mechanism has remained poorly understood, says Sasaki. Our findings help in identifying genes involved in adrenal development and could lead to new targets for therapeutic intervention.

Sasakis investigations have centered around studied gonadal development, how cells become ovaries or testes, organs that, like the adrenal gland, release hormones. Given this background, the adrenal gland was a natural next focus, especially because it has a shared origin with the gonads. In their recent work, Sasaki and colleagues looked at some of the earliest developmental stages to see how precursor cells and tissues evolve to give rise to the adrenal gland.

Scientists have long known that both the gonads and adrenal gland develop from a tissue known as the coelomic epithelium (CE), which is present at an early stage of embryonic development. In mice, for example, this tissue develops into the adrenogonadal primordium, which later divides to form both the adrenal primordium and the gonadal progenitor. The adrenal primodium goes on to become the adrenal gland, and the gonadal progenitor develops into either ovaries or testes.

Using immunofluorescence and in situ hybridization analyses, in which markers enable scientists to track cells descendants, Sasaki and his team found that primate CE expressed different genes than mouse CE. Whereas mice expressed the WT1, GATA4, and NR5A1 genes within the adrenogonadal primordium, primates did not express GATA4 in a parallel stage of development, a surprise to the researchers.

Whats more, while one portion of the primate CE led to the gonadal precursor, the other developed into the adrenal gland precursors, a division that wasnt present in mice.

It takes place in a way thats totally different from the mouse, says Sasaki. It appears that the portion of the coelomic epithelium that gives rise to the gonads is spatially separated from the part that gives rise to the adrenal gland.

Single-cell sequencing further revealed different patterns of gene expression between the adrenal and gonadal cell lineages, as well as a clear divergence between humans and mice. Some of these differentially expressed genes, Sasaki notes, are likely important in the process of deriving adrenal or gonadal tissues from CE.

Certain genes, Sasaki says, could also be examined in the context of adrenal insufficiency.

Currently, people with Addisons disease are treated with a lifelong steroid replacement therapy, using synthetic hormones to substitute for those that their bodies cant make on their own. Its not a cure and comes with serious side effects, Sasaki says.

In future work, he and colleagues hope to lay the groundwork in the lab to generate the adrenal cortex, employing inducible pluripotent stem cells, cells derived from blood or skin that can be induced to become a variety of different cell types. With such an approach, they could coax the stem cells to follow the normal developmental pathway toward becoming adrenal tissue. While in its early stages, this could enable a cell-based therapy for primary adrenal insufficiency, ideally avoiding some of the drawbacks of hormone replacement therapy.

Were pursuing in vitro studies to continue mapping out a blueprint that could be applicable to humans, Sasaki says.

Kotaro Sasaki is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

Sasakis coauthors were Penn Vets Keren Cheng, Yasunari Seita, Taku Moriwaki, Yuka Sakata, and Young Sun Hwang; Kiwamu Noshiro, Hidemichi Watari, and Takeshi Umazume of Hokkaido University; Toshihiko Torigoe of Sapporo Medical University; Mitinori Saitou of Kyoto University; Hideaki Tsuchiya and Chizuru Iwatani of Shiga University of Medical Science; Masayoshi Hosaka of the Fukuzumi Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital; and Toshihiro Ohkouchi of Ohkouchi Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital.

Sasaki was corresponding author and Cheng, Seita, and Moriwaki were co-first authors of the work, which was supported in part by the Japanese Science and Technology Agency (grants JPMJCE1301 and JPMJER1104), Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and Good Ventures Foundation.

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Elucidating the developmental origin of life-sustaining adrenal glands | Penn Today - Penn Today

Ive known Brent Rutemiller CEO of Swimming World and the International Swimming Hall of Fame for about 20 years, our relationship first developed through business. But when you work closely with someone, there is a great opportunity to develop a friendship and Im glad that I get to call Brent a good friend. So, when he reached out almost a year ago with the news that he was diagnosed with plasma-cell leukemia, it was a tough conversation to say the least.

Yet, something from our early chats stood out. Brent didnt have this woe-is-me mentality. Truthfully, he didnt have time for that attitude, nor did he care to mope. No, Brent was going to beat this thing. How? Those details would come later, and as you will see in his letter below, his fight was not without several pitfalls, moments of doubt and frustration. Through it all, though, Brent remained positive, refused to dwell on any setbacks and was steadfast in the fact that one day he was going to receive excellent news and could be used as motivation for others battling a cancer diagnosis.

Today, Swimming World is thrilled to announce that Brent is in early remission from the cancer which wracked his body. Its an achievement to celebrate, and as I told Brent last week, this wonderful news is his moment atop the podium. He claimed victory. He beat the opposition. He captured gold.

The following letter is Brent Rutemillers detailed announcement of the early-remission news delivered by his doctor regarding his fight against cancer.

I finally got my long-awaited blood test results to see if my stem cell transplant was successful.

It will soon be one year since I was diagnosed with cancer. 90% of my plasma was filled with cancer and my kidneys were failing over Memorial Day Weekend last year. Dr. Google said I had 5 months to live. The first 48 hours, I felt sorry for myself. Then I decided that feeling sorry was a useless emotion. I was going to either win or die, there was no second place. I made the decision that the only thing I can control was my attitude and exercise.

I began walking circles in my hospital room and then progressed to the hospital floor. They put a port in my chest and started giving me chemo three times a week. They flooded me with pills to the point that on some days I was taking over 20 within a 24-hour period. They pounded me with steroids once a week to where I now have cataracts in both eyes and will need surgery.

Photo Courtesy:

With the help of Rob Butcher, I was able to get Dr. Fonseca, head of the Mayo Oncology Department to take me as his patient, but first Mayo had to accept me into their system. With the constant loving support of my wife, Ellen Rutemiller, she navigated the insurance paperwork and maze of hoops to get me admitted into Mayo. I cant tell you the number of times they said, no! to her. She then had to navigate Medicare and our secondary insurance policies while being on hold for hours to get our expenses down considerably. She learned the system and got me the best care and insurance coverage possible. Ellen never gave up fighting for me and never took no for an answer.

For 42 straight weeks, they lit me up with chemo causing night sweats, dizzy spells, loss of appetite, reduced oxygen in my blood and days of no energy. All the time, I tried to walk, hike or swim to push those poisons out of my body and keep moving. I only missed about 20 days of working remotely while leading the International Swimming Hall of Fame through Covid, Induction cancellations, closures, and construction disruptions.

Every week Mayo would draw blood to measure my cells and cancer. There were days when my hemoglobin was so low that I needed transfusions.

Over the holidays, I had a reaction to one of my drugs after developing a full-body skin rash. They took me off that drug and my cancer increased.

Then I got Covid! They stopped Chemo for two weeks and gave me a monoclonal covid shot to help me through the virus. After I recovered, the blood tests showed that the cancer was increasing.

I was discouraged as they decided to get more aggressive in February.

They put me back in the hospital and inlaid a three-port line into my chest that tunneled directly into my heart. They wasted no time and infused me through my new ports with 4 different chemotherapies at one time. They let the medicines drip into my veins for 72 straight hours. Then they started giving me another chemo shot in the stomach.

Chemo Blast

Somehow, I found the strength to get out of bed and walk in circles again. Somedays, I got up to 3 miles with Ivan beside me. (Ivan was the name of the IV pole that I pushed around.)

Rutemillers Army Pin

Every nurse along the way got a Rutemillers Army pin as I told them that I was going to be The first person cured of this dreaded cancer. Some of them said they believed me.

After they discharged me, I lost all my hair, but the Chemo Blast treatment was working. The cancer was receding quickly in my blood, but not fast enough.

We were quickly running out of time, so they decided to proceed with harvesting my stem cells to replace the cancer cells in my marrow. My body cooperated by delivering 11.5 million stem cells over two days of harvesting.

The time came on March 16th, to start the stem cell transplant. They hit me with the highest dose of Chemo to wipe out all my marrow producing cells.

Two days later, on March 18th, they infused me with 5.25 million of my own stem cells to take me back to my factory settings and froze the remaining cells. The treatment wiped out all my childhood vaccinations and any other ones in my life. I had no immune system and had to be isolated at home for 30 days as my marrow regenerated.

After 7 days, I unexpectedly vomited after lunch and then developed a fever. Mayo called in the Infectious Disease Team and identified five different bacteria in my blood. The wired me up to a broad-spectrum of antibiotics that wrecked my gut. I stayed in the hospital for five more days.

My red blood and plasma dropped to a critical point forcing two infusions of each. I went home in pain and finally succumbed to a pain killer for the first time, but for only two days.

10 days later the entire family caught norovirus. It took us all four days to recover from severe Gastrointestinal issues.

Since then, I have been getting stronger. Last week marked the 50th day since my transplant. I am back to pre-cancer exercise having swum 3000 yards this morning and hiking in the mountains on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Glenn Mills my Olympic standard.

The Mayo Doctors usually wait 100 days before testing, but because my cancer is so aggressive, they tested me on day fifty.

I was not expecting good news when I got a text from the doctor saying that they COULD NOT FIND ANY CANCER in my blood It is in the normal range!!! (Note he added three exclamation points.). So, after almost one year of positive prayers from everyone, and positive attitudes cheering me on, and regular exercise, I can say that my cancer is in EARLY REMISSION. We did it!!!

We now have the upper hand. Remission for my cancer can last 2-4 years, or longer. The way I see it, with the support of my lovely wife, and with the expertise of Mayo, guidance from my god (who surely got a few words from my mom who passed away 4 days ago), and the support of Rutemillers Army we will reach the goal of FINDING a cure

Brent Rutemiller CEO, President of International Swimming Hall of Fame

Link:
Brent Rutemiller's Cancer In Early Remission After 42 Weeks of Chemotherapy and Stem Cell Transplant - Swimming World Magazine

CHASE BOTTORF/THE EXPRESSLocal relay teams walked in the relay to help spread cancer awareness and help fundraising efforts for the American Cancer Society.

LOCK HAVEN Clinton County recently held its 27th annual Relay For Life in Riverview Park, Woodward Township.

The yearly fundraising event for the American Cancer Society, co-event lead by Roxanne Embick and Shannon Miller, brought in a large crowd with generous donations to boot. Fundraising that is done all foes to the American Cancer Society.

The majority of the money raised stays locally as advocacy for support, according to Roxanne. The other portion of the money goes towards cancer research, she added.

Relay For Life began as a 24-hour ongoing event which always had a member of each relay team walking the track for those 24 hours. The reasoning for the constant 24-hour walking resonates from cancer patients having to live with cancer 24 hours a day, according to Roxanne.

It was in honor of that. Now they have gotten a little relaxed on that but the teams are here and they do walk the track and do fundraisers, she added.

Relay For Life has been a national event since 1985. It has now become more globalized internationally in countries like Canada and Mexico.

Eight relay teams were signed up for 2022s Clinton County Relay For Life with six of those teams participating in this years events.

Not all teams are required to come and set up a site but they do their fundraising through the year, said Roxanne.

The last two years, the Relay For Life coordinators have been trying to catch up due to missing a year with COVID in 2020. Coordinators are hoping to try and make up some of that.

To date, the Clinton County Relay For Life has raised over $30,000. Their ultimate goal is to raise at least a total of $77,000.

Hopefully we can get more people. We can take donations for this year up until August and we do have a couple of events happening throughout the year, Roxanne said.

Cancer survivors attended the day long event with a couple sharing their own stories to the public. Of the survivors whos stories were told, Roxannes own husband, Earl Embick, was a survivor with his own story to tell. In late 2010, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

Roxanne addressed her husbands story to everyone who attended during the survivor event meal.

In November of that year, he woke up in the morning to an upset stomach and a headache. Thinking it was a stomach bug, he tried to go to work but had to leave early due to his sickness, she said. When Earl returned home, Roxanne, who is a nurse, said he had signs of menangitus.

They went to the hospital and discovered that he had bacterial menangitus, a rare form as opposed to the more common viral menangitus, according to Roxanne. However, menangitus would turn out to be part of Earls ailments.

He went through treatment and got better, however it was discovered that his kidneys were not functioning properly, Roxanne said. When we went back to the infectious disease doctor after he was discharged from the hospital, he was concerned and said that he had stage three kidney failure.

Doctors ran tests and found that the protein in Earls urine was four times higher than it should have been, she added. Another test was ran and the results came back positive for multiple myeloma a bone marrow cancer.

There are bad cells in there and they basically over grow, kind of like weeds in a garden. They choke out your ability to make white and red cells and all those things, Roxanne said. It was unusual because most of the time multiple myeloma normally doesnt affect people who are in their forties, which is how old Earl was at the time.

Multiple myeloma typically affects patients who are older in their sixties and seventies. According to Roxanne, there is no understanding of what the root cause of multiple myeloma is.

Since Earl was younger than usual myeloma patients, doctors were able to do the necessary treatments on him. On his 41st birthday in December of 2010, he and Roxanne went to Ohio State University to an oncologist who specializes in myeloma. He received his treatment and was put on two medications, which he took twice a week for eight weeks.

His numbers didnt come down as much has they had hoped but that was okay, Roxanne said about the eight weeks of treatment. In April, we went back for his stem cell transplant. Fortunately they were able to use his own stem cells.

Before his transplant, Earl had to get three shots a day for five days to pack his bone marrow with stem cells. When the transplant was ready to be done, it took six total hours to harvest the stem cells, according to Roxanne.

In May of 2011, he went back to the hospital for high dose chemo therapy and two days later received a rescue stem cell transplant. Though from the transplant, Earl ended up having a complication, according to Roxanne. He had engraftment syndrome which is when stem cells start engrafting and the body sees it as a rejection becoming sick with a high fever.

He made it through everything. He was in the hospital for 17 days we stayed in Ohio until July, Roxanne said. He started maintenance chemo therapy that September called REVLIMID (aka Lenalidomide) he was on that maintenance for six years.

Earl has now been off of all treatments for the last five years and is still without any elements of cancer, she added.

I know as caregivers, we have a very important role to play, we have to be an advocate, we have to make sure theyre getting to their appointments on time and keeping track of them because chemo can make the brain not work like youd like it to work that is all important. He was as much my caregiver as I was his, Roxanne expressed.

The 27th Annual Clinton County Relay For Life lasted from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. last Saturday and was filled with a whole day of events, spreading cancer awareness. More events through the Relay For Life are set throughout the rest of the year.

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Clinton County Relay For Life holds annual event in Riverview Park - Lock Haven Express

There are dozens of studies, innovations, and research findings released everyday by institutions and clinics across the world. Heres a look at some of the other notable health reports from May 17.

Time-Restricted Eating May Lower CVD Risk for Older Breast Cancer SurvivorsOlder breast cancer survivors with cardiometabolic risk factors who restricted food intake to eight hours during the weekday, followed by 16 hours of fasting, lowered their risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) after a few weeks, according to a new research letter publishing today inJACC: CardioOncology.

Community-Focused Strategy Improves Vaccine Uptake in Black and Latino CommunitiesNew research from Boston Medical Center (BMC) shows how intentionality and partnership between community leaders and medical health centers can improve COVID-19 vaccination uptake in Black and Latino communities.

McMaster researchers discover how to reduce severe tissue damage from some viral infectionsMcMaster University researchers have found not only how some viral infections cause severe tissue damage, but also how to reduce it.

Concussion symptoms in children may have multiple underlying causesResearchers unlock potential pathways for treatment by focusing on the relationships between the symptoms of concussions and the nature of the injury.

mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna fare better against COVID-19 variants of concernA comparison of four COVID-19 vaccinations shows that messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna perform better against the World Health Organizations variants of concern (VOCs) than viral vector vaccines AstraZeneca and J&J/Janssen.

New tool developed by WVU researchers makes it easier to identify pregnant patients with eating disordersAt least 5%of pregnant women will experience aneating disorderduring their pregnancies, yet no rapid screening tool exists to identify who they are.

Organic polymeric scintillators excite X-ray communityEfficient strategy for metal-free polymeric scintillators with multicolor radioluminescence for high-resolution X-ray imaging opens a new avenue of research for low-cost, flexible radioluminescent polymeric materials.

Many historically redlined California communities have higher COVID-19 incidence and mortalityOne of many legacies of redlining could also be increased incidence and mortality charges of COVID-19 affecting the largely minority and poor residents of those neighborhoods, in response to analysis printed on the ATS 2022 worldwide convention.

Scientists Use Machine Learning Models to Help Identify Long COVID PatientsClinical scientists used machine learning (ML) models to explore de-identified electronic health record (EHR) data in theNational COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), a National Institutes of Health-funded national clinical database, to help discern characteristics of people with long-COVID and factors that may help identify such patients using data from medical records.

IOMF-funded study determines orgasmic meditation is more comparable to meditation than sexNew research supported by theInstitute of OM Foundation (IOMF), based in Santa Rosa, CA, documents the profoundly positive effect of Orgasmic Meditation, commonly known as OM, for many looking to achieve the overall benefits of meditative practice, according to IOMF-backed researchers.

COVID-19s devastating toll: An rise in adolescent mental health crises and suicidalityA new study led byPatricia Ibeziako, MD, associate chief of clinical services in theDepartment of Psychiatry and Behavioral Servicesat Boston Childrens Hospital, shows that the situation worsened with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Private Health Plans During 2020 Paid Hospitals 224 Percent of What Medicare Would PayPrices paid to hospitals during 2020 by employers and private insurers for both inpatient and outpatient services averaged 224 percent of what Medicare would have paid, with wide variation in prices among states, according to a new RAND Corporationreport.

Henry Ford Cardiologist to Perform a Live Heart Procedure at International Medical Education EventFor the third straight year,Henry Ford Hospital interventional cardiologist Khaldoon Alaswad, M.D.will perform a live heart procedure as part of an international interactive medical education event, with proceeds benefiting hospitals in Ukraine.

Infrared imaging to measure glymphatic functionDynamic infrared tracer imaging uses affordable and widely available equipment to obtain the temporal resolution necessary to evaluate glymphatic flux within the brain.

Scientists See Signs of Traumatic Brain Injury in Headbutting MuskoxScientists at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai saw for the first time hallmarks of concussions and other head trauma in the brains of deceased headbutting animalsmuskoxen and bighorn sheep.

Statins may provide protection against depressionStatins have been hailed as a wonder drug; the cholesterol-lowering drugs have been prescribed to tens of millions of people since their approval in the late 1980s to prevent heart attack and stroke.

Predictable Home Environment Protects Against Development of Heart Disease Risk Factors After Child AbuseA new study shows for the first time that well-organized households protect children who have experienced abuse from developing some precursors to heart disease.

Alternative to open heart surgery just as effective for patients with common heart conditionA study led by researchers at theNational Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Leicester Biomedical Research Centrehas shown that a less invasive heart procedure for a common condition is just as effective as conventional open-heart surgery.

Milestone clinical study shows postbiotic urolithin A improves muscle strength and exercise performance in middle-aged adultsNew research by scientists in Switzerland shows supplementation with urolithin A had exercise-like effects on muscle strength, improving it by 12% after 4 months.

Protein linked to intellectual disability has complex roleResearchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a previously unknown function for the fragile X protein, the loss of which is the leading inherited cause of intellectual disability.

Scientists Nail Down Destination for Protein That Delivers ZincDiscovery reveals a key mechanism that all living things use to transport a trace element essential for survival.

Guidelines to ensure assessment of patient symptoms and quality of life is ethicalIna new studypublished inJAMA, experts in the Universitys Centre for Patient Reported Outcomes Research with international collaborators, set out the guidelines, designed to ensure clinical research which includes patient-reported outcomes is ethical, inclusive, equitable and optimal.

Big study answers treatment question for little known kidney conditionThe largest ever randomised controlled trial in IgA nephropathy has found that treatment with methylprednisolone a cheap, widely used corticosteroid drug halves the risk of losing kidney function and kidney failure, and that this can be effectively achieved with fewer side effects if a reduced dose is used.

Analysis of Supportive Evidence for US Food and Drug Administration Approvals of Novel Drugs in 2020In this study, the cohort of 2020 novel drug approvals continued a trend of new drugs being supported by smaller numbers of preapproval pivotal trials and fewer features traditionally associated with rigor.

Association of Congenital and Acquired Cardiovascular Conditions With COVID-19 Severity Among Pediatric Patients in the USIn this cohort study of 171416 US individuals aged 2 months to 17 years with SARS-CoV-2 infection, cardiac arrest, cardiogenic shock, heart surgery, cardiopulmonary disease, heart failure, hypotension, nontraumatic cerebral hemorrhage, pericarditis, and biventricular defects were associated with increased COVID-19 severity.

Evaluation of Age Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality by Race and Ethnicity From March 2020 to October 2021 in the USAll analyses for this cross-sectional study were conducted using provisional monthly data for March 1, 2020, through October 31, 2021, from the National Center for Health Statisticsand monthly population estimates for 2020 and 2021 from the US Census Bureau.

Desktop Air Curtain System Prevents Spread of COVID-19 in Hospital SettingsIn efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, miniaturizing air curtains for hospital wards, labs, and other health care settings is gaining traction as a viable solution to inadequate face masks or when social distancing is not a realistic option.

Phage Therapy: A Model to Predict Its Efficacy against Pathogenic BacteriaResearchers from Inserm, Universit Sorbonne Paris Nord and Universit Paris-Cit at the IAME Laboratory, in close collaboration with their counterparts at Institut Pasteur and the Paris Public Hospitals Group (AP-HP), have developed a model to better predict the efficacy of phage therapy and possibly develop more robust clinical trials.

Prediabetes and Diabetes Screening Eligibility and Detection in US Adults After Changes to US Preventive Services Task Force and American Diabetes Association RecommendationsThe US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and the American Diabetes Association (ADA) recently recommended lowering the starting age for diabetes screening to 35 years to facilitate earlier detection and treatment.

Study identifies first cellular chaperone for zinc, sheds light on worldwide public health problem of zinc deficiencyThe findings, reported in the journalCell, shed light on the public health issue of zinc deficiency and open an entirely new area of biology for exploration.

University Hospitals and UC Irvine announce new co-leadership of BravNet, a practice-based integrative medicine research networkUniversity Hospitals(UH)Connor Whole Health and Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute (SSIHI) at University of California, Irvine have joined in collaboration to leadBraveNet the first and largest whole health, practice-based research network in the U.S. BraveNet is a nationwide consortium comprised of academic health systems conducting evidence-based research on therapies used in integrative medicine, which is now more often known as whole health.

ATP from sensory neuron-interneuron crosstalk is key to spreading inflammation in Rheumatoid ArthritisA team of researchers from Japan and the USA, led by Professor Masaaki Murakami at Hokkaido University, have revealed that remote inflammation spreads by neuron crosstalk, and that adenosine triphosphate (ATP) plays a key role in this process.

Density, Benign Disease Raise Risk of Breast CancerWomen with dense breast tissue and benign breast disease face an elevated risk of future breast cancer and could benefit from a tailored mammogram screening strategy, according to a large study published inRadiology.

Choroid Plexus Volume Linked to Alzheimers DiseaseIncreased volume of the brains choroid plexus is linked to greater cognitive impairment and Alzheimers disease, according to a new study published inRadiology.

Geisel Researchers Receive $4 Million Grant to Improve Office Visit Interactions Between People Living with Dementia, Care Partners, and CliniciansA team of researchers at Dartmouths Geisel School of Medicine and New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine has received a $4 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to improve triadic interactions between patients living with dementia, their care partners, and their clinicians.

Untapped Potential: Mineral Water Derived from Deep-Sea Water May Have Health BenefitsScientists determine the biological effects and most beneficial hardness of extract-added water derived from deep-sea water.

First U.S. study analyzing tooth survival after root canal in general populationTeeth survive about 11 years after a root canal, according to new research from Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Dentistry.

Fighting COVID-19: Machine learning to optimise filtration effectiveness of face masksResearchers from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) have successfully used machine learning in a study to improve the filtration effectiveness of Egyptian Cotton (EC) face masks.

University of Minnesota technology allows amputees to control a robotic arm with their mindUniversity of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers have developed a more accurate, less invasive technology that allows amputees to move a robotic arm using their brain signals instead of their muscles.

Molecular probe links high-fat diet to nitric oxide levels, cancer developmentResearchers at the Beckman Institute deployed a molecular probe to demonstrate a direct link between a high-fat diet and heightened nitric oxide levels, which can lead to increased risk of inflammation and cancer development.

NEW: EULAR Publication on Therapeutic Drug Monitoring in People with Rheumatic DiseaseTherapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) refers to the principle of using blood concentrations of biopharmaceuticals to guide therapeutic decisions. EULAR the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology has developed a set of new points to consider to support TDM in people with inflammatory rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs).

Steps Should Be Taken Now to Protect Future Supplies of Infant and Pediatric FormulaA perspective published today in the American Society for NutritionsAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutritionaddresses the shortage of infant and pediatric formulas and offers recommendations to help prevent future occurrences and regain the publics trust in the safety and supply of infant and pediatric nutrition.

The war in Ukraine impacts patients with mental disordersDanish patients with mental disorders seem to have experienced a worsening of symptoms in connection with the invasion of Ukraine.

3D-printed acoustic holograms against Alzheimers or ParkinsonsA team from the Universitat Politcnica de Valncia (UPV), the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Columbia University (US) has created 3D-printed acoustic holograms and evaluated their potential in animal models to improve the treatment of diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons, among others.

HBP researchers reveal how the volumes of brain regions change in Parkinsons diseaseResearchers of the Human Brain Project (HBP) found that in Parkinsons disease the volumes of certain brain regions decrease over time in a specific pattern that is associated with clinical symptoms and largely coincides with the pattern described in Braaks famous staging theory.

Landmark Externally-Led Patient-Focused Drug Development Meeting on Schizophrenia Will Showcase Urgent Need for New & Better TreatmentsPeople living with schizophrenia and other psychosis spectrum disorders are too often misunderstood or ignored, and current treatments are outdated and can cause significant side effects.

Nearly half of patients at high risk for lung cancer delayed screening follow-upPreliminary studies to track patients perceived risk of developing lung cancer after a CT scan found that 47 percent had delayed care, according to a study published at the ATS 2022 international conference.

A highly sensitive detection strategy for biomarkers with controllable dynamic rangeIn this research, droplets motion behaviors on the surface were precisely controlled by adjusting the hydrophobic interaction between DNA droplets and lubricant-infused micro-grooves structural surface.

For large bone injuries, its Sonic hedgehog to the rescueA USC Stem Cell study innpj Regenerative Medicinepresents intriguing evidence that large bone injuries might trigger a repair strategy in adults that recapitulates elements of skeletal formationin utero.

New guideline refines care for brain bleeds: compression socks, some meds not effectiveSome treatments or preventive therapies used to manage intracerebral hemorrhages (ICH), or a bleedingstroke, are not as effective as previously believed, according to the new American Heart Association/American Stroke Association guideline for caring for people with spontaneous ICH, published today in the AssociationsStrokejournal.

Marking World Hypertension Day and emerging data on renal denervation: Three renal denervation trials point to effective long-term treatment of hypertensionMay 17th is World Hypertension Day whose theme Measure Your Blood Pressure Accurately, Control It, Live Longer is aimed at increasing awareness of hypertension worldwide.

2022 Andreas Grntzig Ethica Award: The Nursing and Allied Professional Community, at the heart of cardiovascular careOn the 19th of May the Andreas Grntzig Ethica Award, the highest honour in the interventional cardiology community, will be awarded at EuroPCR 2022 to the Nurses and Allied Professionals community in recognition of the essential role they play in advancing the cardiovascular field, serving in a substantial and immediate way the needs of each individual patient.

Climate action, pandemic preparedness and One Health: Science academies present statements for G7 summitAt the Science7 Dialogue Forum in Berlin/Germany on Tuesday, 31 May, the science academies of the G7 states will publish science-based statements on topics on this years agenda of the G7 summit at Schloss Elmau/Germany.

Nature Cardiovascular Research: A CNIC team creates a dynamic 3D atlas of embryonic heart formationResearchers from theNational Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) have created a 3D atlas of the process of heart formation in its embryonic phase, from a collection of mouse samples.

New health professional training blueprint to transform chronic pain careResearchers have developed a new national blueprint to help health professionals support the one in five Australians living with chronic pain, costing the Australian economy $139 billion every year.

NIR-II-Responsive Nickel-Based Therapeutics Provide New Solution for Synergistic OncotherapyA polyethylene glycol-modified urchin-like nickel nanoclusters (PUNNC) with an applied 9T magnetic field, when used for photothermal enhanced chemodynamic synergistic therapy under near-infrared (NIR)-II radiation, can efficiently kill tumor cells in vitro and inhibit tumor tissue growth in vivo, according to a paper published onTheranosticsrecently.

Study uncovers biomarkers that predict response and side effects from immunotherapy for liver cancer patientsA research team from Singapore has identified novel biomarkers that not only predict a patients response to immunotherapy, but also the adverse events they may experience from the same immunotherapy used to treat primary liver cancer hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Change of temperature causes whole body reprogrammingUNIGE scientists have discovered that changes in temperature cause marked and organ-specific effects in all tissues.

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Other Notable Health Studies & Research From May 17, 2022 - Study Finds

Sure. Why Not? I mean, we've got record-high gas prices, supply shortages, the lingering effects of a pandemic, political unrest, and a war in Europe--so why not throw in an invasive species of worm that can leap into the air. Weneeded something else to worry about.

Did I mention that these jumping worms have giant talons and teeth that are capable of ripping an adult human to shreds in less than 30 seconds?

No? Well, that's good, because they don't, and I would hate to lie to you for extra clicks.

University of Illinois Extension, Facebook

University of Illinois Extension, Facebook

It's also in 40 states and counting, so it's not just an Illinois, or even Midwestern problem. What jumping/crazy/snake worms do is absolutely devastate soil, which can and will pose a huge problem for farms, gardens, forests, and every other sort of ecosystem dependent on the earth itself for sustenance.

According toSmithsonianMag.com:

After jumping worms feed their insatiable appetites, they leave behind loose, granular soil the texture of coffee grounds. This altered soil can no longer retain moisture, lacks nutrients and quickly erodes.

Janetta Rightnowar, Facebook

University of Illinois Extension, Facebook

University of Illinois Extension, Facebook

Maybe you're a hardcore gardener with a wide variety of plants, vegetables, flowers, and more. You'll want to be careful about dividing up and moving perennials because you can make the jumping/crazy/snake worm problem worse.

Extension.Illinois.edu:

Much to the dismay of generous gardeners as well as organizations selling shared perennials, spread of this invasive species can also happen quickly through dividing and moving perennial plant species. Spring is often the time of plant sales and sharing perennials, this practice can be harmful to private yards and gardens, as well as forested land.

Click here to learn more about these invasive pests from the University Of Illinois Extension.

Remember when you had a summer break?

To prepare yourself for a potential incident, always keep your vet's phone number handy, along with an after-hours clinic you can call in an emergency. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center also has a hotline you can call at (888) 426-4435 for advice.

Even with all of these resources, however, the best cure for food poisoning is preventing it in the first place. To give you an idea of what human foods can be dangerous, Stacker has put together a slideshow of 30 common foods to avoid. Take a look to see if there are any that surprise you.

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Illinois Is Being Invaded By Worms That Jump A Foot In The Air - 1440wrok.com

Billionaire businessman Tilman Fertitta said he has always been a strong believer in the University of Houston medical schools mission to improve health care equity in Texas. Now hes donating $50 million to help make that vision a reality.

Fertitta and his family on Thursday announced what UH leaders say is a transformational donation for the fledgling medical school, which welcomed its first group of students just two years ago. In recognition, the school has been named the Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, as it prepares to open a state-of-the-art, $80 million building this summer.

Fertitta, the owner of the Landrys Inc. hospitality empire and the Houston Rockets, played a critical role in establishing the medical school as the longtime chairman of the UH systems board of regents. But its the schools mission to improve health and health care in the community that inspired him to make such a large donation, he said.

Everybody should have the same medical treatment that anybody else has, he said. Thats one of the things that I like about this school, and where were trying to fit into the community. We want people to have good primary care, to take care of whatever you need to take care of.

The University of Houston's medical school will be named the Tilman J. Fertitta College of Medicine in recognition of the Fertitta Family Foundation's $50 million donation.

The University of Houston's medical school will be named the Tilman J. Fertitta College of Medicine in recognition of the Fertitta Family Foundation's $50 million donation.

The University of Houston's medical school will be named the Tilman J. Fertitta College of Medicine in recognition of the Fertitta Family Foundation's $50 million donation.

The school was founded in 2019 with a curriculum that emphasizes community health, behavioral and mental health, preventative medicine and social determinants of health the social and economic conditions that influence individual and community health.

The goal is for 50% of graduates to choose careers in primary care specialties, such as pediatrics and general internal medicine, to help address a shortage in Texas. The states Department of State and Human Services has estimated there will a shortage of 3,375 primary care physicians by 2030.

Improving health and health care equity have always been important issues in the medical community, which is why the school has focused on those areas from the outset. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice movement have made them front-burner issues to a larger group of Americans, said Dr. Steven Spann, the medical schools founding dean.

This is something we were thinking about. This is our mission, Spann said. Its wonderful to see society, and health care in particular, beginning to understand the importance of that and embrace it.

The school is also focused on improving the diversity of physicians. Of the 60 students who have been part of the schools first two classes, 67% are from groups that are underrepresented in medicine, and more than half came from a lower socioeconomic background, according to a news release. By comparison, just 13% of students admitted to U.S. medical schools each year are Black or Hispanic.

Training the next generation of primary care physicians and improving health care equity are goals that go hand-in-hand, said Dr. Toi Harris, senior vice president and chief equity, diversity and inclusion officer for Memorial Hermann. If a medical school student has an opportunity to train in a primary care setting, it could help them understand how social determinants, such as socioeconomic status or access to education, affect a patients overall health.

I think its tremendously helpful and will be impactful in terms of how they approach patient care and how they engage with the community, Harris said. Gaining exposure to these types of models during training really can help inform your career pursuits and the way you deliver care.

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In his role as chairman of the UH board of regents, Fertitta has been aligned with the medical schools mission to improve health care access and equity from the start, university President Renu Khator said.

He really believes in its future and what it could do. He has a very clear idea of where it could be in 10 years, or where it could be in 15 years, she said. For him to come forward and give this kind of gift to help the medical school take off and be something better than what it would be without these kinds of transformational gifts, its amazing.

The $50 million donation will go toward efforts to hire top-notch faculty and invest in research at the medical school, Khator said.

Tilman Fertitta, owner of Landry's, Inc., and the Houston Rockets, poses for a portrait at the Post Oak Hotel at Uptown on Tuesday, May 28, 2019, in Houston.

Heres how the gift will be divided:

$10 million will go toward five endowed chairs; the school intends to hire renowned scholars who are focused on health care innovation. This $10 million will be matched as part of the universitys $100 Million Challenge for chairs and professorships.

$10 million will be used to establish an endowed scholarship fund to support endowed graduate research stipends and fellowships for medical students.

$10 million will go toward covering start-up costs for the medical school to enhance research activities.

$20 million will be used to create the Fertitta Deans Endowed Fund to support research-enhancing activities.

Fertittas donation also kicks off a $100 million fundraising campaign for the medical school. The money will be used to support scholarships, recruit faculty and pay for operational needs, such as equipment.

This isnt the first time Fertitta, a UH alum, has given a substantial donation to his alma mater. Back in 2016, he donated $20 million to help fund a $60 million renovation of the universitys basketball arena, now known as the Fertitta Center.

The University of Houston's medical school will be named the Tilman J. Fertitta College of Medicine in recognition of the Fertitta Family Foundation's $50 million donation.

The University of Houston's medical school will be named the Tilman J. Fertitta College of Medicine in recognition of the Fertitta Family Foundation's $50 million donation.

The University of Houston's medical school will be named the Tilman J. Fertitta College of Medicine in recognition of the Fertitta Family Foundation's $50 million donation.

I love Houston. Houstons been very good to me. And the university is the namesake of our city, Fertitta said. Its one of the few large public universities that are in a city the size of Houston, and thats what makes it special.

As chairman of the board of regents, Fertitta led the effort to select a site for the new $80 million College of Medicine building. The board decided in 2018 to build the 130,000 square foot building on a 43-acre tract of previously undeveloped campus land. The building is part of a planned life sciences complex along Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The medical school welcomed its first class of 30 students in 2020. For the past two years, the colleges temporary home has been the Health 2 building on campus.

The new building features a state-of-the-art anatomy suite, a clinical skills lab, patient examination rooms, a simulation center and large team-based learning classrooms.

Fertittas donation is a morale-booster for the medical school as the new building is set to open this summer, Spann said.

We have this beautiful new building, and we now have a great name on our medical school, he said. It just builds momentum and builds enthusiasm. It will foster community support.

Fertitta is also hopeful that his familys donation will inspire others to support the medical school and its mission. He knows that his donation and the work being done at the medical school are just the start; further investments will be needed to improve health care equity in Texas and elsewhere in the U.S.

However, hes hopeful the $50 million donation will help to accomplish that goal. No one should have to spend 10 hours in an emergency room on a Saturday because they dont have a primary care doctor, he said.

This is going to be something thats extremely special, he said. You just have to have the vision to look into the future.

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Tilman Fertitta donating $50 million to UH medical school, which will be renamed after him - Houston Chronicle

After 34 years serving Foxboro and the surrounding communities, Dr. Joseph Horan is retiring from family practice on May 25, 2022. A

fter spending his childhood in Readvilleand attending Xaverian Brothers High School, he attended St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada and then completed medical school at Dalhousie University in 1985. He completed his residency in family practice at UMass family medicine in Fitchburg and in 1988, after moving to the area with his family, he started at the Foxboro Area Health Center. He remains as part of the community now, where three of his grandchildren reside.

Despite the many difficulties that primary care physicians face, Dr. Horan has always remained true to himself -- putting his patients above all else. The role of a family practitioner is really to be a Jack of all Trades for patients from cradle to grave, and this is what Dr. Horan is. They are responsible for preventative care including yearly physicals and vaccines, but are also the first call when someone feels sick or notices something is wrong. They are cardiologists, gastroenterologists, dermatologists, neurologists, psychologists and much more. But maybe most importantly, they are advocates, which is a role Dr Horan has always taken very seriously throughout the years.

From squeezing another patient into his always jam-packed schedule, visiting an elderly patient in the comfort of their own homes, fielding phone consults from friends and family and beyond, or extending his condolences to families who have lost their loved ones who he cared for during his entire career, Dr. Horan always went the extra mile. It is impossible for his family to count the number of stories heard and times they witnessed him going above and beyond for his patients to get the care they need and support them as they navigated some of the scariest times of their lives.

Growing up in the town where he practiced, a week did not pass without his children hearing your dad is my doctor from someone in the community, and often his wifes five-minute grocery run would become a 30-minute conversation with one of his patients. But even though he had so many responsibilities in his practice, he never missed a chance to see his kids play sports, or perform in the band, or spend time skiing with them on the weekends.

Many of his patients had such kind words to share. One family he cared for over 30 years who had two children with intense medical needs described him as a witness to their lives, someone who never tired of helping us, always a phone call away. The many nurses and medical staff that worked with him throughout the years cherished their time working with him and described him as a brilliant and caring man, who never rested until he knew what was wrong with his patient.

Dr. Horan has considered it a great privilege and honor to have cared for so many generations of local families. While he is looking forward to the next chapter of his life, he has been humbled by the many cards, emails and gifts he has received as an expression of appreciation. This community has been touched by a great doctor and his quality care will be greatly missed. They truly dont make doctors like Dr. Horan anymore.

The author of this column, Pam Morrison, is the daughter of Dr. Joseph Horan

Originally posted here:
Dedication, generosity and compassion that had no limit! - The Sun Chronicle

The first time a PC seemed magical to me was when it dozed off and colourful lines twisted across its screen. I'd launch Windows 3.1 just to watch screensavers, marvelling at Mystify and staring at Starfield. How wonderful that our computer needed to dream as preventative medicine! I relived this today with a new collection of customisable 3D screensavers, watching shoals of fish, taking a road trip through a museum of global electricity pylons, watching housing estates rise and fall, and seeing so many swirly colours.

Made by Jean-Paul Software (aka our very own RPS commenter, "Godwhacker"), The Jean-Paul Software Screen Explosion launched this week after a few months in early access. It packs 11 screensavers including a swirling shoal of fish, procedural models of housing estates coming together and breaking apart, a clockwork countdown to your estimated time of death, a vast warehouse run by Father Christmas and his reindeer, and a wild warpspeed starfield. Some have options to customise colours and such, and some even let you add your own custom models (or download others' through the Steam Workshop).

My personal favourite is Pylons Of The World, an endless drive along a colourful road criss-crossed by electricity pylons from around the globe. Yes, it tells you the origin of the pylons you're seeing. And yes, it drives on the left side of the road where appropriate.

I've not used a screensaver in years. They're not needed anymore, and my monitors automatically turn off when idle to save power anyway. Running 3D scenes which make my computer use more power when idle is the opposite of what I want. And yet. While I won't start using a screensaver now, I did enjoy playing with screensavers today.

I enjoyed restarting screensavers to see them with new colours or new patterns. I really enjoyed that drive past international pylons. I enjoyed watching colours. I felt the childhood magic of screensavers again.

The Jean-Paul Software Screen Explosion is out now on Steam for 4/4/$5.

The second time a PC seemed magical to me was the cascade after I won Solitaire for the first time.

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This new 3D screensaver collection includes a driving tour of global pylons - Rock Paper Shotgun

Reestablishing a strong doctor-patient relationship

During Dr. Priester's tenure as internist and cardiologist in New York, he has built enduring relationships with his patient base, many of whom have been loyal to him for several decades. As his practices continued to grow, so did the administrative demands of operating and maintaining a private practice.

Like many other private internal medicine physicians, Dr. Priester has found himself at a crossroads: either continue to practice high-volume medicine, seeing many patients a day, but spending a limited amount of time with each of them or let his practice evolve to deliver highly personalized, preventative care and a chance to empower his patients with greater education and information.

The Priester CCPHP Membership

The concierge (membership-based) model continues to be a rewarding experience for physicians and patients alike. The increased time and flexibility allow concierge physicians, like Dr. Priester, to schedule patients for an hour appointment, if desired.

I've always believed in the importance of the doctor-patient relationship," says Dr. Priester. "This concierge model will not only support that relationship, but allow it to go one step further, by allowing more time with each patient."

Concierge patients of Priester CCPHP receive a host of added amenities as Members, including 24/7 connectivity to Dr. Priester via a direct phone number and a customized telehealth app, same/next day appointments with limited to no wait times regardless of medical necessity, and a robust wellness program called the SENS Solution Wellness Program powered by CCPHP, which focuses on Sleep, Exercise, Nutrition, and Stress Management.

Through the partnership with CCPHP, Dr. Priester also has access to Castle Connolly's Top Doctor Network of nearly 60,000 top recognized physicians nationwide. Being a recognized Top Doctor himself, Dr. Priester can consult with and refer patients to top physicians of similar distinction.

About Dr. Priester

William D. Priester, MD is a board-certified internist and cardiologist serving the community of New York, NY. Dr. Priester earned his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Iowa and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Metropolitan Hospital in New York. He completed his fellowship in cardiology at Lenox Hill Hospital, where he continues as an Adjunct Attending Physician.

Learn more about Dr. Priester's concierge program, Priester CCPHP:

About CCPHP

Castle Connolly Private Health Partners (CCPHP) works with exceptional physicians to create and support concierge (membership-based) healthcare programs that enable the optimal practice environment and the physician-patient relationship. Members (patients) pay an affordable fee to take advantage of a wide array of enhancements for a more convenient, comprehensive, collaborative, and personalized approach to support health and wellbeing. For more information, go toccphp.net.

SOURCE Castle Connolly Private Health Partners, LLC

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The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has remained a significant challenge for researchers as there is currently a lack of cure or vaccine for this disorder.

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While antiretrovirals have improved the types of therapy available for patients, the ineffective requirement of lifetime treatment, as well as the development of resistance, is a major hurdle. However, the emergence and growth of nanotechnology may be a promising solution for a higher level of effective treatment as well as prevention of both HIV and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

HIV was first identified in 1983 as the causative agent that resulted in AIDS, which was first reported in 1981.

The progression of the virus and the associated disease has been reported to be a global pandemic as one of the global lead causes of mortality in adults. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated the number of people living with HIV in 2020 was approximately 37.7 million; this can be translated as 0.7% of the global population, with Africa comprising the highest prevalence compared to other continents.

This majorly infectious disease consists of a primary strain, HIV-1, that can be traced to the chimpanzee species. This virus is an enveloped retrovirus that consists of two copies of single-stranded RNA.

There are three distinct stages of HIV, which describe the progression of the virus, including acute HIV infection, chronic HIV infection, and AIDS.

These can be summarized as the multiplying of the HIV virus, including the initial rapid destruction of CD4 T lymphocytes within the host, causing flu-like symptoms. This can then progress into the second asymptomatic stage, where the virus continues to multiply at low levels; within this chronic stage, the infection can progress into AIDS in 10 years or longer without antiretroviral therapy.

The final stage of HIV consists of AIDS, which is the most severe stage of the infection and can be characterized as having a high level of damage to the immune system, where the body is unable to fight against opportunistic infections. A diagnosis of AIDS is made when HIV patients have a CD4 count of 200 cells/mm3.

HIV/AIDS treatments have focused on antiretroviral therapies, with early treatment being only effective to a certain extent; the first drug that was FDA approved was in 1987, and since, approximately 25 drugs have received approval.

The progression of research, which included the release of protease inhibitors as well as the emergence of triple-drug therapy within the mid-1990s was highly promising for the efficacy of HIV/AIDS treatment. Currently, the highest standard of HIV/AIDS treatment consists of highly active antiretroviral therapy, involving three or more drugs provided simultaneously.

With further research into disease prevention strategies, vaccines have been considered the most effective agent for fighting global infections, evidenced by efficient control over infectious diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella.

The challenges that can be associated with this chronic disease consist of requiring patient compliance for lifetime treatment, which can be difficult to adhere to. A lack of adherence to treatment can increase the probability of treatment failure and increase the likelihood of developing resistant strains of the virus.

Another limitation includes poor aqueous drug solubility, as this can impact the availability of the drug within the body and result in ineffective treatment of HIV.

The advancement in nanotechnology and nanomedicine has provided a promising future for HIV/AIDS therapeutics.

With the advancement of nanomedicine, strategies have been explored to overcome current challenges associated with HIV treatment. This includes oral administration of antiretroviral drugs and improving the water solubility of drugs, such as through solid drug nanoparticles (SDN).

Research into SDN formulations has been produced through a freeze-drying approach, which has been predicted to provide a similar pharmacokinetic standard as a conventional anti-HIV drug. However, this nanomedicine formulation was theorized to allow patients to take a 50% lower dose while experiencing the same effect. This prediction was validated with in vivo experimentation.

The development of SDN formulations has enabled success in superseding conventional oral drug formulations, such asritonavir-boosted lopinavir, which utilizes 42% ethanol and 15% propylene glycol. The use of lopinavir SDN formulations can achieve the production of an effective oral drug without the inclusion of ethanol.

Additionally, the potential inclusion of nanomedicine within this field of therapeutics allows for low-cost production of effective drugs as well as a decrease in required doses for patients.

Other subsets of nanomedicine that can be used for HIV therapeutics include long-acting injectable formulations (LAI), which can provide a solution to patient issues associated with low adherence to lifetime treatments.

An example of a drug that has been re-formulated to carry a nanomedicine component includes the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, rilpivirine, which has been available as an oral medication from 2011, before being nanoformulated as a LAI.

This LAI nanomedicine has been proven to be effective, with concentrations being detected in rats up to 2 months after subcutaneous and intramuscular administration as well as detected in dogs for up to 6 months after administration.

New research in this area has included the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine(HWCOM), who have undertaken nanotechnology research into the delivery of anti-HIV drugs across the blood-brain barrier, aiding in targeting HIV reservoirs within the brain. This research has included the development of a revolutionary technique consisting of using tiny magneto-electric nanoparticles as drug carriers.

Nagesh Kolishetti, one of the studys corresponding authors, stated, This delivery system can reduce the viral load, the amount of virus present, which normally contributes to neurological problems.

This type of combination therapy with the nanoparticles could result in a highly effective treatment regimen for the HIV-infected population who are addicted to a substance of abuse.

This is significant as HIV can cause neurological problems and disorders such as dementia and memory loss, which can be further increased by substance abuse

The future of HIV therapeutics can be said to be greatly intertwined with nanomedicine, with research into the use of nanoformulations that attempt to overcome the challenges of current HIV treatments.

With reports from WHO stating that 73% of HIV patients are treated with antiretroviral therapy and 680,000 deaths in 2020, this field requires a revolutionary change to traditional medicine to provide better treatment and even preventative care for this chronic disease.

Curley, P., Liptrott, N. and Owen, A., 2018. Advances in nanomedicine drug delivery applications for HIV therapy.Future Science OA, 4(1), p.FSO230. Available at: 10.4155/fsoa-2017-0069

FIU News. 2022.Researchers advance the use of nanoparticles to deliver HIV/AIDS drugs to the brain. [online] Available at: https://news.fiu.edu/2021/fiu-researchers-advance-the-use-of-nanoparticles-to-deliver-hivaids-drugs-to-the-brain

Hivinfo.nih.gov. 2022.The Stages of HIV Infection | NIH. [online] Available at:https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/stages-hiv-infection

Mamo, T., Moseman, E., Kolishetti, N., Salvador-Morales, C., Shi, J., Kuritzkes, D., Langer, R., Andrian, U. and Farokhzad, O., 2010. Emerging nanotechnology approaches for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention.Nanomedicine, 5(2), pp.269-285. Available at: 10.2217/nnm.10.1

Worldpopulationreview.com. 2022.HIV Rates by Country 2022. [online] Available at: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hiv-rates-by-country

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the author expressed in their private capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of AZoM.com Limited T/A AZoNetwork the owner and operator of this website. This disclaimer forms part of the Terms and conditions of use of this website.

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Whether youre planning summer activities at home or abroad, it is important to think about ways to avoid seasonal mosquitos if you want to ensure your recreational activities remain enjoyable. Besides the itchy and painful bites mosquitos leave behind, they can carry diseases that are easily transmitted to humans.

While the bites and infections they spread can often be treated, the best course of action is to prevent the bites altogether. If you have control of the environment and can think ahead, there are several ways you can sidestep the pests.

A good place to start is to make sure you have screens to block mosquitos from coming indoors and to be sure to eliminate standing water, where they can lay eggs. When evaluating for standing water, dont forget to check flower pots, rain gutters, plastic furniture covers, and toys.

If you are out and about, wearing long pants and sleeves can help cover bare skin, which gives mosquitoes easy access. In areas of high mosquito concentrations, treating clothing with permethrin, an anti-parasite cream, adds additional protection. While there are a number of different topical products on the market that claim to repel mosquitos, the validity of these claims is not always the same across brands. When looking for safe and effective ways to prevent mosquito bites, there are some products that demonstrate both safety and efficacy.

DEET is most strongly recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Some recommended alternatives to DEET are Picaridin and IR3535. While there are many natural mosquito repelling products, unfortunately, most have not been shown to be effective. The exception to this is oil of lemon eucalyptus, which has an efficacy comparable to DEET.

To be sure the product you would like to use is appropriate, the EPA has a free search tool that allows you to find specific products that will repel mosquitos, ticks, or both. When evaluating products, use caution with treated wristbands. Even though these may contain mosquito-repelling agents, they dont provide a wide enough protection zone to provide adequate coverage for the whole body.

And if your plans include international travel, scheduling an appointment with your physician is important to discuss ways to avoid mosquitos, as well as to obtain preventative medications for mosquito-borne illnesses. While mosquitos are certainly an unpleasant addition to outdoor plans, taking steps to avoid them contributes to having a safe and healthy summer.

Jessica Mayer, DO Program Director Suburban Family Medicine ResidencyVice-Chair Family Medicine Department

Suburban Family Medicine at Norristown2705 DeKalb Street, Suite 202Norristown, PA 19401610-275-7240

Dr. Mayer sees patients of all ages and is dedicated to providing compassionate care for the whole person. She is board certified in Family Medicine and director of Suburban Family Medicine Residency program and vice-chair of Family Medicine Department at Suburban Community Hospital.

Dr. Mayer completed her medical education at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (Pennsylvania) in 2008, internship at Crozer-Chester Medical Center (Pennsylvania) in 2009, and Residency at Mercy Suburban Hospital in 2011.

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With all of the incredible medical advancements made, the HIV virus still escapes the grasp of the worlds top medical researchers and scientists, as the HIV vaccine is still in the works. The medical community managed to find a number of successful COVID-19 vaccine within a year of the viruss existence. Meanwhile, its been forty years since the first reports of people dying from a pneumonia-like virus. That virus was HIV.

Historically, HIV has plagued the Black community at a much higher rate than other races, says the CDC, tragically robbing millions of Black people of full lives, and leaving their loved ones with inconsolable heartbreak. There are a number of reasons for this, including a pervasive lack of access to health care such as preventative drugs and prophylaxis. The CDC also reports that Black people are at a biological disadvantage as theyve been shown to have lower levels of viral suppression against HIV.

Now, with Moderna launching clinical trials for a vaccine, theres new hope of conquering this disease that has taken the lives of 36.3 million people. Heres what we know about the HIV vaccine to date.

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To date, there is no approved vaccine for HIV. Its estimated that over 100 HIV vaccines have been tested around the world since the virus was first discovered. However, to date, the only proven method for fighting HIV is antiviral treatments that can reduce the chances of death in individuals who are already infected with the virus. These drugs can be used to prevent the spread of HIV in three ways, says the National Library of Medicine. When taken daily, they can reduce the chances of transmission before exposure as well as after exposure. They can additionally be taken by infected individuals to prolong their lifespan.

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In 2021, Johnson & Johnson conducted what was known as the Imbokodo trials in sub-Saharan Africa. The company enlisted 2,600 women to participate in the trials and receive the vaccine. The vaccine was based on something called mosaic immunogens, says the National Institute of Health, which induce an immune response. Johnson & Johnson had hoped to see at least a fifty percent reduction rate of infection following the vaccine, but only saw a 25 percent reduction and canceled the trials in late 2021.

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Medical researchers have been fascinated by two individuals who have evidently beat back the virus, without any medical assistance, says Science News. Analysts looked at over 1.5 billion cells from a patient known as EC2 and found zero functional copies of HIV in them. The patient did show nonfunctional copies of HIV, but those do not pose a known threat. These numbers were found after the patient had been infected for a long period of time, so experts believe the chances that the active virus is still simply hiding in the body are low. Another patient had active copies of HIV, but they had landed in a very specific gene that prevented them from spreading. Doctors describe the gene as being Wrapped in the molecular equivalent of razor wire. The immune systems of these two individuals are still being studied and could provide the blueprint for a future vaccine.

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As of 2022, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in collaboration with Moderna has started early trials of three HIV vaccines that are of the same nature as the successful COVID-19 one an mRNA vaccine. The National Institute of Health explains that an mRNA vaccine works by Delivering a piece of genetic material that instructs the body to make a protein fragment of a target pathogen (such as a virus), which the immune system recognizes and remembers, so it can mount a substantial response if later exposed to that pathogen. This is the first study to examine an mRNA vaccine for the prevention of HIV. Participants in the trial will be evaluated at two and six months after injection, at which time samples from their blood and lymph nodes will be assessed. Its important to note that this HIV vaccine cannot cause infection.

RELATED CONTENT:Scientists May Have Successfully Cured HIV In The First Female Patient

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The HIV Vaccine: What We Know, And What We Don't - MadameNoire

North Korea's first-reported COVID-19 outbreak is the "greatest turmoil" to befall the country since its founding more than 70 years ago, according to its leader Kim Jong Un, as the isolated and impoverished nation scrambles to curb the spread of a highly transmissible virus that risks causing a major humanitarian crisis.North Korea reported 21 more deaths and 174,440 new "fever cases" Friday, according to state media KCNA, though it did not specify how many of the deaths and cases were linked to COVID, likely due to the country's extremely limited testing capacity.The climbing death toll and surging "fever cases" come after North Korea said Thursday it had identified its first ever case of COVID-19 an alarming development for a country with one of the world's most fragile public health systems and a largely unvaccinated population.But given the opaque nature of the regime and the country's isolation from the world a trend that has only exacerbated since the pandemic it is extremely difficult to assess the real situation on the ground.Foreign diplomats and aid workers had fled North Korea en masse in 2021 due to shortages of goods and "unprecedented" restrictions on daily life, making it all the more impossible to obtain information from the country other than through official state media.But North Korean state media reports have been vague, and many important questions remain unanswered, including the country's vaccine coverage and the lockdown's impact on the livelihood of its 25 million people.Here is what we know, and what we don't know about the outbreak:How did the outbreak emerge?North Korean authorities have not announced the cause of the outbreak.North Korea's borders have been tightly sealed since January 2020 to keep the virus at bay, making the so-called "hermit nation" even more isolated from the world. It even declined invitations to send teams to compete at the Tokyo and Beijing Olympics, citing the threat of COVID-19.And as new variants began to emerge, it stepped-up those efforts, cutting off nearly all trade with China the country's biggest trading partner and economic lifeline for the Kim regime with imports from Beijing dropping 99% from September to October 2020.It remains unclear how the virus slipped through the country's tightly-sealed borders.When KCNA reported on the first identification of COVID-19 in the country on Thursday, it did not even specify how many infections had been defected. It simply said samples collected from a group of people experiencing fevers on May 8 had tested positive for the highly contagious omicron variant.By Friday, KCNA was reporting that 18,000 new "fever cases" and six deaths were recorded on Thursday, including one who tested positive for the BA.2 sub-variant of omicron."A fever whose cause couldn't be identified explosively spread nationwide since late April," the newspaper said. "As of now up to 187,800 people are being isolated."On Saturday, KCNA said a total of 524,440 people had reported "fever" symptoms between late April and May 13. Among them, 280,810 people were still being treated in quarantine, while the rest had recovered.Can North Korea cope with a large-scale outbreak?An outbreak of COVID-19 could prove disastrous for North Korea. The country's dilapidated health care infrastructure and lack of testing equipment is unlikely to be up to the task of treating a large number of patients with a highly infectious disease.North Korea's lack of transparency and unwillingness to share information also poses a challenge.North Korea has never formally acknowledged how many died during a devastating famine in the 1990s that experts suggest killed as many as 2 million. Those who fled the country at the time shared horrific stories of death and survival, and a country in chaos."North Korea has such a limited supply of basic medicine that public health officials need to focus on preventative medicine. They would be ill-equipped to deal with any kind of epidemic," Jean Lee, director off the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, told CNN at the outset of the pandemic.Doctors who have defected in recent years often speak of poor working conditions and shortages of everything from medicine to basic healthcare supplies.Choi Jung-hun, a former physician in North Korea who fled the country in 2011, said when he was helping to combat a measles outbreak in 2006 to 2007, North Korea did not have the resources to operate round-the-clock quarantine and isolation facilities.He recalled that after identifying suspicious cases, manuals for doctors said patients were supposed to be transferred to a hospital or a quarantine facility for monitoring."The problem in North Korea is that manuals are not followed. When there wasn't enough food provided for the people at hospitals and quarantine facilities, people escaped to look for food," Choi said during an interview with CNN in 2020.How is North Korea responding so far?North Korean state media declared the situation a "major national emergency" upon admitting the first officially reported COVID infection.On Thursday, Kim placed all cities into lockdown and ordered "people with fever or abnormal symptoms" into quarantine; he also directed the distribution of medical supplies the government had reportedly stocked in case of a COVID emergency, according to KCNA.Kim later chaired a meeting of the country's powerful politburo, which agreed to implement "maximum" emergency anti-epidemic measures. The measures include isolating work units and pro-actively conducting medical checkups to find and isolate people with "fever and abnormal symptoms," the KCNA reported Friday."Practical measures are being taken to keep the production going at a high rate in the major sectors of the national economy and to stabilize the life of the people to the maximum," KCNA said.According to KCNA, the politburo criticized the country's anti-epidemic sector for "carelessness, laxity, irresponsibility and incompetence," saying it "failed to respond sensitively" to increasing COVID-19 cases across the world, including in neighboring regions.A reporter for Chinese state media CGTN released a rare video from Pyongyang on Friday, recounting his experience on the ground."As far as we know, not many people in Pyongyang have been vaccinated, and the medical and epidemic prevention facilities are in short supply," reporter Zang Qing said in a Weibo post."Because the capital is in lockdown, the food I have at home is only enough for a week. We are still awaiting what policy the government will announce next."At a meeting Saturday, Kim inspected the country's emergency epidemic measures and medical supplies. He also urged North Korean officials to learn from China's "advanced and rich quarantine results and experience they have already achieved in their fight against the malicious infectious disease," according to KCNA.What about North Korea's vaccine coverage?North Korea is not known to have imported any coronavirus vaccines despite being eligible for the global COVID-19 vaccine sharing program, Covax.Assuming most North Koreans are unvaccinated, an outbreak in the country which has limited testing capabilities, inadequate medical infrastructure and which has isolated itself from the outside world could quickly become deadly.Calls are mounting on the country's leadership to provide access to vaccines."There is no evidence to show that North Korea has access to enough vaccines to protect its population from COVID-19. Yet, it has rejected millions of doses of AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines offered by the WHO-led Covax program," said Amnesty International's East Asia researcher Boram Jang, in a statement."With the first official news of a COVID-19 outbreak in the country, continuing on this path could cost many lives and would be an unconscionable dereliction of upholding the right to health."In February, Covax reportedly scaled back the number of doses allocated to North Korea because the country failed to arrange for any shipments, according to Reuters.A spokesperson for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said Covax has moved to "needs-based vaccine allocations" and "has currently not committed any volume" for North Korea."In case the country decides to start a COVID-19 immunization program, vaccines could be made available based on criteria of Covax objectives and technical considerations to enable the country to catch up with international immunization targets," the spokesperson said.

North Korea's first-reported COVID-19 outbreak is the "greatest turmoil" to befall the country since its founding more than 70 years ago, according to its leader Kim Jong Un, as the isolated and impoverished nation scrambles to curb the spread of a highly transmissible virus that risks causing a major humanitarian crisis.

North Korea reported 21 more deaths and 174,440 new "fever cases" Friday, according to state media KCNA, though it did not specify how many of the deaths and cases were linked to COVID, likely due to the country's extremely limited testing capacity.

The climbing death toll and surging "fever cases" come after North Korea said Thursday it had identified its first ever case of COVID-19 an alarming development for a country with one of the world's most fragile public health systems and a largely unvaccinated population.

But given the opaque nature of the regime and the country's isolation from the world a trend that has only exacerbated since the pandemic it is extremely difficult to assess the real situation on the ground.

Foreign diplomats and aid workers had fled North Korea en masse in 2021 due to shortages of goods and "unprecedented" restrictions on daily life, making it all the more impossible to obtain information from the country other than through official state media.

But North Korean state media reports have been vague, and many important questions remain unanswered, including the country's vaccine coverage and the lockdown's impact on the livelihood of its 25 million people.

Here is what we know, and what we don't know about the outbreak:

North Korean authorities have not announced the cause of the outbreak.

North Korea's borders have been tightly sealed since January 2020 to keep the virus at bay, making the so-called "hermit nation" even more isolated from the world. It even declined invitations to send teams to compete at the Tokyo and Beijing Olympics, citing the threat of COVID-19.

And as new variants began to emerge, it stepped-up those efforts, cutting off nearly all trade with China the country's biggest trading partner and economic lifeline for the Kim regime with imports from Beijing dropping 99% from September to October 2020.

It remains unclear how the virus slipped through the country's tightly-sealed borders.

When KCNA reported on the first identification of COVID-19 in the country on Thursday, it did not even specify how many infections had been defected. It simply said samples collected from a group of people experiencing fevers on May 8 had tested positive for the highly contagious omicron variant.

By Friday, KCNA was reporting that 18,000 new "fever cases" and six deaths were recorded on Thursday, including one who tested positive for the BA.2 sub-variant of omicron.

"A fever whose cause couldn't be identified explosively spread nationwide since late April," the newspaper said. "As of now up to 187,800 people are being isolated."

On Saturday, KCNA said a total of 524,440 people had reported "fever" symptoms between late April and May 13. Among them, 280,810 people were still being treated in quarantine, while the rest had recovered.

An outbreak of COVID-19 could prove disastrous for North Korea. The country's dilapidated health care infrastructure and lack of testing equipment is unlikely to be up to the task of treating a large number of patients with a highly infectious disease.

North Korea's lack of transparency and unwillingness to share information also poses a challenge.

North Korea has never formally acknowledged how many died during a devastating famine in the 1990s that experts suggest killed as many as 2 million. Those who fled the country at the time shared horrific stories of death and survival, and a country in chaos.

"North Korea has such a limited supply of basic medicine that public health officials need to focus on preventative medicine. They would be ill-equipped to deal with any kind of epidemic," Jean Lee, director off the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, told CNN at the outset of the pandemic.

Doctors who have defected in recent years often speak of poor working conditions and shortages of everything from medicine to basic healthcare supplies.

Choi Jung-hun, a former physician in North Korea who fled the country in 2011, said when he was helping to combat a measles outbreak in 2006 to 2007, North Korea did not have the resources to operate round-the-clock quarantine and isolation facilities.

He recalled that after identifying suspicious cases, manuals for doctors said patients were supposed to be transferred to a hospital or a quarantine facility for monitoring.

"The problem in North Korea is that manuals are not followed. When there wasn't enough food provided for the people at hospitals and quarantine facilities, people escaped to look for food," Choi said during an interview with CNN in 2020.

North Korean state media declared the situation a "major national emergency" upon admitting the first officially reported COVID infection.

On Thursday, Kim placed all cities into lockdown and ordered "people with fever or abnormal symptoms" into quarantine; he also directed the distribution of medical supplies the government had reportedly stocked in case of a COVID emergency, according to KCNA.

Kim later chaired a meeting of the country's powerful politburo, which agreed to implement "maximum" emergency anti-epidemic measures. The measures include isolating work units and pro-actively conducting medical checkups to find and isolate people with "fever and abnormal symptoms," the KCNA reported Friday.

"Practical measures are being taken to keep the production going at a high rate in the major sectors of the national economy and to stabilize the life of the people to the maximum," KCNA said.

According to KCNA, the politburo criticized the country's anti-epidemic sector for "carelessness, laxity, irresponsibility and incompetence," saying it "failed to respond sensitively" to increasing COVID-19 cases across the world, including in neighboring regions.

A reporter for Chinese state media CGTN released a rare video from Pyongyang on Friday, recounting his experience on the ground.

"As far as we know, not many people in Pyongyang have been vaccinated, and the medical and epidemic prevention facilities are in short supply," reporter Zang Qing said in a Weibo post.

"Because the capital is in lockdown, the food I have at home is only enough for a week. We are still awaiting what policy the government will announce next."

At a meeting Saturday, Kim inspected the country's emergency epidemic measures and medical supplies. He also urged North Korean officials to learn from China's "advanced and rich quarantine results and experience they have already achieved in their fight against the malicious infectious disease," according to KCNA.

North Korea is not known to have imported any coronavirus vaccines despite being eligible for the global COVID-19 vaccine sharing program, Covax.

Assuming most North Koreans are unvaccinated, an outbreak in the country which has limited testing capabilities, inadequate medical infrastructure and which has isolated itself from the outside world could quickly become deadly.

Calls are mounting on the country's leadership to provide access to vaccines.

"There is no evidence to show that North Korea has access to enough vaccines to protect its population from COVID-19. Yet, it has rejected millions of doses of AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines offered by the WHO-led Covax program," said Amnesty International's East Asia researcher Boram Jang, in a statement.

"With the first official news of a COVID-19 outbreak in the country, continuing on this path could cost many lives and would be an unconscionable dereliction of upholding the right to health."

In February, Covax reportedly scaled back the number of doses allocated to North Korea because the country failed to arrange for any shipments, according to Reuters.

A spokesperson for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said Covax has moved to "needs-based vaccine allocations" and "has currently not committed any volume" for North Korea.

"In case the country decides to start a COVID-19 immunization program, vaccines could be made available based on criteria of Covax objectives and technical considerations to enable the country to catch up with international immunization targets," the spokesperson said.

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What we know (and don't know) about North Korea's COVID-19 outbreak - WCVB Boston