Biostatis could prevent death from traumatic injury

Agencies
March 6, 2018

Washington, Mar 6: The US defence research agency is developing treatments that can slow down biological processes in the event of life-threatening injuries, extending the critical "golden hour" within which the patients life can be saved.

When a soldier suffers a traumatic injury or acute infection, the time from event to first medical treatment is usually the most significant factor in determining the outcome between saving a life or not.

This critical, initial window of time is called the "golden hour," but in many cases the opportunity to intervene may extend much less than sixty minutes, which is why the military invests heavily in moving casualties as rapidly as possible from the battlefield to suitable medical facilities.

However, due to the realities of combat, there are often hard limits to the availability of rapid medical transport and care.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created the Biostasis programme to develop new possibilities for extending the golden hour, not by improving logistics or battlefield care, but by going after time itself, at least how the body manages it.

Biostasis will attempt to directly address the need for additional time in continuously operating biological systems faced with catastrophic, life-threatening events.

The programme will leverage molecular biology to develop new ways of controlling the speed at which living systems operate, and thus extend the window of time following a damaging event before a system collapses. The concept aims to slow life to save life.

"At the molecular level, life is a set of continuous biochemical reactions, and a defining characteristic of these reactions is that they need a catalyst to occur at all," said Tristan McClure-Begley, the Biostasis programme manager.

"Within a cell, these catalysts come in the form of proteins and large molecular machines that transform chemical and kinetic energy into biological processes," said McClure-Begley.

"Our goal with Biostasis is to control those molecular machines and get them to all slow their roll at about the same rate so that we can slow down the entire system gracefully and avoid adverse consequences when the intervention is reversed or wears off," he said.

DARPA is looking for biochemical approaches that control cellular energetics at the protein level.

Creatures such as tardigrades and wood frogs exhibit a capability known as "cryptobiosis," a state where all metabolic processes appear to have stopped, yet life persists.

While the specific molecular mechanisms involved in these animals are very different, they share a common biochemical concept: they selectively stabilise their intracellular machinery.

"If we can figure out the best ways to bolster other biological systems and make them less likely to enter a runaway downward spiral after being damaged, then we will have made a significant addition to the biology toolbox," said McClure-Begley.

Biostasis is initially aimed at generating proof-of-concept, benchtop technologies and testing their application in simple living systems for experimental validation.

To support eventual transition to patients, DARPA will work with federal health and regulatory agencies as the program advances to develop a pathway for potential, future human medical use.

By the end of the five-year, fundamental research program DARPA hopes to have multiple tools for reducing the risk of permanent damage or death following acute injury or infection.

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Agencies
June 22,2020

A team of scientists has produced first open source all-atom models of full-length COVID-19 Spike protein that facilitates viral entry into host cells – a discovery that can facilitate a faster vaccine and antiviral drug development.

The group from Seoul National University in South Korea, University of Cambridge in the UK and Lehigh University in the US produced the first open-source all-atom models of a full-length S protein.

The researchers say this is of particular importance because the S protein plays a central role in viral entry into cells, making it a main target for vaccine and antiviral drug development.

"Our models are the first full-length SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein models that are available to other scientists," said Wonpil Im, a professor in Lehigh University.

"Our team spent days and nights to build these models very carefully from the known cryo-EM structure portions. Modeling was very challenging because there were many regions where simple modeling failed to provide high-quality models," he wrote in a paper published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Scientists can use the models to conduct innovative and novel simulation research for the prevention and treatment of Covid-19.

Though the coronavirus uses many different proteins to replicate and invade cells, the Spike protein is the major surface protein that it uses to bind to a receptor.

The total number of global COVID-19 cases was nearing 9 million, while the deaths have increased to over 467,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

With 2,279,306 cases and 119,967 deaths, the US continues with the world's highest number of COVID-19 infections and fatalities, according to the CSSE.

Brazil comes in the second place with 1,083,341 infections and 50,591 deaths.

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Agencies
June 23,2020

The record levels of new daily COVID-19 cases are due to the fact that the pandemic is peaking in a number of big countries at the same time and reflect a change in the virus' global activity, the World Health Organisation said.

At a media briefing on Monday, WHO's emergencies chief Dr Michael Ryan said that the numbers are increasing because the epidemic is developing in a number of populous countries at the same time.

Some countries have attributed their increased caseload to more testing, including India and the US But Ryan dismissed that explanation.

We do not believe this is a testing phenomenon, he said, noting that numerous countries have also noted marked increases in hospital admissions and deaths neither of which cannot be explained by increased testing.

There definitely is a shift in that the virus is now very well established, Ryan said. The epidemic is now peaking or moving towards a peak in a number of large countries.

He added the situation was definitely accelerating in a number of countries, including the US and others in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

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Agencies
July 2,2020

London, Jul 2: The World Health Organisation says smoking is linked to a higher risk of severe illness and death from the coronavirus in hospitalised patients, although it was unable to specify exactly how much greater those risks might be.

In a scientific brief published this week, the U.N. health agency reviewed 34 published studies on the association between smoking and Covid-19, including the probability of infection, hospitalisation, severity of disease and death.

WHO noted that smokers represent up to 18% of hospitalised coronavirus patients and that there appeared to be a significant link between whether or not patients smoked and the severity of disease they suffered, the type of hospital interventions required and patients' risk of dying.

In April, French researchers released a small study suggesting smokers were at less risk of catching Covid-19 and planned to test nicotine patches on patients and health workers — but their findings were questioned by many scientists at the time who cited the lack of definitive data.

WHO says "the available evidence suggests that smoking is associated with increased severity of disease and death in hospitalized Covid-19 patients. It recommends that smokers quit.

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