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Organoid modeling can be done using adult human tissues, mouse models, or by engineering induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). At UC San Diego Health, Associate Project Scientist, Herve Tiriac, is using adult tissues to create 3D patient-derived pancreas-like organoids.
He discusses the following:
Driven by both professional and personal reasons, Dr. Tiriac is interested in using 3D patient-derived organoid modeling in order to better understand pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, a type of cancer that's both very deadly and understudied. He sees this research as an opportunity to implement meaningful clinical improvement in the lives of those affected, and build a precision medicine technology platform in doing so.
Dr. Tiriac discusses the origination of the term "organoid" and the types of organoid modeling that can be done, the process of the development of organoids based on patient-derived pancreatic tumors, the challenge of organoid contamination by yeast and/or fungi, what types of new experimentation will be done in the near future, such as those dealing with the problem of treatment resistance and improving existing approaches to the development of tumor organoids, and so much more.
Tune in to hear the full conversation
At WALTHAM Petcare Science Institute, the goal is to understand what drives health and wellbeing in our pets—whether cats, dogs, fish, or horses. Vice president of the institute, Kay O'Donnell, discusses the following:
Through the use of vast amounts of data from veterinary practices and the implementation of an AI algorithm, the WALTHAM Petcare Science Institute has developed a method for obtaining useful information from samples of blood, urine, and feces collected from pets over the course of many years. This has given way to the ability to identify biomarkers that indicate pet health statuses and the likelihood of these statutes changing over time.
More broadly, O'Donnell sees this as evidence of a new approach emerging in pet healthcare—one that not only values proactivity and early intervention, but that mirrors the approach that's emerging in human healthcare.
She also discusses the role of diet and nutrition in the activity and composition of the microbiome, how the comparison of oral microbiomes between dogs and humans differ and how this is influenced by differences in diet, and what the future of pet health and animal-human interactions might look like.
For more, visit https://www.waltham.com/.
Paul Turner & Robert McBride, co-founders of Felix Biotechnology (felixbt.com), discuss the growing problem of antibiotic resistance and the new therapies on the horizon.
In this podcast they'll discuss:
Turner & McBride's biotech company, Felix Biotechnology, is heavily focused on progressing the deployment of novel biotherapeutics that can target urgent microbial challenges within human health, and much more.
Turner & McBride discuss the greatest challenges they face in the biomedical field, including the widespread failure of traditional antibiotics. They discuss some of the older technologies they are in the process of updating, such as developing viruses that specifically kill bacteria. Turner & McBride believe that this option will give the medical community greater control as they seek to combat the antibiotic resistance problem.
The biotechnology researchers and entrepreneurs discuss antibiotic sensitivity, and the use of their solutions in therapy. They discuss some of the more troubling bacterial pathogens, discussing cells and proteins. Continuing, the Felix co-founders provide detailed information on bacteriophages or phages as they are called informally, which are the most abundant organisms within the biosphere, a common feature of prokaryotic existence.
Turner & McBride explain the regulatory hurdles that they and other biotech researchers and developers face, and how they can move forward. As they state, clinical trials data is going to be key to getting their phages further developed and released into the medical/healthcare industry. Expanding the discussion, they provide info on the cocktail approach in treatment and therapy.
As many research and development biotechnology companies fail, Felix Biotechnology seeks to find a way to be financially solvent so they can bring their therapy concepts to the market.
Only recently do scientists understand the prevalence and importance of fungi in our digestive system anatomy. Dr. Iliev tells listeners about:
Dr. Iliyan Iliev is Assistant Professor of Immunology in Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. As a mucosal immunologist, he and his lab are focusing specifically on how mycobiota impacts bowel inflammation. Their work has lead them to examine how components of fungi, bacteria, and cell interaction may lead to relief from immunological bowel diseases. The balance between fungi and bacteria appears to be important in the suppression of these diseases, but more work needs to be done.
The presence of gut fungi made itself known after detecting a fungal message while undergoing cellular primer researcher. Once microbiome work became more prevalent in digestive system anatomy and deep gene sequencing became possible, scientist went back and applied this knowledge, discovering a community of different fungi in the gut.
Dr. Iliev's lab works at the strain and species level of fungi of various patients, then connecting these strains and species to the patient's condition. This gut fungi focus may help treat these inflammatory bowel diseases.
See the Ilieve Lab page at Weill Cornell Medicine for more information: https://ilievlab.weill.cornell.edu/
Dr. Poon's research into the mechanism of cell death reveals that what was long thought a random process actually has signs of regulation. In this podcast, you'll learn:
Dr. Ivan Poon of La Trobe University is a Senior Research Fellow in biochemistry and genetics. He specializes in extracellular vesicles and cell turnover, or the mechanisms of cell death. In this discussion, he explains his focus on trying to understand what happens when cells die. The amount of energy a cell puts into generating small vesicles, or apoptotic bodies, during turnover is significant. Therefore, he and other researchers are studying why cells invest in this process.
While researchers have known the basics of cell death for decades, only recently has this mechanism of cell death process been understood as highly regulated rather than random. Furthermore, each cell type follows a different process. Monocytes, for example, form a string-like protrusion like a beaded necklace that then generates apoptotic bodies.
Most important for Dr. Poon is to understand the molecular mechanism of this process—what controls it. The answers may enable special treatment for diseases including drugs that either inhibit or accelerate cell deaths depending on the process needed to regain health.
For more, see Dr. Poon's page on the La Trobe University web site: https://scholars.latrobe.edu.au/display/ipoon
In this podcast, the principal investigator at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Stephen Boppart, details the development of a novel portable imaging system with research and clinical applications. He discusses:
Dr. Boppart expounds on the many research and clinical applications of this new technology, which include exploration of fundamental questions in biology and carcinogenesis, and detection of biomarkers leading to earlier cancer diagnosis.
One of his main focuses has been on putting this technology on a portable medical card and bringing it into the operating room during breast cancer surgery in order to image a tumor as soon as it's been excised. This will allow for a better understanding of breast cancer anatomy, including the cells present, the collagen structure, and the level of metabolic activity.
Dr. Boppart also discusses how the quantity and type of extracellular vesicles differ depending on whether it's been produced by cancerous or healthy tissue, and how this discovery would have been impossible if only using standard methods in histology.
For more information, check out https://biophotonics.illinois.edu/.
Neuroepigenetics entails processes that involve the neuro system. Dr. Isabelle Mansuy explains her research by exploring:
Dr. Isabelle Mansuy runs the Laboratory of Neuroepigenetics at the University of Zurich. Her lab is interested in the long-term effects of stress through the epigenetic carryover. Their studies on mice have shown that young individuals exposed to trauma at a very vulnerable time, a time when their germ cells are less protected, can retain dramatic effects. These stress-induced traumas modify the germ cell epigenome and the traces left on the brain sometimes carry over across generations.
Through these studies, her lab has made a solid model that is reproducible where they can screen these epigenetic changes and plot which of the epigenetic-caused behavioral changes remain and specifically for how many generations.
Dr. Mansuy explains the depth to which epigenetic inheritance affects all physiological elements, from metabolic organs to bones to skin. Everywhere they looked they saw effects from trauma affecting cellular production.
Her lab continues to try and understand how these changes are transcribed and are looking at the possibility that blood is probably the mediator between the signals.
Finally, she asks us to consider that epigenetic inheritance research has been delayed by our belief that DNA sequencing would solve all genetic problems and this is not the case. Neuroepigenetics changes our concept of heredity.
For more, see her lab website: https://www.hifo.uzh.ch/en/research/mansuy.html
Additionally, her papers are located on Pubmed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Quantgene combines deep genomics with AI to detect cancer very early. When you listen, you'll hear Mr. Bhakdi explain:
Quantgene founder and CEO Jo Bhakdi discusses the company's focus on early cancer detection through blood testing to find its earliest markers. With a human genome sequence software-driven technology that also engages chemistry, machine learning, and laboratory processes, Quantgene is able to sequence and investigate cancer DNA one by one. This increases the accuracy and speed by an exponential degree compared to other detections that were based on protein marker identification.
The test can pick up somatic DNA mutations in the blood caused by tumors with a whole new level of precision by detecting individual molecules in cancer DNA. This human genome sequence work is superior to next generation sequencing because it's much more accurate.
Quantgene's process can investigate every single DNA copy and eliminate any errors. They aggregated the world's largest data set of tumor DNA and created a matching learning project to answer very specific questions like, what are the smallest number of locations one has to look at to still find any variant of a tumor? They can get a systemic reflection of the tumor and can tell exactly what the tumor is in mutational terms. The data they've generated and continue to generate is completely new in oncology.
Future plans include the launch of an early detection product in 2020 called Serenity. A simple blood test done once a year should guide physicians on detecting cancer early. The resulting data set will create much larger data sets ultimately, with a huge data flow to gain full scientific insight.
For more information on the company, see https://www.quantgene.com/
For more on the 2020 test release of Serenity, see https://www.quantgene.com/early-cancer-detection
On today's episode, Dr. Price shares his insight and information on a range of fascinating topics, including the following:
The human virome is the collection of all of the viruses in and on the surface of the body. There are trillions of these viruses, and many of them are bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect and replicate within bacteria. Over the past 15 years or so, there has been a lot of research and effort in trying to understand the function of microbes in the body and how they relate to states of health and disease.
At UC San Diego, Associate Director of Microbiology and Associate Professor of Pathology and Medicine, David Pride, is focused specifically on trying to understand how to utilize bacteriophages in a way that will improve human health.
"One of the unanticipated developments that really came from nano is that we evolved from chemistry, physics, engineering, medicine, toxicology, and so forth, and we learned to adopt each other's approaches and adopt each other's problems," says Dr. Paul Weiss, UC Presidential Chair, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, and Distinguished Professor of Material Science & Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
He continues by explaining how the communication and collaborative approaches in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology have served the world of microbiome research, and how they might impact other fields of research as well.
After developing the BRAIN Initiative under the Obama Administration, Dr. Weiss and his team were asked to lead the technological roadmap effort for the National Microbiome Initiative, which gathered scientists and engineers from around the world with a common goal: to understand what technologies can be used to understand how different species interact in the microbiome of humans, oceans, and soils.
Dr. Weiss discusses a number of interesting topics and accomplishments of the Paul Weiss Lab, so tune in for all the details. You will discover:
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