Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

Public release date: 28-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 x2156 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY -- A novel method for printing human cells onto surfaces in defined patterns can help advance research on tissue engineering and regeneration, as described in an article in Tissue Engineering, Part C, Methods, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc (http://www.liebertpub.com). The article is available free online at the Tissue Engineering website (http://www.liebertpub.com/ten).

"Cell printing is one of the breakthrough technologies that will make the application of stem cells for tissue engineering feasible," says John Jansen, DDS, PhD, Methods Co-Editor-in-Chief and Professor and Chairman, Department of Biomaterials, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, The Netherlands.

Yu Fang and colleagues, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, combined two microscale techniques to dispense and position cells in a variety of patterns. They then demonstrated the ability to use these 3-dimensional cell systems to monitor cell signaling events known to have a role in the growth, proliferation, and metastasis of cancer cells. The authors describe the use of sound waves to deliver microdroplets of cells and polymer-based phase separation to control cell placement in the article "Rapid Generation of Multiplexed Cell Co-Cultures Using Acoustic Droplet Ejection Followed by Aqueous Two-phase Exclusion Patterning." (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ten.TEC.2011.0709)

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About the Journal

Tissue Engineering (http://www.liebertpub.com/ten) is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly in print and online in three parts: Part A--the flagship journal; Part BReviews; and Part CMethods. Led by Co-Editors-In-Chief Antonios Mikos, PhD, Louis Calder Professor at Rice University, Houston, TX, and Peter C. Johnson, MD, Vice President, Research and Development, Avery Dennison Medical Solutions of Chicago, IL and President and CEO, Scintellix, LLC, Raleigh, NC, the Journal brings together scientific and medical experts in the fields of biomedical engineering, material science, molecular and cellular biology, and genetic engineering. Tissue Engineering is the official journal of the Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS). Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed online at the Tissue Engineering website (http://www.liebertpub.com/ten).

About the Company

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.(http://www.liebertpub.com), is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Stem Cells and Development, Human Gene Therapy and HGT Methods, and Biopreservation and Biobanking. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 70 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available at Mary Ann Liebert Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com).

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Innovative cell printing technologies hold promise for tissue engineering R&D

- Human genome and mouse studies identify new precise genetic links

Newswise Working with genetically engineered mice and the genomes of thousands of people with schizophrenia, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they now better understand how both nature and nurture can affect ones risks for schizophrenia and abnormal brain development in general.

The researchers reported in the March 2 issue of Cell that defects in a schizophrenia-risk genes and environmental stress right after birth together can lead to abnormal brain development and raise the likelihood of developing schizophrenia by nearly one and half times.

Our study suggests that if people have a single genetic risk factor alone or a traumatic environment in very early childhood alone, they may not develop mental disorders like schizophrenia, says Guo-li Ming, M.D., Ph.D., professor of neurology and member of the Institute for Cell Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. But the findings also suggest that someone who carries the genetic risk factor and experiences certain kinds of stress early in life may be more likely to develop the disease.

Pinpointing the cause or causes of schizophrenia has been notoriously difficult, owing to the likely interplay of multiple genes and environmental triggers, Ming says. Searching for clues at the molecular level, the Johns Hopkins team focused on the interaction of two factors long implicated in the disease: Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) protein, which is important for brain development, and GABA, a brain chemical needed for normal brain function.

To find how these factors impact brain development and disease susceptibility, the researchers first engineered mice to have reduced levels of DISC1 protein in one type of neuron in the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in learning, memory and mood regulation. Through a microscope, they saw that newborn mouse brain cells with reduced levels of DISC1 protein had similar sized and shaped neurons as those from mice with normal levels of DISC1 protein. To change the function of the chemical messenger GABA, the researchers engineered the same neurons in mice to have more effective GABA. Those brain cells looked much different than normal neurons, with longer appendages or projections. Newborn mice engineered with both the more effective GABA and reduced levels of DISC1 showed the longest projections, suggesting, Ming said, that defects in both DISC1 and GABA together could change the physiology of developing neurons for the worse.

Meanwhile, other researchers at University of Calgary and at the National Institute of Physiological Sciences in Japan had shown in newborn mice that changes in environment and routine stress can impede GABA from working properly during development. In the next set of experiments, the investigators paired reducing DISC1 levels and stress in mice to see if it could also lead to developmental defects. To stress the mice, the team separated newborns from their mothers for three hours a day for ten days, then examined neurons from the stressed newborns and saw no differences in their size, shape and organization compared with unstressed mice. But when they similarly stressed newborn mice with reduced DISC1 levels, the neurons they saw were larger, more disorganized and had more projections than the unstressed mouse neurons. The projections, in fact, went to the wrong places in the brain.

Next, to see if their results in mice correlated to suspected human schizophrenia risk factors, the researchers compared the genetic sequences of 2,961 schizophrenia patients and healthy people from Scotland, Germany and the United States. Specifically, they determined if specific variations of DNA letters found in two genes, DISC1 and a gene for another protein, NKCC1, which controls the effect of GABA, were more likely to be found in schizophrenia patients than in healthy individuals. They paired 36 DNA letter changes in DISC1 and two DNA letter variations in NKCC1 one DNA letter change per gene in all possible combinations. Results showed that if a persons genome contained one specific combination of single DNA letter changes, then that person is 1.4 times more likely than people without these DNA changes to develop schizophrenia. Having these single DNA letter changes in either one of these genes alone did not increase risk.

Now that we have identified the precise genetic risks, we can rationally search for drugs that correct these defects, says Hongjun Song, Ph.D., co-author, professor of neurology and director of the Stem Cell Program at the Institute for Cell Engineering.

Other authors of the paper from Johns Hopkins are Ju Young Kim, Cindy Y. Liu, Fengyu Zhang, Xin Duan, Zhexing Wen, Juan Song, Kimberly Christian and Daniel R. Weinberger. Emer Feighery, Bai Lu and Joseph H. Callicott from the National Institute of Mental Health, Dan Rujescu of Ludwig-Maximilians-University, and David St Clair of the University of Aberdeen Royal Cornhill Hospital are additional authors.

See more here:
Genetic Risk and Stressful Early Infancy Join to Increase Risk for Schizophrenia

Public release date: 15-Feb-2012
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Contact: Cathia Falvey
cfalvey@liebertpub.com
914-740-2100
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, February 15, 2012?Therapeutic cancer vaccines, which stimulate the body's immune system to target and destroy cancer cells, are being used in combination with conventional chemotherapy with growing success, as described in several illuminating articles in Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com). These articles are available free online at http://www.liebertpub.com/cbr

The U.S. FDA recently approved the first cancer therapeutic vaccine for treatment of metastatic prostate cancer. At least 14 other cancer vaccine strategies are in Phase II or III clinical trials for metastatic melanoma, lung cancer, and lymphoma, for example.

A critical perspective, "Recent Advances in Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines," (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/cbr.2012.1200) published in the Journal by Jeffrey Schlom, PhD, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD explains that a key advantage of cancer vaccines used in combination with chemotherapy is the extremely low level of toxicity. "The next frontier for vaccine therapy will be the use of vaccines in combination with certain chemotherapeutic agents, radiation, hormone therapy, and certain small molecule targeted therapies," according to Dr. Schlom.

These emerging areas of cancer vaccine therapy are explored in detail in two accompanying research reports by Dr. Schlom's colleagues at NCI/NIH. James Hodge, Hadley Sharp, and Sofia Gameiro describe how a tumor-targeted vaccine can enhance the effectiveness of radiation therapy on cancer growth and spread beyond the primary tumor in the article "Abscopal Regression of Antigen Disparate Tumors by Antigen Cascade After Systemic Tumor Vaccination in Combination with Local Tumor Radiation." (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cbr.2012.1202) Drs. Hodge and Gameiro and coauthor Jorge Caballero present the molecular signatures of lung tumor cells that can be made more susceptible to immunotherapy when first exposed to chemotherapeutic agents in the article "Defining the Molecular Signature of Chemotherapy-Mediated Lung Tumor Phenotype Modulation and Increased Susceptibility to T-cell Killing." (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cbr.2012.1203)

"This perspective and promising research reports are from one of the leading vaccine research laboratories in the world," says Co-Editor-in-Chief Donald J. Buchsbaum, PhD, Division of Radiation Biology, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Alabama at Birmingham. "The ultimate use of cancer vaccines in combination with other immunotherapies, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy will be based on preclinical investigations and hopefully will produce clinical survival benefit for a range of cancers."

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Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals, published 10 times a year in print and online, is under the editorial leadership of Editors Donald J. Buchsbaum, PhD and Robert K. Oldham, MD, Lower Keys Cancer Center, Key West, FL. Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals is the only journal with a specific focus on cancer biotherapy, including monoclonal antibodies, cytokine therapy, cancer gene therapy, cell-based therapies, and other forms of immunotherapy. The Journal includes extensive reporting on advancements in radioimmunotherapy and the use of radiopharmaceuticals and radiolabeled peptides for the development of new cancer treatments. Topics include antibody drug conjugates, fusion toxins and immunotoxins, nanoparticle therapy, vascular therapy, and inhibitors of proliferation signaling pathways. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed online at http://www.liebertpub.com/cbr

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research; Human Gene Therapy and Human Gene Therapy Methods; and Stem Cells and Development. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 70 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available at http://www.liebertpub.com

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
140 Huguenot St., New Rochelle, NY 10801-5215
http://www.liebertpub.com
Phone: 914-740-2100
800M-LIEBERT
Fax: 914-740-2101

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Promising early results with therapeutic cancer vaccines

26-10-2011 07:18 Genetic engineering may be one of the greatest breakthroughs in recent history, however, with scientific advancements new ethical issues are raised, forcing us to ask not how, but if we should push genetic research to its absolute limit. This programme looks at the possible benefits of genetic engineering, such as the curing of hereditary diseases and the creation of better, more efficient crops. It also explores the potential issues that arise with this new technology - the questionable morality of cloning, and the controversy that surrounds stem-cell research are two topics which are also investigated.

Link:
Genetic Engineering (excerpt) - Video