Immunized camels and COVID-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), a global pandemic on 11th March 2020, as its causative virus “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2” (SARS-CoV-2) spreads rapidly out of control across the world[1]. A few months ago, the virus has spread all over the world claiming the lives of thousands of people, and hundreds of thousands being infected on daily bases and the numbers are on the increase[12]. This pandemic puts enormous pressure on health services across the globe, especially as it coincides with the seasonal flu. Therefore, all efforts to control this new pandemic are needed

The past, current and future trends in DNA vaccine immunisations

This review focuses on DNA vaccines, denoting the last two decades since the early substantiation of preclinical protection was published in Science in 1993 by Ulmer et al. In spite of being safely administered and easily engineered and manufactured DNA vaccine, it holds the future prospects of immunization by inducing potent cellular immune responses against infectious and non-infectious diseases. It is well documented that injection of DNA plasmid encoding a desired gene of interest can result in the subsequent expression of its products and lead to the induction of an immune response within a host. This is pertinent to prophylactic and therapeutic vaccination approach when the peculiar gene produces a protective epitope from a pathogen. The recent studies demonstrated by a number of research centers showed that these immune responses evoke protective immunity against several infectious diseases and cancers, which provides adequate support for the use of this approach. We attempt in this review to provide an informative and unbiased overview of the general principles and concept of DNA vaccines technology with a summary of a novel approach to the DNA vaccine, present investigations that describe the mechanism(s) of protective immunity provoked by DNA immunization and to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of DNA immunisation

A Preliminary Investigation on the Possibility of Developing a Cancer Vaccine Using Snake Venom Components

Cancer is a global health concern and is still the leading cause of death worldwide, with 10 million deaths caused, so far, by the disease in 2020. Although there are treatments to treat some cancers and save lives, these treatments do have drawbacks and can cause side effects. Although various anticancer remedies have been discovered using natural products in the past, none of them went into clinical trials. Scientists still looking for alternative agents, within animal products. Recently venom is gaining attention for its anticancer activities. Objective: The present study, therefore, aimed to address the theoretical possibility that people bitten by venomous snakes may also develop prophylaxis, i.e., natural immunity, against cancer. And whether snake venom can be used as a vaccine due to their similarities with potential cancer antigens or not. Method: An immunoinformatic analysis was performed by correlating potential snake venom components’ amino sequence data with different cancer antigens. Results: Initially, our findings showed that while developed countries have low snakebite rates, they also demonstrated high cancer rates, in contrast to that developing countries, where they have high snakebite rates but low cancer rates. In terms of the immunoinformatic approach, ten cancer antigens have various similarities with five snake venom components. While the amino acid sequence alignment demonstrates similarities below 40%, the antigenicity index scores were found to be high. We predict that an immune system activated in snakebite victims may elicit an immune response against similar epitopes expressed on cancer cells. Hence, victims of snake bites may gain natural immunity against cancer. Conclusion: This study reports that non-lethal snakebites may play a vital role in protecting individuals from developing cancer in the future. Although it is a pilot study, such a concept and findings will open doors for future work to address this finding.</jats:p

In vitro Anti-Proliferative Activity of the Rubia tinctorum and Alkanna tinctoria Root Extracts in Panel of Human Tumor Cell Lines hasson

Cancer is a devastating disease and is considered number one killer worldwide. Herbal formulations had played a key role over the past several decades in the development of anti-cancer drugs. Medicinal plants, which are endemic in Jordan, are known for several biological activities in particular their anti-cancer activity. However, the anti-cancer efficacy of the root extracts of Jordanian Rubia tinctorum and Alkanna tinctoria is not yet reported. To address this issue, this study assessed the anti-cancer activity of some root extracts obtained from Jordanian R. tinctorum and A. tinctoria in different tumor cell lines including the tongue, bladder, colon, gastric, lungs, breast, pancreas, and renal tissue origins by modified propidium iodide (PI) based monolayer assay. Among the tested root extracts obtained by different solvent systems, A. tinctoria in 100 % ethanol and methanol showed prominent anti-cancer activity against MDA-MB-231breast cancer cells (IC50: 2.98 µg/ml, IC70: 6.03 µg/ml), and CAL-27 tongue squamous carcinoma cells (IC50: 3.86 µg/ml, IC70: 5.97 µg/ml) respectively. Different solvent root extracts of R. tinctorum exhibited a similar trend of anti-tumor activity in both CAL-27 and MDA MB-231 cells. The anti-proliferative property of the extracts on CAL-27 and MDA-MB-231 cells is unclear. However, it can be concluded that the observed anti-cancer potential can be attributed to the phenolic compounds of the extracts as high polar solvents were used for extraction. The current study forms the rationale for isolating significant amount of anti-cancer active compounds from R. tinctorum and A. tinctori

Non-Invasive Brain-to-Brain Interface (BBI): Establishing Functional Links between Two Brains

Transcranial focused ultrasound (FUS) is capable of modulating the neural activity of specific brain regions, with a potential role as a non-invasive computer-to-brain interface (CBI). In conjunction with the use of brain-to-computer interface (BCI) techniques that translate brain function to generate computer commands, we investigated the feasibility of using the FUS-based CBI to non-invasively establish a functional link between the brains of different species (i.e. human and Sprague-Dawley rat), thus creating a brain-to-brain interface (BBI). The implementation was aimed to non-invasively translate the human volunteer's intention to stimulate a rat's brain motor area that is responsible for the tail movement. The volunteer initiated the intention by looking at a strobe light flicker on a computer display, and the degree of synchronization in the electroencephalographic steady-state-visual-evoked-potentials (SSVEP) with respect to the strobe frequency was analyzed using a computer. Increased signal amplitude in the SSVEP, indicating the volunteer's intention, triggered the delivery of a burst-mode FUS (350 kHz ultrasound frequency, tone burst duration of 0.5 ms, pulse repetition frequency of 1 kHz, given for 300 msec duration) to excite the motor area of an anesthetized rat transcranially. The successful excitation subsequently elicited the tail movement, which was detected by a motion sensor. The interface was achieved at 94.0 +/- 3.0% accuracy, with a time delay of 1.59 +/- 1.07 sec from the thought-initiation to the creation of the tail movement. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of a computer-mediated BBI that links central neural functions between two biological entities, which may confer unexplored opportunities in the study of neuroscience with potential implications for therapeutic applications.open12

The association of Human Leukocyte Antigens Complex with Type 1 Diabetes in Omanis

Background: Identifying the human leukocyte antigens (HLA) high risk alleles, genotypes and haplotypes in different populations is beneficial for understanding their roles in type 1 diabetes (T1D) pathogenesis and intervention practices. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify T1D associated HLA gene alleles in the Omani population. Methods: Our case-control study included 73 diabetic seropositive children (mean age 9.08±3.27 years) and 110 healthy controls. HLA–A, -B, -C, -DRB1, and -DQB1 genes were genotyped using sequence specific primer polymerase chain reaction (SSP-PCR). Results: Two HLA class I alleles (B*08, B*58) and three class II alleles (DQB1*02, DRB1*03 and DRB1*04) were associated with T1D susceptibility, while one class I (B*51) and three class II (DQB1*05, DQB1*06, and DRB1*16) alleles were associated with T1D protection. HLA- DRB1*03 and DQB1*02 alleles showed the strongest risk association among all alleles. Six DRB1 residues (E9, S11, S13, Y30, V70 and K71) were significantly associated with T1D susceptibility. Heterozygous genotypes, HLA-DRB1*03/*04 and DQB1*02/*03 were significantly associated with T1D susceptibility (P=4.29E-07, OR=63.2 and P=0.02, OR=3.6, respectively). Furthermore, we detected a significant combined action of DRB1*03-DQB1*02 haplotype in T1D risk (P=1.76E-05, OR=15), and DRB1*16-DQB1*05 haplotype in protection (P=3.12E-2, OR=0.48). Conclusion: Known HLA class II gene alleles are associated with T1D in Omani children

Watching TV news as a memory task -- brain activation and age effects

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Neuroimaging studies which investigate brain activity underlying declarative memory processes typically use artificial, unimodal laboratory stimuli. In contrast, we developed a paradigm which much more closely approximates real-life situations of information encoding.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this study, we tested whether ecologically valid stimuli - clips of a TV news show - are apt to assess memory-related fMRI activation in healthy participants across a wide age range (22-70 years). We contrasted brain responses during natural stimulation (TV news video clips) with a control condition (scrambled versions of the same clips with reversed audio tracks). After scanning, free recall performance was assessed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The memory task evoked robust activation of a left-lateralized network, including primarily lateral temporal cortex, frontal cortex, as well as the left hippocampus. Further analyses revealed that - when controlling for performance effects - older age was associated with greater activation of left temporal and right frontal cortex.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We demonstrate the feasibility of assessing brain activity underlying declarative memory using a natural stimulation paradigm with high ecological validity. The preliminary result of greater brain activation with increasing age might reflect an attempt to compensate for decreasing episodic memory capacity associated with aging.</p

Functional characterization of the human myosin-7a motor domain

Myosin-7a participates in auditory and visual processes. Defects in MYO7A, the gene encoding the myosin-7a heavy chain, are causative for Usher syndrome 1B, the most frequent cause of deaf-blindness in humans. In the present study, we performed a detailed kinetic and functional characterization of the isolated human myosin-7a motor domain to elucidate the details of chemomechanical coupling and the regulation of motor function. A rate-limiting, slow ADP release step causes long lifetimes of strong actin-binding intermediates and results in a high duty ratio. Moreover, our results reveal a Mg2+-sensitive regulatory mechanism tuning the kinetic and mechanical properties of the myosin-7a motor domain. We obtained direct evidence that changes in the concentration of free Mg2+ ions affect the motor properties of human myosin-7a using an in vitro motility assay system. Our results suggest that in a cellular environment, compartment-specific fluctuations in free Mg2+ ions can mediate the conditional switching of myosin-7a between cargo moving and tension bearing modes

Blue-phase templated fabrication of three-dimensional nanostructures for photonic applications

A promising approach to the fabrication of materials with nanoscale features is the transfer of liquid-crystalline structure to polymers. However, this has not been achieved in systems with full three-dimensional periodicity. Here we demonstrate the fabrication of self-assembled three-dimensional nanostructures by polymer templating blue phase I, a chiral liquid crystal with cubic symmetry. Blue phase I was photopolymerized and the remaining liquid crystal removed to create a porous free-standing cast, which retains the chiral three-dimensional structure of the blue phase, yet contains no chiral additive molecules. The cast may in turn be used as a hard template for the fabrication of new materials. By refilling the cast with an achiral nematic liquid crystal, we created templated blue phases that have unprecedented thermal stability in the range -125 to 125 °C, and that act as both mirrorless lasers and switchable electro-optic devices. Blue-phase templated materials will facilitate advances in device architectures for photonics applications in particular