Nanomedicinecenter.com

Coca-Cola CEO gives $6 million for cancer research

John Brock, the CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., along with his family, donated $6 million to build 2 faculty chairs at two American universities (Emory and Georgia Tech) to support research in cancer nanotechnology.

Brock’s main inspiration for this act was his mother, who died in 2007 from lung and colon cancer, although she never smoked and really lived in a healthy way. After she died, John and the rest of his family started to talk to scientists about nanomedicine and were determined to help in order to improve the methods and techniques for early cancer detection.

“After she passed away, we started talking more about our interest in trying to help researchers get new leads in the early detection and treatment of cancer,” said Brock. “My mother was a caregiver in her community. She would be thrilled that some value can be created in the search for better ways to manage cancer.”

Source: bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2008/12/15/daily67.html

An artificial brain in creation

A team of American scientists are working hard on designing and developing an artificial brain that would have human brain’s characteristics such as sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition.

On one side of the team there are psychiatrists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led by Professor Giulio Tononi. On the other side there are scientists from Columbia University and IBM, who are working on the software for the “cognitive computer”, and nanotechnology experts from Cornell, Stanford and University of California-Merced who will make the hardware.

Their aim is to create a machine which will be able to “think for itself” and do various logical tasks. Another interesting thing is that it will be as small as the human’s brain, and will work powered by just a hundret-watt light bulb.
“Our brains can do it, so we have proof that it is possible,” says Tononi.

Of course, it is impossible to replicate the whole human brain. “A lot of the work will be to determine what kinds of neurons are crucial and which ones we can do without,” Tononi said.
He said that the most important thing is to understand how to teach an artificial brain how to deal and learn from experience.
He also said that the artificial brain will be plastic, so it can change while it learns new things. The design will convey information using electrical impulses modeled on the spiking neurons found in mammal brains.

“It’s a very difficult task, but not impossible. I would be happy if we’d create a mouse brain. After that, it would be just a matter of time when we’d progress to more complex brains,” said Tononi.

The whole project is funded by a $4.9 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Source: wisconsin.edu

Scientists discover anti-tumor gene

A new anti-tumor gene called SARI has been discovered and identified by scientists from the Virginia Commonwealth University. The gene can suppress a key protein that is overexpressed in 90% of human cancers. This is a huge discovery, since this could lead to finding a working cure for cancer.

The whole project was successfully finished in the Fisher laboratory by using a technique called subtraction hybridization. Interferon was used as a immune system modulator.

The scientists delivered the gene through a virus to infected cancer cells, and they stopped dividing and died.
“Additionally, IFNs are powerful immune modulating agents that contribute to the immune response to cancer and they are effective inhibitors of new blood vessel formation, the process of angiogenesis, which is obligatory for the growth of both primary and metastatic cancers,” said Fisher, a member of VCU Massey Cancer Center.

IFNs are currently being used in treatment of many diseases, such as melanoma, malignant glioma, leukemia and more. “We have uncovered a new way by which interferon can induce anti-tumor activity. The identification of SARI also provides a new potential reagent for the selective killing of tumor cells,” said Fisher.

This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation and the National Foundation for Cancer Research.

Source: vcu.edu