World’s First Saliva Test Detects Hidden Throat Cancer

According to American Society of Clinical Oncology, there is an estimated 53,260 adults (38,330 men and 14,880 women) in the United States will be diagnosed with oral and oropharyngeal cancer in the year 2020. Rates of these cancers are more than twice as high in men as in women. Oral and oropharyngeal cancer are the eighth most common cancer among men. The average age of diagnosis is 62. About 25% of cases occur in people younger than 55, but these cancers are rare in children.




Persistent human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is now the leading cause of cancers in the oropharynx (tonsils and tongue base area of the throat). In what is believed to be a world-first, a simple saliva test developed by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) biomedical scientists has detected early throat cancer in a person who had no symptom and no clinical signs of cancer.



“The series of saliva tests raised the alert and detected an early cancer before the person had any symptoms,” said QUT Faculty of Health’s Associate Professor Chamindie Punyadeera, who, with Dr Kai Tang, developed the test. Professor Punyadeera said the discovery was made during an HPV-prevalence study which included 665 healthy individuals. The incidence of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV)-driven throat cancers is on the rise in developed countries. Unfortunately, it is often discovered only when it is more advanced, with patients needing complicated and highly impactful treatment options. In the US, HPV-driven throat cancers have surpassed cervical cancers as the most common cancer caused by HPV.  However, unlike cervical cancer, up until now, there has been no screening test for this type of oropharyngeal cancer.


“To take the test, all the person has to do is give a salivary oral rinse sample. When the test shows HPV-16 DNA, it is repeated and if the presence of HPV-16 is persistent over a period of time we would
be suspicious that there may be underlying cancer. “The person whom we reported in this study had been consistently HPV-16 DNA positive for 36 months, with a steadily rising count of HPV-16 DNA after testing at 6, 12 and 36 months. The patient was found to have a 2mm squamous cell carcinoma in the left tonsil, treated by tonsillectomy. This has given our patient a high chance of cure with very straightforward treatment. Since the surgery, the patient has had no evidence of HPV-16 DNA in his saliva.”

The presence of this pattern of elevated salivary HPV-DNA must be fully evaluated, as it may provide the critical marker for early cancer detection. Professor Punyadeera said this was the first-ever case of histologically confirmed diagnosis of an asymptomatic, hidden throat cancer, diagnosed with a saliva screening test and that wider validation studies are required to confirm this finding.


REFERENCE

1. American Society of Clinical Oncology (2020). Oral and oropharyngeal cancer statistics. Retrieved from
https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/oral-and-oropharyngeal-cancer/statistics

2. Higuera, V. (2018, August 9).What is throat cancer?. Heartline. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from
https://www.healthline.com/health/cancer-throat-or-larynx

3. Queensland University of Technology. (2020, May 12). World-first saliva test detects hidden throat cancer. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from  www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200512093950.htm

4. Queensland University of Technology. (2020, May 12).World-first saliva test detects hidden throat cancer. Medicalxpress. Retrieved May 14, 2020 from
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-world-first-saliva-hidden-throat-cancer.html

IMAGE GLOSSARY

1.   
   https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwwwdocwirenews.com%2Fdocwire-pick%2Fhem-onc-picks%2Fscientists-develop-first-saliva-test-that-detects-throat-cancer-in-asymptomatic-patients%2F&psig=AOvVaw3KPDYoCgZS-H2xpkfLidUe&ust=1589956569970000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCOix3bmtv-kCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAV
2.   
   https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FQUT%2Fstatus%2F1144020919498596352&psig=AOvVaw381qzzqMwZ3Qatq1DBEFxG&ust=1589953762276000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCKC55PCtv-kCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD
3.    
   https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.qut.edu.au%2Fresearch%2Farticle%3Fid%3D144469&psig=AOvVaw09oZ1bVIxrHd3pIdaHfuHv&ust=1589957292759000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCODQ0dqqv-kCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAa

Mind Controlled Arm Prostheses

For the First time, people with limb amputations can experience sensations of touch with a mind-controlled arm prosthesis. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reports on three Swedish patients who have lived, for several years, with this new technology. This is one of the world’s most integrated interfaces between human and machine.

The research was led by Max Ortiz Catalan, Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology, in collaboration with Sahlgrenska University Hospital, University of Gothenburg, and Integrum AB, all in Gothenburg,
Sweden. Researchers at Medical University of Vienna in Austria and theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in the
USA were also involved.

“Our study shows that a prosthetic hand, attached to the bone and controlled by electrodes implanted in nerves and muscles, can operate much more precisely than conventional prosthetic hands. We further improved the use of the prosthesis by integrating tactile sensory feedback. This is used by the patients to mediate how hard to grab or squeeze an object. Over time, the ability of the patients to discern smaller changes in the intensity of  ensations has improved,” says Max Ortiz Catalan.   The patients have used a mind-controlled prosthesis in their everyday life for up to seven years. For the last few years, they Max Ortiz Catalan, Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology have also lived with a new function. The sensations of touch in the prosthetic hand. This is a new concept for artificial limbs, which are called neuromusculoskeletal prostheses. They are connected to the user’s nerves, muscles, and skeleton. “The most important contribution of this study was to demonstrate that this new type of prosthesis is a clinically viable replacement for a lost arm. No matter how sophisticated a neural interface becomes, it can only deliver real benefit to patients if the connection between the patient and the prosthesis is safe and reliable in the long term. Our results are the product of many years of work, and now we can Finally present the first bionic arm prosthesis that can be reliably controlled using implanted electrodes, while also conveying sensations to the user in everyday life,” continues Prof. Catalan. Since receiving prostheses, the patients have used them daily in all their professional and personal activities.

The newest part of the technology, the sensation of touch, is possible through stimulation of the nerves that used to be connected to the biological hand before the amputation. Force sensors located in the thumb of the prosthesis measure contact and pressure applied to an object while grasping. This information is transmitted to the patients’ nerves leading to their brains. Patients can thus feel when they are touching an object, its characteristics, and how hard they are pressing it, which is crucial for imitating a biological hand.

The implantation of this new technology took place at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, led by Professor Rickard Brånemark and Dr. Paolo Sassu. Over a million people worldwide suffer from limb loss, and the end goal for the research team, in collaboration with Integrum AB, is to develop a widely available product suitable for as many of these people as possible.

The current study dealt with patients who had above-elbow amputations, and this technology is closer to becoming a finished product. The research team is working in parallel with a new system for amputations below the elbow. In those cases, instead of one large bone (humerus), there are two smaller bones (radius and ulna) to which the implant needs to be anchored. The group is also working on adapting the system for leg prostheses. In addition to  aplications within arosthetics, the permanent interface between human and machine provides entirely new opportunities for scientific research into how the human muscular and nervous systems work.

REFERENCES

1. Chalmers University of Technology. (2020, April 30). Mind-controlled arm prostheses that ‘feel’ are now a part of everyday life. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 12, 2020 from  

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200430110321.htm

2. Fan, S. (2019, July 31).”Moving Beyond Mind-controlled Limbs to Prosthetics That Can Actually ‘Feel’.”Retrieved May 12, 2020 from 

https://singularityhub.com/2019/07/31/beyond-mind-controlled-robotic-limbs-to-prosthetics-that-can-actually-feel/

3. ”Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Arm Moves Individual ‘Fingers’.” (2016, February 15).Retrieved May 12, 2020 from
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/mind_controlled_prosthetic_arm_moves_individual_fingers_

4. ”Neuroscience researchers receive $3.4 million NIH grant to develop brain-controlled prosthetic limbs.”(2018, October 5). Retrieved May 12, 2020 from 

https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/neurosciences-articles/neuroscience-researchers-receive-grant-to-develop-brain-controlled-prosthetic-limbs

COVID-19 : Targeting Cells For Treatment

COVID-19 is still affecting many people worldwide. The precautions to be taken are well known to the society by now. Across the globe, the governments are hard at work establishing the physical infrastructure to fight the  andemic. At the same time, many laboratories across the world are working on clinical trials evaluating potential treatments. Researchers at MIT, the Ragon Institute of MGH, and Harvard along with colleagues from around the world have identified specific types of cells that appear to be the targets of the coronavirus, which is causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

Using existing data on the RNA found in different types of cells, the researchers were able to search for cells that express the two proteins that help the SARS-CoV-2 virus enter human cells. They found subsets of cells in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestine that express RNA for both of these proteins much more than other cells. Alex K. Shalekfrom MIT and Jose Ordovas-Montanes, a former MIT postdoc who now runs his lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in the scientific journal Cell.

    “Our goal is to get information out to the community and to
share data as soon as is humanly possible so that we can help accelerate ongoing efforts in the scientific and medical communities,”
says Alex K. Shalek,

Associate Professor of Chemistry affliated to MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES).

Not long after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began, scientists discovered that the viral “spike” protein binds to a receptor on human cells known as angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Another human protein, an enzyme called TMPRSS2, helps to activate the coronavirus spike protein, to allow for cell entry. The combined binding and activation allows the virus to get into host cells. Prof. Shalek’s lab, and many other labs around the world, have performed large-scale studies of tens of thousands of human, nonhuman primate, and mouse cells, in which they use single-cell RNA sequencing technology to determine which genes are turned on in a given cell type. Since last year, researchers at MIT have been building a database with partners at the Broad Institute to store a huge collection of these datasets in one place, allowing researchers to study potential roles for particular cells in a variety of infectious diseases.

Much of the data came from labs that belong to the Human Cell Atlas project, whose goal is to catalog  the distinctive patterns of gene activity for every cell type in the human body. The datasets that the MIT team used for this study included hundreds of cell types from the lungs, nasal passages, and intestine. The researchers chose those organs for the Covid-19 study because previous evidence had indicated that the virus can infect each of them. They then compared the results to cell types from unaffected organs.

In the nasal passages, the researchers found that goblet secretory cells, which produce mucus, express RNAs for both of the proteins that SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells. In the lungs, they found the RNAs for these proteins mainly in cells called type II pneumocytes. These cells line the alveoli (air sacs) of the lungs and are responsible for keeping them open. In the intestine, they found that cells called absorptive enterocytes, which are responsible for the absorption of some nutrients, express the RNAs for these two proteins more than any other intestinal cell type.

“This may not be the full story, but it paints a much more precise picture than where the field stood before,” Prof. Ordovas-Montanes says. “Now we can say with some level of confidence that these receptors are expressed on these specific cells in these tissues.”

“It’s hard to make any broad conclusions about the role of interferon against this virus. The only way we’ll begin to understand that is through carefully controlled clinical trials,” Prof. Shalek says. “What we are trying to do is put information out there, because there are so many rapid clinical responses that people are making. We’re trying to make them aware of things that might be relevant.”

Prof. Shalek now hopes to work with collaborators to profile tissue models that incorporate the cells identified
in this study. Such models could be used to test existing antiviral drugs and predict how they might affect SARS-CoV-2 infection. 

The MIT team and their collaborators have made all the data they used in this study available to other labs who want to use it. Much of the data used in this study were generated in collaboration with researchers around the world, who were very willing to share it, Prof. Shalek says. The researchers hope that their findings will help guide scientists who are working on developing new drug treatments or testing existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating Covid-19.

REFERENCES

1. COVID-19: “Researchers identify cells likely targeted by COVID-19 virus” (2020, April 22).Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200422132556.htm

2. Dhawan, B.(2020, May 1). COVID-19: Breakthrough! MIT researchers identify cells most likely to be attacked by a
coronavirus. Financial Express. Retrieved from
https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/health/covid-19-breakthrough-mit-researchers-identify-cells-most-likely-to-be-attacked-by-coronavirus/1945233/
3. “Researchers Identify Cells Likely Targeted By Covid-19 Virus”. (2020, April 23).Retrieved from
https://www.enn.com/articles/63246-researchers-identify-cells-likely-targeted-by-covid-19-virus

4. Flanagan, C. (2020, April 23). Researchers Identify Cells Targeted By The COVID-19 Virus. Femina. Retrieved from
https://www.femina.in/trending/researchers-identify-cells-targeted-by-the-covid-19-virus-155320.html
5. World Health Organization. (n.d.)Retrieved May 12, 2020, from
https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1