Publisher Health

A decades-old program created by President George W. Bush to combat AIDS around the world is at risk of being sucked into a partisan dispute over abortion, with some Republicans threatening to block its renewal.Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker, and George W. Bush, the Republican former president, do not agree on much. But earlier this year, they joined a high-powered gathering in Washington — with the Irish rock star Bono on video from Dublin — to mark the 20th anniversary of America’s biggest and, arguably, most successful foreign aid program.Mr. Bush created that program, the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, in 2003. In the two decades since, PEPFAR, as it is known, has saved 25 million lives and served as a powerful tool for soft diplomacy, a symbol of America’s moral leadership in the world. It has had extraordinary support from a bipartisan coalition of liberals and Christian conservatives.But now PEPFAR is in danger of becoming a victim of abortion politics — just as the State Department is reorganizing to make the program permanent.The program is set to expire at the end of September. But House Republicans are not moving forward with a bill to reauthorize it for another five years, because abortion opponents — led by a G.O.P. congressman who has long been a supporter of PEPFAR — are insisting on adding abortion-related restrictions.The stalemate is the latest example of how Republicans are using their majority in the House of Representatives to impose their conservative views on social policy throughout the federal government. They have focused in particular on abortion, a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and, with it, the right to legal abortion. Earlier this summer, House Republicans loaded up the annual military policy bill that has long been bipartisan with provisions to limit abortion access and transgender care.The fight over PEPFAR, a $7 billion-a-year program that operates in more than 50 countries, is similar, because it is a broadly bipartisan program that now appears at risk of being sucked into a partisan fight over cultural and social issues.PEPFAR continues to have wide support, including from Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which oversees the program and approve the reauthorization legislation. But so far, Mr. McCaul has not advanced it because of the objections of abortion foes, including his Republican colleague, Representative Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey, one of the leading anti-abortion voices in Congress who also helped draft the legislation creating PEPFAR.Representative Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey wants PEPFAR funding to include restrictions barring the program from partnering with organizations that provide abortion services.Pool photo by Ken CedenoMr. Smith now says he will not agree to renew the program unless it is subject to the so-called Mexico City policy — enacted by Republican presidents but lifted by Democrats, including President Biden — that would bar the program from partnering with any organization that provides abortion services, no matter the source of the funding.That is a non-starter for Democrats, who are demanding a “clean” five-year reauthorization — one with no added policy restrictions.“We’ve done clean reauthorizations for 20 years,” said Representative Barbara Lee, Democratic of California and a chief sponsor of PEPFAR.But there is a substantial stumbling block: Three influential outside groups that oppose abortion — the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation’s political action arm and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America — have sided with Mr. Smith and intend to “score” the vote when they compile their annual ratings of members of Congress. A vote for renewing PEPFAR without the anti-abortion language would be counted as a demerit, making it politically toxic for most Republicans.The situation has alarmed champions of the program. In an email, Bono called the impasse “madness,” and called on Congress to “protect the bipartisan commitment to keeping politics out of PEPFAR.”Mr. McCaul said he is “talking to supporters both inside and outside the government, and working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the House and the Senate” to resolve the dispute. He has also been texting with Bono, who in turn has been in touch with congressional leaders on the matter.A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the negotiations, said on Thursday that the White House was “engaging closely with Congress at senior levels” in pursuit of a straight five-year reauthorization.The program is an important legacy for Mr. Bush and other Republicans of his era, including Bill Frist, the former Senate majority leader, and Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania.President George W. Bush at the White House in 2003 with a choir from Uganda made up of children who had been orphaned by H.I.V., AIDS or conflict.Doug Mills/The New York Times“I look back on the things I did as a member of Congress, and feel like I was able, as the pro-life warrior in the United States Senate, to forge a compromise to get conservatives to support this,” Mr. Santorum said in an interview. “It’s been a great thing for our country, and it’s been a great thing for humanity.”Last week, Mr. Santorum publicly pleaded for a “five-year, clean extension” in an opinion essay in the conservative outlet Newsmax. He said he intended to use Congress’s upcoming August recess to try to forge a compromise.But in recent months, Mr. Smith, the New Jersey Republican, and right-wing groups have begun accusing the Biden administration of injecting progressive politics into the program.In late May, a Heritage Foundation scholar published an essay in The Hill arguing that PEPFAR had become “increasingly politicized” and needed an overhaul. Mr. Smith followed in early June with “Dear Colleague” letter asserting that Mr. Biden had “hijacked PEPFAR.”In an interview, he pointed to new language in a PEPFAR country and regional operational plan calling for the program to partner with organizations that advocate for “institutional reforms in law and policy regarding sexual, reproductive and economic rights of women.” He argued that was code for a plan to “integrate abortion with H.I.V./AIDS work.”The document also says PEPFAR programs should “advance human rights and decriminalization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (L.G.B.T.Q.I.+) communities.” That did not sit well with the Family Research Council, whose chief lobbyist, Travis Weber, recently called PEPFAR “a massive slush fund for abortion and L.G.B.T. advocacy.” In an interview, he said he stood by those words.The senior White House official said that the “intentional focus on health equity is new” and that it came in response to requests from local communities for PEPFAR to “address barriers to health for children, adolescent girls and young women, and key populations.” The mention of women’s rights refers to ensuring that adolescent girls have access to schools, the official said.The Biden administration has added a footnote to the document clarifying that PEPFAR does not fund abortions, an assertion that Mr. Smith called “meaningless.”There is no evidence that PEPFAR or its foreign partners have used federal tax dollars to promote or perform abortions; U.S. law does not allow it. But some PEPFAR grantees, such as Population Services International, a global health nonprofit based in Washington, do provide abortion-related services with money from other sources.“The assertion is made by critics is that organizations like P.S.I. are working with U.S. money and involved in abortion — and shouldn’t that be illegal?” said Karl Hofmann, the group’s president and chief executive. “I guess my answer is, those two facts are true, and it’s not illegal.”Ms. Lee, the California Democrat, said she is working to “clarify this misrepresentation” being made by Mr. Smith.But the prospects for a five-year extension seem bleak.“We are in a very precarious place,” said Shepherd Smith, an evangelical Christian and a co-founder of Childrens AIDS Fund International, a nonprofit. He has organized other faith-based groups to issue a letter in support of reauthorization.Christopher H. Smith, the New Jersey congressman, has proposed an alternative: He persuaded fellow Republicans to insert language into a State Department spending bill that would allow PEPFAR to keep operating for a year without a new authorization, but subject to the anti-abortion restrictions. But even if that were to pass, certain programs — including one devoted to orphans and vulnerable children — would lapse after Sept. 30.And the symbolism of such a move would be devastating, PEPFAR’s backers say — a signal to other nations that the United States is abandoning its bipartisan commitment to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, and that Washington is truly broken. It would also be a setback for global health; PEPFAR has created an infrastructure of clinics in poor nations that provide other services, including Covid-19 testing and vaccines.“This is not an issue that at all involves abortion — it’s about having health care facilities in countries to deal with pandemic type of challenges,” said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland. He called PEPFAR’s creation “one of the great moments in American foreign policy.”A man receives a Covid-19 vaccine in Kathantha, Sierra Leone. PEPFAR has created an infrastructure of clinics in poor nations that provide other services, including Covid-19 testing and vaccines.Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York TimesAs the debate plays out on Capitol Hill, the State Department official who oversees PEPFAR, Dr. John N. Nkengasong, is about to get a big promotion. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is expected to announce the establishment of a new Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, to be led by Dr. Nkengasong. The idea is to integrate PEPFAR into the department’s broader global health work and to transition it out of emergency status.Since its inception, the program has invested more than $100 billion in fighting the global AIDS crisis. Independent analyses by K.F.F., formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, have found that PEPFAR has helped improve maternal and child health and is “associated with large, significant declines in mortality” in countries where it has operated.Backers of the program are hoping that Mr. Bush will weigh in. Earlier this year, Emily Bass, an author and activist, sent the former president a signed copy of her book, “To End a Plague: America’s Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa,” which chronicles the PEPFAR story.A few weeks ago, Ms. Bass said, Mr. Bush sent a letter thanking her.“Laura and I will remain invested in this mission for the rest of our lives,” he wrote.

Raman spectroscopy — a chemical analysis method that shines monochromatic light onto a sample and records the scattered light that emerges — has caused frustration among biomedical researchers for more than half a century. Due to the heat generated by the light, live proteins are nearly destroyed during the optical measurements, leading to diminishing and non-reproducible results. As of recently, however, those frustrations may now be a thing of the past.
A group of researchers with the Institute for Quantum Sciences and Engineering at Texas A&M University and the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) have developed a new technique that allows low-concentration and low-dose screenings of protein-to-ligand interactions in physiologically relevant conditions. Titled thermostable-Raman-interaction-profiling (TRIP), this new approach is a paradigm-shifting answer to a long-standing problem that provides label-free, highly reproducible Raman spectroscopy measurements.
“Protein is a very fragile biological molecule and needs specific care,” said lead author and postdoctoral research assistant Dr. Narangerel Altangerel. “When I cool down the surface or substrate, I can make the proteins happy. I can poke them with the laser, and they can now output the information I need.”
While the proteins studied are on a molecular level, the implications of these findings could be huge. Like a lock and key, a protein-ligand interaction is the first step in processes like signal transduction, immune responses and gene regulation. Due to TRIP’s ability to detect protein-ligand interactions in real time, the timeline for drug and vaccine testing may be shortened. Another application could be clinical, turning lengthy tests to detect a virus into same-day turnaround with accurate results.
“The whole idea from the spectroscopy statute is that it requires minimum to none for sample preparation, so this can be moved into the clinic right away,” said co-author and University Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering Dr. Vladislav Yakovlev. “Clinicians and patients don’t have to wait for days and weeks of analysis. You can get all these answers almost right away.”
An additional benefit of the TRIP technique is that the sample size required to run the test is much smaller and requires a lower protein concentration, meaning a more cost-effective process for testing.
“I was buying 100 microliters of a sample for $3,500, then I have to share this sample with multiple people and end up with only a 20 to 30 microliter sample,” Altangerel said. “This forced me to use a smaller sample making Raman hard to do, as low-concentration samples make it a weak process. That made me challenge myself to try different things.”
Despite the breakthrough, the team is looking for other aspects in which the TRIP method could be useful.

Common beans are important food sources with high nutritional content. Bean seeds also contain phenolic compounds, which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties that promote health. A study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and CIATEJ in Guadalajara, Mexico, explored the composition of seed coat extracts from black and pinto bean varieties unique to the Chiapas region of Southern Mexico.
“These beans are preserved among Mayan communities and grown by indigenous farmers. They are heirlooms from past generations and are important because of their cultural significance and contribution to biodiversity,” explained study co-author Elvira de Mejia, professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition (FSHN), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I.
The research team selected two varieties among several collected in the Chiapas region because of their high phenolic content, present in the seed coat pigment that gives the beans their dark red or black coloring.
“These phenolic compounds have the capability of keeping oxidation and inflammation under control, which could help decrease the risk of chronic health issues such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes,” de Mejia said.
First, the researchers removed the bean seed coat and ground it for processing. Then they analyzed the chemical composition of a crude extract, as well as an enriched extract that was purified to concentrate the phenolic content. They also measured the bean extracts’ antioxidant capacity and ability to inhibit free radicals through biochemical assays and in silico molecular docking, a type of computer simulation.
“We found the black beans had high quantities of anthocyanin, in particular delphinidin, petunidin, and malvidin glucosides, which have antioxidative properties. The pinto beans had the highest total content of phenolic compounds and showed great potential for inhibiting enzymes that contribute to inflammation,” said David Fonseca Hernández, a doctoral student at CIATEJ, and lead author of the paper. Fonseca conducted the research as a visiting scholar in FSHN at U. of I.
The seed coat extracts can be used as additives in the food industry or in cosmetics, Fonseca explained.

When breast cancer is diagnosed in the earliest stages, the survival rate is nearly 100 percent. However, for tumors detected in later stages, that rate drops to around 25 percent.
In hopes of improving the overall survival rate for breast cancer patients, MIT researchers have designed a wearable ultrasound device that could allow people to detect tumors when they are still in early stages. In particular, it could be valuable for patients at high risk of developing breast cancer in between routine mammograms.
The device is a flexible patch that can be attached to a bra, allowing the wearer to move an ultrasound tracker along the patch and image the breast tissue from different angles. In the new study, the researchers showed that they could obtain ultrasound images with resolution comparable to that of the ultrasound probes used in medical imaging centers.
“We changed the form factor of the ultrasound technology so that it can be used in your home. It’s portable and easy to use, and provides real-time, user-friendly monitoring of breast tissue,” says Canan Dagdeviren, an associate professor in MIT’s Media Lab and the senior author of the study.
MIT graduate student Wenya Du, Research Scientist Lin Zhang, Emma Suh ’23, and Dabin Lin, a professor at Xi’an Technological University, are the lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Science Advances.
A wearable diagnostic
For this project, Dagdeviren drew inspiration from her late aunt, Fatma Caliskanoglu, who was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer at age 49, despite having regular cancer screens, and passed away six months later. At her aunt’s bedside, Dagdeviren, then a postdoc at MIT, drew up a rough schematic of a diagnostic device that could be incorporated into a bra and would allow for more frequent screening of women at high risk for breast cancer.

The influenza (flu) virus is constantly undergoing a process of evolution and adaptation through acquiring new mutations. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have added a new layer of understanding to explain why and how flu viruses change. The “survival of the accessible” model provides a complementary view to the more widely recognized “survival of the fittest” way of evolving. The work was published today in Science Advances.
Viruses undergo a rapid evolutionary flux due to constant genetic mutations. This rapid flux is why people get a flu shot every year, as we need to tackle the latest flu variant that has emerged as the dominant strain. We often see these mutations in the context of traditional evolutionary thinking, where variant fitness determines which mutated virus emerges as a dominant strain in a population. The St. Jude team investigated this theory and defined an alternative evolutionary principle, which they propose is a key driver of evolution, termed “variant accessibility.”
The research, led by Alexander Gunnarsson, Ph.D., and M. Madan Babu, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Structural Biology and Center of Excellence for Data-Driven Discovery, involved creating a model of mutational accessibility to help predict how and why specific mutations emerge in a population during viral evolution.
The unappreciated role of variant accessibility
The genomic alphabet only has four letters representing the nucleotides: (A)denosine, (T)hymine, (G)uanine, and (C)ytosine. Groups of three nucleotides within a protein-coding gene are called a codon. Codons act like a recipe for assembling proteins, encoding for a specific amino acid. Mutations occur when nucleotides are altered, for instance, during replication. This alteration leads to a different amino acid being used to make the protein. But not all mutations are equally likely to emerge, as Babu and Gunnarsson discovered.
“The process of genetic replication has inherent biases built in, such as the relative ease of an A to be mutated to a C rather than to a G,” Babu explained. “This means that the pool of mutants with this A-to-C mutation is larger, and surviving variants will predominantly emerge from that particular pool, even though there may be a fitter sequence with an A-to-G mutation.”
Using the influenza virus as a case study, Gunnarsson and Babu translated this concept into a mathematical model. Their model enables researchers to predict the path of future evolution based on the accessibility of a mutation. Of particular interest was exploring how specific protein sites can gain or lose the ability to be modified after acquiring a mutation. They then examined how this gain or loss influenced the protein’s function.

As with many toxins, exposure to the toxic metal cadmium during pregnancy can adversely impact fetal development. Now, researchers at the Rutgers School of Public Health think they’re beginning to understand how the metal inflicts its damage: by disrupting placental hormones that regulate pregnancy physiology.
Unlike other toxins, relatively little cadmium crosses the placenta to directly impact the fetus. Instead, the placenta concentrates cadmium in its tissue at rates of up to six times that found in umbilical cord serum.
“We already know a lot about cadmium and its detrimental impacts on fetal health, such as low birthweight,” said Zorimar Rivera-Núñez, an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology and lead author of the study published in the journal Toxics. “What we don’t really understand is how the placenta regulates exposure to cadmium and other toxicants. That’s what this research was trying to ascertain.”
Very few epidemiological studies have examined cadmium’s endocrine-disrupting potential during pregnancy, the researchers said. To address this knowledge gap, Rivera-Núñez, together with Megan Hansel, a doctoral degree student at the Rutgers School of Public Health, and Camila Capurro, a clinical research assistant at the school and an MPH student, analyzed urine samples from 294 pregnant women who participated in the Understanding Pregnancy Signals and Infant Development (UPSIDE) study in Rochester, N.Y.
Study participants provided urine samples during each trimester and answered questions about demographics, lifestyle, health history and other measures.
By testing their urine for cadmium and sex steroid levels, including testosterone, which is important to fetal brain development, the researchers determined as cadmium levels increased, levels of free testosterone — testosterone that isn’t attached to a protein — decreased.
At the same time, total testosterone — both free and bound testosterone — remained stable, suggesting cadmium may influence fetal exposure to sex steroids, which in turn can adversely influence fetal growth.
“We think that what cadmium is doing is altering the bound/unbound process of testosterone during pregnancy,” said Rivera-Núñez. “If cadmium is interfering with these binding proteins, it might explain why we’re seeing lower levels of free, or unbound, testosterone.”
Rivera-Núñez said one goal of this research is to help pregnant women avoid cadmium exposure. Doing so will be difficult: Although human exposure occurs through tobacco products, it’s frequently found in foods, accumulating in the environment through industrial emissions, mining and the burning of coal. To address these sources, expectant mothers need to understand the risks and regulators must work to keep the toxin from the environment in the first place, she said.
“If we can understand the mechanisms by which cadmium impacts growth in utero, we might be able to understand how similar chemicals work on the placenta,” Rivera-Núñez said. “Eventually, that could help lower exposure risks across the board.”

The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on helping people who are institutionalized against their will.Five years ago, I began volunteering as a bill payer for a legally blind, 95-year-old woman on public assistance. The job involved handling paperwork that clients could no longer handle themselves, thus helping enable them to remain at home. I came to learn that this woman had no family or friends left, and she came to think of me as her only friend. During my time with her, she was also put under the care of Adult Protective Services (A.P.S.), because one of her caregivers was fraudulently using her credit card.Last August, she fell out of bed in the middle of the night. A caregiver found her the next morning and called 911. She was taken to the hospital, treated and then sent to a rehabilitation center in a nursing home. After 100 days, as per her insurance, she was now considered a long-term patient.She is now 100 years old, blind and lying in bed 24 hours a day, except when I visit her and take her to the patio in a wheelchair. She is in an unfamiliar place and hears screaming, crying and cursing all night from other patients. She is relatively lucid despite her circumstances, and the only thing that is keeping her alive is the hope that she can go back to her small studio apartment soon, a place where she has lived for 50 years. She has said she wants to die if she can’t go home.Because she was protected by A.P.S. and is now in a guardianship arrangement under the care of the nursing home, I can no longer legally pay her bills or take care of any paperwork. This has meant that her rent has not been paid, and eviction proceedings are in the works. I have tried to get myself listed as a contact for her, to at least be able to advocate for better services but have come up against a wildly frustrating Catch-22 situation. She has been deemed incompetent by the nursing home and therefore can’t name me as a contact. I requested to have her evaluated again, because I don’t believe she is incompetent, and the answer was that only her contact can make that request.My question to you is, Do I tell her the truth, that she is never going home? Will taking away that hope make her give up her will to live? And should her will to live be based on a false premise? The social worker at the nursing home won’t even talk to me, because I am not a legal contact, and so the decision to tell her the truth lies with me; she has no one else. — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:This story is heartbreaking and, I fear, all too common, as “kinless” older adults grow in number. All sorts of factors play a role, some benevolent. These include an attitude toward elder care that puts safety ahead of freedom, and the well-intended use of provisions, like the guardianship process, that deny people their autonomy.Nursing homes aren’t always unaffected by financial incentives, either: the hundred days of rehabilitation that Medicare can mostly cover followed by the Medicaid-funded long-term care that, at a lower rate, still keeps a bed filled. Petitioning to have patients deemed incapacitated, with guardianship assigned to a third party, can make bill collection easier, too. What’s unusual here, I suspect, is mainly that you’re around to bear witness to it.There might be an institutional temptation to keep her in the dark so that she will be easier to manage. But it’s her life. She has a right to know as much of what is happening to her as she can understand and a right to respond accordingly. First, though, be sure that she has exhausted her options.You can try to convey your concerns to a long-term-care ombudsman, who, by federal law, serves as an advocate for residents. Your state probably also has an elder-abuse center and elder-advocacy groups that you could consult. This woman simply wants to live out her days in her own home. That shouldn’t be too much to ask.Yet her options, and yours, are sadly limited. There’s a need for systemic reform here. “We are too easily willing and able to justify radical measures such as guardianship and do not yet have more humane, dignified solutions in place,” Laura Mosqueda, an elder-care and elder-abuse expert at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, tells me about cases like the one you describe. As our bodies and minds grow frail, conflicts arise between protecting us and respecting us; institutional arrangements meant to save us from misery can end up inflicting it.Readers RespondThe previous column’s question was from a reader whose nanny had informed her that a close friend was mistreating her own nanny by underpaying her, withholding food and reneging on promised benefits. Our reader wondered what her ethical obligations were in this situation. She wrote: “This friend introduced me to her circle of friends a few years ago, and it’s because of her that I am part of a great group of women. Should I intervene and risk her behaving even worse toward her nannies and creating a rift in the friend circle? Or do I say nothing and continue with business as usual?”In his response, the Ethicist noted: “If you bring up what you’ve heard with your friend, she will know that her nanny has been complaining about her — and may retaliate. Because her nanny is vulnerable here, make sure that whatever you do has her approval. … If she doesn’t want you to speak up, you could wait until the next transition. If that’s not going to happen soon, you may feel you have to distance yourself from your friend without saying why. Abusive behavior makes someone unappealing company.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)⬥Do you want to look the other way, knowing this person is abusing her power over her employee? If your friend gets mad at you for speaking up, it says more about her. You should be able to live with a smaller circle of friends who treat all people with dignity, rather than a larger group who do not. — Richard⬥I appreciated how the Ethicist responded to the greater possible legal ramifications of the situation for nannies and other domestic workers, since they are a group often overlooked due to classism, racism, sexism and the isolating conditions of the job itself. His advice was spot on about going through the nanny before taking any action to avoid unwanted retaliation. — Courtney⬥The Ethicist’s advice to not jeopardize the current nanny’s job is so important. This job, despite the alleged abuse, may be a critically valuable source of income. Waiting to bring it up until the next “nanny transition” is good idea. At the very least, getting the current nanny’s approval is essential. — Tom⬥The letter writer could talk to her friend about how much she values and appreciates her own nanny and how protective she feels toward her. She could give examples of different ways that nannies get exploited and share her disgust that people behave in such awful, inequitable ways. This would serve the same purpose of providing a moral compass without risking the career of the friend’s nanny. — Deborah⬥This is an opportunity to help your entire circle of friends appreciate the importance of how we treat those who have less power than us. You can provide other examples and avoid having your abusive friend trace this back specifically to her and her nanny. The goal is for her to see her own behavior deemed inappropriate by you and all your mutual friends. — John

Research from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago found that direct injection of neonatal mesenchymal stem cells, derived from heart tissue discarded during surgery, reduces intestinal inflammation and promotes wound healing in a mouse model of Crohn’s disease-like ileitis, an illness marked by chronic intestinal inflammation and progressive tissue damage.
The study, published in the journal Advanced Therapeutics, offers a promising new and alternative treatment approach that avoids the pitfalls of current Crohn’s disease medications, including diminishing effectiveness, severe side effects and increased risk of gastrointestinal dysfunction.
“Neonatal cardiac-derived mesenchymal stem cells have been used in a clinical trial to repair an injured heart, but this is the first time these potent cells have been studied in an inflammatory intestinal disease model,” said senior author Arun Sharma, PhD, from Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Lurie Children’s who is the Director of Pediatric Urological Regenerative Medicine and Surgical Research, and Research Associate Professor of Urology and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University. “Our results are encouraging and definitely provide a new platform to potentially treat aspects of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases.”
Dr. Sharma explains that before it would be feasible to use these stem cells clinically to treat Crohn’s disease, his team needs to overcome the hurdle of how they are administered. In the current animal model study, the stem cells were injected directly into the inflammatory lesions in the small intestine, which requires surgical procedures. The next step then is to develop a safe way to inject them into the body through a vein, similar to performing a blood draw in the arm of a patient. More animal studies will be needed before this novel treatment approach can progress to clinical trials.
“Ultimately our goal is to utilize this cell type as treatment, but also as a preventive measure, before signs and symptoms of Crohn’s disease develop,” said Dr. Sharma. “We also might be able to apply this approach to other inflammatory diseases. The potential is enormous, and we are excited to move forward.”
Research at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is conducted through Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute. The Manne Research Institute is focused on improving child health, transforming pediatric medicine and ensuring healthier futures through the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Lurie Children’s is a nonprofit organization committed to providing access to exceptional care for every child. It is ranked as one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report. Lurie Children’s is the pediatric training ground for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Having control over how a dish is cooked is always a good idea. Taking a hint from the kitchen, scientists appear to have discovered a way to produce a true structure of the rare but naturally-occurring anti-HIV compound Lancilactone C from start to finish.
Its non-cytotoxicity in mammals could make this triterpenoid an ideal candidate for treating AIDS if its biological activity were clear — and if only it were abundant in nature.
Now, a research group at Kyoto University has succeeded in creating a domino-like synthesis of Lancilactone C’s unique seven-membered ring structure.
“Our synthetic method revealed that the proposed structure of Lancilactone C was initially incorrect,” says Chihiro Tsukano of Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Agriculture. “But we successfully derived its true structure from our spectral data and understanding of its biosynthesis.”
In addition to this revelation, Tsukano realized that the electrocyclization — a rearrangement reaction in organic chemistry — used in the total synthesis also occurs in biosynthesis. Ironically, it remains a mystery of whether the proposed structure containing an unsaturated seven-membered ring might exist in nature as an analog — or equivalent compound — and how it might affect the expression of biological activity.
Tsukano’s team utilized the domino-like reaction to enable the total synthesis of lancilactones and related triterpenoids. This outcome has inspired the team to further their research in optimizing compound structures, leading to possible development of novel antivirals.
The endless loop of required medication and multi-drug therapies often correlates with a lower quality of life for economically burdened patients.
“Our synthetic method for Lancilactone C, with its known efficacy, may lead to developing less problematic anti-HIV drugs,” concludes Tsukano.

Scientists have found a way to use nanotechnology to create a 3D ‘scaffold’ to grow cells from the retina -paving the way for potential new ways of treating a common cause of blindness.
Researchers, led by Professor Barbara Pierscionek from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), have been working on a way to successfully grow retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells that stay healthy and viable for up to 150 days. RPE cells sit just outside the neural part of the retina and, when damaged, can cause vision to deteriorate.
It is the first time this technology, called ‘electrospinning’, has been used to create a scaffold on which the RPE cells could grow, and could revolutionise treatment for one of age-related macular degeneration, one of the world’s most common vision complaints.
When the scaffold is treated with a steroid called fluocinolone acetonide, which protects against inflammation, the resilience of the cells appears to increase, promoting growth of eye cells. These findings are important in the future development of ocular tissue for transplantation into the patient’s eye.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of blindness in the developed world and is expected to increase in the coming years due to an ageing population. Recent research predicted that 77 million people in Europe alone will have some form of AMD by 2050.
AMD can be caused by changes in the Bruch’s membrane, which supports the RPE cells, and breakdown of the choriocapillaris, the rich vascular bed that is adjacent to the other side of the Bruch’s membrane.
In Western populations, the most common way sight deteriorates is due to an accumulation of lipid deposits called drusen, and the subsequent degeneration of parts of the RPE, the choriocapillaris and outer retina. In the developing world, AMD tends to be caused by abnormal blood vessel growth in the choroid and their subsequent movement into the RPE cells, leading to haemorrhaging, RPE or retinal detachment and scar formation.