Tag Archives: disease

Immune system in a jar could speed vaccine development

474px-Human_brain In old science fiction movies, mad scientists and the like always seem to have, somewhere around their lab, a brain in a jar.

I never much saw the point of that. How about something really useful: an immune system in a jar? (Via New Scientist Invention Blog.)

Invented by George Lewis, a virologist at the University of Maryland, this simple replica immune system would allow scientists to test vaccines in the laboratory to make sure they trigger the production of antibodies, without having to take the sometimes dangerous step of actually testing the vaccine in a living human being. This could greatly speed the process of producing new vaccines.

They simply culture white blood cells in the presence of an antigen (which could be a virus, or could be a vaccine designed to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies against a specific virus). The cultured cells respond by producing new cells that make antibodies against the antigen.

Mad scientists, however, will probably want to stick with the old brain-in-the-jar: cultured white blood cells just don’t have the same visual impact.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

[tags]medicine,vaccine,disease,mad scientists[/tags]

Old-school bioweapons – sick sheep

Ram with curly horns Biological warfare would appear to be a much older idea than we thought. New translations of ancient Middle Eastern texts suggest the Hittites had hit upon the idea of weakening their enemies with diseases by sending them rams “cursed” with a bacterial infection called tularemia – over 3 millennia ago. Tularemia is still a potentially lethal agent today … whether or not a sheep would be a successful delivery system in our modern age is an unknown quantity, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were parts of the world where it could still be very effective. [Image by Dave-F]

On a lighter note, I can’t help but be reminded of the Sheep Cannon from the hilarious and addictive Worms computer games.

[tags]warfare, biological, disease, history[/tags]

Powerful new diagnostic method for identifying disease organisms

Still from magnetophoresis animation Paging Dr. McCoy: a technique that uses a magnetic field to selectively separate tiny magnetic particles, developed at Purdue and Duke universities, could be used to diagnose the presence of many diseases in a single sample within minutes, with a sensitivity up to a million times higher than current methods. (Via Science Daily.)

View an animation of the process, called non-linear magnetophoretic separation, here. (The image above is a still from this animation.)

(Image: Purdue University via Science Daily.)

[tags]medicine, technology, disease[/tags]

News flash: space germs can kill

From the Department of Science that Scares Me comes this little piece on salmonella sent to space that came back more dangerous than before.  The researchers describe it as a mutation that allowed the bacteria to survive in a certain kind of environment – microgravity – that fortuitously allowed them to be more effective (read: deadly) in organisms.

Thanks for giving me something more to worry about.  Sheesh!

(via DailyTech)