Engineering skin grafts for complex body parts

A bioengineered glove of human skin created for grafting.
Photo Credit: Alberto Pappalardo and Hasan Erbil Abaci / Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Skin grafts are a vital treatment for burns and other extensive skin injuries. Since the 1980s, advances in bioengineering have allowed researchers to grow new patches of skin in the lab. Such engineered grafts are less traumatic for patients than transplanting skin from elsewhere on the body.

To date, available techniques have only allowed such skin patches to be produced in shapes similar to bandages, such as flat rectangles or circles. These shapes work well to cover wounds on flat surfaces like the back. But using them on complex structures like the hands or face requires extensive cutting and suturing, which can cause damage and scarring.

A research team led by Dr. Hasan Erbil Abaci of Columbia University has been working on methods to make 3D engineered skin in the shape of complex body parts. Such custom grafts could then be transplanted intact, with minimal suturing required. In a new study, the team tested their skin-culture system using models of human hands and the hindlimbs of mice. Results were published on January 27, 2023, in Science Advances.

Securing supply chains with quantum computing

Sandia National Laboratories scientists Alicia Magann, right, Kenneth Rudinger, top left, Mohan Sarovar, bottom left, and Matthew Grace, not pictured, developed Feedback-based Algorithm for Quantum Optimization, or FALQON, as a new framework for programming quantum computers, an emerging technology that could become a powerful tool for global security.
Photo Credit: Robin Blume-Kohout

The Russo-Ukrainian conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic have shown how vulnerable global supply chains can be. International events can disrupt manufacturing, delay shipping, induce panic buying and send energy costs soaring.

New research in quantum computing at Sandia National Laboratories is moving science closer to being able to overcome supply-chain challenges and restore global security during future periods of unrest.

“Reconfiguring the supply chain on short notice is an exceptionally difficult optimization problem, which restricts the agility of global trade,” said Alicia Magann, a Truman Fellow at Sandia. She has led the development of a new way to design programs on quantum computers, which she and her team think could be especially useful for solving these kinds of massive optimization problems someday in the future when quantum technology becomes more mature.

Kangaroo fecal microbes could reduce methane from cows

Photo Credit: sandid

Baby kangaroo feces might help provide an unlikely solution to the environmental problem of cow-produced methane. A microbial culture developed from the kangaroo feces inhibited methane production in a cow stomach simulator in a Washington State University study.

After researchers added the baby kangaroo culture and a known methane inhibitor to the simulated stomach, it produced acetic acid instead of methane. Unlike methane, which cattle discard as flatulence, acetic acid has benefits for cows as it aids muscle growth. The researchers published their work in the journal Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology.

“Methane emissions from cows are a major contributor to greenhouse gases, and at the same time, people like to eat red meat,” said Birgitte Ahring, corresponding author on the paper and a professor in with the Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory at the WSU Tri-Cities campus. “We have to find a way to mitigate this problem.”

Reducing the burps and farts of methane emissions from cattle is no laughing matter. Methane is the second largest greenhouse gas contributor and is about 30 times more potent at heating up the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. More than half of the methane released to the atmosphere is thought to come from the agricultural sector, and ruminant animals, such as cattle and goats, are the most significant contributors. Furthermore, the process of producing methane requires as much as 10% of the animal’s energy.

Rice scientists reengineer cancer drugs to be more versatile

Rice University scientists have enlisted widely used cancer therapy systems to control gene expression in mammalian cells, a feat of synthetic biology that could change how diseases are treated.
Photo Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Rice University scientists have enlisted widely used cancer therapy systems to control gene expression in mammalian cells, a feat of synthetic biology that could change how diseases are treated.

The lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Xue Sherry Gao discovered a way to further tap the therapeutic potential of proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs), small molecules that are used as effective tools for treating cancer, immune disorders, viral infections and neurodegenerative diseases.

Gao and collaborators reengineered the PROTAC molecular infrastructure and showed it can be used to achieve chemically induced dimerization (CID), a mechanism by which two proteins bind together only in the presence of a specific third molecule known as an inducer. The research is described in a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The Scent of Discovery

 Gonzalo Otazu, Ph.D., examines the equipment used in the study.
Photo Credit: Steven Gaines

New research from the College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM) could help explain how the sense of smell is impacted in individuals with autism.

Individuals with autism have an “insistence on sameness,” and often avoid unfamiliar elements, including new smells and foods, which can impact their quality of life. While many studies have focused on the behavioral features of autism, additional research is needed to help explain its sensory aspects.

A study led by Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences Gonzalo Otazu, Ph.D., published in the journal Nature Communications, analyzes a mouse model of autism and reports differences in the neurological processes responsible for smell.

Heart failure places a great strain on healthcare

Anna Norhammar, adjunct professor at KI.
Photo Credit: Ulf Sirborn

Patients with heart failure often suffer from co-morbidities, which places a great strain on the healthcare services, a multinational study published in Heart reports. The researchers, who are based at Karolinska Institutet, identify an urgent need to improve risk management of the disease.

Up to 64 million people around the world have heart failure a figure that is expected to rise as populations age and diagnostic methods improve.

According to the new study, there are no multinational studies describing heart failure patients and the consequences of the disease.   

“Given that we know that the incidence of heart failure increases with population age, a modern, broad view of what the heart failure population looks like, involving risks and costs, is important for all forms of care planning,” says Anna Norhammar, adjunct professor at the Cardiology Unit, Department of Medicine (Solna), Karolinska Institutet.

When the light is neither "on" nor "off" in the nanoworld

Illustration of the slit-shaped nanostructure in gold with quantum state highlighted.
Illustration Credit: Daniel Fersch / Universität Würzburg

Scientists at the Universities of Würzburg and Bielefeld detect the quantum properties of collective optical-electronic oscillations on the nanoscale. The results could contribute to the development of novel computer chips.

Whether the light in our living spaces is on or off can be regulated in everyday life simply by reaching for the light switch. However, when the space for the light is shrunk to a few nanometers, quantum mechanical effects dominate, and it is unclear whether there is light in it or not. Both can even be the case at the same time, as scientists from the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) and the University of Bielefeld show in the journal “Nature Physics.”

“Detecting these exotic states of quantum physics on the size scales of electrical transistors could help in the development of optical quantum technologies of future computer chips,” explains Würzburg professor Bert Hecht. The nanostructures studied were produced in his group.

Researchers identify new molecular mechanism key to planarian regeneration

These flatworms are capable of regenerating any part of their bodies, even their heads.
Photo Credit: Teresa Adell.

Planaria are freshwater flatworms that have become a key model for studying regeneration and stem cells, as they can regenerate any part of the body, even the head. But how does the animal know what part of its body is missing and what kind of tissue it needs to regenerate? Researchers from the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics of the University of Barcelona and the Institute of Biomedicine of the UB (IBUB) have studied the regeneration process of these animals and have identified how the modulation of the intercellular signaling pathway Wnt modifies chromatin, the set of genetic material that cells own in the cell nucleus. A few hours after an amputation, this mechanism lets the wound stem cells know the fate of the new tissue.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, involves researchers from the Andalusian Centre for Developmental Biology (CABD), the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville and the University of East Anglia (Norwich, England).

Four classes of planetary systems

Artist impression of the four classes of planetary system architecture. A new architecture framework allows researchers to study an entire planetary system at the systems level. If the small planets within a system are close to the star and massive planets further away, such systems have ‘Ordered’ architecture. Conversely, if the mass of the planets in a system tends to decrease with distance to the star these systems are ‘Anti-Ordered’. If all planets in a system have similar masses, then the architecture of this system is ‘Similar’. ‘Mixed’ planetary systems are those in which the planetary masses show large variations. Research suggests that planetary systems which have the same architecture class have common formation pathways.
Illustration Credit: © NCCR PlanetS / Tobias Stierli

Astronomers have long been aware that planetary systems are not necessarily structured like our solar system. Researchers from the Universities of Bern and Geneva, as well as from the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS, have now shown for the first time that there are in fact four types of planetary systems. This classification will allow scientists to study planetary systems as a whole and to compare them with other systems. The results can be found in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

In our solar system, everything seems to be in order: The smaller rocky planets, such as Venus, Earth or Mars, orbit relatively close to our star. The large gas and ice giants, such as Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune, on the other hand, move in wide orbits around the sun. In two studies published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, researchers from the Universities of Bern and Geneva and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS show that our planetary system is quite unique in this respect. 

Lung cancer study finds new target for treatment resistance after EGFR inhibitors

Monique Nilsson, Ph.D. | John Heymach, M.D., Ph.D.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center

Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have identified CD70 as being highly expressed on drug-resistant cancer cells in EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), highlighting a novel therapeutic target that could be used to eliminate resistant cells remaining after treatment with commonly used EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). The study published today in Cancer Cell.

The preclinical research was led by Monique Nilsson, Ph.D., and corresponding author John Heymach, M.D., Ph.D., chair of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology. The researchers discovered that CD70, a cell surface protein normally found on immune cells, is highly overexpressed in resistant cells as well as in the residual cancer cells immediately following TKI treatment. They demonstrated that CD70 can be effectively used to target these cells with antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) or cell therapies in laboratory models.

“Residual cancer cells left over from TKI treatment are essentially a reservoir from which future resistant cells eventually grow,” Heymach said. “These findings set the stage for a really promising approach in which we may give initial effective therapies and immediately follow them with these CD70-targeting drugs to eliminate the remaining residual cells.”