As reported yesterday in LiveScience, Mark Briffa, a behavioral ecologist published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B that hermit crabs have different personalities. In the past he has examined how they behave in combat and the value they place on a shell.

Dr. Briffa’s method for determining a crab’s personality was to flip crabs upside down and measure how long it took them to exit their shell. Based on this measurement he did a statistical comparison between a crabs behavioral consistency verses their behavioral plasticity. From this result he found a pattern in behavior and was able to show statistically that certain crabs are more bold than others.

In 2006, I remember reading an interesting article in the New York Times, by Charles Siebert, describing the different personalities of the giant Pacific octopus, an article definitely worth a read if you have the time. What was so surprising by this report was the distinctive stories passed to Charles by the marine biologist working at the aquarium. They could specifically describe the distinct personalities of each octopus, the jealous one or the one sensitive to light who would spray you with water if you flashed him , etc. This brings up a very interesting and perplexing ethical question that I think is far too often overlooked in the Biotech community. Is animal testing an appropriate way for testing new drugs or technologies? For example, monkeys clearly have personalities, so is it proper to be injecting them with Ebola to determine if the new vaccine is successful? These are questions that if the community is being intellectually honest, at a minimum, should be discussing. We all know the benefits from testing on animal models but have we recognized or even acknowledged some of the negatives.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo have announced they have successfully grown kidneys and pancreas in mice missing the ability to grow their own said organs. According to Japan Today, the researchers injected embryonic stem cells from healthy mice into eggs of genetically engineered mice that do not grow kidneys and pancreases three days after fertilization and implanted the eggs into surrogate mice. The newborn mice turned out to have kidneys and pancreases and the researchers confirmed that they derived from the embryonic stem cells while vascular tracts and nerves were those of the host mice. Both types of organs functioned normally. Professor Hiromitsu Nakauchi, lead researcher, said a potential application of this technique in the future includes reproducing in reprogrammed swine the pancreas of a diabetic patient using stem cells produced from the patient’s skin tissue.

Embryonic stem cell research has been a very controversial issue. Interesting is the suggestion by Dr. Nakauchi that this technique could be used to take stem cells from a patient’s skin, not embryonic. If this was the case, I would fail to see how this would be an issue with anyone who is an opponent of embryonic stem cell research.

Ten years ago if you had a car wreck and suffered deep lacerations the standard treatment would have been a tourniquet to prevent bleed out. While waiting to reach a hospital, the result of this treatment could have been loss of a limb or death. Now, it is the year 2008, and treatment procedures have slowly been changing to use a new revolutionary product to greatly reduce these incidents, the HemCon Bandage. The HemCon Bandage provides an instant antibacterial barrier to control bleeding, replacing the need for traditional gauze bandages or tourniquets. This innovative new treatment for hemostatic control is the reason that HemCon Medical Technologies is on Biotech Mashup’s list of 15 companies that have the potential to change medicine.

HemCon Medical Technologies launched in 2001 under the auspice of grants provided by the united states ARMY with additional capital from the two founders, Dr. Bill Wiesmann and Dr. Kenton Gregory. Doing a lot of hard work and having a little bit of luck, the doctors, have turned a small startup into what HemCon Medical is today. The company before last week had three products on the market; HemCon Bandage, ChitoFlex, and HemCon Dental Dressing. Using these products HemCon’s technology was only available to the military, hospitals, and emergency responders until now. This last week HemCon announced a new product, KytoStat, bringing the company’s technology from the hospital and military battlefield to your backyard. The KytoStat is the next generation band-aid, providing instant wound care.

The HemCon bandage contains chitosan, an organic substance found in crustacean shells. In 1984, scientists published in Neurosurgery the use of chitosan to stop bleeding in cats. Since then numerous journal articles have been published describing this new hemostatic agent but it was not until the doctors Wiesmann and Gregory founded HemCon did someone develop a chitosan bandage. As described by HemCon’s website the process starts with chitosan processed in Iceland from shrimp shells. After mixing it with acetic acid and turning it into a gel, the material is cast into square tiles. The squares are then freeze-dried in a vacuum chamber, compressed to about half their original thickness, and backed with a thin sheet of brown plastic. This completes the manufacturing of what is now a HemCon bandage, each bandage is then sealed in foil and sterilized by gamma radiation.

The benefits of a chitosan bandages are two fold; first when it is placed on a wound the chitosan has been found to have antimicrobial properties, second the bandage promotes clotting because blood cells and platelets carry a negative electrical charge and are attracted to chitosan, which bears a positive charge. The bandage has stopped or slowed down severe bleeding from combat wounds in 97 percent of the cases according to this special report in 2006. Hemcon’s media department responded to our inquiries with some interesting additional information, such as “are the HemCon dressings kosher? Hemcon dressings are made from shellfish, a creature that is considered forbidden from consumption by some religious groups. Although the dressing is not technically consumed, it is not considered kosher.” An interesting ethical dilemma may occur if a patient who must follow kosher laws is or could be saved by HemCon bandages.

HemCon may have a presence in the market, a new product that is direct to consumers and an exclusive license agreement with Cardinal Health but, a large number of challenges are still ahead. Two other companies offering next generation hemostatic control technologies are in the market, Celox Medical and Z-Medica. Celox Medical has a granule hemostatic agent which was tested by the United States Marine Corps and obtained 100 percent survival rates. Celox however, still does not have a product for sale. Z-Medica on the other hand sells the QuikClot, which is currently being used by the military, hospitals, and first responders. As well the company has multiple product offerings. In a recent study done by the Naval Medical Center, they compared all three hemostatic methods and found that all substantially improved outcomes verses traditional dressings but, Celox technology appeared to show the greatest improvement for control and survival. It should be noted this was a very small study with only 12 animals in each group and should be taken only lightly until larger studies can be carried out. This study points out that HemCon has some tough competition in the near future. Even with this competition Biotech Mashup feels that with the benefits of chitosan and the current leverage that HemCon has in the market, they stand a very good chance of greatly impacting the medical community and the standard of care for the foreseeable future.

If I told you in the future you will be able breath into a device and know if you have cancer, would you believe me or would you ask me what new science fiction book I was talking about? Menssana Research would tell you that the future is now. They have developed and tested a new device that requires you to only breathe and then it can determine if you have cancer or other common ailments such as Tuberculosis. If successful in this endeavor, this will be a revolution in diagnostic testing and is the reason that Menssana Research has made Biotech Mashup’s top 15 picks for companies that have the potential to change medicine.

Diagnostic test using your breath is not a new idea. Spirometry, pulmonary lung function testing, is believed to date back as early as sometime between 129-200 A.D. when Galen did volumetric testing on a boy. In 1852, John Hutchinson, developed a water spirometer which is still in use today. Spirometry testing can be used to help determine a number of ailments such as, chronic bronchitis, pulmonary fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and emphysema. Similar to volumetric testing but distinct in that biomarkers can be used for disease determination is the analysis of volatile compounds in breath. Many credit the technology basis of volatile diagnostic testing to Linus Pauling, who in 1971 found that normal breath contains volatile organic compounds. However, some argue that this credit should be given to Robert Borkenstein, who in 1954, developed the breathalyzer to measure the amount of blood alcohol in an individual. Regardless of who is to be given credit little else has advanced this form of diagnostic testing for the last 35 years.

Menssana Research Incorporated, founded by Doctor Michael Phillips, believes it is time for a leap forward. The Breathscanner is the first clinical device offered by Menssana. The concept behind the Breathscanner seems simple; collect a person’s breath and analyze the unique volatile organic compounds, VOCs, which can be indicative of disease. The reality though is different as the typical concentration of VOCs in a breath is very low and nobody knows what VOC profiles indicate disease. To address these problems Menssana put to use two analytical techniques known to have very good sensitivity, gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy. Using these instruments to analyze the VOCs in someone’s breath they have been able to put together what they have coined “breath methylated alkane contour, BMAC.” A person’s BMAC is a unique profile which can be used to determine someone’s risk for numerous diseases such as, heart transplant rejection, lung cancer, breast cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis, and other diseases. The Breathscanner was recently shown at DARPA Tech 2007, and was a big hit.

In 2004, the FDA gave Humanitarian Device Exemption status to Menssana for a heart transplant rejection breath test. Even though HUD is intended to benefit patients in the treatment or diagnosis of a disease or condition that affects or is manifested in fewer than 4,000 individuals in the United States per year, this was a huge step for Menssana. Moving forward Menssana is well funded and pushing for commercialization of numerous new diagnostic tests. Speaking via email with Dr. Michael Phillips he was kind enough to respond to our request for information letting us know, “The next big things in breath testing will be:

The Lungscreen breath test for lung cancer: This has been validated in three published multicenter studies(…)It has a CE Mark that approves it for marketing in Europe. NIH has awarded us a $3M grant to perform a multicenter validation study in the USA in order to obtain FDA approval.

Breath test for breast cancer:  NIH funded us to perform a pilot study that demonstrated breath biomarkers of breast cancer (publications on our website). We are now evaluating a point-of-care breath test for breast cancer that will deliver results in minutes. No radiation, no breast compression, no pain - it is completely safe.

Breath test for pulmonary tuberculosis: NIH funded us to perform a pilot study that demonstrated breath biomarkers of pulmonary TB. We are currently analyzing the data from a large multicenter international validation study. Results soon, we hope.”

Biotech Mashup is very impressed with the work done by Menssana Research and how far they have come in developing this technology. However, we recognize that with the use of mass spectrometry and gas chromatography equipment for analysis, these types of test will still be required to be sent to a diagnostic laboratory thus taking days for the patient to know the test results. The diagnostics field is having a big push for results to be available in the office while you visit your doctor. We know Menssana may be addressing this as they are currently in development of a next generation system. We are eager for the day that we can walk into our doctor’s office and do a quick breath test to let us know if we are healthy or if we need immediate treatment.

By now, you’ve probably heard of the doomsday vault that opened in Norway last Tuesday. It is a facility built to safely hold and protect the world’s supply of seeds. The vault was carved 364 feet deep into sandstone and limestone under the permafrost of a remote Arctic mountain only 620 miles from the North Pole, where, ironically, nothing grows. The vault is comprised of three spacious cold chambers, each measuring 89 x 33 feet. It has the capacity to hold up to 4.5 million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet’s main food crops, making it possible to re-establish plants if they disappear from their natural environment or are obliterated by major disasters. Samples will remain the property of their countries of origin. The vault is protected by high walls of fortified concrete and an armored door, as well as its 425-ft altitude above sea-level, in the event that the polar ice sheets melt due to global warming. At least if that happens,there will be no shortage of fresh water to germinate the seeds. Fortunately, the vault can also withstand a nuclear attack (which could also be expected to melt some ice).

I really commend Norway for undertaking the expense and effort to build this vault. It is an acknowledgement of the difficult times we live in and the uncertainty of the future. Instead of sugar coating the planet’s situation, the Norwegian government has forked out nearly $5 million to build the vault at a time when the U.S. seems interested in only military conquests and the immediate threat of terrorists. The construction of this vault also highlights the need for vaults to store cells from all living creatures and at diverse locations. Someday, cloning technology will likely permit extinct animals to be re-created, although they may not be able to survive in the wild without training from their parents. We should also store along with the cells as much information about the species as possible (habitat, food preferences, etc). I think that this seed vault is fantastic, but it is really only a first step for our planet.

Researchers at Purdue University, have published in Nature, a new technology for detection of toxins and food-borne pathogens. The research group claims the technology is able to detect several pathogens in thousands of food and water samples in a couple of hours. Interestingly, it can also estimate the number of microbes present in a sample and determine whether that amount poses an active health hazard.

The technology uses live mammalian cells, B-cell hybridoma, PED-2E9, in a type I collagen matrix, that release a chemical, alkaline phosphatase, when harmed. This chemical can be detected uses optical equipment, such as laser scanning cytometry or cryo-nano scanning electron microscopy. The group developed software which can then analyze the signal and determine the quantity of harmful microbes present. Since the bio-sensor uses live cells it only detects actively harmful pathogens and ignores those that are inactive and harmless. Most test on the market currently detect dead or alive microbes and are prone to high false alarm rates or use a lengthy incubation periods, up to 20 hours or more, to grow only living microbes for detection.

This is an interesting application for live cells but is not novel. BAE systems has had this algae detector on the market for some time now. Even with this being said, the food market is lacking a fast, relatively speaking, detection method for Listeria monocytogenes. We at Biotech Mashup will follow this group to see if they are able to spin this out of the laboratory.

Worldwide, the number of scientific journals and published papers are increasing. This continued increase in peer reviewed work is making it harder for scientist to find the papers they need or publish the papers that they want others in their field to see.

A team at Northwestern University believes they have a solution. The group has developed a new mathematical algorithm to rank journals according to quality. The team analyzed 23 million papers representing 200 academic fields from 1955 to 2006. The results from their analysis produced 200 separate tables of rankings by field and will be published February 27 in PLoS ONE.

Lead researcher Luís A. Nunes Amaral, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his team found that the time scale for a published paper’s complete accumulation of citations — a gauge for determining the full impact of the paper — can range from less than one year to 26 years, depending on the journal. Using their new method, the Northwestern researchers can estimate the total number of citations a paper in a specific journal will get in the future and thus determine — right now — the paper’s likely impact in its field. This is the kind of information university administrators and funding agencies should find helpful when they are evaluating faculty members for tenure and researchers for grant awards.

Since the rankings have not been published yet it is hard to critique, however it should be stressed that if this kind of information is used by funding agencies to determine awards then many worthwhile basic research studies may become even further under funded. Hopefully this type of mechanism is carefully evaluated and used sparingly until further analysis of the algorithm and its accuracy can be done.

Nanotechnology, considered morally unacceptable by the public, has benefited a variety of fields and is once again making strides in medicine. The University of Michigan has reported a novel technique using nanoemulsions to vaccinate against infectious diseases. The group uses nanometer diameter oil-based emulsions that are sprayed into the nose to produce a strong immune response. Previously, this technique was successful in vaccinating against influenza and can now add smallpox and HIV to the list.

Nanoemulsion vaccines developed at the Center for Biologic Nanotechnology at the University of Michigan are based on a mixture of soybean oil, alcohol, water and detergents emulsified into ultra-small particles smaller than 400 nanometers wide, or 1/200th the width of a human hair. This new technology uses surface tension from the nanoemulsions to disrupt membranes and destroy microbes without much or any damage to human cells. Laboratory results with mice indicate that treatment of their nares with nanoemulsion prior to exposure to pathogens offers protection against pathogen challenge. The emulsion also acts as a mucosal adjuvant by presenting the pathogen to the immune system, which can induce protective immunity in the absence of an active infection. In contrast, the presentation of other forms of inactivated pathogens does not yield an effective immune response, suggesting that the nanoemulsion-killed organisms are uniquely immunogenic.

Dilute emulsions showed stability when stored at 40°C for over 1 year and at room temperature for over 3 years. They can also withstand several cycles of heating and cooling. The technology has been licensed out to NanoBio Corporation. If successful in commercialization, this could become a disruptive technology, eliminating the current technique of needle vaccinations.

Korean researchers report the development of a robot powered by heart muscle cells from a rat. The researchers coated a biocompatible polymer with heart cells that pulse in synchony in the presence of glucose, obviating the need for an external power supply. These beating cells permit the robot to move its six legs. The robot has three short front legs and three longer back legs, which are all attached to a central rectangular body. As the heart cells contract, the longer rear legs bend inwards. This creates a difference in friction between the front and rear legs, which pushes the robot forward. The scientists measured the robot’s average speed at about 100 micrometers per second (or about 2.2E-10 MPH). The lead designer, Sukho Park at Chonnam National University, Korea, says these crab-like robots could be used inside the body to clear blocked tubes or arteries.

This made me think of another really neat use for the heart muscle cells, which would be to make a glucose-powered electricity generator. The basic concept would be to coat a micro-balloon with the cells and use their contracting force to drive a nano-machined generator. The concept is shown below. The advantage would be that you could power small electronics or anything else that runs off electricity using only glucose. Although each single generator may not make much power, linking thousands of nano-generators together may generate usuable quantities of power.

Heart muscle cells coat a micro balloon and contract in synchrony. The expelled fluid drives a generator using nano-machined gears.
 

Here on Biotech Mashup we generally report on life-science related stuff. But sometimes, something so cool comes along that we just have to spread the word. This time it’s the Bradford Robotic Telescope, located on Mount Teide in Tenerife, the Canary Islands. What is so cool about this site is that they have a telescope that you can submit jobs to. So if you are interested in a particular piece of the sky, you can aim the telescope and have it take a picture for you. They have a 14-inch diameter telescope and the turn-around time is days to weeks. There is also an image gallery if you just want to see what other great pictures people took and then posted. It’s free to use, and you need to register to aim the camera. And if you think the origins of life might just be from outer space, then you might really have some fun here searching for hospitable galaxies.