Health
Researcher reverses ageing process in bee's brain
Norwegian researcher Gro Amdam has succeeded in reversing the ageing process in the bee brain - findings which she believes may bring hope to people with dementia.
"No one really believes that the fountain of youth exists," says Professor Amdam. "We accept that as we age, our health and mental acuity will decline. But recent findings indicate that ageing doesn't have to be synonymous with going downhill." Professor Amdam's research subjects are bees, the workings of whose brain cells are surprisingly similar to ours, she explains. So when she finds the secrets behind what makes a bee brain tick, the knowledge may well apply to humans, too.
New tasks had positive effect In addition to her professorship at Arizona State University in the US, Professor Amdam also does part-time research at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås, Norway. Until 2010 her research on brain function in bees was partly funded by a grant under the Research Council's National Programme for Research in Functional Genomics in Norway (FUGE).
Together with her research group, Professor Amdam has studied the performance of older bees on learning and memory tests. Her bee subjects underwent a laboratory learning test in which they were challenged to combine an impression (a scent) with a reward - and to remember that relationship later.
Source: News Medical
Smartphone technology improves prosthetic limbs
Losing a limb can be a devastating experience, and while electrically powered prostheses can serve as a replacement for a lost arm, they are notoriously difficult to operate, and will never fully replace normal hand function.
NTNU researchers are working to improve this situation through the use of smartphone technology. The technology, called an accelerometer, gives users a better sense of the orientation of their artificial limb - thus making the limb easier to operate.
Øyvind Stavdahl, an associate professor at NTNU's Department of Engineering Cybernetics and Anders Fougner, a PhD candidate in the department, have shown that when an accelerometer is used in a prosthetic arm, it is easier for the user to recognize exactly how the arm is oriented in space.
"Prostheses are driven by the remaining muscles in the severed limb. Sometimes, however, the prosthesis receives atypical signals from the muscles, which can confuse the system and lead to the prosthesis performing the wrong movement,” Stavdahl says. “Knowing the orientation of the arm is essential for normal prosthetic function. It simply makes it a lot easier to operate."
"Our hope is that this application might improve the lives of people," says Fougner. But he stresses that it is equally important for prosthetic users to be given adequate training. Their research has shown that an accelerometer, combined with proper training, reduces the frequency of incorrect movements from 30 to 5 percent.
Although this is a niche market in Norway, where there are only about 600 upper limb prosthetic users, the new approach has huge commercial potential worldwide, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. "A more functional prosthesis might be on the market in a couple of years," says Stavdahl.
The future looks bright...
Especially for brain imaging with the opening in September of a major new worldclass facility for in vivo brain imaging at the University of Oslo.
The Letten Centre is located at Centre for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience (CMBN), Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, and provides facilities for multiphoton laser scanning microscopy. A delighted Professor Tone Tønjum, Director of CMBN, commented: “The imaging facility has been established due to a generous donation from Professor Letten Saugstad, who herself has contributed greatly to our understanding of brain development and neuropsychiatric disease. The Letten Centre will be one of the most advanced centres for bioimaging in Scandinavia and is associated with Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway, Nordic EMBL Partnership. We are at a truly exciting time in neuroscience research and we hope to continue to be in forefront of new discoveries by investing in facilities such as this for our excellent research groups.
Source: Oslo Teknopol
Oslo to be European Portal of New Global Biosciences Gateway
BIO2010 will also see the formal announcement of the creation of a new Global Biosciences Gateway designed to accelerate translational oncology and bring new diagnostics and treatments to market faster.
Oslo Cancer Cluster will form the European portal for this with Hamner Institute representing the US and Shanghai Asia.
Oslo Cancer Cluster has now announced the initial programme for the second European Cancer Cluster Partnering meeting to be held in Oslo on 15-17 September. According to OCC CEO Bjarte Reve, ECCP has been designed around eight compact sessions during the two-day conference "Oncology 2020” is the theme for two opening sessions, which are followed by six core sessions addressing important aspects of oncology R&D, business development and investor relations with successful partnering as the overall aim."
Opening of the Norwegian Healthcare & Life Science Innovation Expo
Wednesday September 8th, Torger Ødegaard, the Oslo City Councilor for Culture and Education, together with representatives for the Health Ministries in Shanghai, the Norwegian Consulate to Shanghai and the director of the Chinese Rehabilitation Research Center, opened the Norwegian Healthcare & Life Science Innovation Expo at the Nordic Light House in Shanghai, China.
St. Olav University Hospital and eight Norwegian companies attend the Expo as exhibitors, showing their products and solutions to Chinese Healthcare people, hospitals and authorities. The long term goal of the Expo is to facilitate cooperation between China and Norway, develop innovative solutions for the healthcare markets in both China and Norway.
Source: Oslo Medtech
Forth Valley Royal Hospital to use robot 'workers'
A hospital in Scotland is to become the first in the UK to use a fleet of robots to carry out day-to-day tasks.
The robots will carry clinical waste, deliver food, clean the operating theatre and dispense drugs.
They are currently undergoing final tests ahead of the August opening of the new £300m Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Stirlingshire.
The robots will have their own dedicated network of corridors underneath the hospital.
Source: BBC
Norwegian Wireless Healthcare
Norwegian company, Imatis, is part of a cutting-edge project consortium that has developed, implemented and tested a multi sensor, vendor independenet biomedical sensor network.
The main conclusion from the project is that the generic wireless communication platform developed in the project facilitates monitoring of vital body functions in hospital a home care scenarios. Imatis has delivered the sensor integration platform which the biomedical wireless sensor network (BWSN) was implemented on.
There are still needs for improvements related to security handling, monitoring of several patients/persons at the same time, and further adaptations to medical experts needs for information.
The BWSN and the collaboration form an important platform for further technical development and business development in order to penetrate a market expected to increase substantially in the future.
Source: Imatis
Three-person IVF 'may prevent inherited disease'
Scientists at Newcastle University have created embryos containing DNA from a man and two women.
They say their research, published in the journal Nature, has the potential to help mothers with rare genetic disorders have healthy children. The aim is to prevent damaged DNA in mitochondria - the "batteries" which power the cell - from being passed on by the mother.
IVF clinics are not currently permitted to carry out the procedure.
Around one in 200 children is born each year with mutations in the mitochondrial DNA. In most cases this causes only mild disease, sometimes without symptoms.
Source: BBC
Using nanotechnology in cancer research
Biomedical researchers in Bergen are applying nanotechnology to mimic the body's natural processes, create new blood vessels to supply engineered tissue, and deepen our understanding of cancer.
Biomedical researchers around the globe are going all-out to induce cells to create new tissue. But all living tissues require a supply of blood to survive. Professor James Lorens and his team at the University of Bergen's Department of Biomedicine are using nanotechnology to study how to make cells form new blood vessels, both within the patient's body and in the laboratory. In the next phase the team will use this knowledge to investigate the molecular mechanisms that govern the progression of cancer.
Source: Research Council Norway
Oslo Cancer Cluster -Oslo Cancer Cluster Innovation Park
Oslo Cancer Cluster has just signed a deal with the City of Oslo to build a brand new Innovation Park next-door to the Norwegian Radium Hospital in Oslo.
"The Oslo Cancer Cluster Innovation Park is an innovative cooperation between industry and a high school of a kind never seen before in the world", says Bjarte Reve, CEO of the Oslo Cancer Cluster (OCC). The Innovation Park will open in August 2012, and will integrate the member companies of OCC, world-class cancer research and Ullern High School.
"Our ambition is to become world leading in cancer research, and our Innovation Park with top modern facilities and integrated resources will help us step up into the elite-class", says Reve. The students at Ullern High School can look forward to guest lecturers ranging from top scientists to CEOs from the biotech industry, as well getting "food for thought" from sharing lunch every day with world leading researchers.
Source: Oslocancercluster
Norwegian Medical Sensation: Removes cancer with light
On The World Cancer Day - the Oslo Cancer Cluster member company PCI Biotech made the front page of the largest Norwegian Newspaper VG.
"Norwegian Medical Sensation: Removes cancer with light - The tumours almost felt off" is the front page VG uses on describing PCI Biotechs result from their ongoing phase-I study at the University College of London (UCL).
Colin Hopper, surgeon and head of the phase-I study at UCL says to VG that he was very surprised with the effects of the PCI technology: “The cancer tumours became almost black and fell of in front of our eyes."
Source: OCC
New centre for stem cell research ready for action
The Research Council has played a key role in establishing the new national centre for stem cell research which recently opened its doors in Oslo.
The establishment of the centre was made possible by an amendment to the Biotechnology Act which as of 2008 permits research on supernumerary fertilised eggs and embryonic stem cells to be conducted in Norway.
Stem cells have the potential to be useful in the treatment of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, HIV/AIDS and osteoporosis as well as for spinal cord injuries.
The Research Council will provide a total of NOK 28 million in funding to the centre over a five-year period.
From 2002, when the first strategic initiative on stem cell research was launched, through to 2013 the Research Council will have allocated some NOK 170 million to this vital area of research, including funding for the new national centre. Activities in this field are administered under the Stem Cell Research Programme, which was launched in 2008.
The Research Council also funds stem cell research via a number of other programmes and initiatives, including the NevroNor initiative, the Cancer Stem Cell Innovation Centre (CAST - a Centre for Research-based Innovation), the Centre for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience and the Centre for Cancer Biomedicine (both Centres of Excellence), as well as the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway at UiO, which is part of the Nordic partnership with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
Good results and exciting challenges for the GLOBVAC programme
The Research Council's Programme for Global Health and Vaccination Research (GLOBVAC) has received an extremely positive report from the panel of international experts that conducted an evaluation of the programme. The panel recommends that activities under the programme be continued and expanded.
Close to 10 million children under the age of five die every year, and more than 95 per cent of these deaths occur among the poor in developing countries. Despite this, only a small proportion of the world's health research is devoted to health problems in these countries. Thanks to the GLOBVAC programme, Norway has significantly increased its efforts in this area over the past few years.
The overall objective of the GLOBVAC programme is to strengthen and expand research that can contribute to sustainable improvements in health in low- and middle-income countries. The programme encompasses both health research in a broad sense and vaccination research related to diseases that affect these countries.
If effective vaccination programmes were implemented, the child mortality rate could be considerably lower. "The Norwegian Government's funding for research on vaccines is a small but important contribution to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goal aimed at reducing child mortality," states Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, commenting on the GLOBVAC programme.
Source: Forskningsradet
The Norwegian Pharmaceutical Pipeline is growing
For the third year running the Norwegian Bioindustry Association has conducted a survey of The Norwegian Pharmaceutical Pipeline. There has been a growth of companies involved in clinical trials phase I and II, while the same number of companies is managing clinical trials in phase III.
The key findings are:
- A total of 20 companies had a pipeline in 2009 (same as in 2008). There were 15 companies that had ongoing clinical trial(s) (project in phase I-III), while 5 companies only had ongoing pre clinical studies. This report maps both ongoing clinical trial(s) and preclinical studie(s).
- There are four new companies in the 2009 survey that did not participate in the last year survey.
- It is an increase of 14 projects in pre clinical trial to clinical trial phase III and 12 clinical trials when comparing to the 2008 data. This is mainly due to 11 new studies in clinical phase I.
- There has been a growth of companies involved in clinical trials phase I and II, while the same number of companies is managing clinical trials in phase III. There were 5 companies that did not have ongoing clinical studies, but only pre-clinical studies, of which 3 companies did not have studies in late pre clinical trial.
- Overall there are more clinical trials per capita in Norway than in Sweden in 2009. Even when excluding the newcomers the difference between Norway and Sweden with respect to number of clinical trials per capita has been significantly improved.
- The majority of the projects are developed internally as in 2008. However there are a significant larger proportion of studies in 2009 that are developed in collaboration with industry and academia.
- The trend in the Norwegian study is the same as at is seen in the Swedish pipeline3 where there is also a prominent increase in biologics, while chemical molecules are still in majority with 10 more projects in clinical trials (phase I-III).
- There is a prominent trend to transfer the manufacturing abroad for both clinical trial production and production of final product compared to last year's survey.
- The majority of the 41 clinical trials are classed as therapeutic. Overall 68 % of the 41 clinical trials mapped by this survey are within the therapeutic category. Cancer is by far the most dominating indication and account 64 % of the clinical trials in this category. There are 20 companies participating in the survey, of which most 90 % have therapeutic projects. Less than 20 % of the companies had diagnostic projects, and only 10 % had drug delivery project. Compared to the Swedish pipeline the Norwegian pipeline is less diverse, and more dominated of cancer related conditions.