Medicine 2.0

It is pretty sure now, that web 2.0, the new generation of web services, will (and already is playing) play an important role in the future of medicine. These web tools, expert-based community sites, medical blogs and wikis can ease the work of physicians, scientists, medical students or medical librarians.

Let us being to believe that the new generation of web services will change the way medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered.

Do you want to know more?

Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service, that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate.

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.

Sequence Analysis is still sexy:Dual Descriptor Method for Biological Sequence Analysis

The emergence of “Systems Biology” in recent years highlights the systematic viewpoint of bio-system modeling. Building on such a background, Dual Descriptor Method, a generic methodology for biological sequence analysis is proposed. From a systematic perspective, Dual Descriptor is defined as a two element set of Composition Weight Map and Position Weight Function which aim at reflecting the composition and permutation information of a sequence. An alternate training algorithm is provided to get an optimum description of the building patterns of the sequences.

In this paper, dual descriptor method has been applied to the analysis of two typical problems of molecular biology: gene identification and the prediction of protein function. Satisfactory and insightful results are achieved. Owing to the generality of this methodology, dual descriptor method has wide application perspective for many problems of pattern recognition, especially those involved in “Systems Biology”.

Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service, that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate.

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.

Towards a "holy grail" in human medicine: the ability to restore organs damaged through trauma, disease, cancer, or even the normal aging process.

Tissue or organ repair has been the ultimate goal of surgery from ancient times to the present day. Clearly, there is a lot of interest in the regeneration of tissues, and tissue repair in organisms is within reach. However, we are a long way from understanding how to coax the human body into regenerating complex body parts after injury or disease. As an example, regeneration of amputated limbs in amphibians - “epimorphic” regeneration which includes cellular dedifferentiation in the injured tissues of the limb stump and proliferation of these cells to form a distal blastema which undergoes patterning and growth to restore the missing limb structures.

Some of the processes that are relatively little known and most of scientists are keen in understanding are:

1. Processes involving cell recruitment of progenitor cells to the site of disease or injury and tissue-specific differentiation
2. Growth factors and cytokines responsible for activating the body's own native cells to initiate regeneration.
3. Integration of the regenerated tissue within the surrounding host tissue and true differentiation through pathways involved in embryonic development
4. Regulation of expression of a target gene can induce the expression of one or more tissue-inductive factors
5. Direct the differentiation of stem or progenitor cells, or remove a factor that inhibits regeneration
6. Ability of differentiating cells of muscle and other tissues to lose their ability to revert to the proliferative state and contribute to organ regeneration

Molecular Connections Private Ltd. Bangalore India has announced the launch of its new Knowledgebase of all activating and inhibitory cell surface receptors and their complexes with the ligand(s) determined to date - Receptome:

1. Knowledgebase, is a result of manually mining thousands of papers, on functional ligand-receptor pairs with their role & biological significance in developmental biology, as reported in literature till date
2. Careful description of cell surface receptors, ligand(s) and molecular pathways integrated into complex networks and their expression patterns (signatures) involved in tissue regeneration
3. Completely deciphered pathways of endogenous growth factors and cytokines and their receptors with their regulatory mechanisms involved in tissue regeneration.
4. Endogenous modulators or regulators of developmental ligand-receptor(s) widely studied in differentiation of stem or progenitor cells or tissue regeneration
5. A platform to identify and track stem cells in different culture programs using expression profiles of markers
6. Comprehensive overview of the synergistic and combinatorial effects of receptors in tissue

Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service, that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate.

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.

Johns Hopkins Center Launches Genetic Rights Educational Effort

Previous blogging on the topic of GINA GINA Aftermath - Consumers Still Wary of Genetic Tests and in the series of blogs closing following the personal genomics industry scene. Now here is some thing very interesting and very vital that is about education the common man about GINA. Johns Hopkins University’s Genetics and Public Policy Center has launched an educational effort aimed at informing the public of how their genetic data can and cannot be used under the recently enacted Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.

As part of its so-called “Project GINA,” the GPPC plans “to disseminate information” about the legislation to healthcare stakeholders and the general public, GPPC Law and Policy Director Susannah Baruch told last week. As part of its plan, the GPPC will launch a web site describing and explaining the federal law that bars health insurers and employers from discriminating based on genetic data. The website, slated to launch in September, will outline what protections are provided under the law, contain a FAQ page, and will provide updates describing how federal and state regulators are implementing the law.

Until the launch of the site, however, GPPC is providing information on GINA under the “What’s Happening” heading on its homepage.

Ahead of the website’s launch, GPPC has made preliminary efforts to educate the public and stakeholders about the law through peer-reviewed publications, webinars, and fact sheets. GPPC recently hosted a series of webinars with the Bureau of National Affairs and has disseminated informational fact sheets describing GINA’s provisions.

Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service, that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate.

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.

California Grants Navigenics, 23andMe Licenses to Offer Services in State

The last time i blogged on this issue Reading Between Lines and now California will allow two of the fourteen consumer genomics companies it slapped with cease and desist letters two months ago to again market their genotyping services in the state, the state’s Department of Public Health confirmed Thursday. The CDPH inspected both companies, and on Aug. 7 it granted a license to operate in the state to Navigenics and a week later it gave one to 23andMe. Both of these companies were among the group that CDPH in June said were operating outside of state regulations.

“State law requires these laboratories to have a license, obtain a physician's order from the consumer and demonstrate how they validate the results of their tests,”

“several” other of the companies that received the cease-and-desist notification have now applied for licenses in the state, but noted that the state is not currently disclosing further information about how it is investigating the other laboratories. Navigenics and 23andMe both are headquartered in California.

Do yo want to know more?

Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service, that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate.

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.

Customize your Data Needs from PUBMED

Provision to change keywords with user’s changing research preferences in PUBMED data

Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service, that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate.

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.

New Drug Reverses Alzheimer's Disease Within Day

Scientists report a remarkable improvement in Alzheimer's transgenic mice following treatment with a new drug. The study provides the first demonstration that an ionophore, a compound that transports metal ions across cell membranes, can elicit rapid and pronounced improvement in neuropathology and cognitive function in mouse models of Alzheimer's Disease (AD).

Recent research has implicated dysregulation of metal ions in the brain, particularly copper and zinc, in the pathogenesis of AD and the damaging accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) protein that is characteristic of this devastating disease. The ionophore clioquinol (CQ), an 8-hydroxyquinoline, has been shown to increase intracellular copper and zinc levels and decrease Aβ levels in cultured cells and in the brains of transgenic (Tg) AD mice. However, further studies in mice and humans demonstrated that brain entry of CQ was quite limited.

This research is published by Cell Press in the July 10th issue of the journal Neuron.

Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service, that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate.

Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here:www.xtractor.in.