Urban Landscapes in the 21st Century – Part 1: The Evolution of Cities

In 1800, 2% of us lived in cities. By 1950 that number had grown to 30%. In 2007 we surpassed 50% and forecasts for 2050 based on present growth indicates that 65% of us will be urban dwellers.

Before World War II, the majority of humanity lived on subsistence farms supporting large family units. Today less than one-third of humanity practices subsistence agriculture. Evidence shows that as populations resettle in cities, family size decreases while average lifespan increases. Mass urbanization, therefore, is acting as a population control. As we approach 2100 cities will cause an overall slowing of  the population explosion that today seems so disturbing to us.

Urbanization isn’t evenly distributed across the planet. Cities cover only 2% of the planet’s land mass but they exert a greater influence than the area of habitation. In the Developed Western World better than 90% of us live in cities. Central and Latin America are quickly approaching the same level of urbanization of North America and Europe. In Asia urban populations represent 41% of the total, and in Africa, 38%. It is in these two continents where rapid urbanization is happening.

Human Existence is Urban in the 21st Century

Our 21st century future is being shaped by cities. Half of us now live in cities and the rate of increase in city dwellers is approaching 70 million per year.

The cities of Asia and Africa like their cousins in Central and South America aspire to achieve the “American Lifestyle” of those urban communities in the Developed World. Instead so many of these fast-growing urban centres suffer from inadequate funding, poor services, congestion and the growth of informal economies that contribute nothing to the tax base necessary for funding urban improvements.

These are the urban realities of the 21st century where humanity needs to come to terms with new ways of achieving sustainability. It is in these cities that humanity will experience the bulk of urban growth . With urban migration amounting to 130 people per minute, the cities of these parts of the world face immense new challenges.

For most new migrants to cities in the first decade of the 21st century they experience urban environments like the one in the picture below. Over 1 billion urban dwellers live in what best can be described as slums although slums in the Developed World look posh compared to what is depicted here. These “homes” have little in the way of clean water, electricity or proper sanitation. Most of the inhabitants work at jobs in what is coined the “informal economy.”

The informal economy is huge. Estimates put it at $10 trillion per year, bigger than the economy of Japan. But it is an economy that is underground, driven by barter and cash. It makes no tax contribution to the cities in which it operates. As a result the cities have inadequate funding to provide improved services and materials to the newcomers who desperately need what the city potentially can offer.

This Jakarta slum sits on the edge of the modern downtown and is an example of what is occurring through much of the Developing World with the rapid migration of rural populations to urban settings. Source: The Telegraph

A good example of this dynamic can be found in Lagos, Nigeria. A slum there, called Makoko, is home to rural fisherman who have migrated to pursue the dream of a better life. The inhabitants find jobs wherever they can, develop home-based business ventures, barter for food and material goods, contribute to the survival of their families but have no economic relationship with Lagos itself. These new immigrants don’t own the land where they have erected their shacks and pay no taxes. Makoko is like many African urban slums. Its people are disenfranchised with no property they can call their own. They have limited city services. Almost everything of use is found by residents foraging for materials, and finding sources of power and water when and wherever possible. Although many have televisions and “Western” material things in their homes, the homes themselves are knocked together with tin and scrap wood. And should the Government of Nigeria choose to build something in Makoko these homes get bulldozed with the tenants having no legal title or recourse.

Lagos is the fastest growing city in Africa. Makoko represents one of its many enormous challenges. At its current growth rate of 8% per year, Lagos will exceed 25 million in population by 2015. Two-thirds of its inhabitants will reside in Makoko-like shanty towns. In 2015 Lagos will become the 3rd largest city in the world, only surpassed by Tokyo, Japan with its well-developed infrastructure, and Mumbai, India, suffering from many of the same challenges as Lagos.

Urban Sustainability in the Developing World

How do you plan for cities that grow at 8% per year? When informal settlements mushroom into existence almost overnight and usually within proximity of the commercial centres of these cities, what can planners do to deal with these new facts on the ground?

Today 1 billion people live in urban slums. Total new annual housing requirements equal 35 million units per year, 96,000 per day, 4,000 an hour, or 66 per minute. The United Nations Population Fund, an international body focused on the challenges of population growth in cities is seeking international cooperation to develop innovative housing policies. One idea changes informal settlements, such as the one depicted in Jakarta, into planned communities where new immigrants have significant input. The idea is to encourage new immigrants to build permanent homes by providing simple, easy-to-construct plans along with appropriate building materials. House designs would allow for family expansion. Instead of horizontal growth, houses would grow vertically allowing families to safely add 2nd and 3rd floors over time. This would address the need for urban intensification without building of high-rise concrete towers. It would also allow families to operate informal businesses from their homes, a reflection of the cultural characteristics of newcomers and the informal economy in which they operate.

Another idea comes from Venezuela where squatter settlements around the capital city, Caracas, are undergoing transformation. Instead of demolishing these shanty towns and moving the inhabitants to high-rises, urban planners are surveying the settlements and providing those living in the area with title to the property they occupy. Pride of ownership can work magic even in an impoverished community. This policy is leading to the formalizing of these suburbs and their integration into the larger urban community including the provisioning of city services.

Venezuela is also experimenting with novel building materials to meet its growing demand for new housing. Because the country has abundant oil reserves, it is manufacturing homes from the output of refineries and even exporting these simple, modular plastic homes to other Developing World countries like Cuba.

Looking remarkably like any suburban bungalow, these Venezuelan-built plastic homes are a novel approach to meeting housing demands of cities in the Developing World. Source: Havana Journal

For the people of Lagos and other Developing World cities, experiments in policy such as those described above could prove to be powerful new methods for changing the urban environment. After all, Nigeria and Venezuela share the same challenges and both have abundant oil reserves.

We’ll continue this topic in our next blog when we look at how cities in both the Developed and Developing World are deploying new ideas and 21st century technology to address the other challenges cities face — pollution and waste, energy production and conservation, dealing with water and urban food requirements, developing new transportation solutions, and building an urban model that achieves a healthier, biodiverse-rich future.

Mining – Part 2: Extraction Technology and Techniques in the 21st Century

What do we mine? In our last blog focused on exploration we talked about metallic and rare earth minerals. We didn’t focus on coal, or aggregate (gravel and construction materials). Nor did we talk about the mining of bitumen (oil or tar sands). But much of what we extract in mining includes all of these other materials.

Humanity has been extracting “stuff” from hillsides and pits for thousands of years. Mines pre-date the Neolithic Revolution by more than 30,000 years. From mines like the one that appears below to today the basic extraction technology has not significantly changed.

Entrance to a mine in Northern Spain originally worked in Roman times. Source: Google

We have mined by finding resources on the surface. We have mined by digging tunnels and shafts into the ground. We have even recovered salt from the ocean using evaporation to harvest the mineral.

Currently surface mining is the predominant way we extract materials on this planet. Subsurface mining represents a small percentage of total mining activity. And today we are looking at mining the ocean floor. Let’s take a closer look at each of these mining technologies.

Surface Mining

Surface mining extracts 67.3 billion tons of raw material including metals, non-metals and coal annually. Of that amount 30 billion tons represents waste that is removed to get to the really valuable “stuff” that lies beneath. We quarry rock, sand and gravel to the tune of 23.5 billion tons for construction including 2.3 billion tons of material each year to for cement. Uncovering a mother lode and stripping out the ore has been and remains our most common mining technique to-date. In the United States, 98% of all metallic ores are extracted through surface mines. A typical surface mine is an open pit, a quarry or a stripped surface.

If you have never experienced a surface mine first hand it tends to overwhelm you. My first visit took place in 1965 when my high school class visited the open pit iron mine in Marmora, Ontario, about two hours northeast of Toronto. The mining company, Bethlehem Steel, had discovered a deposit of magnetite iron ore that was 33 meters (+100 feet) under the land surface, and therefore accessible by using open pit technology. To access the ore the company removed 73 million tons of limestone. The pit pictured below was a spectacular engineering feat. Its terraced sides served as a roadway upon which some of the biggest trucks I had ever seen crawled hauling raw ore excavated from the pit. I remember taking some sample magnetite home with me containing beautifully formed garnet crystals.

The open pit at Marmora was developed in 1952 and mined out by 1978.

The ore body at Marmora was not large, spanning 850 by 220 meters (approximately 2,800 by 720 feet) and at its deepest reached 460 meters (1,500 feet) below the surface. It wasn’t highly concentrated iron either and therefore was crushed and pelletized as concentrate on site. You can see in the picture some of the processing buildings next to the open pit. At the time I  first visited Marmora huge power shovels and bulldozers could be seen on the pit floor digging up raw ore. After 26 years the mine was no longer of any economic value and mining operations ceased. Today the abandoned mine sits like an open wound on the landscape slowly filling with water. Next to the pit lie mountains of waste material.  One can find lots of Marmoras around the planet, abandoned pits accompanied by slag heaps, with little effort by the companies that did the mining and by the governments that granted mining licenses to do any environmental rehabilitation.

In the United States an even more extreme form of surface strip mining involves mountaintop removal. In 1998 the United States Department of Energy estimated that coal reserves in Appalachia amounted to 28.5 billion tons with much of it concentrated in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. To get to these coal reserves companies have been applying for permits to blast the tops of mountains, disposing of the mining overburden in nearby valleys. Once the coal is removed the company plans include land reclamation and restoration. Many licenses have been granted in the past two decades but recently environmental concerns have slowed the pace of this type of mining. In January 2011, the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency vetoed a mountaintop removal permit being sought by one company in West Virginia. The reasons cited included concerns about environmental impact on water quality and aquatic life during the mining operation and after reclamation. Studies of other mountaintop mining operations showed that existing production and reclamation plans were contributing to environmental degradation that warranted a second look. This is just one example of what the future holds for surface mining in many developed countries.

In developing countries, however, the need to build infrastructure is driving exploration and the growth of surface mining with all its attendant environmental risks. In fact the United Nations estimates that by 2038 humans will extract 138 billion tons of materials from the Earth using surface mining techniques with much of the growth coming from the developing world.

Subsurface Mining

Subsurface mine operators sink shafts and dig tunnels in the Earth to reach buried ore deposits. Mines can be vertical shafts, horizontal tunnels, sloping shafts that can incline upward or downward or a combination of all of these depending on the shape of the ore body. Unlike surface mines that use big shovel and pail technologies, underground mining involves drilling, grinding, building underground rooms supported by pillars and shoring, removing ore, reshoring and following the ore face.  Harder mined materials may require underground controlled blasting to get to the ore.

As high-grade ore deposits become harder to access subsurface mines are digging deeper into the Earth. This means more complex infrastructure for ventilation, temperature management and environmental safety, better and faster human transportation systems, the building of safe areas within the mine, and material transportation systems that provide rapid removal of mined ore and waste.

The deepest subsurface gold mines today in South Africa reach depths of 4,000 meters (over 13,000 feet or close to 2.5 miles). What is the environment like in deep mines? Temperatures of rocks exceed 60 Celsius (140 Fahrenheit). Slurry ice is pumped underground to cool the tunnel air to 29.5 Celsius (85 Fahrenheit). A mix of concrete, water and rock acts as an insulator within the walls of excavated areas to make the mine habitable.

Getting in and out of a mine at the depths we are describing can take well over an hour. In the event of an emergency mines are equipped with safety chambers (see the illustration below) for refuge.

This Strata Safety Refuge Chamber comes with 48-hours of breathable air in the event of a mine emergency. Source: Strata Safety Products

The rescue of the 33 trapped men at the San Jose mine in Chile involved drilling a rescue bore hole to a depth of 680 meters (over 2,200 feet). In mines 6 times deeper think of the technology needed to save the lives of those trapped below.

Robotic Mining

As subsurface mining penetrates deeper into the Earth, and as mineral deposits become harder to access robots will not only be used to rescue trapped miners but will replace humans at the ore face. Robots in subsurface mining have significant advantages over us.

RoboClimer is a tele-operated climbing robot capable of doing drilling working on vertical slopes. Source: Spanish National Research Council

1. They don’t need to breathe and can be hardened to withstand the temperatures, atmosphere, potential toxic gases and chemicals that human operators need protection from. Robots can operate in a mining area in which iInert gases are pumped to eliminate the risk of a subsurface fire. In coal mining this would be an enormous benefit.
2. They are not constrained by the limitations of human anatomy and can be designed to navigate and work both horizontally and vertically and anywhere in between. Robots can be outfitted with multiple robotic legs for stability and arms holding specialized mining tools. Three, four, five or six hands are way better than two. Six feet or sixty gives a robot mobility options.
3. They can be made small to fit small mineral seams. That means mining operators can excavate smaller tunnels with less stress to the surrounding rock from which the minerals are extracted. For those on the surface it means less chance of subsidence from a mining cave in.
4. They can be used in remote mining locations where human habitation would be difficult. Think of mines in polar regions or off the planet’s surface.
5. They can be controlled remotely or they can be networked to work cooperatively.

Humans will no longer need be exposed to the dangers of operating in the deep at the mine face, or be exposed to toxins leading to illnesses associated with long-term exposure to mining environments.

Ocean Mining

Exploiting the surface of the planet that lies underwater remains the next frontier for the mining industry. Just as oil and natural gas exploration moved offshore so will mining. Why?

Seafloor Massive Sulphide or SMS are deposits that form on the ocean floor near the edges of crustal plates. Associated with the hydrothermal vents known as “black smokers,” SMS deposits contain high concentrations of copper, zinc, gold, silver and other trace metals. They form when ocean water leaches into the cracks and rock fractures and undergos super-heating to a point where it dissolves the minerals in nearby rocks. When the super-heated water contacts the cold seawater above it the dissolved minerals precipitate on to the ocean floor creating massive deposits in the range of several million tons.

Companies and countries are just starting to exploit SMS laying claim to hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of the ocean floor. One company in Canada, Nautilus Minerals, is developing a project called Solwara 1 off the New Guinea coast.

What technology will humans need to develop ocean mining? The basic components already exist from technology developed for deep sea fossil fuel exploration and development. Robotic marine undersea technology can explore and mine SMS deposits. Piping systems and risers will serve as conduits for mined SMS combined with liquid to be pumped to the ocean surface for collection and processing.

Many countries are laying claim to SMS deposits. The following map illustrates the full extent of our 21st century mining future under the ocean.

SMS deposit mining claims by various countries appear in salmon pink in this world map. Source: The Economist

Mining Off the Planet’s Surface

The 21st century will see our first efforts at mining near the Earth. From the moment that humans ventured to the Moon and Mars we have been studying their geological history, surveying their surfaces, creating radar and LIDAR images of subsurface terrain, identifying concentrations of mineral deposits, all with the idea of eventually inhabiting them.

When we finally begin to inhabit the Moon and Mars our first humans and robots will be miners seeking water for sustenance and for its byproducts, oxygen and hydrogen, then building materials for construction. The 21st century should see the first surface mining off our planet’s surface. Near-earth asteroids may become mining waystations to provide materials for constructing spaceships that will fly to Mars and beyond.

But we will look at space and the 21st century in much greater depth in an upcoming blog.

Mining – Part 1: Exploring for the Mother Lode in the 21st Century

Every cellphone uses 42 different minerals in the manufacturing process. This includes bauxite, beryllium, copper, gold, iron, limestone, silica, silver, talc, wollastonite and many rare earths.

Every digital alarm clock contains rare earths in phosphors plus boron, copper, gold and quartz.

Your television contains 35 different minerals, your computer 30.

Today we use silver more in electronics than in jewellery.

Every year 51% of all the copper consumed in the United States goes into house construction.

And a final example, one Toyota Prius motor and battery require 23 kilograms (50 pounds) of rare earths.

Are we running out of mineral resources? No. What we are running out of is easily accessible ones. We’ve managed to find over the last 10,000 years, and particularly in the last 200 years all the low-hanging fruit, to borrow an agricultural term.

In the 21st century we no longer walk along the edge of cliff or a long a river’s edge and strike gold, nickel, iron, or zinc. Today we deploy sophisticated discovery technologies to help find what remains hidden beneath the surface of the Earth. The demand for minerals takes us to the sea floor, the Arctic  and other remote areas that are environmentally sensitive or, for the purposes of extraction, technologically challenging.

Demand for Minerals of All Kinds Continues to Climb

In this section we have compiled two lists. One contains mining statistics on the most recognizable mineral resources. The second contains rare earth minerals.

Humanity mines a staggering amount of mineral wealth from the planet each year. These 2010 statistics (unless otherwise indicated) reveal just how much we extract:

1. Bauxite – 177,000,000 metric tons (2006)
2. Beryllium – 190 metric tons
3. Copper – 16,200,000 metric tons
4. Gold – 2,500 metric tons
5. Iron – 1,600,000,000 metric tons (2009)
6. Lead – 4,100,000 metric tons
7. Magnesium – 5,580,000 metric tons
8. Molybdenum – 234,000 metric tons
9. Nickel – 1,445,600 metric tons
10. Palladium – 197 metric tons
11. Platinum – 183 metric tons
12. Silver – 22,200 metric tons
13. Titanium – 6,300,000 metric tons
14. Uranium – 53,600 metric tons
15. Zinc – 12,000,000 metric

Our second list assigns different rare earths to different manufactured products of our Industrial Age. Rare earths have been used in manufacturing since the first incandescent lightbulb. Today you find them in flat screen televisions, cellphones, wind turbines, airplanes, automobiles and satellites. Here’s a sample of where, how and how much we use annually:

1. 48,000 metric tons of rare earths are used in permanent magnets including Neodymium, Praseodymium, Dysprosium, Terbium, and Samarium.
2. 35,000 metric tons get used in Nickel Metal Hydride Batteries including Lanthanum,  Cerium, Praseodymium, and Neodymium.
3. 28,500 metric tons are used to make catalytic converters containing Cerium, Lanthanum, Praseodymium, and Neodymium.
4. 13,000 metric tons are used in flourescent lightbulbs and paints including Europium, Yttrium, Terbium, Lanthanum, Dysprosium, Cerium, Praseodymium, and Gadolinium.
5. 30,500 metric tons are used in polishing powders for the finishing of jewellery, marble, ceramics and other products. These rare earths include Cerium, Lanthanum, and Neodymium.
6. 11,000 metric tons are added to glass including Cerium, Lanthanum, Neodymium, Erbium, Gadolinium, and Ytterbium.

Between the minerals on these two lists, when we add the numbers up we can see just how huge a part minerals play in our technology-based society. In fact, on average, per capita use of newly mined minerals in the United States in 2010 amounted to 7,400 kilograms (almost 17,000  pounds).

Average mineral consumption per person in the United States. Source: Poorna Pal, Glendale Community College

Keeping Up with Mineral Demand is Getting Tougher

Discovering a mother lode in the past was often accidental. I remember the story told to us in high school about the discovery of  the vast deposit of nickel and copper in Sudbury, Ontario in the 19th century. During survey work in Northern Ontario associated with the building of the new Canadian Pacific Railroad a worker noted a deflection on a compass needle when in the Sudbury area.  Years later when the railway was under construction copper and nickel surface samples were unearthed. Eventually the area was opened to mining and today, Sudbury represents one of the richest sources of nickel and copper on Earth.

Mineral deposits are seldom found through surface surveys anymore. Instead we rely on a range of technologies to uncover hidden resources. These include remote sensing technologies such as:

• Ground and Aerial Magnetic Surveys – measure the magnetic intensity of an ore body close to the surface of the earth.
• Gravimetric Surveys – study individual geological structures where an overlay of sedimentary rocks hides a potential ore body discovery.
• Electromagnetic Surveys – measure the electromagnetic properties of hidden ore bodies to determine their mineral properties.
• Radiometric Surveys – detect and map radioactive materials such as uranium, thorium, potassium and rare earths.
• Resistivity Surveys – involves transmitting a current into the ground to detect subsurface hydrogeology and ore bodies.
• Audio Frequency Magnetic Surveys - measure natural alternating magnetic fields using sound.
• Ground Penetrating Radar – is used to some degree for mineral exploration but more for mining development to establish bedrock depth, location of sand and gravel deposits, and assess the stability and quality of rock formations.
• Neutron Activation Analysis – can be used in a laboratory or on location to detect halogens, antimony, rare earth elements, gold, platinum, uranium, and thorium in rock samples.
• Seismic Reflection – uses seismic feedback from controlled explosions or other vibration sources to map underground features.

Magnetic Surveys outline the extent and depth of a subsurface ore body. Source: Zapata Incorporated

Other techniques involve on site exploration teams of geologists, engineers, botanists, chemists and  mining specialists. Techniques deployed include:

• Geochemical Prospecting – can be strategic covering thousands of square kilometers or tactical involving smaller areas with high mineral potential. The chemistry of the rock and soil are measured looking for a halo effect of trace mineral elements. Sampling is mapped to a grid to display geochemical concentrations of  mineral elements.
• Geobotanical Prospecting  - is a form of geochemical prospecting that identifies plant species known to co-exist with chemicals associated with mineral elements or measures the trace-element content of plants within a strategic or tactical area. Patterns are detected to outline dispersion from a central mineral source.
• Trenching and Sampling – done  on site following positive results from remote sensing, geochemical and geobotanical prospecting. Just as it sounds, trenching involves digging a shallow trench in identified tactical areas to collect samples of underlying rocks for testing.
• Core Drilling – is used to identify minerals by analyzing samples from drilling activity. Drilling is also done within mines to test the quality of potential mineral seams.

Diamond core drill bits are used to retrieve rock samples for analysis of mineral content.

In our next blog we will look at mineral extraction technologies being deployed in the 21st century.

Biomedicine – Part 11: Curing in the 21st Century – Influenza and the Common Cold

In this blog we look at potential 21st century cures for two diseases that have plagued humanity each creating an unwarranted burden on society – one more economic than deadly, the other more frightening in its potential to take human life. Both derive from viral infections. The former disease is the common cold. The latter is influenza or flu.

The Common Cold

The common cold is associated with 200 virus types. These include rhinovirus of which there are 110 types, coronavirus, 30 types, and a smattering of others such as adenovirus (pictured below),  coxsackievirus, echovirus, coxsackievirus, respiratory syncytial virus and enterovirus. Among cold viruses are some that cause even more serious illnesses. These include orthomyxovirus with strains associated with influenza, and paramyxovirus with its parainfluenza virus strains.

With so many cold viruses, developing a cure becomes a challenge. But recently researchers in Cambridge in the United Kingdom have made a discovery that could lead to a way to defeat cold viruses even after they have invaded cells.

Adenovirus, mentioned in an earlier blog, is one of over 200 viruses responsible for the common cold. Source: Protein Data Bank

To appreciate this discovery it is important to understand how viruses propagate and cause cold symptoms.  Viruses cannot replicate by themselves. They need the machinery of the cells they invade to generate copies of themselves. Initially a cold virus is introduced to the body by penetrating through the mucus membranes in the nose and throat. The virus is small enough to slip through the mucus defence barrier. It binds with a surface receptor on cells lining the nose and throat and by doing so gets access to the protein-making machinery within the cell. Using the cell proteins the viruses replicate and rapidly invade nearby cells.

Virus-infected cells emit chemical signatures that attract the body’s immune system to them to fight off the invaders. It is the white cells in the immune system that cause an immune system response which includes the symptoms we associate with a cold: stuffy nose, mucus and phlegm, and the cough response to the irritation and inflammation of the nasal and respiratory membrane.

Colds normally don’t last very long, a few days and a few days going. After a week they are usually gone. But sometimes cold viruses leave the body susceptible to other infectious agents of a far more serious nature. So besides finding a way to defeat the cold for its own sake, there are other good reasons to come up with a cure.

Can We Cure It?

Detection and disruption represent the key strategies for curing the common cold. If our immune system could disrupt the virus before it harnesses the machinery of infected cells, the virus would be unable to replicate and would die. At the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, at Cambridge in the United Kingdom, researchers have discovered that anti-viral antibodies have the ability to ride piggyback on an invading virus as it enters the cell and to kill the virus before it replicates. Previously this had never been observed. Scientists thought antibodies only worked outside cells.

In making this discovery, researchers may be able to harness proteins within the cell to fight the virus. The principal antibody recognition cellular protein is tripartite motif-containing 21 or TRIM21. In a normal cold it takes several days before TRIM21 builds up in cells to fight off the viral invasion. But if a vaccine could boost the TRIM21 response by enhancing its fighting power it could neutralize the virus earlier, disrupting it within a few hours and before the infection leads to immune response symptoms.

The findings were recently published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Before human clinical testing scientists will begin lab animal studies. It is expected that a human vaccine will be available before 2020.

This approach could lead to cures for many other disease caused by viruses including rotavirus and enterovirus, a group of viruses that infect millions of children annually resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Influenza

In 1918 with the World War coming to an end, a flu epidemic later called the Spanish Flu killed more people than the war it followed. Spanish Flu infected 20% of the world’s population over its two-year run and killed between 20 and 40 million. Those most susceptible were young adults between the ages 20 and 40.

Every year when flu season comes around we are encouraged to get a flu shot. Flu can be deadly and influenza viruses can jump species from animal to human hosts such as H1N1 known as Swine Flu. Where the animal may have acquired immunity over time, the human may not. Hence Swine Flu killed many young people who had no immunity to it, Bird Flu in Asia killed handlers of domestic fowl for the same reason, and SARS, a virus that originated in China and spread by airplane around the world, caused many deaths before isolation controls ended the pandemic.

Flu is very different from the common cold. Its onset is faster and the symptoms are more profound. It infects the respiratory tract from the nose to the lungs. It can in any single flu season, associated with late fall and winter months, infect as much as 20% of the population and kill thousands.

It is caused by three types of influenza viruses labelled A and B and C. C is the mildest and not associated with epidemics or pandemics. Type A influenza includes H1N1 or swine flu and along with Type B are associated with these large-scale outbreaks.

There are three types of Influenza virus, A, B, and C. A and B are responsible for pandemics. C causes mild outbreaks. The cutaway shows the RNA and proteins that disrupts the chemistry of infected cells.

The influenza virus constantly evolves making it very difficult for biomedical researchers to develop infection controls to deal with the changes. Flu vaccines are formulated for the most part to fight last year’s influenza virus variant. Scientists in the Northern Hemisphere get a sneak peek at the next influenza virus when outbreaks occur in the Southern Hemisphere, a 6-month window to develop a vaccine that combines last year’s and the current influenza happening at the opposite side of the planet. The most recent flu pandemic occurred in 2009 with the H1N1 outbreak in Australasia before arriving in North America and Europe. H1N1 resulted in 57 million cases in the United States and 11,690 deaths.

Can We Do Better than the Annual Flu Shot?

The answer is yes and researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory may have found the answer. They call it DRACO for short. It stands for Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer, an antiviral therapy designed to find and kill virus-infected cells, leaving uninfected cells unharmed.

Rather than specifically targeting a single virus DRACO takes a broad-spectrum approach, targeting a type of RNA produced by virus-infected cells. DRACO as a therapeutic cure is not limited to treating influenza. It has the potential to deal with outbreaks of almost any virus.

Through animal studies, MIT researchers identified a form of RNA that only appeared in virus infected cells. Dubbed dsRNA, or double-stranded RNA, the cells natural defence systems attach a protein to the strand in an attempt to block it with the virus countering the cell’s defence every step of the way.

The researchers decided  to combine one of these dsRNA-binding proteins with a more lethal protein, one that causes cellular death, known as apoptosis. Apoptosis occurs in cells naturally after many replications when telomeres shorten to the point that the protein initiates the cell’s demise. It also can initiate when a cell begins to exhibit cancerous behaviours.

Through DRACO therapy the naturally occurring apoptosis protein bound to the dsRNA protein can cross the cell membrane of any cells in the body. If no dsRNA is present DRACO leaves the cell unharmed. If dsRNA is present, DRACO initiates cell suicide. Mice treated with DRACO were completely free of viral infections with no toxic side effects. Clinical human trials are not too far in the future.

Biomedicine – Part 11: Curing Technologies in the 21st Century – Overcoming Addiction

Is drug addiction a disease? It may start with a voluntary sampling of a cigarette, an amphetamine, a stimulant, a depressant….but what eventually happens is in fact a dependency driven by our brains. We continue to use the drug for its effect even though it adversely affects our lives. Addictive substances impact the brain’s frontal cortex. That’s the area of our brain that governs decision-making and judgment.  Addiction acts like a runaway train by interrupting the normal brain circuitry making the craving for whatever the substance is overwhelming.

Is everyone susceptible to addiction? It’s a good question because environment may be a strong determining factor.

What motivates someone to try an addictive substance? Often it’s curiosity. Other times it’s stress brought about by circumstances. Sometimes it’s peer pressure, a wish to be a part of a social group, sharing something in common. So circumstances play a role in susceptibility.

What makes an addictive drug work?

Why does our body accept this type of foreign substance?

The chemical structure of most addictive drugs mimics brain chemistry fooling our neurons and in particular neural receptors.

Let’s look at marijuana as an example.

Is the natural brain chemical Anandamide really similar to THC, the active chemical in marijuana? Source: NIDA

The active chemical in marijuana is THC (tetrahydrocannibol). As you can see from the illustration above THC (on right) is a fairly complex molecule. It is fat-soluble allowing it to slip through the barrier that isolates the brain from the rest of our body systems. THC binds with a neural receptor that is the same one used by a naturally occurring molecule, Anandamide (the molecule on the left).

First identified in 1992, Anandamide was discovered by Dr. William Devane at University of Wisconsin, and Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Synthesized in an area of the brain that governs memory, higher thought processes and body movement, the two researchers named it after the Sanskrit word that means bliss. Why? Because in finding Anandamide these researchers were identifying the natural human-generated equivalent to THC, a chemical that regulates pain, appetite, mood and short-term memory in the brain.

How do Addictive Drugs Interact with Our Brains?

Neural receptors are the key to nerve cell communication. Chemicals that mimic those naturally produced need a way to take part in that communication. In the example we have looked at THC versus Anandamide, the former binds with receptors on the surface of nerve cells in the same way as the latter.

Anandamide is a “key” molecule because it unlocks a cell by binding with receptors on the cell surface. It does this because its shape fits the receptor like a key entering a lock. When it interacts a door opens through the cell membrane causing a flood of chemicals to enter the nerve cell affecting its positive or negative charge.

THC does exactly the same thing because its shape can also bind with the neuron receptor. The difference in the body response to THC versus Anandamide is one of duration. Where Anandamide is fragile and very short-lived, THC is far more robust. So the bliss effect of Anandamide is short-lived, where the bliss effect of THC can go on for a long time producing the perpetual “high” associated with smoking marijuana.

Most of the drugs we use for pain management work in a similar way. Morphine locks into an opiate receptor in nerve cells. Its natural molecular equivalent is enkephalin. Morphine is addictive because when it binds with a nerve cell receptor it locks even tighter than enkephalin and remains attached. Pharmaceutical companies recognized the addictive nature of morphine and developed less potent substitutes like codeine and demerol.

Addictive drugs elevate another brain-synthesized molecular chemical, dopamine. Dopamine acts like adrenaline affecting the brain processes that govern emotional response, pleasure, pain and body movement. Excessive dopamine creates brain euphoria. Drugs that induce strong dopamine responses are called dopamine agonists. Cocaine is one of these. It binds with the dopamine receptor on the surface of a neuron inducing an excessive dopamine response.

Dopamine is a synthesized molecule that stimulates the pleasure centres in the brain. Cocaine and amphetamines are dopamine agonists increasing the response. Source: Squidoo

Over time neurons exposed to drugs like cocaine and amphetamines become desensitized or tolerant to dopamine. In these cases each exposure produces less of drug response. The neurons, in anticipation of the drug, stay in a state of stimulation requiring more to create the same effect. How cocaine does this is by binding and hanging on to the proteins that transport dopamine and remaining longer elevating the dopamine response. Amphetamines work similarly leading to over stimulation of the neurons.

Is There an Addiction Vaccine in the Near Future?

Traditional treatments for addiction have involved finding a less addictive drug such as methadone to help reduce heroin dependency, or using a nicotine patch to help stop smoking. Another drug, Vivitrol, has been used to treat alcoholism and opium addiction. There are even anti-smoking pills that don’t act as drug mimics but instead inhibit the neural receptors.

A vaccine approach pursued since the 1970s, has only recently been able to see dramatic progress in creating cocaine immunity. Dr. Ronald Crystal, at Weill Cornell Medical College, has led a team that has produced a  vaccine to treat cocaine addiction.

The vaccine was created from a modified version of the adenovirus, the virus for the common cold, discarding the content that causes colds and using the remainder as a carrier medium. A molecule constructed to resemble cocaine is injected into the adenovirus and when a human is vaccinated results in an immune system response. The reason for using the adenovirus is simple. Most addictive drugs are too small for detection by the immune system which allows them to get by the body’s defences. By combining the synthesized drug molecules with a carrier already recognized as pathogen, the immune system learns to attack the smaller drug molecules as pathogens as well so they never reach the neural receptors of the brain. In laboratory tests the vaccine’s effect lasted more than 13 weeks causing an immune response anytime mice “snorted” cocaine.

A similar medical project has used a modified cholera bacteria as a transport mechanism with cocaine creating an immune system response to produce antibodies. In 2009 Baylor College of Medicine in Houston ran clinical trials using this cholera-based anti-addiction cocaine vaccine with 115 human subjects. The results showed a strong antibody response in 38% of patients who received the vaccine, and 45% of remained cocaine free in follow-up examinations up to 4 months after. The vaccine is currently in national clinical trials in the United States. Eventually vaccines of this type could be delivered regularly much the way some people take allergy shots, continually boosting the immune response and eliminating the negative body responses to cocaine ingestion.

Recent researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have had successful results developing a similar vaccine for heroin addiction and have tested it in animal models.

Research into vaccines focused on treating smokers for nicotine addiction is on the way. But alcoholism, the most prevalent addiction, remains untreatable through vaccination.

Considering the cost society bears to deal with addiction, policing the illegal drug trade. and the cost of incarceration for repeat drug dealers and offenders, anti-addiction vaccinations represent a better future.

Biomedicine – Part 11: Curing Technologies in the 21st Century – Ending Obesity

Our image of wellness and health has changed in the last two centuries. In the late 19th and early 20th century the healthy and wealthy looked like the men who appear in the picture below. By today’s standards we would consider these men fat or even obese.

From left to right, J.P. Morgan, Edward VII and Andrew Carnegie represented what was considered a healthy figure at the end of the 19th century.

Back in their time these men were society’s elite, an example of success in life. Of the three only Edward VII died from the kinds of complications we associate with bad health decisions and obesity, indulging in 20 cigarettes and 12 cigars per day, gluttonous eating habits and dying from a succession of multiple heart attacks. The other two managed to survive their obesity.

Today we have a different human paradigm as seen in the image below. Obesity doesn’t fit with this picture. Yet today obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, and not just in North America, but worldwide.

Our image of what healthy looks like has changed over time. Source: Modern Athlete

Why? Because our obesity grows:

• As more of us move from rural to urban areas
• As we move from physical work to knowledge work
• As we add more labour-saving technology to our homes
• As we bring new entertainment technologies to our living rooms and dens
• As we rely more and more on drugs that have side-effects contributing to obesity

We eat saturated fats and sugar. We are less active physically than any previous generation. In 2012 according to a recent Australian study 1.5 billion of us are overweight. Of these 400 million are obese.

Our genetics contributes to this condition in part but our growing bulkiness stems from the combination of all of the issues described above. Since 1980 these behaviours and lifestyle changes have led to obesity growth rates of 300% in North America, parts of Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, Australasia and China. And there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight.

There are consequences. Obesity and being overweight comes with increased risk including (in alphabetical order):

• Cancer of the breast, colon, endometrium, kidney, gall bladder and prostate
• Cardiovascular disease
• Chronic musculoskeletal problems effecting joints such as knees and hips
• High blood pressure
• High blood cholesterol
• Hypertension
• Infertility
• Osteoarthritis
• Skin problems
• Stroke
• Type-2 Diabetes

Obesity in adults is accompanied by obesity in children. In a recent United Nations report it was estimated that 22 million children under five years of age worldwide were overweight.

Even more alarming is a correlation between obesity and Type-2 Diabetes and exposure to air pollutants. Recent studies reported by the American Diabetes Association indicate that exposure to particulate matter in the air leads to increased obesity and diabetes. The study concludes that exposure to particulate matter in the air results in inflammation in fatty (adiopose) tissue as well as insulin resistance and that this is contributing to the doubling of reported cases of diabetes over the last 15 years in the United States to almost 24 million.

There is a correlation between obesity and pharmaceuticals. So many medical conditions we treat with drugs that have an unwanted side affect — obesity. Drugs that treat depression, psychoses, and epilepsy are known to stimulate appetite. So do anti-viral and anti-HIV drugs. Steroids, progesterone and estrogen to treat autoimmune and hormonal imbalances also contribute to weight gain. We are, infact, medicating ourselves to obesity.

Effective Lifestyle and Eating Remedies for Obesity

It is in our nature to ignore a condition until it leads to more serious outcomes and that is the way most of us treat obesity and being overweight. As a result we treat the complications, medicating for all the diseases described above, rather than coming up with strategies to deal with the initial problem.

The easiest way to deal with obesity is through managing diet and changing lifestyle. To do this we need to:

1. Change the type of foods we eat as well as the quantity. This involves increasing the amount low-fat and high-fibre foods we eat. It means more fruit and vegetables, more whole grains and nuts in our diet, less saturated animal-based fats, more unsaturated vegetable-oil fats, and less sugary foods. And it means eating less.
2. Develop an active lifestyle involving daily exercise to burn the food we eat. This doesn’t mean becoming a marathoner. It does mean developing active hobbies, walking instead of driving, and cycling instead of using a car.

As a writer I am very aware of how my work environment can contribute to weight gain. I have watched my weight go up and down over the years. Today I am once more shedding pounds to reach my ideal weight, around 80 kilograms (176 pounds).  I am about 7 kilograms away right now. How I’m doing it is by combining portion control in my eating with increased activity. I make a point of walking one hour every day to offset the long deskbound hours when I am doing research and writing. I conscientously take frequent breaks from my desk to walk from my office upstairs to our main floor or our basement. By doing this I hope to lessen the impact of sedentary work.

But even with diet and exercise overweight problems and obesity don’t necessarily go away. And if you are on a drug treatment program to deal with other maladies, you may find it very difficult to keep weight off.

In the University of Melbourne study in Australia that we talked about earlier in this blog, researchers tracked 50 overweight men and women with an average weight of 95 kilograms (209 pounds). The group was put on a 10-week low-calorie diet and on average lost 13 kilograms (29 pounds). At the end of the weight-loss period,  body hormone levels changed leading to an average weight regain of almost 5 kilograms (11 pounds). So even when humans lose weight many regain a portion of it quickly. And it appears this has something to do with our body chemistry, the proteins that are part of us that determine when we are hungry and when we are not.

Can Science and Technology Save Us from being Overweight?

Two gastric endocrine hormones play a significant role in dealing with enhancing and suppressing our appetite.  One is leptin. The other is ghrelin. Researchers study the interrelationship between these two in trying to understand why some people are more prone to obesity or eating disorders.

The hormones are truly a balancing act. Leptin regulates energy levels in the body by suppressing the desire to eat. It is an anorexigenic (as in anorexia) hormone. Ghrelin acts as a counterweight to leptin. If energy levels are low it encourages us to to eat. The term to describe the ghrelin hormone characteric is orexigenic.

Obese patients are orexigenic. They are leptin-resistant because they either do not produce enough leptin protein in their systems to stop them from wanting to eat or they produce too much ghrelin within their bodies which stimulates the appetite.

In studying the leptin-ghrelin cycle researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California have identified a way to suppress grhelin using an antibody. Under the leadership of Dr. Eric Zorrilla, a neuroscientist who specializes in eating disorders, the Scripps research team has developed an antibody-based therapy that combine an anti-ghrelin with a carrier protein harvested from a mollusc, the Keyhole Limpet.

The Keyhole Limpet manufactures Hemocyanin, a protein that binds with anti-ghrelin to provide a vaccine for obesity. Image Source: Popular Science

The protein, Keyhole Limpet Hemocyanin or KLH, is currently being studied as a carrier protein for cancer treatment vaccines to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma, cutaneous melanoma, breast and bladder cancers. But what it can do for cancer also works when it is coupled with ghrelin antibodies. Currently being tested in animal studies, Scripps plans a human vaccine trial in the near future.

Is the future of obesity tied to a vaccine rather than dieting and lifestyle changes? For most of us who can control obesity and being overweight by changing diet and behaviour the obesity vaccine will probably never be something we need. But like so much of the progress we make in technology we may just choose the easy way out and get a shot to deal with being overweight.

Biomedicine – Part 11: Curing Technologies in the 21st Century Continued – Ending Heartache

Of all the topics I have written about to-date, this one strikes closest to home. My daughter was born with congenital heart disease 27 years ago. At the time the odds in favour of her survival to adulthood were low but she made it. Today, children born with her form of congenital heart disease are far more likely to live a full life because of medical discoveries, development of new devices, better medical protocols, and a better understanding of the science of human physiology.

A Quick Primer on Heart Disease

Humans get two types of heart disease: congenital (that is born with) and acquired (disease that develops over time). Congenital tends to be structural. It can express itself in abnormal anatomy or physiology. Acquired begins with normal anatomy but physiology changes as the heart becomes diseased. Both can lead to heart failure which you can live with for a very long time or heart attacks which can lead to death.

Tetralogy of Fallot is one of many congenital heart defects, structural diseases that happen during fetal development. Source: New England Journal of Medicine

Structural defects to the heart and blood vessels in congenital heart disease can be repaired surgically, missing valves implanted and blood flow restructured using human grafts and artificial materials. Drugs can help regulate heart rhythm or improve the pumping efficiency. Pacemakers can help overcome structural problems that impact the electrical system that regulates heart rhythm.

Acquired, which represents the bulk of what we normally think of as heart disease, can also benefit from surgical intervention, drugs, pacemakers and other devices.

Atherosclerosis is an acquired heart disease that leads to partial to full blockages in the coronary arteries. Source: Medline

What causes heart disease? Lifestyle and inherited genes are the principal cause with 30 to 60% of the risk associated with the latter when it comes to acquired, rather than the former. Recent international studies identified 17 new genetic variants linked to increased heart disease risk.  Five of these were associated with genetic regions that govern lipid metabolism processes, genetic controllers that impact the build up of fatty deposits in arteries. Ten others were in genes involved with other diseases and traits such as autoimmune diseases like Celiac and Type 1 Diabetes, cerebral and abdominal aneurysms, and lung cancer. What this means is there is no single genetic “smoking gun” that defines whether a person is likely to get heart disease in his or her lifetime. Instead we have a complex of genetic markers.

New Therapies for Repairing Bum Hearts and Blood Vessels

Stem Cells

In past blogs we have talked about stem cell therapy. Because stem cells have the potential to develop into a range of tissue types we can use them to regenerate and replace diseased tissue.

Cellular Dynamics International (CDI), is an American company located in Madison, Wisconsin, that is experimenting with the reprogramming of adult somatic cells to make them revert to a pluripotent state so that they can grow into any cell type needed for doing repairs to the body. These are induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS. Since 2008 CDI has used iPS cells to manufacture cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells), freezing and sending them to pharmaceutical companies doing research on new drugs to treat heart disease.

Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells are generated from adult donors to grow organs and body tissue. Source: http://stemcells-research.net

But iPS cells have a brighter future if we can work out some of the bugs. Those bugs include faint traces of chemical residue from the parent cells used to create the reverted cells. Those residues can lead to mutations and as we have already written in previous blogs, mutations can lead to runaway cancer cell proliferation.

You can create iPS cells from almost any human tissue source. If a patient with a damaged heart provides a tissue sample, the cells from the sample can be induced to revert to iPS cells. They then can be transplanted back into the patient at the location requiring treatment. iPS cells from the donor are not rejected because they are from the donor who is also the recipient. The iPS cells in their reverted state can take on the characteristics of those cells that are in proximity to them and start to divide. iPS cells in the heart can generate heart muscle. iPS cells in the spine can generate nerve cells. CDI charges pharmaceutical companies $1,500 for 1.5 million iPS cells. That’s not cheap but the potential for iPS as an alternative therapy to transplants makes this a desirable area of ongoing research.

In research being conducted in Bristol, England and Glasgow, Scotland, Doctor Costanza Emanueli, along with a team of scientists are studying a variety of approaches to treating heart attack victims including using embryonic stem cells to create blood vessel cells to inject into patients. The method of delivery is a skin patch.

Gene Therapy

Researchers are looking at ways to tweak DNA to repair injured hearts. This involves manipulating a variety of genes that impact muscle and blood vessel growth.

Dr. Emanueli’s team, mentioned in the previous section, is studying boosting levels of nerve growth factor (NGF) to improve heart attack survival rates. In studies with mice the death rate from heart attacks was reduced by half using NGF. The gene responsible for NGF was attached to a specially engineered virus and delivered into the hearts of mice. Mice that received the NGF gene showed much improved circulation and heart function. In previous studies NGF was known to regrow nerves but in this case it encouraged new blood vessels to grow inside the injured heart muscle.

In another study conducted at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the gene C/EPB-beta spurred the growth of cardiomyocytes. This study showed that a genetic trigger responding to physical exercise turned on a molecular pathway to get cells to start dividing. For a very long time cardiologists could not find evidence of cell division in adult heart cells. Hearts under stress or subject to exercise would swell but cell proliferation in these enlarged hearts was poorly understood.

Heart muscle enlargement, called hypertrophy, can be associated with disease or with what is referred to as “athlete’s heart.” In the study cardiomyocyte growth was attributed to molecular events rather than factors such as high blood pressure.

Reprogramming Heart Cells After a Heart Attack

Heart attacks in the past have caused irreparable damage to heart muscles. What causes them? The usual suspects are accumulations of deposits on the walls of arteries that supply the heart with blood. When an artery is partly to fully blocked oxygen and nutrients are cut off to the area next to the blockage. This kills the muscle near the blockage affecting the heart’s ability to beat. But what if the section of damaged heart muscle can regrow?

Professor Paul Riley, of Oxford University’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, and his team of researchers are looking at a layer of cells known as the epicardium. The epicardium is the inner wall of the sac of tissue known as the pericardium that surrounds the heart. The embryonic epicardium contains many types of cells used by the heart and circulatory system including blood vessels and heart muscle. But after birth the epicardium gets quiet and stops generating these tissues. Dr. Riley and his team looked at ways to switch the epicardium cell generation back on. In mice studies they achieved just that by administering doses of Thymosin Beta 4, a natural occurring protein, to stimulate the embryonic genes in the epicardium to create cardiomyocytes. The researchers found that administering Thymosin Beta 4 before a heart attack proved to stimulate faster regrowth of heart muscle tissue.

The team continues to hunt for other naturally occurring molecules that can stimulate heart muscle and blood vessel growth. Along with drug and interventional therapies to clear arterial blockages, administering these proteins pre-emptively could create a bank of healthy new heart muscle to speed recovery should an attack occur.

Dr. Anastasis Stephanou, University College Hospital, London, is part of a team looking at creating patches to repair damaged hearts. Sheets of protein impregnated with biological material including three types of heart cells form a scaffolding to grow cardiac tissue. So far they have been able to create small pieces of cardiac tissue with an aim to create larger sheets that could be used to patch a damaged heart.

Researchers in all these areas are getting closer to moving from the laboratory to clinical trials. We are probably less than a decade away from achieving new breakthroughs in repairing hearts.

Biomedicine – Part 11: Curing Technologies in the 21st Century Continued – Finding Cures to Stop the Body Attacking Itself

Not too many people realize that many forms of diabetes are caused by our immune system going haywire. Normally, the immune system is our first line of defence against invasive bacterium. But what happens when our system cannot tell friend from foe? In this blog we identify some of the leading autoimmune diseases and the current state of our research, and a potential cure using nanotechnology as the transport mechanism.

What is an Autoimmune Disease?

Autoimmune diseases are inflammatory response diseases caused by our immune system attacking us. They are non-discriminating and can be found in almost every organ and system in the human body. They tend to be chronic conditions continuing throughout the lifetime of the individual. There can be periods of remission followed by reappearance of symptoms. They tend to strike women more than men. Hormones may play a role. But there are some autoimmune disorders that are more prevalent in men such as Type 1 Diabetes.

How significant is the problem? It is estimated that 24 million Americans and 5 percent of the population in Western countries suffer from autoimmune diseases. Compare that to cancer at 12 million Americans and you begin to see the enormity of the problem.

There appears to be a correlation between our genetic inheritance and autoimmune diseases with children tending to develop diseases that appear in parents, and close relatives exhibiting common autoimmune diseases within extended family groups. Multiple sclerosis represents one of the most common autoimmune diseases that tends to run in families.

What confounds the medical field today about autoimmune diseases is finding the smoking gun or guns, the direct causal link that triggers the immune system response. Lots of circumstantial evidence points to viruses, chemical exposure, foods and environmental toxins but doctors and researchers continue to investigate what triggers these diseases. Having a family member who continues to experience an autoimmune disease has made studying this subject very personal to me.

Autoimmune diseases attack every part of the body. The American National Institute of Health identifies at least 80 different autoimmune diseases that include many familiar conditions you probably never thought were caused by our immune system. See how many you know from this partial list.

• Actinic Prurigo – an autoimmune response to the sun
• Addison’s disease – the autoimmune destruction of the Adrenal Gland – a disease that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy suffered from
• Ankylosing Spondylitis – an arthritic condition that attacks the pelvis and spine
• Autoimmune Myocarditis – a condition that effects the heart muscle
• Behcet’s Disease – a disease that causes oral and genital ulcers, and skin and ocular lesions, and can affect arteries and veins throughout the body
• Birdshot Chorioretinopathy – a disease of the retina in the eye that causes flashing lights and night blindness
• Chronic Urticaria and Angioedema – a condition that causes persistent eruptions of hives traced to drug, food reactions, pressure, infection or toxin response
• Celiac Disease – a disorder of the small intestine
• Crohn’s Disease – a disease that effects the entire digestive tract in the body
• Drug Hypersensitivity – a response to drugs leading to fever, skin rash, and internal organ reactions such as hepatitis, pancreatitis, myocarditis, nephritis, intestinal lung disease and muscle inflammation
• Graves’ Disease – a disease of the Thyroid Gland that leads to hyperthyroidism and goiters
• Guillain-Barre Syndrome – a response to infection that results in nerve inflammation, muscle weakness and potential paralysis
• Hemochromatosis - an adult onset disease resulting in progressive iron overload in the body with complications such as cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, cardiomyopathy, arthritis, and testicular failure
• Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis – a disease of the Thryoid Gland that leads to hypothyroidism
• Hemolytic Anemia – a disease that attacks red blood cells destroying them prematurely
• Juvenile and Type 1 Diabetes – a disease caused by destruction of insulin-producing Pancreatic Islet cells
• Lupus or SLE (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus) – a disease that predominantly strikes women and causes skin, joint, haematologic, neurologic, renal and other organ problems and leads to seizures, psychiatric symptoms, peripheral neuropathies or stroke.
• Multiple Sclerosis – a neurodegenerative disease more common in women that attacks the myelin sheath surrounding nerves affecting coordination, balance and vision as well as many organs in the body
• Myasthenia Gravis – a neuromuscular disease that causes muscle weakness and fatigue.
• Polyarthralgia – a disease that causes inflammation in the joints and is associated with osteoarthritis
• Psoriasis – a chronic inflammatory skin disease
• Raynaud’s Disease – a response associated with other autoimmune disorders that causes blood vessels in the  hands and feet to overreact to cold temperatures
• Rheumatic Fever – a disease that may occur after a Streptococcal or other infection causing lesions in connective tissue, particularly the heart
• Rheumatoid Arthritis – a chronic inflammatory arthritis that causes deformation of joints
• Scleroderma – a disease that affects tissue fibre, particularly the skin, lungs, gastrointestinal tract, heart, small blood vessels and capillaries
• Sjogrens – a disease that attacks the salivary and tear glands
• Thrombocytopenia – a disease that effects blood platelet production leading to abnormal bleeding
• Ulcerative Colitis – a disease that causes inflammation and ulcers in the large intestine
• Uveitis – an eye disease that leads to blindness

Today’s Autoimmune Controls Create Their Own Problems

Currently autoimmune disease treatment is all about reducing or reversing symptoms. In the case of diabetes we treat sufferers with insulin rather than restore pancreatic cell function. In the case of many of the inflammatory responses from autoimmune diseases we treat patients with a cocktail of drugs that include prednisone and other corticosteroids, anti-inflammatories like aspirin, acid blockers, antihistamines and immune suppression drugs (the kind used to stop rejection in organ transplants). In many cases the side affects of these drug cocktails proves to be worse than the diseases.

HLA, T and B, Autoimmune Diseases and a Potential Cure

When scientists and researchers talk about the immune system the letters in the above title become part of the conversation.

What is HLA?

What does T refer to?

What is the B all about?

HLA stands for Human Leukocyte Antigen, the genes that reside on the 6th chromosome in our cells and that govern immune response. The proteins associated with these genes are called antigens.

The T and B refer to different types of leukocytes, the white blood cells that reside in our circulatory systems and marshal our response to infections. The T and the B refer to T-cells, and B-cells. In addition there are sub-categories to leukocyte groups. One is the T-regulatory cell  or T-reg and researchers study it because these cells play a role in regulating the level of immune response by other leukocytes.

If we could develop a technology to stop specific unhelpful autoimmune reactions while allowing our normal immune response to deal with unwanted bacterium and viruses then we would be making a big leap forward in our ability to deal with autoimmune diseases. That’s exactly what researchers at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, have been working on using nanotechnology as the delivery mechanism for a vaccine that cures Type 1 Diabetes and has implications for other autoimmune disorders.

Dr. Pere Santamaria works at the Julia McFarlane Diabetes ResearcherCentre in the University’s Faculty of Medicine.

Dr. Pere Santamaria has led a team developing a diabetes vaccine that uses nanoparticles to stop immune response cells from destroying insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.                                           Source: University of Calgary

Working with mice with Type 1 Diabetes, Dr. Santamaria and his team looked at stopping the autoimmune response that damages the pancreas leading to the condition. They studied the behaviour of specific T-cells responsible for the disease and the T-reg cells whose role is to inhibit the former from attacking healthy host tissue.  Their goal was to strengthen the T-reg cells to stop the destructive autoimmune response. Using synthetic iron oxide nanoparticles and a cocktail of antigens from insulin producing cells, the team created a vaccine that could be directed at the autoimmune attack, strengthening the T-reg cells. The treatment not only restored normal blood sugar and insulin levels in the mice, it also prevented the onset of the disease. At the same time the vaccine treatment did not compromise the rest of the immune system.

The implication of using nanovaccines such as the one Dr. Santamaria’s team developed to treat other chronic autoimmune diseases is enormous. For those who suffer from one or more of that long list of autoimmune diseases described above, this is technology with great promise.

Biomedicine – Part 11: Curing Technologies in the 21st Century Continued – Curing Cancer

Some Basic Facts About Cancer

When the genes in normal (somatic) cells mutate cell behaviour may change over time leading to cancer. Mutations are a normal part of the life of a cell. That’s because when cells divide they replicate their DNA but imperfectly.

In a previous blog we talked about telomeres, the ends of the DNA strands in our chromosomes and how the telomeres shorten over time with each cell division eventually leading to cellular death. But it is not just telomeres that change during cell division. Other parts of the DNA can get scrambled or lost. We call these changes mutations. Since mutations happen all the time why do some become cancerous while others remain benign?

Medical researchers suspect that specific mutations in sections of our DNA that regulate the cell life cycle, when accumulated over time, cause cancer. Mutations that govern other cellular functions appear to have no malignant implications.

Here are some additional facts about cancer.

1. Less than 5% of cancers are familial, that is, inherited. So when you are told breast cancer runs in your family this is representative of a very small percentage of all the cancers that doctors see.
2. Most cancers happen in older people and are not inherited. They result from accumulated DNA mutations in cells over a lifetime.
3. Some cancers result from epigenetic changes, that is external factors such as environment, food and nutrition and lifestyle that create DNA mutations.

As researchers study cancer they are discovering new ways to treat it and reviewing some old ideas that showed promising results in the past. Let’s look at where we were with cancer, where we are today, and where we will be in the near future in the 21st century.

Seeking a Vaccine that Cures Cancer

Does the name William Coley ring a bell? For most of you, probably not. Born in 1862, Dr. Coley, an American surgeon who decided to devote himself to finding a cure for cancer, was the first to note that exposure to an infection could arouse a person’s immune system to shrink tumors.

William Coley pioneered cancer treatment with patients by injecting them with Coley's toxin, a mixture of heat-treated bacteria. Source: MBVax Bioscience Inc.

Dr. Coley studied sarcoma (bone cancer) at his New York hospital and identified a prior case of a German immigrant who had been operated on several times to excise a tumor in his left cheek. Each time the tumor regrew and after the final operation the remaining wound became infected. Surgeons were convinced that the man’s case was terminal but 4-1/2 months after he was discharged the tumor had vanished. When Dr. Coley studied the case he discovered that Streptococcus Pyogenes, a common bacterium that causes strep throat, was the source of the wound infection. The history of the case showed that the man had several outbreaks of fever and these outbreaks coincided with dramatic changes to the tumor. Dr. Coley concluded that the infection had saved the man’s life by stimulating his immune system to eradicate not only the bacterium but also the cancer.

Dr. Coley tested his theory on late-stage sarcoma patients first injecting them with live Streptococcus Pyogenes bacterium. The injections caused the tumors to shrink but in two cases the strep infections killed the patients. Dr. Coley then experimented with heat-treated bacterium injections. His first patient was a 16-year old boy suffering from a massive abdominal tumor. Known as Coley Fluid and later Coley’s Toxin, when injected into the tumor mass, produced the symptoms of an infectious disease (fever and chills) but not the full-blown illness itself. Repeat injections caused the tumor to shrink and eventually disappear. With no further cancer treatment the patient was discharged and survived another 26 years. Death was from a heart attack and not cancer.

Today the work of Dr. Coley continues at the Cancer Research Institute in New York. Founded by Dr. Coley’s daughter, the Institute studies how our immune system responds to cancer. In the 1970s doctors at the institute discovered that Bacille Calmette-Guerin or BCG could be used to treat early onset cancer of the bladder. The Institute has also studied cell proteins, called cytokines, and their immunotherapeutic effect on tumors.

Far from being Coley’s Toxin, seen by many in the medical establishment as quackery, current research is proving that Dr. Coley’s approach may lead to multiple cancer vaccines similar to the HPV cancer vaccine used to prime the immune system to kill human papillomavirus, a cause of cervical cancer.

Provenge is a vaccine developed by Dendreon, a company in Seattle. Designed to initially treat late-stage prostate cancer, Provenge is patient-specific. Cells from a patient are collected and then exposed to a chemical bath that contains cytokines that activate the immune system to attack the cancer. The cells are reinjected into the patient over the period of a month. Clinical trials on 512 advanced prostate cancer patients have been encouraging with 1/3 of the vaccinated patients remaining alive after 3 years. Plans are to introduce Provenge into earlier stage prostate cancer clinical trials.

We now know through the legacy of Dr. Coley that immunotherapy works. But what is the actual mechanism within our cells that leads to cancer? Research using baker’s yeast is yielding some exciting results.

Why Yeast Holds Clues to Curing Cancer

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is baker’s yeast, the yeast we humans have been using for milennia to make bread and fermented beverages. When a biologist, Leland Hartwell, decided to study cancer he chose yeast to help him model and understand the cell cycle.

Leland Hartwell, 2001 Nobel Prize winner, studied baker's yeast to better understand cancer cell behaviours. Source: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute

Hartwell was able to identify more than 100 genes directly involved in yeast cells that impacted life cycle. He called these Cell Division Cycle genes or CDCs. Hartwell identifed specific yeast genes responsible for different parts of the cell cycle and found similar characteristics in human cells. Since CDC genes either stimulate or inhibit cell division at very specific times in the cell lifecycle, Hartwell was able to identify the genes that didn’t operate in a normal manner. These included:

1. Oncogenes – genes that act as if they were operating in hyperdrive
2. Tumor Suppressor Genes – genes that inhibit runaway cell division
3. Checkpoint and Repair Genes – genes that detect damage to the DNA and attempt repairs

Any mutation to these genes could lead to what he described as driving with a stuck-accelerator and broken-brakes with no awareness that something has gone wrong resulting in out-of-control cell replication and the development of cancerous tumors.

What are the implications of this research in our search for cures for cancer in humans? Knowing that mutations in genes that control the lifecycle of our cells causes cancer should allow us to develop targeted therapeutic drugs specifically aimed at stopping runaway tumor growth. The tailor-making of drugs, called pharmacogenomics, should result in patient-specific cancer chemotherapy treatment without the side effects we normally associate with today’s treatments.

Having discovered the genetic mechanism that fuels cancer, the challenge is to find a way of delivering the cure and scientists may have discovered that answer. Read on.

RNA, Nanotechnology and Cures for Cancer

We’ve talked about Ribonucleic Acid or RNA in previous blogs. RNA interference or RNAi is a recent discovery and has enormous implications in delivering a cure for cancer. Why? Because RNAi can be used to silence the activity of specific genes within a cell. It does this by destroying messenger RNA or mRNA, the molecular messenger that carries coded information in genes to the protein factories needed to manage the cell’s lifecyle.

The challenge scientists faced was finding a way to dleiver RNAi  to a target without it degrading. When RNA is normally injected into the bloodstream it quickly degrades. That’s where nanoparticles come in. American researchers have developed a vaccine that contains a nanoparticle drug that can deliver RNAi to cancer cells. Using a polymer that self-assembles to create the nanoparticle, and coated with a chemical that provides each particle with protection from binding to any cells it encounters within the bloodstream, the nanoparticles target surface receptors on cancer cells, penetrate and destroy them and cause minimal side effects to surrounding healthy cells.

It has taken 15 years to develop nanotechnology delivery systems. RNAi was discovered in 1998. What will we witness in the next 15 years? We are getting much closer to one of the Holy Grails of modern medicine, a cancer cure.

Biomedicine – Part 11: Curing Technologies in the 21st Century

In this last series of  blogs we look at curing what ails humanity using 21st century technology. We’ll tackle this in several articles.

Many of our 21st century technology solutions may prove effective in treating a range of disease types. What diseases are on our immediate radar?

1. HIV and AIDS
2. Mosquito-spread Diseases – Malaria, Dengue Fever
3. Cancer
4. Diabetes
5. Allergies and Autoimmunity
6. Heart Disease
7. Obesity
8. Addiction
9. Influenza
10. The Common Cold

How close are we to finding cures? For some very close.

In this first blog will look at HIV and AIDS and diseases spread by mosquitoes.

Ending AIDS

Bioengineering a cure for AIDS means ending a global pandemic that infects 7,000 humans daily. Over 35 million humans today are infected with HIV, the virus responsible for AIDS. HIV attacks our immune system’s primary defences, the T cells. Specifically it attacks CD4+ T cells, cells that initiate the body’s response to an infection. HIV is classified as a retrovirus. Retroviruses use host cells to replicate themselves and CD4+ is HIV’s host. Once HIV has “occupied” a CD4+ cell it damages it until it dies leaving us with fewer to fight off other infections. Normal humans have 600 to 1,200 CD4+ cells per cubic millimeter of blood. Numbers below 500 require intervention in terms of treatment with retroviral drugs today. When counts drop below 200 a HIV infection turns into AIDS.

HIV takes over a lymph cell and uses its nuclear information to replicate itself. In this picture HIV is erupting from a lymphocyte.

Today HIV-infected humans can live decades with the virus before AIDS because combinations of medications can be used to fight the virus. This medical breakthrough started in the mid 1990s and in the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century we have seen very hopeful signs in combatting the infection using gene therapy.

Today HIV is a chronic disease and not necessarily a death sentence. Retroviral drugs do not eliminate the infection, just keep it at bay. This presents an economic and supply challenge. The drugs have to be taken every day. They are expensive and as a result unaffordable to people in many of the Developing World countries.

Two approaches to managing HIV include creating a vaccine, or finding an outright cure. Currently it appears that we are closer to a cure and gene therapy is the technology involved.

The case of Timothy Brown represents what may prove to be the sought for breakthrough. Mr. Brown, an American, was diagnosed with HIV and leukemia. In 2007 and 2008 he received two bone-marrow transplants to treat the leukemia. The marrow donor lacked a protein that resides on 99% of all CD4+ T cells. Called CCR5, it is the protein that HIV uses as a way to enter a CD4+ cell.

Timothy Brown, an HIV and leukemia sufferer, in receiving a bone marrow transplant for leukemia has been HIV free.

As in all bone marrow transplant cases, Mr. Brown’s own immune system had to be destroyed for him to accept the donor. The replacement immune system produced a remarkable result. Mr. Brown, who now lives in San Francisco, has been HIV free since the transplant.

Bone marrow transplants represent an impractical way of killing HIV. But this startling success has scientists experimenting using gene therapy as a method to modify a patient’s immune cells by eliminating CCR5. Recently, Sangamo BioSciences successfully demonstrated a CCR5 gene disruption technology with promising initial clinical results. Sangamo is not alone in developing CCR5 inhibitors. Researchers at City of Hope, University of Southern California, and Calimmune at UCLA are developing CCR5 disabling technology in blood stem cells. Using these types of stem cells for transplants could lead to permanent immunity to HIV.

In 2012, we are much closer to an AIDS cure than ever.

Ending the Mosquito as a Disease Spreader

Mosquitoes have been called flying hypodermic needles. They infect 700 million people annually with a variety of diseases. Dengue fever, a tropical illness, infects 50 to 100 million people per year and has been spreading northward in North America as global warming changes climate patterns. Dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) represents a more serious disease with a fatality rate of about 5%. Up to 1 million people die from malaria each year. The El Nino weather effect may relate to the cycle of both malaria and dengue outbreaks. Mosquitoes transmit other diseases including encephalitis, Rift Valley Fever, Yellow Fever, West Nile Virus and Canine Heartworm. If we can stop the biting we can seriously limit the spread of these diseases.

Mosquitoes are responsible for infecting 700 million people worldwide each year. Source: National Pesticide Information Center

A company in California has been studying how blood-feeding insects use olfactory neurons to detect CO2 gas plumes produced when humans and animals breathe out. Called OlFactor Laboratories, the company is creating technology that can be used as a repellent, inhibiting the detection of CO2 or,  a lure, trapping insects using a CO2 emitter. This radical new approach delivers new, easier to deploy and more cost-effective tools in the fight against the transmission of infectious disease by blood-feeding insects.

Mosquitoes detect CO2 to locate prey. OlFactor Laboratories is considering several solutions with this understanding. One would generate a chemical that mimics CO2 acting as an odour trap. Another would involve creating an odour cloud to make CO2 emitters undetectable. OlFactor is looking at a chemical, butanone as well as derivatives such as butanal and butanedione. When CO2 detecting insects sniff these chemicals their CO2 sensors don’t work.

If OlFactor succeeds we will do a lot less of applying DEET and other chemicals to our skin and will witness a dramatic decrease in disease and death from mosquito bites. OlFactor expects to have this technology readily available before 2020.

In our next blog will look at curing technologies with cancer and diabetes as the target.