Good morning and Happy First-Friday-in-March! Spring can’t get here fast enough, but the good news is you can get your biotechnology fix all year round!

POTENTIAL CANCER VACCINE DEVELOPED – According to a new study by Dutch researchers, an experimental vaccine that utilizes dendritic cells (a form of immune system cells) is not only safe to use but also induces an immune T-cell response against mesotheliomia tumors. Dr. Joachim Aerts of the Erasmus Medical Center explains the drawbacks of mesothelioma and the potential of this treatment:

“The major problem in mesothelioma is that the immunosuppressive environment caused by the tumor will negatively influence our therapy so we are now working on a method to lower this immunosuppressive environment,” Aerts said. “We hope that by further development of our method it will be possible to increase survival in patients with mesothelioma and eventually vaccinate persons who have been in contact with asbestos to prevent them from getting asbestos related diseases.”

ALGAE INDUSTRY KEEPS ROLLING – This recent post from The Energy Collective outlines some recent developments in the Algae biofuel industry, focusing on two recent Department of Energy funding initiatives totaling over $10 million for Honeywell’s UOP business and DuPont:

In UOP’s case, the funding will be used for the design of a demonstration system that will capture carbon dioxide from exhaust stacks at Honeywell’s manufacturing facility in Hopewell, Virginia, and deliver the captured CO2 to a cultivation system for algae. Algal oil will be extracted from the algae for biofuel feedstock, and the algae residual can be converted to pyrolysis oil, which can be burned to generate renewable electricity.

And as for DuPont:

For DuPont, the $8.8m funding given by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) will help the company’s macroalgae-to-isobutanol project, which will establish technology and intellectual property in the use of macroalgae for biobutanol production. Butamax™ Advanced Biofuels LLC, a joint venture between DuPont and BP, will be responsible for commercialization of the resulting technology package.

This comes after the recent announcement from BIO urging congress to address the barriers to the commercialization of Algae biofuels.

ALL STEM CELLS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL – A recent study of lab mice revealed that there are two distinct kinds of self-renewing blood cells, which may lead to a better understanding of how to treat blood diseases. According to co-author Grant Challen of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston:

“For the longest time, people always thought there was one single type of blood stem cell in the bone marrow that continually replenished the blood system throughout the life of a person. Recent studies have hinted that blood stem cells have distinct behaviors, but no one had been able to pinpoint the different kinds of cells. We’re the first group to actually identify them using different markers.”

The article continued:

Challen and colleagues used a special dye to stain stem cells removed from mouse bone marrow. Some stem cells expelled the dye at different rates, which, along with other well-known stem cell markers, allowed the researchers to sort these cells into two classes. This dye difference told researchers that the stem cells looked different, but not whether the cells acted differently, too.