I feel like today is a good day for HEALING, FEEDING and FUELING the world…

HEAL: MICROBUBBLES HELP BUILD NEW BLOOD VESSELS – Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine have discovered that bone marrow stem cells suspended in X-ray-visible microbubbles can help in treating peripheral arterial disease (PAD) patients by increasing the number of blood vessels. This is what associate professor Dara L. Kraitchman, VMD, PhD, had to say:

“Using an animal model, we found that stem cells in x-ray–visible microbubbles dramatically improve the ability to build new blood vessels when a blood vessel in the upper leg has been suddenly closed or occluded. With this treatment, the body was able to provide a more normal blood supply to the toes—possibly offering the hope of dramatically reducing—or avoiding—amputation. Treatment could also be personalized for individual patients.”

FEED: LET ME TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT BIOTECH CROPS – Having trouble figuring out what exactly are genetically modified crops? And what do they mean to the United States and the rest of the world? Elizabeth Weise of USA Today wrote a great article yesterday that about sums up the current state of GMOs in the world. And there’s even a bar graph made up of corn stalks! Actually, that’s not true. But they would do that. Here’s an excerpt:

Meanwhile in North America, and increasingly in South America, farmers embrace them, arguing they protect the environment by decreasing pesticide use and making no-till crops (where the soil is not plowed) possible. This increases water retention and decreases erosion, and at least by some measures reduces carbon released into the atmosphere…

Another reason there’s little concern in North America is that almost all those crops are either fed only to animals (soy and feed corn), used for fiber (cotton) or are so processed that the genetically engineered proteins are no longer present (sugar beets and high-fructose corn syrup). An attempt to introduce genetically engineered wheat in 2004 failed because growers were afraid it would hurt export prices.

FUEL: ALGAE PRODUCERS SEEK OUT EFFICIENCY - Aurora Biofuels, a startup that produces algae biodiesel, has just received $15 million in venture funding. But it still has to overcome the problem (like most, if not all biofuel companies) of finding a feasible way to scale their process to produce the millions of gallons of fuel necessary to compete with oil.

Aurora will use the new money to commercialize its fuels, but doesn’t plan to come to market until 2011 or 2012. With $40 million in capital raised, it seems to have enough runway to get it there, but then what? It says it plans to build fuel-producing plants near its algae farms so that they can feed on and recycle the carbon dioxide produced. But $40 million doesn’t seem like enough to make this happen…

BUT

Aurora’s one argument for why it will win out over its competitors, is that it has bred a strain of algae capable of generating 125 times as much fuel from the same amount of pond scum. If smaller acreages are needed, it can cut its costs by as much as half, and the company will be able to offer its fuel for cheaper — as low as $55 a barrel — undercutting its rivals and becoming more cost competitive with gasoline.

Good Afternoon Biotech Fans! In today’s roundup we have stem cells, gene tests, soybeans and the word “balloons”. Get excited:

GET YOUR EFFICIENT STEM CELLS FROM AMNIOTIC FLUID – Scientists at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York have discovered that skin cells in human amniotic fluid can potentially become embryonic-like stem cells. The researchers led by Assistant Professor Katalin Polgar found when compared to cultured adult skin cells, the amniotic fluid skin cells formed stem cell colonies in about half the time and yielded nearly a 200 percent increase in number:

“There remains today a need in stem cell research for an easily reprogrammable cell type. Our study shows that reprogramming of cultured, terminally differentiated amniotic fluid cells results in pluripotent stem cells that are identical to human embryonic stem cells, and that it is much easier, faster and more efficient than reprogramming neonatal and adult cells.”

GENE TEST DETERMINES EXACT DOSE OF BLOOD THINNER DRUG – Researchers at the Medco Research Institute in Franklin Lakes, N.J have developed a simple genetic test that helps doctors determine the best dose of the blood-thinner drug warfarin, reducing hospitalizations by one-third during the early dose-adjustment phase. The test identifies variations in two genes that strongly influence sensitivity to warfarin (Coumadin), which is used to prevent blood clots in people with high-risk conditions, such as atrial fibrillation, or after surgery to replace a heart valve:

The study included 896 people who, shortly after beginning warfarin therapy, gave a blood sample or cheek swab that was analyzed for expression of two genes — CYP2C9 and VKORC1 — that revealed sensitivity to warfarin. People with high sensitivity were put on a reduced dose of warfarin and had frequent blood tests. People with low sensitivity were given a higher dose of warfarin.

HIGH YIELD SOYBEAN GETS PUSH FROM DUPONT – DuPont EVP James Borel announced that their high-yielding Y Series soybeans “is really ramping up rapidly“, likely accounting for two-thirds of the company’s North American soybean sales this year, up from one-third in 2009:

The new soybeans, which have shown to out-yield competitive varieties by as much as 10 percent, marked the largest product launch in Pioneer’s 83-year history, and are part of a new product lineup that DuPont hopes will help boost soybean yields by 40 percent by 2018.

Borel said DuPont was seeking out additional collaborations in Africa, the Philippines and China in order to establish themselves as food security leaders as the world population balloons.

Hi there biotech fans. We have an all-star lineup of GMOs, Stem Cells and life-saving genetic tests in today’s roundup. Let’s have a look:

PHILIPPINES NEXT IN LINE FOR GMO APPROVAL – This from Reuters: the institute that kick-started the Green Revolution in the 1960s (and the nation that brought you Manny Pacquiao) is confident that the Philippines may follow China as the next Asian country to approve widespread planting of genetically modified rice crops. According to Robert Zeigler, director general of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI):

“Golden Rice, a Vitamin A-enriched grain developed by the IRRI is being bred into local varieties as well in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Vietnam as part of testing to ensure safety…There’s some possibility that it would be the Philippines that will get approval next, for Golden Rice. Probably late 2011 or early 2012.”

According to the article, over 90 million children in Southeast Asia suffer from Vitamin A deficiency, more than in any other region, according to IRRI, and the introduction of Golden Rice in the Philippines may be largely meant to benefit public health instead of boosting yields to curb imports.

NEW GENE TEST FOR DETECTING LIKELIHOOD OF AUTISM – A novel type of genetic test has been developed by the Genetics Diagnostic Laboratory at Children’s Hospital Boston that is better than standard genetic tests at detecting abnormalities that predispose a child to autism:

Researchers offered about 933 people aged 13 months to 22 years who had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder three genetic tests: G-banded karyotype testing, fragile X testing or chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA), which has been available only for the past few years. Karyotype tests identified chromosomal aberrations associated with autism in about 2 percent of patients, while the fragile X genetic mutation was found in about 0.5 percent of patients. CMA detected chromosomal abnormalities in slightly more than 7 percent of patients, making it the best available genetic test for autism spectrum disorders, the study authors said.

STEM CELLS BRING HOPE TO ASTHMA PATIENTS – Scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland discovered that stem cells could combat cases of asthma in lab mice, giving hope to the 300 million sufferers worldwide.

Mice that developed the condition by being exposed to pollen were protected against attacks after the cells obtained from bone marrow were injected into them. The researchers believe the bone marrow stem cells reduce inflammation in the airways, the immune system’s normal response to severe cases of asthma. So Dr Eva Mezey, of the Genetics Diagnostic Laboratory at Children’s Hospital Boston, and colleagues injected the asthmatic mice with the cells and found they stopped symptoms.

Call it the ebb tide after the Oscars.  Not too much new on the biotech video front this week.  We got some updates from some regulars, including our own Dr. Targan as well as some good video by Novo Nordisk on Beaker.com.  But the most graphic is our first entry.  Biotech and video games!

COMING TO A GAME NEAR YOU … ADAM JENSEN, DEFENDER OF BIOTECH – Are you a u Deus Ex Fan?  If so check out this trailer for the upcoming release of the Deus Ex prequel, taking place in Detroit in the year 2027, 25 years prior to the original Deus Ex.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A LAB TECH? – Ok.  Maybe not.   But hey, they’re hiring and it is a tough market out there.  So watch this video.  All courtesy of Madison College.

BIOTECH … IT IS BETTER THAN TIDE – Dr. Targan is back and this time he’s taking on industrial enzymes courtesy of biotechnology.  The good doctor explains how biotech produces enzymes that keep all of us keep clean, smell nice, and look better.  And it gets better.  By using enzymes we take a lot of bad chemicals out of the processing and waste stream.

BAYER TV … NOT QUITE MTV BUT -  It is ’science for a better life.’  This video short chronicles the recent visit by the Vice-president of the European Commission and the Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, the Italian Antonio Tajani at the start of his mandate.

BIOTECH + DIABETES = NOVO NORDISK – There’s a couple of videos from our friends over at Beaker.com on diabetes and Novo Nordisk.  First is a short capture on the pandemic that is diabetes.  Puts the disease in perspective.  Then there’s a profile of Nina, a regulatory professional at Novo Nordisk.  This is one of many videos that Novo Nordisk has done to show the human face behind biotech advances.  Good show!

In addition to the videos, a few stories over the weekend that you may want to read …

HELPING CROPS FIGHT PESTS – That was the lead in an ABC News story on how scientists have isolated genes in some crops that they can then transfer to other to help fight crop disease.  According to the report:

A team led by Cyril Zipfel at Britain’s Sainsbury Laboratory found that transferring a single gene from a wild plant to disease-susceptible crop plants made them more robust against infections like bacterial wilt and other diseases.  If the results can be duplicated more widely, they could help prevent massive crop losses and avoid environmental, health and financial costs associated with using pesticides, the researchers wrote in the Nature Biotechnology journal on Sunday.  “The implications for engineering crop plants with enhanced resistance to infectious diseases are very promising,” Sophien Kamoun, head of the Sainsbury Laboratory, said in a commentary.  The team is already extending its work to several crop plants, including potato, apple, cassava and banana — all of which suffer from damaging bacterial diseases, particularly in the developing world.

WSJ TAKES ON ROCHE – The Wall Street Journal has a piece on Roche and expectations about its pipeline following its acquisition of Genentech.

CHICAGO AND BIOTECH – You may think this would be a reference to the upcoming BIO Convention in Chicago.  Nope.  This is a story in the New York Times on how support networks in Chicago are promoting biotech.  According to the story

Universities and laboratories in the Chicago area have long been a source of innovations in the life sciences, but for decades inventors and entrepreneurs have often lacked the money and business savvy to bring their ideas to market. The story of TheraBionic and dozens of similar start-ups over the past few years indicates the serious effort to raise Chicago’s standing as a commercial biotech center.

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Healing. Feeding. Fueling. That’s what biotechnology brings to the world on a daily basis:

HEAL: MOTHER OF ALL SKIN CELLS DISCOVERED – A team of Dutch and Swedish researchers say they’ve found the “mother” (or origin) of all skin cells, which actually lives in hair follicles. Word is that this discovery could dramatically improve skin treatments for victims of serious wounds and burns. Hans Clevers of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Utrecht elaborates:

“This is the mother of all the stem cells in the skin — it makes all the other stem cells. The same stem cells exist in humans, we can see them, and the promise is that these cells are probably going to be much better than anything we have had to date at making new skin. We are learning how to grow the mouse cells in culture. Once we know how to do this and can isolate the human variant, we should be able to grow human cells as well.”

FEED: TO BATTLE HUNGER, WORLD MUST EMBRACE BIOTECH CROPS – According to a new study by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the use of biotechnology to create genetically modified crops can meet the needs of a growing population, especially as the world’s population grows from 6 billion to approximately 9 billion people later this century:

Golden rice–or rice genetically altered to contain beta carotene and new genes to overcome iron deficiency–is preventing thousands of cases of childhood blindness and reducing anemia, according to the NCPA study. Additionally, through genetic modification, crops can be altered to improve various crops’ nutritional value and reduce the environmental impact of farming, which are very important factors as the population and demand for food grow, [NCPA senior fellow, H. Sterling] Burnett adds, noting the world will need to produce three times more food than is currently produced.

FUEL: DAIMLER INCREASES BIOFUEL PRESENCE IN INDIA – In India, Daimler AG is already known for its development of Jatropha biodiesel and its spectacular B100 cross-country test drives back in 2002. Now, they’re back in India launching a new jatropha plantation project for which it has already planted its first 100 hectares. It is working with village communities in Tamil Nadu, supplying both funds and expertise from its successfully completed research projects.

“One of our core tasks is the engineering of sustainable mobility that is also viable for the future” said Professor Herbert Kohler, VP of E-Drive & Future Mobility and Chief Environmental Officer of Daimler AG. “By promoting fuels made from jatropha, we are making yet another contribution. At the same time, by supporting village communities we are creating economic prospects for socially weak regions of this earth”.

Once again, IAmBiotech.org is taking a look at how biotechnology is HEALING, FUELING and FEEDING the world today:

GENE DISCOVERY COULD LEAD TO ISOLATION OF RARE DISEASES – Based on two family-based studies, U.S. researchers found that fewer genetic mutations are inherited than previously thought, a development that could speed up the discovery of so-called “disease genes”. The approach is being used to find genes that may mitigate inherited disorders and offer hope for people with conditions such as Huntington’s disease.

Comparing the genetic blueprint of parents and their children can narrow the hunt for disease-causing genes to a handful of candidates rather than the thousands that are identified when a genome is analyzed in isolation, said Leroy Hood, a researcher who helped sequence the first family genome at Seattle’s Institute for Systems Biology.

“There will be an explosion of family sequencing that will identify disease genes,” Hood, 71, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “My prediction is that in 10 years or so, most of us will have our genome sequences done as part of our medical records and it will be an important part of predictive medicine.”

BIOFUEL FROM TEA LEAVES – This innovative story comes to us from Biofuels Digest:

In Pakistan, researchers are reporting that are used tea leaves — of which there are several million tons consumed annually, are a potentially viable cellulosic feedstock for ethanol, biodiesel as well as drop-in fuels. A group at the Nano Science and Catalysis Division at Quaid-i-Azam University have pioneered the use of a nanocatalyst to accelerate reaction times to viably extract energy from the spent leaves.

CHINA RECOGNIZES POTENTIAL OF BIOTECH CROPS – According to China’s Ministry of Agriculture, the country will accelerate development of its own genetically modified crops in order to establish food security and international competitiveness. According to one official:

“Accelerating technical research on GMO crops and their application and healthy development will provide a vigorous scientific support for the sustainable development of China’s agriculture”

Let’s take a look at how biotechnology is HEALING, FUELING and FEEDING the world today!

HEAL: USING A VIRUS TO BATTLE CANCER – Scientists at the Tom Baker Cancer Center in Alberta have developed a way to use the non-lethal reovirus to kill off prostate cancer cells while sparing normal tissue. There is already some evidence of the virus’ effect against lymphoid, ovarian, breast, pancreatic and high grade glioma brain cancers but this new Canadian study is the first to test it on prostate cancer. According to study leader Dr Don Morris:

”Our results are a stepping stone into future prostate cancer clinical trials with another category of cancer therapeutics. For the treatment of localised prostate cancer, we found that the reovirus is safe and has evidence of specific tumour versus normal prostate cell efficacy.”

FUEL: INDONESIA PLANTS 20,000 ACRES OF BIOFUEL CROP: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I can never get enough Jatropha! According to Biofuels Digest:

In Indonesia, Biodiesel Austindo (BDAI) and Masohi Agro Semesta (MAS) signed an Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly develop approximately 20,000 acres (8,000 hectares) of jatropha on the island of Java. According to the partners, the plantation will be developed over a four year period and it is anticipated work will commence on land preparation within the next two months to enable planting to commence in time for the next wet season.

FEED: DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WILL TAKE THE LEAD IN BIOTECH CROPS – Clive James, chairman of the International Service For the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) told The Wall Street Journal that within the next two years, developing countries led by China and Brazil will overtake richer nations in adopting genetically modified crops.

Mr. James still expects India to be a major user of genetically modified seeds. “China, Brazil, India, Argentina and South Africa are the big five that will drive rise in Bt crop areas as they try to improve yield when arable land growth is stagnant.” He said as much as 60 million hectares of land would come under genetically modified rice and maize in equal proportions in China over the next three years, as that country has granted a critical regulatory approval for both the crops.

Congratulations biotech community, you survived Monday. Now let’s see how biotechnology is HEALING, FUELING and FUELING the world TODAY! (Yes, fueling twice).

HEAL: TRACK DOWN CANCER, TAKE DOWN CANCER – According to The New York Times, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a way to monitor the progress of a patient’s cancer treatment using a new technique for rapidly sequencing, or decoding, large amounts of DNA. The article explains their discovery:

A cell becomes cancerous when the genes that stop runaway growth are sabotaged by mutations. Once the cell’s anticancer defenses are destroyed, genetic mayhem ensues, with further mutations and wholesale rearrangements of DNA in the chromosomes. If these altered bits of DNA could be picked up in a patient’s bloodstream, they would serve as a direct and sensitive marker of cancer. A surgeon could check if he had successfully removed all of a tumor, and chemotherapists could monitor the success of any treatment by testing for the reappearance of cancer cells.

There is A LOT more than goes into this process so make sure you check out the full article.

FUEL: MICROBE BIOFUEL – This story comes to us from the folks at CrunchGear. Japanese oil giant Nippon Oil and Hitachi Plant Technologies are developing a technology that would help to mass-produce eco-friendly jet fuel from Euglena, single-celled organisms that live in ponds and lakes. The companies stand by their efficient process of extracting oil from the organism, saying their production yield will exceed that of staple biofuel crops like sugarcane.

The current goal is to push down production costs per liter in a test plant to $0.80 per liter in order to be able to compete with regular jet fuel as far as prices are concerned. Another option, according to Euglena, is to use the biofuel for buses. The company says mass-producing Euglena-derived biofuel should be possible by 2015.

FUEL: JATROPHA STRIKES AGAIN, BIOFUEL IN HAWAII – In yesterday’s video roundup, we showed you what agricultural biotechnology means to Hawaiian farmers and their economy. So today, why don’t we look at how industrial biotechnology is affecting the people of Hawaii. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin published the story of Christian and James Twigg-Smith, father and son farmers, who were able to harvest their first jatropha crop last summer since planting the seeds two years ago. They had enough to make a few gallons of biodiesel and even run some tests on the oil they produced.

Christian Twigg-Smith, who also owns a coffee farm and construction company, said growing jatropha is similar to coffee because both are row crops, and the nuts have to be husked and dried before they are pressed for their oil. It takes about 100 pounds of nuts to make one gallon of biodiesel, Christian Twigg-Smith said. The first crop was harvested by hand, but the farmers are gearing up for their second-year harvest this summer and are looking to buy a mechanical harvester. They are seeking $1.3 million in financing to help purchase the equipment, a cold press to get the oil out of the nut and a covered building for the processing and storage of the nuts.