Irandaily | No. 4431 | Science

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Iran Boosting Anti-Cancer Drugs

Avicenna Research Center has examined ways of enhancing the effects of anti-cancer drugs based on dendritic cells.
Dr. Amir Hassan Zarnani, associate professor in Avicenna Research Center for Modern Biological Technologies of the Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research, said currently cancer is mainly treated by surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Mehr News Agency reported.
“In recent years, other methods such as immunotherapy, the use of the body’s immune system, for treating cancer have been introduced,” he said.
“Our research has been based on the use of dendritic cells as a cell therapy for cancer. These cells take in the antigens, including cancer, that enter the body and after processing them, they deliver the antigen particles to the immune system through the receptors on their surface.”
In this therapeutic method, the dendritic cells are either received from the patient or produced in-vitro. Then the cancer antigens are loaded on them so that the cell may deliver the antigens in a way that they are identifiable by the immune cells.
Zarnani noted that the research is carried out on the enhancement of the dendritic cells’ power for multiple efficacy of immune reaction in them.
“Accordingly we adopted a new approach where a tumor independent antigen was made to enter the dendritic cells along with the cancer antigen,” he said
This contributed to a 10-fold increase in their anti-cancer responses.
Also, according to the research findings, another paper was published in Drug Discovery Today where new concepts were introduced as combined treatments.
“Based on the hypothesis, as cancer cells are highly smart they can escape various tools introduced by the body immune system, therefore the use of one treatment for cancer will not yield much success,” he said.
“So using one treatment does not suffice for cancer and combined treatments must be used. From a cell therapy point of view, with dendritic cells, this means the enhancement of the cells’ power using methods such as the simultaneous loading of two antigens, treatment using dendritic cells along with the elimination of immune system suppression mechanisms or the enhancement of the functionality of immune system mediators,” he added.

Collecting Water From Desert Fog

In arid places where fog occurs overnight, some people utilize so-called “fog harvesters” to acquire fresh water.
These are typically pieces of netting that collect fog droplets, which then roll down into a container below, ExtremeTech wrote.
Various researchers have tried to increase the efficiency of these harvesters, such as by making them from a combination of hydrophilic (water-absorbing) and hydrophobic (water-repelling) materials.
Now, a team of scientists have done something a little different--they’ve created a cotton-based fog-harvesting material that switches between being entirely hydrophilic and entirely hydrophobic.
The scientists--from The Netherlands’ Eindhoven University of Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic University--started with ordinary cotton fabric. Ordinarily, plain cotton can only absorb about 18 percent its own weight in airborne water droplets. The team then applied a coating of a polymer known as PNIPAAm.
At temperatures up to 34ºC (93ºF), PNIPAAm has a spongy, hydrophilic structure. This allowed the coated cotton to absorb a whopping 340 percent of its weight in droplets. Once the temperature gets any higher, however, the polymer’s structure “closes up” and becomes hydrophobic. In the case of the treated cotton, this caused the absorbed water to be released in liquid form.
That water was reportedly pure and safe to consume, plus the polymer was able to stand up to repeated cycles of use. Additionally, while traditional fog harvesters rely partially on wind to help shake the collected droplets loose, the new material works even in completely still conditions.
Cotton is already pretty cheap and the PNIPAAm is likewise said to be fairly inexpensive. The idea is that sheets of the treated cotton could be laid directly over crops (or receptacles, presumably) at night, then left to absorb and release water on their own. It has also been suggested that the material could be used to make water-harvesting tents, or perspiration-wicking athletic clothing.
The researchers, led by Hong Kong Polytechnic’s Prof. John Xin and Eindhoven’s Dr. Catarina Esteves, are now looking at ways of increasing the polymer’s hydrophilic qualities and lowering the temperature at which it becomes hydrophobic.

Fighting Male Cancers With These Foods

Cancer diagnoses are all too common. Most men know someone who’s been personally affected by the disease.
According to Cancer.ca, roughly 45 percent of men will develop it in their lifetime and cancer has already surpassed diseases of the heart as the main cause of death among Canadians in 2007.
But there are a number of foods packed with nutrients known to fight cancer. A look at some of the most common cancers among men and the best eats to arm your self against the life-threatening illness:
For the Prostate: Go for Garlic
According to research by Cancer.ca, the most common cancer among men (apart from non-melanoma skin cancer) is prostrate cancer. Though it might not help your breath, garlic is thought to help prevent the disorder. Men’s Health UK highlighted a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that made the case for eating about three cloves a day. They found that men that did had a 50 percent lower risk of prostate cancer than those who chowed down on less than 2 grams.

For the Lungs: Something Fishy
Though lung cancer is the second most prevalent cancer among both men and women, rates are higher among guys. Carnivores with a weakness for cigarettes should take note of research cite in Reader’s Digest: the combination of smoking and animal fats appears to promote lung cancer. However, the omega-3 fatty acids prevalent in foods like salmon, sardines and mackerel “appears to minimize the effect.” Better yet, just ditch the tobacco habit altogether.

For the Colon: Fiber’s Your Friend
In the United States, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has listed colon and rectum cancer the third most prevalent cancer among men. The Center believes rates could be “cut by as much as 60 percent if all people aged 50 years or older received regular screening tests.” Fiber has long been touted as one of the best ways to keep digestive health in check, but it need not be limited to bland breakfast cereals. Realage.com suggests eating more Mexican-inspired dishes: high-fiber foods like beans and brown rice can help fend off colon polyps that can lead to colon cancer.

Why Arctic Sea Ice Melts So Quickly

During the Arctic spring and summer, ponds of freshwater appear on the melting ice, dotting the landscape with a dazzling range of blues.
Despite their beauty, these melt ponds are a harbinger of climate change in the Arctic, according to a new study by researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, LiveScience said.
The pools form more easily on young ice and young ice now accounts for more than 50 percent of the Arctic sea ice cover. The ponds also absorb more of the sun’s heat, helping ice melt faster, the study finds.
To test the effect of the melt ponds on sea ice, scientists from the institute traveled to the Arctic aboard the research ice breaker RV Polarstern during the summer of 2011. They analyzed how far the sun’s rays penetrated the ice with a remotely operated underwater vehicle equipped with radiation sensors and cameras.

Thinner Ice, More Melt Ponds
Arctic sea ice has become distinctly thinner and younger in the past decade, the researchers said in a statement. The amount of 3-foot-thick (1 meter), multiyear ice, which lasts through seasonal melts, is declining.
This older ice has a rough surface, created by the constant motion from currents and collisions. Far fewer and smaller ponds appear on this uneven surface, though they were considerably deeper than the flat ponds on the younger ice, the researchers found.
But almost half of the thin, year-old ice floes are extensively covered with melt ponds, the researchers discovered.
“The decisive aspect here is the smoother surface of this young ice, permitting the melt water to spread over large areas and form a network of many individual melt ponds,” Marcel Nicolaus, a sea ice physicist and melt pond expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute, said in the statement.
Young, thin ice with many melt ponds allowed three times as much light to pass through than older ice, Nicolaus said.
It also absorbed 50 percent more solar radiation, which causes more melting and means the thin ice reflected less of the sun’s rays than thick ice.
“The ice melts from inside out to a certain extent,” Nicolaus said in the statement.
The research team is now investigating how additional sunlight will affect organisms that live on and beneath the Arctic ice, such as algae that clings to the ice floes.
“We assume that in the future, climate change will permit more sunlight to reach the Arctic Ocean--and particularly also that part of the ocean which is still covered by sea ice in summer,” Nicolaus said.