Latest news with #UniversityofCaliforniaSanDiegoSchoolofMedicine
Hans India
4 days ago
- Health
- Hans India
Alzheimer's gene therapy shows promise to prevent brain damage
New Delhi: A novel gene therapy for Alzheimer's disease, which showed promise to protect the brain from damage and preserve cognitive function, has renewed hope for millions of patients with the neurodegenerative disease. Worldwide, approximately 57 million people live with dementia, and Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause, accounting for 60-70 per cent of cases. Alzheimer's occurs when abnormal proteins build up in the brain, leading to the death of brain cells and declines in cognitive function and memory. While current treatments can manage symptoms of Alzheimer's, the new gene therapy aims to halt or even reverse disease progression, said researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. They noted that, unlike existing treatments for Alzheimer's that target unhealthy protein deposits in the brain, the new approach could help address the root cause of Alzheimer's disease by influencing the behaviour of brain cells themselves. The study investigated the effect of hippocampal SynCav1 delivery in two distinct preclinical mice models. The results, published in the journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, showed that delivering the treatment at the symptomatic stage of the disease preserved hippocampal-dependent memory -- a critical aspect of cognitive function that is often impaired in Alzheimer's patients. Further, the finding stated that compared to healthy mice of the same age, the treated mice also had a similar pattern of gene expression. This suggests that the treatment has the potential to alter the behaviour of diseased cells to restore them to a healthier state. 'While multiple newly FDA-approved treatments focus on targeting amyloid-beta clearance in Alzheimer's patients, the therapeutic value of SynCav1 lies in its ability to protect vulnerable neurons and augment cellular responses -- mechanisms that differ from currently approved therapies,' said the researchers in the paper. Due to the multitude of neurotoxicity in the Alzheimer's brain, the team called for further studies to investigate SynCav1's therapeutic role when combined with amyloid-targeted drugs to enhance clinical outcomes.
NDTV
08-05-2025
- Health
- NDTV
Covid-19 Likely Originated From Wildlife Trade, Not Lab Leak, Researchers Claim
A new genetic study bolsters the theory that COVID-19 originated from the wildlife trade, challenging claims of a lab leak. Researchers traced the virus's origins to animals sold in Wuhan markets, adding fuel to the ongoing debate amid US-China tensions. The findings, published in Cell on May 7, 2025, point to a natural spillover, highlighting the persistent risks of zoonotic diseases stemming from the wildlife trade. Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and their colleagues concluded that the ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerged just years before the pandemic began. The virus left its origin in Western China or Northern Laos just years before the emergence, travelling nearly 2,700 kilometres to Central China. This timeframe is too short for natural dispersal by its primary host, the horseshoe bat, suggesting it "hitched a ride" via the wildlife trade, similar to the SARS outbreak in 2002. "When two different viruses infect the same bat, sometimes what comes out of that bat is an amalgam of different pieces of both viruses," said co-senior author Joel Wertheim, PhD, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine's Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health. "Recombination complicates our understanding of the evolution of these viruses because it results in different parts of the genome having different evolutionary histories." To overcome this, the researchers focused on non-recombining regions of the viral genomes, allowing them to more accurately reconstruct the evolutionary history. The study indicates that sarbecoviruses related to SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 have circulated around Western China and Southeast Asia for millennia, spreading at similar rates as their horseshoe bat hosts. "Horseshoe bats have an estimated foraging area of around 2-3 km and a dispersal capacity similar to the diffusion velocity we estimated for the sarbecoviruses related to SARS-CoV-2," said co-senior author Simon Dellicour, Ph.D., head of the Spatial Epidemiology Lab at Université Libre de Bruxelles and visiting professor at KU Leuven. The analysis further revealed that the most recent sarbecovirus ancestors of both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 left their points of origin less than 10 years before infecting humans more than a thousand kilometres away. "We show that the original SARS-CoV-1 was circulating in Western China - just one to two years before the emergence of SARS in Guangdong Province, South Central China, and SARS-CoV-2 in Western China or Northern Laos - just five to seven years before the emergence of COVID-19 in Wuhan," said Jonathan E. Pekar, PhD, a 2023 graduate of the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology programme at UC San Diego School of Medicine, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
West Australian
08-05-2025
- Health
- West Australian
Origin story of COVID virus rewritten, challenging lab leak theory
New research is rewriting the origin story of the virus that triggered the deadly COVID pandemic. Challenging the idea that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak, scientists now believe they know when and where the virus first emerged. COVID, which first emerged in humans in Wuhan in central China in December 2019, is calculated to have caused up to 36 million deaths worldwide. It's believe the virus that causes it left the area where it first emerged among animals in China or northern Laos several years before jumping across to humans 2700 kilometres away in Wuhan. While the primary host of the virus was a horseshoe bat, the virus was only able to travel the distance to where the human cases were first detected by 'hitching a ride' there with other animals via the wildlife trade, according to the research published in Cell . Researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine made the finding after analysing the family tree of virus strains SARS-CoV-1, which caused the SARS pandemic of 2002-2004, and the SARS-CoV-2, which caused the COVID pandemic — mapping their evolutionary history before they emerged in humans. 'We show that the original SARS-CoV-1 was circulating in Western China — just one to two years before the emergence of SARS in Guangdong Province, South Central China, and SARS-CoV-2 in Western China or Northern Laos — just five to seven years before the emergence of COVID-19 in Wuhan,' researcher Jonathan E. Pekar said. Given the distances that both viruses would have had to cover so quickly, it is highly improbable that they could have been carried there via the bats alone, they concluded. Much more likely, they say, is that they were transported there accidentally by wild animal traders via intermediate host animals. 'The viruses most closely related to the original SARS coronavirus were found in palm civets and raccoon dogs in southern China, hundreds of miles from the bat populations that were their original source,' said co-senior author Michael Worobey. 'For more than two decades the scientific community has concluded that the live-wildlife trade was how those hundreds of miles were covered. We're seeing exactly the same pattern with SARS-CoV-2.' The findings challenge the view that SARS-CoV-1 emerged naturally, but SARS-CoV2 was the result of a lab leak. 'At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a concern that the distance between Wuhan and the bat virus reservoir was too extreme for a zoonotic origin,' co-senior author Joel Wertheim said. 'This paper shows that it isn't unusual and is, in fact, extremely similar to the emergence of SARS-CoV-1 in 2002.' It's hoped that by continuing to sample wild bat populations for viruses, scientists will be able to prepare for and control future outbreaks. Debate about the origins of COVID-19 has raged since the pandemic took hold in 2019-2020. The CIA said in January the pandemic was more likely to have emerged from a lab in China than from nature, after the agency had for years said it could not reach a conclusion on the matter.
Perth Now
08-05-2025
- Health
- Perth Now
COVID shock as new findings challenge popular origin theory
New research is rewriting the origin story of the virus that triggered the deadly COVID pandemic. Challenging the idea that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak, scientists now believe they know when and where the virus first emerged. COVID, which first emerged in humans in Wuhan in central China in December 2019, is calculated to have caused up to 36 million deaths worldwide. It's believe the virus that causes it left the area where it first emerged among animals in China or northern Laos several years before jumping across to humans 2700 kilometres away in Wuhan. While the primary host of the virus was a horseshoe bat, the virus was only able to travel the distance to where the human cases were first detected by 'hitching a ride' there with other animals via the wildlife trade, according to the research published in Cell. Researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine made the finding after analysing the family tree of virus strains SARS-CoV-1, which caused the SARS pandemic of 2002-2004, and the SARS-CoV-2, which caused the COVID pandemic — mapping their evolutionary history before they emerged in humans. 'We show that the original SARS-CoV-1 was circulating in Western China — just one to two years before the emergence of SARS in Guangdong Province, South Central China, and SARS-CoV-2 in Western China or Northern Laos — just five to seven years before the emergence of COVID-19 in Wuhan,' researcher Jonathan E. Pekar said. Given the distances that both viruses would have had to cover so quickly, it is highly improbable that they could have been carried there via the bats alone, they concluded. Much more likely, they say, is that they were transported there accidentally by wild animal traders via intermediate host animals. 'The viruses most closely related to the original SARS coronavirus were found in palm civets and raccoon dogs in southern China, hundreds of miles from the bat populations that were their original source,' said co-senior author Michael Worobey. 'For more than two decades the scientific community has concluded that the live-wildlife trade was how those hundreds of miles were covered. We're seeing exactly the same pattern with SARS-CoV-2.' The findings challenge the view that SARS-CoV-1 emerged naturally, but SARS-CoV2 was the result of a lab leak. 'At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a concern that the distance between Wuhan and the bat virus reservoir was too extreme for a zoonotic origin,' co-senior author Joel Wertheim said. 'This paper shows that it isn't unusual and is, in fact, extremely similar to the emergence of SARS-CoV-1 in 2002.' It's hoped that by continuing to sample wild bat populations for viruses, scientists will be able to prepare for and control future outbreaks. Debate about the origins of COVID-19 has raged since the pandemic took hold in 2019-2020. The CIA said in January the pandemic was more likely to have emerged from a lab in China than from nature, after the agency had for years said it could not reach a conclusion on the matter.
CBC
30-01-2025
- Health
- CBC
Researchers decry 'freeze on science' as confusion reigns over Trump administration medical funding
Canadian scientists say the uncertainty surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump's apparent pause on federal health spending could stall research on new drugs, vaccines, and treatments for cancer, dementia and more — including at labs in Canada. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) powers some of the best scientists around the world. Most of its $47-billion US budget last year funded research that the agency deemed could "enhance health, lengthen life, reduce illness and disability." That includes work being done by Canadian researchers, who received over $40 million US of funding last year. Now there's confusion. On Jan. 21, the Trump administration imposed a communication freeze until Feb. 1 for federal health officials. At the NIH, that meant key meetings that decide which scientific research to fund were cancelled, with no word on when they would be rescheduled. This week, an NIH webpage on grants and funding, a dashboard for researchers, announced unspecified changes that will affect "research project grants, fellowships and training grants" submitted on or after Jan. 25. Adding to the chaos: in a separate move, the administration also froze hundreds of billions of dollars in federal grants, loans and aid Monday, before reversing course Wednesday. All this is leaving many scientists — including those in Canada — unsure of the future of their work. Canadian Steffanie Strathdee moved to the U.S. in 1998 and receives NIH funding for her HIV prevention research. She is awaiting word on a new grant submission for $12 million US and had a meeting scheduled with the NIH next week about it. "When I opened my computer and saw that NIH dollars were frozen, I was stunned," Strathdee said. Strathdee is a professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. The research involves following large groups of people who use drugs over time to study HIV and hepatitis C. Some of her work includes studies in Canada with people who use drugs to inform prevention and treatment in the U.S., Canada and beyond. Strathdee said most researchers she knows have already been affected by the temporary freezes on meetings, travel, communication and hiring at the NIH. "At the very best scenario, we're facing a significant funding delay, and that means that the livelihoods of my staff and my students, both in Canada and the U.S., are being affected." Future consequences? Researchers working at Canadian universities are also anxious about the lack of clarity. Nathan Spreng is the James McGill Professor in the department of neurology and neurosurgery at McGill University in Montreal, where he studies how the brain changes as we get older. The NIH has funded his research into loneliness, brain aging and Alzheimer's disease. Research like Spreng's, if underfunded, could delay the development of future treatments. "The consequences of this are just real human suffering," Spreng said. "There are a number of diseases and injuries that are not well treated at the moment. Absent this kind of funding, these people will just continue to suffer." NIH funding contributed to the development of all but two of 356 drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2019, a 2023 article in JAMA Health Forum suggests. Spreng said that the main concern right now within the scientific community is about NIH study sections, expert-led panels who rank grant proposals for funding. "It's not going to be felt immediately," Spreng said. "It's going to take a number of years for a kind of cumulative impact to emerge, but across the board, what we'll see are fewer treatments, fewer innovations in medicine and the persistence of ill health." WATCH | Funding, but also information sharing, at stake if U.S. leaves WHO: What the U.S. leaving the WHO means for Canada 4 days ago Duration 4:28 Those working at the World Health Organization had been expecting the worst — but U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order still stung. Dr. Prabhat Jha, a professor of Global Health with the University of Toronto, outlines the financial impact of the U.S. leaving the WHO, and what it means for Canada and other countries contributing to the organization. Science community feeling a chill An exception, according to a memo first reported on Monday by Stat, a U.S.-based health and medical news site, allows people enrolled in clinical trials of potential medications to travel to the study sites. But ongoing confusion about impact on the wider NIH research funding continues. "It is really is putting a freeze on science," and the chill is being felt throughout the science community, said Jim Woodgett, a cancer researcher at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Toronto's Sinai Health and the Terry Fox Research Institute. "We don't know a lot about the details, and they seem to be changing every second," he said. "I think that uncertainty actually is adding to the crisis." Woodgett notes the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the main funder of medical research in this country, has a budget of about $1.4 billion. Since 2016, the Government of Canada invested $22 billion on science and research initiatives. For comparison, the NIH alone spends more than double that every year — over $47 billion US or $67 billion in Canadian dollars. Strathdee, the HIV scientist, said the uncertainty with U.S. funding opens the door for Canada to increase research funding and attract top American scientists — or bring Canadians back home. "This is an opportunity for not brain drain, but brain gain," Strathdee said. "I'm just one of many people that want to come back home and have never given up on my collaborations in Canada." A spokesperson for the federal minister of innovation, science and industry told CBC News that the government is watching the development on science and research funding in the U.S. closely. Strathdee, who currently commutes between San Diego and Toronto, is hedging her bets.
