MAPS technology may generate vaccines conferring strong immunity at reduced cost and risk

Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 30 Jul 2013 - 2:00 PDT Current ratings for:
MAPS technology may generate vaccines conferring strong immunity at reduced cost and risk

A new method of vaccine design, called the Multiple Antigen Presentation System (MAPS), may result in vaccines that bring together the benefits of whole-cell and acellular or defined subunit vaccination. The method, pioneered by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital, permits rapid construction of new vaccines that activate mulitple arms of the immune system simultaneously against one or more pathogens, generating robust immune protection with a lower risk of adverse effects.

As reported by Fan Zhang, PhD, Ying-Jie Lu, PhD, and Richard Malley, MD, from Boston Children's Division of Infectious Disease, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 29, the method could speed development of new vaccines for a range of globally serious pathogens, or infectious agents.

Broadly speaking, the vaccines available today fall into two categories: whole-cell vaccines, which rely on weakened or killed bacteria or viruses; and acellular or subunit vaccines, which include a limited number of antigens - portions of a pathogen that trigger an immune response. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages.

"Whole-cell vaccines elicit a broad range of immune responses, often just as an infection would, but can cause side effects and are hard to standardize," said Malley. "Acellular vaccines can provide good early immunity with less risk of side effects, but the immune responses they induce wane with time."

The MAPS method may allow vaccine developers to take a middle ground, where they can link multiple protein and polysaccharide (sugar) antigens from one or more pathogens together in a modular fashion, much as one would connect Lego blocks.

The resulting complex - which resembles a scaffold of polysaccharides studded with proteins - can stimulate both antibody and T-cell responses simultaneously much like whole-cell vaccines, resulting in stronger immunity to the source pathogen(s). However, because the composition of a MAPS vaccine is well defined and based on the use of isolated antigens (as one would find with an acellular vaccine) the risk of side effects should be greatly reduced.

For instance, mice injected with a MAPS vaccine combining proteins from tuberculosis (TB) and polysaccharides from Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) mounted vigorous antibody and T-cell responses against TB, whereas those vaccinated with TB protein antigens alone mounted only an antibody response.

Similarly, 90 percent of mice given a MAPS-based vaccine containing multiple pneumococcal polysaccharide and protein antigens were protected from a lethal pneumococcus infection, mounting strong antibody and T-cell responses against the bacteria. By contrast, 30 percent of mice vaccinated with the same antigens in an unbound state survived the same challenge.

"The MAPS technology gives you the advantages of: whole-cell vaccines while being much more deliberate about which antigens you include; doing it in a quantitative and precise way; and including a number of antigens so as to try to replicate the effectiveness of whole-cell vaccination," Malley explained. "The immunogenicity of these constructs is greater than the sum of their parts, somewhat because they are presented to the host as particles."

The system relies on the interactions of two compounds, biotin and rhizavidin, rather than covalent binding as is used in most of the current conjugate vaccines. To build a MAPS vaccine, biotin is bound to the polysaccharide(s) of choice and rhizavidin to the protein(s). The biotin and rhizavidin then bind together through an affinity interaction analogous to Velcro. The construction process is highly efficient, significantly reducing the time and cost of vaccine development and production.

While his team's initial work has focused on bacterial pathogens, Malley believes the technology could impact vaccine development for a broad range of pathogens, in particular those of importance in the developing world. "Technically, one could construct MAPS vaccines for viruses, parasites, even cancer antigens," he said. "And the modularity is such that one could include antigens from multiple pathogens into the same vaccine, allowing the development of combinatorial vaccines much more efficiently."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our immune system / vaccines section for the latest news on this subject.

Fan Zhang, Ying-Jie Lu, and Richard Malley "Multiple antigen-presenting system (MAPS) to induce comprehensive B- and T-cell immunity" Published online before print July 29, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1307228110

The study was supported by the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (grant R01AI067737) and the Translational Research Program at Boston Children's Hospital.

Boston Children's Hospital

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Technology in kids' bedrooms disrupts sleep patterns

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Main Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Also Included In: Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia
Article Date: 30 Jul 2013 - 8:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Technology in kids' bedrooms disrupts sleep patterns

Media technology in children's bedrooms such as TVs and computers can disrupt their sleep patterns, according to a study published in the journal BMC Public Health.

Researchers from Helsinki, Finland, conducted the first long-term study to find out whether electronic media use and electronic media presence in a child's bedroom predicted or changed sleep habits.

Participants in the study analyzed schoolchildren aged 10 and 11 years old from 27 schools across the Scandinavian country.

Baseline measurements for the study began in 2006, where children were asked to complete a questionnaire about their health behaviors. The children were asked to do the survey again 18 months later.

The children were also asked about their bedtimes and wake-up times on school days and at weekends.

Television viewing and computer habits were assessed to find out how many hours in the day the children watched television, videos or DVDs, and played computer games.

The study also enquired whether children had a television, computer or game console in their bedroom.

Children who had a TV or computer in their bedroom went to bed later on school days and at the weekend, meaning they were getting less sleep.

Results also revealed that when analyzing girls and boys individually, boys who had a computer or TV in their bedroom went to bed later compared with the girls.

The study authors say of the results:

"Our main findings were that computer use and television viewing predicted shorter sleep duration and later bedtimes. The more children used a computer or watched a TV, the greater was the decrease in sleep duration and the delay in bedtime 18 months later.

A media presence in the bedroom was also related to irregular sleep habits: a television and a computer in the bedroom among boys, and a television in the bedroom among girls."

The study authors add that since no other long-term studies exist in this research area, the results show new information that associates computer and television use with sleep habits 18 months later.

The authors say parents, teachers and healthcare providers should be aware that television viewing and computer use may have an adverse impact on children's sleep.

Teija Nuutinen of the Folkhälsan Research Center and the Department of Public Health at the University of Helsinki, says:

"Children need extra sleep as they go through puberty, but our study finds that TV and computer use affect the sleep of children. This is especially true during the week and may be impacting their school work as well as their development.

Media viewing habits should be considered for kids who are tired and struggling to concentrate, or who have behavior problems caused by lack of sleep."

Written by Honor Whiteman

Copyright: Medical News Today
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Solar-powered sterilization technology supported by Gates Foundation

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 25 Jul 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Solar-powered sterilization technology supported by Gates Foundation

Rice University nanotechnology researchers have unveiled a solar-powered sterilization system that could be a boon for more than 2.5 billion people who lack adequate sanitation. The "solar steam" sterilization system uses nanomaterials to convert as much as 80 percent of the energy in sunlight into germ-killing heat.

The technology is described online in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. In the paper, researchers from Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) show two ways that solar steam can be used for sterilization - one setup to clean medical instruments and another to sanitize human waste.

"Sanitation and sterilization are enormous obstacles without reliable electricity," said Rice photonics pioneer Naomi Halas, the director of LANP and lead researcher on the project, with senior co-author and Rice professor Peter Nordlander. "Solar steam's efficiency at converting sunlight directly into steam opens up new possibilities for off-grid sterilization that simply aren't available today."

In a previous study last year, Halas and colleagues showed that "solar steam" was so effective at direct conversion of solar energy into heat that it could even produce steam from ice water.

"It makes steam directly from sunlight," she said. "That means the steam forms immediately, even before the water boils."

Halas, Rice's Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, professor of physics, professor of chemistry and professor of biomedical engineering, is one of the world's most-cited chemists. Her lab specializes in creating and studying light-activated particles. One of her creations, gold nanoshells, is the subject of several clinical trials for cancer treatment.

Solar steam's efficiency comes from light-harvesting nanoparticles that were created at LANP by Rice graduate student Oara Neumann, the lead author on the PNAS study. Neumann created a version of nanoshells that converts a broad spectrum of sunlight - including both visible and invisible bandwidths - directly into heat. When submerged in water and exposed to sunlight, the particles heat up so quickly they instantly vaporize water and create steam. The technology has an overall energy efficiency of 24 percent. Photovoltaic solar panels, by comparison, typically have an overall energy efficiency of around 15 percent.

When used in the autoclaves in the tests, the heat and pressure created by the steam were sufficient to kill not just living microbes but also spores and viruses. The solar steam autoclave was designed by Rice undergraduates at Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen and refined by Neumann and colleagues at LANP. In the PNAS study, standard tests for sterilization showed the solar steam autoclave could kill even the most heat-resistant microbes.

"The process is very efficient," Neumann said. "For the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation program that is sponsoring us, we needed to create a system that could handle the waste of a family of four with just two treatments per week, and the autoclave setup we reported in this paper can do that."

Halas said her team hopes to work with waste-treatment pioneer Sanivation to conduct the first field tests of the solar steam waste sterilizer at three sites in Kenya.

"Sanitation technology isn't glamorous, but it's a matter of life and death for 2.5 billion people," Halas said. "For this to really work, you need a technology that can be completely off-grid, that's not that large, that functions relatively quickly, is easy to handle and doesn't have dangerous components. Our Solar Steam system has all of that, and it's the only technology we've seen that can completely sterilize waste. I can't wait to see how it performs in the field."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our public health section for the latest news on this subject.

Paper co-authors include Curtis Feronti, Albert Neumann, Anjie Dong, Kevin Schell, Benjamin Lu, Eric Kim, Mary Quinn, Shea Thompson, Nathaniel Grady, Maria Oden and Nordlander, all of Rice. The research was supported by a Grand Challenges grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and by the Welch Foundation.

Rice University

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Technology Initiative To Identify Risk Factors Underlying Military Suicide Crisis Using Predictive Analytics

Main Category: Veterans / Ex-Servicemen
Also Included In: Mental Health
Article Date: 11 Jul 2013 - 2:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Technology Initiative To Identify Risk Factors Underlying Military Suicide Crisis Using Predictive Analytics

Patterns and Predictions, a predictive analytics company, has announced its Big Data initiative "The Durkheim Project*" - to predict suicide at scale using its machine learning data fabric built on technologies from Attivio and Cloudera.

Patterns and Predictions is now providing technology enabling opt-in participation from more than 100,000 U.S. veterans to build a 'big' medical database that will help military mental health experts fight a complex and challenging enemy: the alarming incidence of suicide among veterans.

Cited by a 2012 TIME Magazine cover story ("One A Day"), as a problem of epidemic proportions, suicide rates among veterans are roughly double those of adults in the general U.S. population. TIME also noted that military efforts have struggled to successfully address the suicide crisis due, in part, to a lack of understanding why nothing has worked to stop it.

Patterns and Predictions' founder Chris Poulin, has been working with Dartmouth researchers to address this problem since 2010. "The next generation of predictive analytics tools gives scientific and clinical investigators new hope and resources for solving even the most intractable problems," said Poulin.

In 2011, Patterns and Predictions engaged Big Data analytics experts Attivio and Cloudera and secured a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Concluded in February 2013, staff from Patterns and Predictions, Dartmouth, and the U.S. Veterans Administration conducted an investigation to validate the machine learning data fabric. Initial findings indicated the data model's predictive accuracy was statistically significant (consistent accuracies of 65 percent or more) in predicting suicidality risk among a veteran control group.

Having confirmed the theoretical underpinnings of this work, Patterns and Predictions is leading "Phase 2" technology for The Durkheim Project, a tightly integrated Big Data initiative with one objective: suicidality prediction at scale. "The promise of Durkheim lies in its ability to collect and monitor a diverse repository of complex data, with the hope of eventually providing a real-time triage of interventional actions upon detection of a critical event," said Poulin. At this time, the associated medical study (Dartmouth CPHS #23781) is authorized as observation only and non-interventional.

Tightly Integrated Technologies

Durkheim's event-driven predictions are made possible by Patterns and Predictions' integration of its suicide risk prediction technology (including a Facebook® app, and mobile app for iPhone® and Android®) and database connections with complementary capabilities from Attivio, the leading unified information access platform, and Cloudera, the category leader in Apache Hadoop-based software and services for the enterprise.

Attivio: Attivio provided code that enables the indexing and dynamic joining of diverse information on a massive scale to make it highly accessible. "Attivio Active Intelligence Engine® offers a schema-less index and patented JOIN technology that our projects have relied on time and again to power our cutting-edge text analytics," said Poulin.

Cloudera: Patterns and Predictions engaged Cloudera Professional Services to co-develop code in the area of real-time prediction on CDH (Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop), the market-leading open source distribution of Hadoop and related projects. "With Cloudera's unique software expertise, we can focus on making The Durkheim Project's risk assessments faster across larger data sets," said Poulin.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our veterans / ex-servicemen section for the latest news on this subject.

In a July 2 statement, The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Facebook, Inc. announced their participation in The Durkheim Project.

*About The Durkheim Project

“The Durkheim Project” is a medical non-profit initiative. It is named in honor of Emile Durkheim, a founding sociologist whose 1897 publication of “Suicide” defined early text analysis for suicide risk, as well as theoretical explanations. The Durkheim Project is comprised of a multi-disciplinary team of artificial intelligence and medical experts from private companies, The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Together these professionals have formed a team dedicated to applied research on suicide. More information about the study - and additional background information - can be found at The Durkheim Project website: http://www.durkheimproject.org

Funding Support/Disclaimers

This material is based upon work supported by the Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA), and Space Warfare Systems Center Pacific under Contract N66001-11-4006. Also supported by, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) via the Department of Interior National Business Center contract number N10PC20221. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Advance Research Program Agency (DARPA) and Space, the Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific, IARPA, DOI/NBC, or the U.S. Government.

Patterns and Predictions

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11 Jul. 2013. APA

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'Technology Initiative To Identify Risk Factors Underlying Military Suicide Crisis Using Predictive Analytics'

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Technology Initiative To Identify Risk Factors Underlying Military Suicide Crisis Using Predictive Analytics

Main Category: Veterans / Ex-Servicemen
Also Included In: Mental Health
Article Date: 11 Jul 2013 - 2:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Technology Initiative To Identify Risk Factors Underlying Military Suicide Crisis Using Predictive Analytics

Patterns and Predictions, a predictive analytics company, has announced its Big Data initiative "The Durkheim Project*" - to predict suicide at scale using its machine learning data fabric built on technologies from Attivio and Cloudera.

Patterns and Predictions is now providing technology enabling opt-in participation from more than 100,000 U.S. veterans to build a 'big' medical database that will help military mental health experts fight a complex and challenging enemy: the alarming incidence of suicide among veterans.

Cited by a 2012 TIME Magazine cover story ("One A Day"), as a problem of epidemic proportions, suicide rates among veterans are roughly double those of adults in the general U.S. population. TIME also noted that military efforts have struggled to successfully address the suicide crisis due, in part, to a lack of understanding why nothing has worked to stop it.

Patterns and Predictions' founder Chris Poulin, has been working with Dartmouth researchers to address this problem since 2010. "The next generation of predictive analytics tools gives scientific and clinical investigators new hope and resources for solving even the most intractable problems," said Poulin.

In 2011, Patterns and Predictions engaged Big Data analytics experts Attivio and Cloudera and secured a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Concluded in February 2013, staff from Patterns and Predictions, Dartmouth, and the U.S. Veterans Administration conducted an investigation to validate the machine learning data fabric. Initial findings indicated the data model's predictive accuracy was statistically significant (consistent accuracies of 65 percent or more) in predicting suicidality risk among a veteran control group.

Having confirmed the theoretical underpinnings of this work, Patterns and Predictions is leading "Phase 2" technology for The Durkheim Project, a tightly integrated Big Data initiative with one objective: suicidality prediction at scale. "The promise of Durkheim lies in its ability to collect and monitor a diverse repository of complex data, with the hope of eventually providing a real-time triage of interventional actions upon detection of a critical event," said Poulin. At this time, the associated medical study (Dartmouth CPHS #23781) is authorized as observation only and non-interventional.

Tightly Integrated Technologies

Durkheim's event-driven predictions are made possible by Patterns and Predictions' integration of its suicide risk prediction technology (including a Facebook® app, and mobile app for iPhone® and Android®) and database connections with complementary capabilities from Attivio, the leading unified information access platform, and Cloudera, the category leader in Apache Hadoop-based software and services for the enterprise.

Attivio: Attivio provided code that enables the indexing and dynamic joining of diverse information on a massive scale to make it highly accessible. "Attivio Active Intelligence Engine® offers a schema-less index and patented JOIN technology that our projects have relied on time and again to power our cutting-edge text analytics," said Poulin.

Cloudera: Patterns and Predictions engaged Cloudera Professional Services to co-develop code in the area of real-time prediction on CDH (Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop), the market-leading open source distribution of Hadoop and related projects. "With Cloudera's unique software expertise, we can focus on making The Durkheim Project's risk assessments faster across larger data sets," said Poulin.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our veterans / ex-servicemen section for the latest news on this subject.

In a July 2 statement, The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Facebook, Inc. announced their participation in The Durkheim Project.

*About The Durkheim Project

“The Durkheim Project” is a medical non-profit initiative. It is named in honor of Emile Durkheim, a founding sociologist whose 1897 publication of “Suicide” defined early text analysis for suicide risk, as well as theoretical explanations. The Durkheim Project is comprised of a multi-disciplinary team of artificial intelligence and medical experts from private companies, The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Together these professionals have formed a team dedicated to applied research on suicide. More information about the study - and additional background information - can be found at The Durkheim Project website: http://www.durkheimproject.org

Funding Support/Disclaimers

This material is based upon work supported by the Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA), and Space Warfare Systems Center Pacific under Contract N66001-11-4006. Also supported by, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) via the Department of Interior National Business Center contract number N10PC20221. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Advance Research Program Agency (DARPA) and Space, the Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific, IARPA, DOI/NBC, or the U.S. Government.

Patterns and Predictions

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Predictions, Patterns and. "Technology Initiative To Identify Risk Factors Underlying Military Suicide Crisis Using Predictive Analytics." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 11 Jul. 2013. Web.
11 Jul. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Technology Initiative To Identify Risk Factors Underlying Military Suicide Crisis Using Predictive Analytics'

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Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here