New research shows that boosting a protein pathway in the body

A new Cochrane Review concludes that all countries should consider establishing proper home birth services. They should also provide low-risk pregnant women with information enabling them to make an informed choice. The review has been prepared by senior researcher, statistician Ole Olsen, the Research Unit for General Practice, University of Copenhagen, and midwifery lecturer PhD Jette Aaroe Clausen.
In many countries it is believed that the safest option for all women is to give birth in hospital. However, observational studies of increasingly better quality and in different settings suggest that planned home birth in many places can be as safe as planned hospital birth and with less intervention and fewer complications.
‘If home birth is going be an attractive and safe option for most pregnant women, it has to be an integrated part of the health care system,’ Ole Olsen says and adds, ‘In several Danish regions the home birth service has been very well organised for several years. This is not the case everywhere in the world.’
The updated Cochrane Review concludes that there is no strong evidence from experimental studies (randomised trials) to favour either planned hospital birth or planned home birth for low-risk pregnant women. At least not as long as the planned home birth is assisted by an experienced midwife with collaborative medical back up in case transfer should be necessary.
Routines and easy access to medical interventions may increase the risk of unnecessary interventions in birth explaining why women who give birth at home have a higher likelihood for a spontaneous labour. There are 20-60 per cent fewer interventions, for example fewer caesarean sections, epidurals and augmentation among those women who plan a homebirth; and 10-30 per cent fewer complications, for example post partum bleeding and severe perineal tears.
‘Patience is important if women want to avoid interference and give birth spontaneously,’ says Jette Aaroe Clausen. ‘At home the temptation to make unnecessary interventions is reduced. The woman avoids for example routine electronic monitoring that may easily lead to further interventions in birth.’
Jette Aaroe Clausen adds that interventions in childbirth are common in many countries, but also that there is a growing concern internationally because interventions may lead to iatrogenic effects; iatrogenic effects meaning unintended consequences of the intervention. Routine electronic monitoring may for example lead to more women having artificial rupture of membranes which in turn can lead to more interventions.
While the scientific evidence from observational studies has been growing, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in the case Ternovszky versus Hungary has handed down a judgement stating that ‘the right to respect for private life includes the right to choose the circumstances of birth’. This is quoted in the review.
Thus the conclusions of the review are based on human rights and ethics as well as on results from the best available scientific studies. University of Copenhagen

Excitement around the potential for targeted nanoparticles (NPs) that can be controlled by stimulus outside of the body for cancer therapy has been growing over the past few years. More specifically, there has been considerable attention around near-infrared (NIR) light as an ideal method to stimulate nanoparticles from outside the body. NIR is minimally absorbed by skin and tissue, has the ability to penetrate deep tissue in a non-invasive way and the energy from NIR light can be converted to heat by gold nanomaterials for effective thermal ablation of diseased tissue.
In new research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), researchers describe the design and effectiveness of a first-of-its-kind, self assembled, multi-functional, NIR responsive gold nanorods that can deliver a chemotherapy drug specifically targeted to cancer cells and selectively release the drug in response to an external beam of light while creating heat for synergistic thermo-chemo mediated anti-tumour efficacy.
‘The design of this gold nanorod and its self-assembly was inspired by nature and the ability of complimentary strands of DNA to hybridize on their own without imposing complicated chemical processes on them,’ explained Omid Farokhzad, MD, an anesthesiologist, director of the Laboratory of Nanomedicine and Biomaterials at BWH, and senior author of this study. ‘Each functionalized DNA strand individually, and the self assembled components as a system, play a distinct yet integrative role resulting in synergistic targeted and triggered thermo-chemotherapy capable of eradicating tumours in our pre-clinical models.’
One DNA strand is attached to the gold nanorod and the complementary strand is attached to a stealth layer and a homing molecule that keeps the system under the radar of the immune system while targeting it directly to cancer cells. When the DNA strands come together, the targeted gold nanorod is formed and the double stranded DNA serves as the scaffold for binding the chemotherapy drug, doxorubicin, which can be released in response to NIR light that concurrently results in generation of heat by the gold nanorods.
‘This new platform is comprised of three distinct functional components and each plays a role in contributing to the triple punch of triggered thermotherapy, controlled doxorubicin release, and cancer cell targeting,’ explained Zeyu Xiao, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at BWH and lead author of this study.
To demonstrate the robust capability of this nanorod system, Farokhzad and colleagues used a pre-clinical model to evaluate the in vivo anti-tumour efficacy in two different tumour models and four different groups with different drug regiments, each group varying in weight and tumour size. Researchers administrated an injection of the novel, self-assembled nanoparticle and then 10 minutes post-injection, the tumours were irradiated using NIR light that activated the nanoparticle using the gold nanorod and created heat. The results showed that this platform successfully delivered heat and anti-cancer drugs and synergistically eradicated tumors.
‘Thermal ablation is already commonly used in cancer treatment,’ said Dr. Farokhzad. ‘What is extremely exciting about this platform is that we are able to selectively target cancer cells and then hit the tumour twice: first with a controlled release of a chemotherapy drug and then secondly with triggered induction of heat from the activation of the gold nanorod. And all this can be done non-invasively.’ Brigham and Women’s Hospital

From the air, the twists and turns of rivers can easily be seen. In the body, however, tracing the twists and turns of blood vessels is difficult, but important. Vessel ‘bendiness’ can indicate the presence and progression of cancer.
This principle led UNC scientists to a new method of using a high-resolution ultrasound to identify early tumours in pre-clinical studies. The method, based on vessel bendiness or ‘tortuosity,’ potentially offers an inexpensive, non-invasive and fast method to detect cancer that could someday help doctors identify cancers when tumours are less than a centimetre in size.
Paul Dayton, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering explains, ‘The correlation between vessel tortuosity and cancer is well-established. What’s new about our finding is that we can visualise these vessels in minutes with a very quick scan, using very inexpensive imaging methods.’ Dr. Dayton is a member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The UNC team used a new high-resolution ultrasound method, called ‘acoustic angiography,’ with an intravascular contrast agent that allowed them to acquire images of only the blood vessels. ‘Unlike current clinical ‘grayscale’ ultrasound, this method filters out all tissue signals, so we can see small blood vessels clearly.’ says Dayton.
‘Our results showed a definitive difference between vessels within and surrounding tumours versus those associated with normal healthy vasculature. The limitation that we must now address is that our method works only for tumours at a shallow depth into tissue, such as melanomas or thyroid cancer. Our next studies will focus on this imaging-depth issue as well as evaluating the ability of this technology to determine a tumour