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'Virus Sponge' Could Improve Flu Treatments, Diabetes Care, Vaccine Development
University of Maryland researchers have announced a new "virus sponge" that could aid in the treatment of, among other things, avian flu. The sponge woks similar to kidney dialysis, filtering the harmful virus from the blood. "The virus sponge is based on a technology called molecular imprinting. In molecular imprinting, researchers stamp a molecule's shape into a substance (in this case, a hydrogel--a sponge-like material). When the specific molecule filters through the hydrogel, it fits in the imprint hole and is trapped."
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I honestly have no idea how this is even a practical technique, much less a breakthrough. Rather than this dodgy "aerogel" technique, you could use the molecules that nature has used for millenia : antibodies. All you need is an antibody against an epitope of the virus (a unique molecular pattern somewhere on it's surface), and then you bind the antibodies to a medium. Or, there's a way to generate the membrane bound antibodies present in B cells, and to adhere those to a surface. In any case, such a "filter" has existed for years, though as far as I know, this technique hasn't been used to filter the blood of a living patient.
Then again, neither have these researchers : they are just claiming it is practical.
...it's only a short-term solution. It's great if the patient is to be kept isolated, away from any other source of new infection (after the 'sponge' is removed). The sponge works to remove the active contaminant from the patient's bloodstream - it does not, however, allow the patient to build up an autoimmune response to the target contaminant. Neat idea, tho.
Informatus Technologicus
I would be very sceptical about the proposed use in diabetes.
FTA: "Applying the technology to a drug or food additive could contribute to the dietary freedom of those who suffer from type II diabetes," Kofinas said.
It's not as simple. Diabetes is not just about glucose intake, more about energy intake. So filtering out glucose is equivalent to eating "diabetic" sugar free food. Helps, but is far from a cure and in some cases actually makes the patient's sugar higher (since they tend to have higher intake of this "sugar-free" food).
It would be great to see something like this developed to a usable stage, but I see it more useful as purifying/separating technique rather than a cure. Let's wait and see where this goes. :)
For instance, why not use it to filter out cholesterol or arterial plaque? Go in to the clinic once a month and clean out the pipes. Or an ingestible version that binds with saturated or trans-fats? Granted, there's problems with having too much undigested crap (anal seepage, anyone?), but a lot of that is because current fat blockers use a shot-gun approach that knocks out good and bad fats. If you can just bind the trans or saturated fats and let the unsaturated ones in, that could be an amazing boost to the health of all Slashdotters - pepperoni pizza suddenly becomes a health food...
There are a number of cancers which leave free-floating cancerous clumps of cells in the bloodstream. Patients with such cancers often get extra chemotherapy injected into the spine to stop it reaching there. A free-floating cancer clump would seem to be easier to filter with this sort of sponge than an individual virus.
Would it make more sense for these folks to use the product on a market that actually exists right now, so that they can refine and develop the idea further for viruses who have not yet evolved to be transmissible between humans and therefore whose lethal form is as yet unknowable?
(It sounds a great idea, but great ideas need to be researched thoroughly, which isn't cheap. Free-floating cancers could be a potential source of revenue between now and when it's needed for a viral epidemic.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Selectivity is most important. It's great that this gel can 'capture' virus proteins, but does it bind them more tightly than other proteins? This could be very problematic if it removes native proteins in the human serum. Many proteins look alike structurally at low resolution -- nm resolutions. If this system doesn't discriminate based on other factors like electrostatics, then this couldn't possibly be an effective filter.
The next problem is accessibility. I'm assuming that this gel only traps proteins outside of cells. I'm not a virologist (I'm structural biologist & biophysical chemist), but it seems to me that if a virus has integrated itself into your genome or populated most of your cells, you're screwed.
Viruses live in cells. They can move from one cell to the adjacent next cell when the first infected cell lyses. Furthermore, even if a virus ends up in blood, would you catch it with a filter at a central point, or would the virus already have infected another cell by then before reaching the filter.
Blood doesn't like to be filtered. Damage to blood by hemodialysis is well known (which is why you everyone should be a donors, especially as the chance that you will actually be a donor is minuscule).
That is not to say that the technique cannot have any use, but in the area of blood filtration, I don't think so. Even for treating donated blood it may not be as useful as one might think, because the virus (if not in a blood cell), may be attached to a (red) blood cell.
Bert
I think that a method to remove alcohol from the bloodstream the moment you walk out the door of the pub would be a killer app, except that then all of a sudden that gorgeous girl at your side will just become a common broad and that just might ruin the rest of the night...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Then it's bad that you didn't get a chance to live in Middle Age or any other place/moment before modern medicine arrived. You could have gotten a so much better life expectancy of...
:
forty years.</sarcasm>
Modern medicine can reliably be considered as a source of better human condition, because
- when it was introduced in the occidental world, mortality rates did fall.
- in other countries where it was introduced later, we didn't see an increase of mortality rate due to "occidental-produced superbugs" migrating, but we saw a decrease of mortality later when medicine arrived there, too. (and has caused a lot of overpopulation troubles because mortality fell faster than natality)
- mortality keeps going lower, unaffected by what is actually called a super bug. The only thing that increase is some disease that are usually age related (like cancer) that we haven't seen that much back when people died younger.
You're confusing things. : /that don't require them/ (the rise of antibiotics-resistant skin bacteria in developed world is such an example).
"Super bugs" are problems linked not to the existence of drugs themselves, but to the abusive usage of drugs by
- industries that pour them happily in their flock's food or in basins where they raise fishes (The hugest proportion - the increase of H5N1's resistance to anything but Tamiflu is directly linked to the tendency of Asian poultry producers to almost literary feed them on other flu anti-virals)
- doctors under pressure of patient (usually too easily afraid mothers) prescribing them for disease
- patient not following the instructions for antibiotics correctly because they stop too early their treatment when they feel better because they are afraid of too much chemicals.
Have been the drugs used properly (prescribed by a doctor only when needed, and taken as they are supposed to be), we wouldn't have seen "super bugs".
Also, "super bugs" aren't in any way more dangerous to the general population than the corresponding "normal bugs".
They aren't "super" because they are more aggressive. They are "super" because the usual means used by modern medicine doesn't work as well as it used to be for killing them.
In other words : YOU ARE NOT in danger to being sick more easily from a "super bug".
You'll have as much risk to catch the future human-variant of the avian H5N1 flu, as any other flu (somewhere between the spanish flu and last winter's unremarkable flu depending on how much of your previous antibodies you can re-use. Although the spanish flu is very less likely because we don't have the same post-war social situation and poverty). It'll just be much more difficult to cure if we only have Tamiflu left (or worse, if Tamiflu doesn't work anymore because people have piled boxes and eaten it like candy because of the media-created mass fear).
You have as much risk to catch a disease from your Staphyloccocus Aureus (a bacteria that normally just "lives" on the skin surface of a significant part of the population and that is the most typical example of drug resisting "super bug"), whether it's MRSA (resists to most common penicillins and such), GISA/VRSA (difficult to kill with even the latest chemical inventions) or the "normal" wild type : i.e. near to none.
The "super bug" status means only that, in the very rare case when the bug provoke an infection (usually the bug is a problem in intensive care because it can "climb" along the perfusion needles from the skin surface to the blood stream), it can be a PITA because the patient defences are low because the patient is weak (in intensive care) and bec
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I though the virus sponge already existed. We always called it Paris Hilton...
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
We already have a virus sponge. It's called Windows.