Biomedicine with graphene in Barcelona

The new implants based on this material can treat from the parkinson to deep depression

Biomedicine with graphene in Barcelona

With age, the macula, a thin layer of the retina, begins to degenerate and eventually leads to vision loss. In some people, however, this degeneration begins long before and is not linked to old age but to genetic inheritance. It is retinitis “pigmentosa”, a disease that causes blindness to 40 years of age and for which there is currently no cure. Although all is not lost.

“People who suffer from macular degeneration or retinitis “pigmentosa” have an intact optic nerve. Therefore could stimulate through innovative, flexible implants that are well adapted to the curvature of the retina, graphene-based, highly biocompatible, so that the optic nerve achieved imaging the outer material “, said José Antonio Garrido, ICREA research professor at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), during the presentation of the new line of work dedicated to biomedical technologies that right now is inaugurated within the framework of the ambitious European project  Graphene Flagship.

These retinal implants are one of the possible and promising applications of graphene and other two-dimensional materials, called so because fineness have the minimum possible in the case of graphene, an atom-thick layer which makes them much more area that volume. For their properties, these new materials could have many therapeutic biomedical applications, which are those that just will explore this new initiative.

“In the next four years we will try to develop new implants, which provide properties that until now did not exist and that allow us to monitor from epilepsy, to treat Parkinson’s disease or severe depression that does not refer to drugs,” said Garrido.

A scientific challenge

At the moment, the initiative will focus on three specific areas: ophthalmology, neurology and surgery. And it will try to assess how these materials behave compared with the existing electronic technology.

Kostas Kostarelos, University of Manchester and co-leader of the initiative with Garrido, “we have worked a couple of years to put this package in patches. It is the first Graphene Flagship attempt to engage in a serious way the biomedical community, and is a political and scientific challenge. We try to maintain realistic expectations without neglecting a futuristic approach all these new materials can behave. ”

To illustrate the extent to graphene and other two-dimensional materials could improve the treatment of some diseases, Rosa Villa, researcher at the National Microelectronics Centre (CNM-IMB-CSIC, CIBER-BBN), explained how patients with profound depression that deep stimulation is applied by inserting electrodes in the brain that apply electric shocks, should change them every so often these electrodes because being in a very oxidative environment such as that prevailing in the body, just corroding.

Moreover, these electrodes pick up little information. However, if these electrodes were made of graphene, “allow greater interaction with the body, it would not need to change them so often. We do MRIs allow patients to monitor if they improve and could get a higher density of information, “said the scientist.

They could even design devices that transported biological molecules capable of reaching specific areas of the body and release drugs there.

The applications of these materials do not stop here and experts say it could even help people with disabilities to be controlled from the wheelchair to prostheses or home automation households.

“These implants will be able to read the signals from the motor cortex and translate them into orders,”he added Garrido, for whom surely the first implants that will apply are those less invasive. “For example, for a brain mapping and monitoring function before an operation,” he said.

Graphene Flagship

Graphene Flagship has a budget of 1000 million euros and has 10 years’ duration. It is a pioneering project, the largest European and global initiative to date designed to investigate graphene and other two-dimensional materials, in order to bring the laboratory to society. It began as the Human Brain project, the other major flagship of the European Commission in 2013 and 150 members from 20 different countries participating.

Is divided into different work packages, each focused on a topic, from health and the environment, to energy, sensors and biomedicine. The launch of this new line has been held in Barcelona is no accident: the Catalan capital is a leader in biomedical research at European level and also in the science of two-dimensional materials with ICN2 to the head.

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Young forever?

Scientists discover how to keep the body young despite age

Biomedical Research building Barcelona

 

Muscles have a cleaning system that eliminates waste and preventing degenerate over the years, as scientists have discovered the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) today presented its findings in the journal Nature.

When this cleaning system stops working properly, the muscles go into senescence. Then, stem cells lose the ability to regenerate tissue and muscle is weakened. It’s something that happens gradually from the fifth decade of life and that is observed extreme way elderly people who forces them fail.

But when the cleaning system is restored, as have researchers with drugs, muscle tissue can regenerate again and retrieves the lost vigor. So far the experiments have been performed in mice and in human cells in the laboratory.

Since the molecules involved in the cleaning system of muscle cells are the same in mice and in human body, “it should be possible to restore the regenerative capacity and muscle strength also in people,” says Pura Muñoz-Cánoves, ICREA researcher at UPF who led the work.

In fact, there are already approved drugs on the market that, in research, have shown ability to rejuvenate muscle tissue. Specifically, the team has experienced UPF rapamycin (an immunosuppressant which is mainly used to prevent organ rejection after a transplant) and Trolox (a similar antioxidant vitamin E).

Some pharmaceutical companies have also developing drugs that act on the mechanism identified in muscle regeneration research. Looking ahead, based on the results reported in Nature, they could develop new drugs that maximize the ability of tissue regeneration and minimize side effects.

The first candidate to receive the rejuvenating treatment would be elderly people weakened by sarcopenia, ie the loss of muscle mass, Muñoz-Cánoves reports. It could also be effective in adults weakened by cachexia, which is a tissue atrophy associated with diseases such as cancer, tuberculosis or AIDS. Or it could be useful to accelerate the healing of muscle injuries in athletes, since healing time depends on the ability of muscle regeneration, which in turn depends on efficient removal of waste from cells.

The cleaning system, technically called autophagy, “is like a vacuum,” says Muñoz-Cánoves. Removes components of cells stop functioning properly and become toxic. These components range from individual molecules (free radicals or damaged proteins) to whole organelles (such as mitochondria or ribosomes).

Since all organs and tissues of the human body depend on autophagy, Muñoz-Cánoves believes that the same system could be key to slow aging in other organs, and it could be useful to increase their regenerative capacity and rejuvenate. “I think it must be so because every house has to be cleaned, and autophagy is a very fundamental cleaning mechanism in living organisms,” says the researcher. But he warns that “we have not proven that our research has been limited to muscle tissue.”

In muscle, equipment UPF autophagy has been shown to maintain the ability of stem cells to regenerate tissue. And when autophagy no longer efficient and begin to accumulate waste, stem cells enter senescence and lose their regenerative capacity.

“We were surprised to discover this,” says Muñoz-Cánoves. “When you stop to think about it, it makes sense, because the stem cells need to break free of waste accumulate every day to work properly.” But despite intensive research in the last decade on the biology of aging, “this is the first time a relationship between declining and aging autophagy in mammalian tissue is observed.”

The work reported in Nature, whose first author Laura Garcia-Prat, gives meaning to research published earlier longevity. It was noted in particular that rapamycin prolongs life in various species, including mammals such as mice, but had not explained why. They it was also observed that metformin seems to slow aging in people who take it for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, to the point that there is a clinical trial underway to evaluate its potential to extend life.

Both rapamycin and metformin act on molecules that regulate autophagy and have now been shown to be essential to maintain the capacity to regenerate muscles. “Although senescence due to aging is often seen as an inevitable and irremediable process, we demonstrate that the internal clock of aging stem cells can be manipulated with drugs,” the researchers conclude in Nature UPF.

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