Designer Immune Cells

Redesigning the Immune Cells

Waiting lists are long and finding a suitable donor is a game of probabilities, but organ transplants are life-saving procedures that take place for tens of thousands of people every year.

Of the thousands that receive a transplant however, the largest obstacles to overcome for many of them is organ rejection, where the body’s immune system treats the organ as an invader and destroys it. Scientists in Augusta, Georgia may have discovered a way to combat this final hurdle to successful organ transplant and the possible applications are far-reaching.

The body’s automatic immune response is to attack and destroy a transplanted organ because it is foreign tissue, just like viruses, bacteria and cancer cells are foreign and need to be destroyed. This process of attacking the organ is called immunologic rejection.

Anti-rejection drugs are employed to stop the immune system from working effectively and attacking the organ, but this leaves patients open to severe risk of infection and requires lifelong drug-dependency.

Scientists at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta have come up with a novel approach to dealing with organ rejection, one that doesn’t require complex drug regimes or decimation of the immune system.

Dr. Anatolij Horuzsko, reproductive immunologist at the MCG Centre for Molecular Chaperone/Radiobiology and Cancer Virology, has unveiled “designer” immune cells to help patients manage their new organ.

These designer cells are degradable microparticles that deliver a large dose of a natural immuno-suppresor called HLA-G (human leukocyte antigen G) to dendritic cells in the body, cells that dictate what the immune system should attack. The dendrites are stopped from giving orders to attack the foreign tissue of the organ and it’s allowed to function as normal.

Microparticle therapy, already successful in skin grafts on mice, would be required for a period of weeks after which time dendritic cells would learn to automatically ignore the organ tissue.

“It’s like a calming effect and once tolerance is established, we don’t need it any more” Dr. Horuzsko says.

In straight comparison with natural HLA-G suppressant behaviour,

HLA-G microparticles have dendritic markers, making them faster and more efficient at sending signals. Without markers, they lack direction and so would be devoured by macrophages – the body’s garbage eaters.

Along with removing the need for immuno-suppressant drugs and their associated health risks, microparticles have the potential to do more than protect donor organs.

Diseases in the body such as arthritis and multiple sclerosis work by misdirection of the immune system to destroy healthy tissue, again microparticles such as these could be useful in sending messages to prevent an attack and in the case of tumours, where the immune system is working overtime, the microparticles could be used in opposition and HLA-G could be blocked completely.

If further research is successful, it may be just 5 or 6 years before designer immune cells are making their way through the systems of thousands of people all over the world – saving their lives by saving the organs they may have waited months or years to obtain.

What Gaming Can Do For You

Pro-Social Gaming

For many years the debate over computer games and their impact on children has continued with little impact on the games industry itself, suggesting that theories about the negative effects of gaming are not taken too seriously, or if they are, there is little done about them.

Numerous studies have been done showing a correlation between violent games and aggressive behaviour in youngsters, whether that is a propensity to hurt or simply show a lack of concern for others.

The trend can be considered a worrying one, if it is accurate, not least of all because children play computer games more now than ever before.

There is a reason to be hopeful however. There are more children playing games, but there are also more games on the market and not all of them involve bombs, guns and blast zones.

Some of them require the player to do good in non-violent ways and, in the real world, the effects are quite surprising.

The current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a top-tier academic journal, presents a report from the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan, with the findings of three studies that show video games containing pro-social content make players more helpful individuals after the game is over.

The report, co-authored by researchers from the USA, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan, is the first of its kind and documents the effects of games where characters help and support each other in non-violent ways.

“These studies show the same kind of impact on three different age groups from three very different cultures,” said Brad Bushman, University of Michigan, co-author of the report, “…the studies use different analytic approaches – correlational, longitudinal and experimental. The resulting triangulation of evidence provides the strongest possible proof that the findings are both valid and generalizable.”

The first study examined the link between gaming and pro-social behaviour among 727 students in Singapore, with a mean age 13 years. Questions were put to them about the behaviour of characters within their favourite games. How often did one character hurt, help or kill another? Other questions were posed regarding how the student themselves spent their time and their money. Did they use any of in charitable ways? Did they share their belongings? Were they ever aggressive in posed situations?

As has happened in past studies, there was a strong correlation between violent games and negative behaviour but the interesting discovery was the correlation between playing pro-social games and helping others.

The second study was an analysis of the long-term affects of gaming habits. Nearly 2000 Japanese children aged 10 to 16 were surveyed about their exposure to pro-social games and their own positive behaviour towards others within a month of playing them. Then they were asked the same questions 3 to 4 months later and there was still an effect from the gaming they had been exposed to months earlier.

Interestingly enough, the downward spiral of aggression that results from exposure to violent games was mirrored in the pro-social gaming, but with the opposite effect. Months later there was still helpful and positive behaviour being shown by the game players.

The third and final study was an experiment with 161 American college students with a mean age of 19. After playing pro-social, violent or neutral games, students were asked to assign puzzles of varying difficulty to a randomly chosen partner. The partner could win $10 if they solved all of them. Those who had played pro-social games were significantly more helpful, choosing easier puzzles for their partners. Those who had played violent games were more likely to assign the hardest puzzles.

“…these findings make it clear that playing video games is not in itself good or bad for children,” said Bushman, professor of communications and psychology and research professor at ISR. “The type of content in the game has a bigger impact than the overall amount of time spent playing.”

Pro-social games are on the increase and the introduction of technologies like the Nintendo Wii has opened up game playing to a new audience. At the end of 2008, beating their rivals Xbox 360 and Sony Play Station 3, the Wii sold over 50 million units. The physical, multi-player element integrated with pro-social subjects appeals to families and more significantly people who wouldn’t normally play video games.

For kids who play games and love games, parents may never be successful in weaning them off but in this age of pro-social endeavour, they have a wider choice of game to choose from, and in the end, if they can’t beat them, they can always join in.

Cloaking Against Earthquakes

Earthquake protection

A new approach to dealing with earthquakes in highly populated areas of the world may be the key to saving thousands of lives every year.

Researchers at Liverpool University and the Fresnel Institute (CNRS) in Marseilles have developed a technology not unlike a cloaking device – think Star Trek – to protect buildings from the physical effects of seismic activity.

Earthquakes manifest in two parts – body waves, which propagate through the earth, and surface waves which pass across it. It’s the surface wave that wreaks havoc on populated areas and destroys buildings.

Research has shown that concentric rings of plastic built into the earth of a building’s foundations can actually divert surface waves and ‘cloak’ the building, protecting the entire structure from tremors, seismic waves and aftershocks.

The rings are made from a metamaterial – an engineered material displaying exceptional properties that are not observed in naturally occurring materials. They can be tuned to the frequency of an incoming seismic wave and for small frequency ranges there can be two rings working in sync, absorbing waves at those frequencies

By controlling elasticity and stiffness of the rings, surface waves can pass through the protective ‘cloak’ and are transformed into tiny pressure and density fluctuations, the wave path is altered so it arcs away from the protective cloak and the building is left untouched.

The technology is not yet foolproof however; waves that pass through the foundations of a protected building are not diminished as they exit, they travel on with the same intensity as before. So risk cannot be eliminated; it can only be transferred to other areas.

Sebastien Guenneau from Liverpool’s Department of Mathematics who developed the technology with Stefan Enoch and Mohamed Farhat from the Fresnel Institute says, “this work has enormous potential in offering protection for densely populated areas of the world at risk from earthquakes. The challenge now is to turn our theories into real applications that can save lives – small scale experiments are underway.”