UK-Indonesian Partnership announced, life sciences and research namechecked
The UK and Indonesia together intend to:
- Strengthen health systems, leveraging research and development to health and life sciences innovations, and better preventing, detecting and responding to infectious diseases through an enhanced Indonesia-UK Health Partnership
- Build on existing academic collaboration to increase research and development (R&D) programmes in life sciences and technology
- Build new and deepen existing science and technology R&D partnerships, creating deeper links between our research and innovation communities
- Support and work collaboratively to enable vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to be rapidly developed, and deployed
– Promote increased networks and connection between the UK and Indonesia’s sectors for digital health and medical technology
– Enhance cooperation in pathogen genomic sequencing, through the development of regional and bilateral networks for surveillance, training and capacity building
– Redouble joint efforts to tackle anti-microbial resistance (AMR) through the bilateral partnership and in multilateral fora such as the G20https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-indonesia-partnership-roadmap-2022-to-2024/uk-indonesia-partnership-roadmap-2022-to-2024#research-and-innovation-life-sciences-health-and-education
Certain bacteria in urine could point to aggressive prostate cancer
- Experts hope that this new discovery is a crucial marker of aggressive prostate cancer, which could lead to earlier diagnoses
- However, more time is needed to fully establish whether the bacteria is a definitive marker of the disease
- The University of East Anglia team who led the research are testing whether treating the infection with antibiotics can prevent severe tumours from developing
- This research could be vital as current tests cannot accurately predict whether cancers will be harmful or not
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61150771
New automated technology can pinpoint the best antibiotics for blood infections
- This development, led by scientists in China, could be a very useful step in the growing battle against AMR
- The CAST-R device can isolate specific molecules which can be used to decide which antibiotics are the best to use against different infections
- Current tests of this nature, using different technology, can take up to two days for a result and often have low accuracy
- The CAST-R tests gave highly accurate results within 3 hours – a marked improvement on current methods
https://www.healtheuropa.com/cast-r-automated-technology-identifies-antibiotics-for-blood-infections/115014/
Protein test found to discover useful biomarker for dementia
- A test of protein in the blood provides increasingly compelling evidence of a helpful biomarker of frontotemporal dementia – brain disorders which have few treatment pathways
- High plasma neurofilament light (NfL) levels were seen to be linked to frontotemporal dementia, even in those with mutations but without the onset of symptoms
- Elevated levels also signaled the increased severity of the disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-team-affirms-blood-biomarker-group.html
Gene mutation found to indicate aggressive
- Scientists have discovered that the mutation of the ARID2 gene is key in marking whether a melanoma will become dangerously metastatic
- This discovery suggests that patients with this gene mutation may need to be treated differently to have the chances of a more successful outcome
- Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, has a high survival rate if caught early but can turn incredibly dangerous and aggressive if it spreads
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-scientists-gene-mutation-aggressive-melanoma.html
