how a worm turned into a bringer of medical miracles.PLOEMEUR, FRANCE: For centuries, the only use humans found for the lugworm -- dark pink, slimy and inedible -- was on the end of a fish hook.
But the invertebrates´ unappreciated status is about to change.
Their blood, say French researchers, ha
"The haemoglobin of the lugworm can transps an extraordinary ability to load up with life-giving oxygen.Harnessing it for human needs could transform medicine, providing a blood substitute that could save lives, speed recovery after surgery and help transplant patients, they say.ort 40 times more oxygen from the lungs to tissues than human haemoglobin," says Gregory Raymond, a biologist at Aquastream, a fish-farming facility on the Brittany coastline.
"It also has the advantage of being compatible with all blood types."
Raymond and his team, which specialises in fish egg production, joined forces with biotech firm Hemarina in 2015 in the hope of securing a reliable means of lugworm production.
The facility now churns out more than 1.3 million of the creatures each year, each providing tiny amounts of the precious haemoglobin.
"We started basically from zero. Since the worm had never been studied, all parameters needed inventing from scratch, from feeding to water temperature," says project researcher Gwen Herault.
Medical interest in the lugworm -- Arenicola marina -- dates back to 2003, when the outbreak of mad-cow disease in Europe and the worldwide HIV epidemic began to affect blood supplies.
The problem was that animal haemoglobins, as a substitute for the human equivalent, can cause allergic reaction, potentially damaging the kidneys.
In lugworms, though, haemoglobin dissolves in the blood and is not contained within red blood cells as in humans -- in other words, blood type is not an issue -- and its structure is almost the same as human haemoglobin.
In 2006, the worm´s potential was validated in a major study.
Scientists at Roscoff, close to Plomeur, extracted and purified haemoglobin from local-caught lugworms and tested it on lab mice. The rodents were fine and showed no sign of the immune response that dogged other animal substitutes.
If proven safe for humans, the researchers said, the worms´ oxygen-rich blood could tackle septic shock -- a crash in blood pressure that can cause fatal multiple organ failure -- and help to conserve organs for transplantation.
Clinical trials of the blood product began in 2015. Lugworm haemoglobin was used last year in 10 human kidney transplants at a hospital in the western French city of Brest and 60 patients are currently enrolled in tests of the blood product across France.
x

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Socrates

Image
Socrates was born 470 BC and 399 BC. He was a  Greek  philosopher and is considered the father of western  philosophy . He tough  Plato  in 428-348 BC, was his most famous student and would teach  Aristotle  in 384-322 BC ,who would then tutor  Alexander the Great  in 356-323 BC. By this progression,  Greek philosophy , as first developed by Socrates. It was spread throughout the known world during  Alexander 's conquests.  Socrates' historicity has never been challenged but what precisely.  Although Socrates is generally regarded as initiating the discipline of philosophy in the West, most of what we know of him comes from Plato and so this honor is, rightly, challenged. Many different schools of philosophy were founded by Socrates' student and his influence would be felt for generations and even to the present day.  He studied  music , gymnastics, and grammar in his youth (the common subjects of study for a young Greek) and followed his father's profession as a sc
Read more

Mc Mahon line

Image
Encyclopedia Britannica Mc Mahon line frontier between Tibet and Assam in British India,  negotiated between Tibet and Great Britain at the end of the shimla conference ( October 1913- july 1914) and named for the chief British negotiator, Sir Henry  Mc Mahon.  It runs from the eastern border of Bhutan along the crest of the Himalayas until it reaches the great bend in the emerges from its Tibetan course into the Assam Valley.  Delegrate of the Chinese republication government also attended the shimla conference,  but they refused to sign the principal agreement on the status and boundaries of Tibet on the ground that Tibet was subordinate to China and had not the power to make treaties. The Chinese have maintained this position to the present day and also have claimed that Chinese territory extends southward to the base of the Himalayas foot hills. This frontier controversy with independent India let to the sino-Indian hostilities of October November 1962 . In the conflict the
Read more

Library

Image
Library came from Latin word liber which means Books and library is the old French word. In Greek and Roman language , the word is bibliotheca library is a place where group of collections of books and or other print or non-print materials organized and maintained for use like books,  journals, flims, archives, DVD, DC, research material, thesis, newspaper of different language and years e.c.t . It's a collection of sources of information and knowledge. Different places has different types library according to there need and according there types of libraries. Children library, Public library,  Special library and Digital library which is easier to gain information from anywhere. EARLY LIBRARIES Early libraries consisted of archives materials (writing material of that time)  such as Clay tables,  cuneiform , script,  papyrus,  vellum e.c.t . Those libraries are unique and archives for today ,which came from the legendary and great people who not only work for it but als
Read more