There are few things in life that can be more terrifying and potentially disastrous than getting a diagnosis of having Parkinson's disease. Facing the prospect of having your body literally giving out on you and you not being able to exert any sort of control over it can be a difficult thing to contend with.
While medical science has come a long way in the treatment of Parkinson's, present day medical treatments are still lacking in having a huge effect on this particular condition. However, there are a few ways to effectively deal with the onset of Parkinson's and there are a few people leading the way on this front. The treatment is yoga therapy and one of the people leading the charge is Colleen Carroll.
As a yoga teacher for over 15 years, Colleen began to consider that yoga was not only helpful for the rank and file, but that yoga could actually be beneficial for people suffering from disorders such as Alzheimer's, MS, epilepsy and Parkinson's. This led her to Loyola Marymount University where she studied in the yoga therapy RX program, which is a course on using yoga in a clinical setting. After completing the 2 year program Colleen began to focus her yoga techniques to deal primarily with those suffering from Parkinson's.
While there are many deeply complicated issues surrounding why and how Parkinson's effects the human body, the main issue with this condition is that it effects gait, muscle coordination and balance. With yoga therapy, these are combated through simple techniques of breathing, proper posture and simple but specific movements. While Parkinson's results in tremors and muscle rigidity, therapeutic yoga is aimed at promoting fluidity and control.
While this is certainly no miracle cure, these simple techniques have shown great promise in combating the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, prevention of the worsening of the disease and has also proven to improve the physiological effect this disease has on a person such as anxiety, depression and sleep disorders.
Parkinson's disease can be a scary and troubling diagnosis to get, but it doesn't have to be the end of the world. Medications can certainly help, but medicines are not the only line of defense when battling Parkinson's disease. With yoga therapy, you can have a way to not only fight and battle back Parkinson's disease, but you can improve your quality of life in the process.
April 16, 2011
potentials of nanotechnology
Back in September 2004, the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) launched the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer to stimulate and coordinate research in biology, engineering and materials science to push cancer nanotechnology forward. Just over 2 years on, such research is attracting increasing attention: in a round-up of last year's breakthroughs in the burgeoning field of nanotechnology from Forbes magazine, anticancer nanoparticles featured in the top five.
Nanotechnology is being applied to cancer in two broad areas: the development of nanovectors, such as nanoparticles, which can be loaded with drugs or imaging agents and then targeted to tumours, and high-throughput nanosensor devices for detecting the biological signatures of cancer. Combined, such technologies could lead to earlier diagnosis and better treatment for patients with cancer.
Spearheading efforts to expedite the clinical application of these technologies, the NCI currently funds eight Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE) in the United States, in addition to 12 other smaller programmes. "We've pulled most of the key players in medical nanotechnology into this programme, and we're spending about US$35–40 million a year on these approaches," says Piotr Grodzinski, Director of the NCI Alliance. The NCI Alliance is actively pursuing both the therapeutic and diagnostics aspects of cancer nanotechnology with follow-up programmes in sight. Grodzinski hopes that by then nanotechnology will have matured into a clinically useful approach.
Robert Langer's team have shown the potential of targeted nanoparticles to deliver anticancer drugs.
Early signs are promising. The research highlighted in the Forbes list was conducted by a team led by Robert Langer, a chemical engineer who is Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, and also one of the two principal investigators for the MIT–Harvard CCNE. Langer, with Omid Farokhzad, Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, USA, and colleagues, uses polymeric nanoparticles coated with aptamers — RNA-based targeting moieties — to guide them towards the tumour, where they bind, enter the cells and then dissolve to spill out their contents — the anticancer drug docetaxel. The nanoparticles are also coated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to aid their safe passage through the bloodstream and into the tumour cells. A single injection of such nanoparticles coated with aptamers that bind to prostate-membrane-specific antigen eradicated tumours in a mouse model of prostate cancer (PNAS 103, 6315–6320; 2006). "Extensive animal models show that this approach is both safe and efficacious," says Langer.
One of the key challenges in creating effective nanoparticles is targeting them to appropriate tissues and cells. Although biological targeting using aptamers or antibodies on the surface of nanoparticles is one popular option, other researchers are beginning to exploit the physical characteristics of the particles to guide them to desired locations. "The size, shape, physical properties, density and charge all affect how particles travel through the body, and whether or not they will cross biological membranes," says Mauro Ferrari, a professor of nanotechnology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Rice University in Houston, USA. His work shows that biological barriers such as the vascular wall dominate the distribution of injected nanoparticles in the body, even for particles that are decorated with exquisite biological recognition moieties. A judicious choice of size and shape of a nanovector particle can enhance by orders of magnitude the amount of drug delivered to the target lesion site. "I believe that the era of 'rational design' of nanoparticles has arrived, and that optimal design will occur based on principles of engineering and physics," Ferrari says.
Joseph DeSimone, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, is putting these principles into practice. DeSimone has adapted fabrication technologies from the electronics industry to produce shape-specific organic nanoparticles. "We basically make moulds out of a really low-surface-energy fluoropolymer that allows us to synthesize truly engineered particles with desired characteristics," says DeSimone. DeSimone's engineered process allows the precise control over particle size (20 nm to >100 m), particle shape (spheres, cylinders, discs, toroidal), particle composition (organic or inorganic, solid or porous), particle cargo (hydrophilic or hydrophobic therapeutics, biologicals, imaging agents), particle compliance (stiff, deformable) and particle surface properties (Avidin–biotin complexes, targeting peptides, antibodies, aptamers, PEG chains).
Nanoparticles are not the only way to encapsulate a drug or imaging agent into a small carrier, but DeSimone suggests that the nanotechnology approach offers crucial advantages. "With liposomes [which have previously been used to deliver drugs] you kinetically trap what cargo molecule you can, but you can't modify the amount that gets trapped," says DeSimone. "Our moulds enable us to make organic particles loaded with therapeutic cargoes at any amount — 5%, 20% or whatever we want."
DeSimone is also taking a cue from naturally occurring particles, such as red blood cells, to produce compliant nanoparticles that can deform to pass across biological barriers such as sinusoids in the spleen or the blood–brain barrier. "The ability to get through these barriers and the flow characteristics of particles — whether they flow through the centre of a capillary or along cell walls — are dictated by size, shape, surface chemistry and compliance," says DeSimone.
Liquidia Technologies Inc., based in Morrisville, North Carolina, USA, was spun-off from DeSimone's laboratory a few years ago to develop this technology platform. Right now, the company is working on feasibility studies, as well as research collaborations with some large pharmaceutical and medical device companies. "These feasibility studies will run through the rest of 2007, with the goal of focused out-licensing and joint product development deals within the next 18 months," says Luke Roush, Vice President of Business Development at Liquidia. "These studies will also provide data that will validate application of our technology platform, and help us advance knowledge about how to apply it in areas of clinical need," adds Roush.
The synergy between the therapeutic and diagnostic/monitoring applications of nanotechnology could be particularly potent. Linda Molnar, a programme officer at the NCI Alliance, sees a future in which new imaging agents, new diagnostic chips and new targeted therapies come together to facilitate a form of personalized medicine in which early and more accurate detection leads to rapid initiation of treatment, followed by diagnostic tests to see whether the patient is responding. If they do, good; if not, another therapy can be tried and the process repeated — what Molnar refers to as real-time therapeutic monitoring. "The sooner you can detect the cancer and start treatment, and know that you're treating that patient with a therapy that they respond to, the better," says Molnar. "That's why people are excited, and why people at the NCI have made such a large investment in nanotechnology for cancer."
As novel nanomedicine products move from the laboratory to the clinic, the issue of regulatory approval of these new technologies will come to the fore. In many cases these products will combine established drugs with materials already used in FDA-approved therapies, and no special provisions are in place to deal with nanomedicine at present. An FDA spokesperson said, "All nanotechnology applications will at this point fall within the existing framework for review of all products submitted to CDER [Center for Drug Evaluation and Research]; [however], CDER is discussing how nanotech products may be treated differently, if necessary."
Nanotechnology is being applied to cancer in two broad areas: the development of nanovectors, such as nanoparticles, which can be loaded with drugs or imaging agents and then targeted to tumours, and high-throughput nanosensor devices for detecting the biological signatures of cancer. Combined, such technologies could lead to earlier diagnosis and better treatment for patients with cancer.
Spearheading efforts to expedite the clinical application of these technologies, the NCI currently funds eight Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE) in the United States, in addition to 12 other smaller programmes. "We've pulled most of the key players in medical nanotechnology into this programme, and we're spending about US$35–40 million a year on these approaches," says Piotr Grodzinski, Director of the NCI Alliance. The NCI Alliance is actively pursuing both the therapeutic and diagnostics aspects of cancer nanotechnology with follow-up programmes in sight. Grodzinski hopes that by then nanotechnology will have matured into a clinically useful approach.
Robert Langer's team have shown the potential of targeted nanoparticles to deliver anticancer drugs.
Early signs are promising. The research highlighted in the Forbes list was conducted by a team led by Robert Langer, a chemical engineer who is Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, and also one of the two principal investigators for the MIT–Harvard CCNE. Langer, with Omid Farokhzad, Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, USA, and colleagues, uses polymeric nanoparticles coated with aptamers — RNA-based targeting moieties — to guide them towards the tumour, where they bind, enter the cells and then dissolve to spill out their contents — the anticancer drug docetaxel. The nanoparticles are also coated with polyethylene glycol (PEG) to aid their safe passage through the bloodstream and into the tumour cells. A single injection of such nanoparticles coated with aptamers that bind to prostate-membrane-specific antigen eradicated tumours in a mouse model of prostate cancer (PNAS 103, 6315–6320; 2006). "Extensive animal models show that this approach is both safe and efficacious," says Langer.
One of the key challenges in creating effective nanoparticles is targeting them to appropriate tissues and cells. Although biological targeting using aptamers or antibodies on the surface of nanoparticles is one popular option, other researchers are beginning to exploit the physical characteristics of the particles to guide them to desired locations. "The size, shape, physical properties, density and charge all affect how particles travel through the body, and whether or not they will cross biological membranes," says Mauro Ferrari, a professor of nanotechnology at the University of Texas Health Science Center, the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and Rice University in Houston, USA. His work shows that biological barriers such as the vascular wall dominate the distribution of injected nanoparticles in the body, even for particles that are decorated with exquisite biological recognition moieties. A judicious choice of size and shape of a nanovector particle can enhance by orders of magnitude the amount of drug delivered to the target lesion site. "I believe that the era of 'rational design' of nanoparticles has arrived, and that optimal design will occur based on principles of engineering and physics," Ferrari says.
Joseph DeSimone, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, is putting these principles into practice. DeSimone has adapted fabrication technologies from the electronics industry to produce shape-specific organic nanoparticles. "We basically make moulds out of a really low-surface-energy fluoropolymer that allows us to synthesize truly engineered particles with desired characteristics," says DeSimone. DeSimone's engineered process allows the precise control over particle size (20 nm to >100 m), particle shape (spheres, cylinders, discs, toroidal), particle composition (organic or inorganic, solid or porous), particle cargo (hydrophilic or hydrophobic therapeutics, biologicals, imaging agents), particle compliance (stiff, deformable) and particle surface properties (Avidin–biotin complexes, targeting peptides, antibodies, aptamers, PEG chains).
Nanoparticles are not the only way to encapsulate a drug or imaging agent into a small carrier, but DeSimone suggests that the nanotechnology approach offers crucial advantages. "With liposomes [which have previously been used to deliver drugs] you kinetically trap what cargo molecule you can, but you can't modify the amount that gets trapped," says DeSimone. "Our moulds enable us to make organic particles loaded with therapeutic cargoes at any amount — 5%, 20% or whatever we want."
DeSimone is also taking a cue from naturally occurring particles, such as red blood cells, to produce compliant nanoparticles that can deform to pass across biological barriers such as sinusoids in the spleen or the blood–brain barrier. "The ability to get through these barriers and the flow characteristics of particles — whether they flow through the centre of a capillary or along cell walls — are dictated by size, shape, surface chemistry and compliance," says DeSimone.
Liquidia Technologies Inc., based in Morrisville, North Carolina, USA, was spun-off from DeSimone's laboratory a few years ago to develop this technology platform. Right now, the company is working on feasibility studies, as well as research collaborations with some large pharmaceutical and medical device companies. "These feasibility studies will run through the rest of 2007, with the goal of focused out-licensing and joint product development deals within the next 18 months," says Luke Roush, Vice President of Business Development at Liquidia. "These studies will also provide data that will validate application of our technology platform, and help us advance knowledge about how to apply it in areas of clinical need," adds Roush.
The synergy between the therapeutic and diagnostic/monitoring applications of nanotechnology could be particularly potent. Linda Molnar, a programme officer at the NCI Alliance, sees a future in which new imaging agents, new diagnostic chips and new targeted therapies come together to facilitate a form of personalized medicine in which early and more accurate detection leads to rapid initiation of treatment, followed by diagnostic tests to see whether the patient is responding. If they do, good; if not, another therapy can be tried and the process repeated — what Molnar refers to as real-time therapeutic monitoring. "The sooner you can detect the cancer and start treatment, and know that you're treating that patient with a therapy that they respond to, the better," says Molnar. "That's why people are excited, and why people at the NCI have made such a large investment in nanotechnology for cancer."
As novel nanomedicine products move from the laboratory to the clinic, the issue of regulatory approval of these new technologies will come to the fore. In many cases these products will combine established drugs with materials already used in FDA-approved therapies, and no special provisions are in place to deal with nanomedicine at present. An FDA spokesperson said, "All nanotechnology applications will at this point fall within the existing framework for review of all products submitted to CDER [Center for Drug Evaluation and Research]; [however], CDER is discussing how nanotech products may be treated differently, if necessary."
role of nanotechnology in biology
Nanotechnology refers to the interactions of cellular and molecular components and engineered materials—typically clusters of atoms, molecules, and molecular fragments—at the most elemental level of biology. Such nanoscale objects— typically, though not exclusively, with dimensions smaller than 100 nanometers—can be useful by themselves or as part of larger devices containing multiple nanoscale objects. At the nanoscale, the physical, chemical, and biological properties of materials differ fundamentally and often noninvasive access to the interior of a living cell affords the opportunity for unprecedented gains on both clinical and basic research frontiers.
unexpectedly from those of the corresponding bulk material because the quantum mechanical properties of atomic interactions are influenced by material variations on the nanometer scale. In fact, by creating nanometer-scale structures, it is possible to control fundamental characteristics of a material, including its melting point, magnetic properties, and even color, without changing the material’s chemical composition.
Nanoscale devices and nanoscale components of larger devices are of the same size as biological entities. They are smaller than human cells (10,000 to 20,000 nanometers in diameter) and organelles and similar in size to large biological macromolecules such as enzymes and receptors— hemoglobin, for example, is approximately 5 nm in diameter, while the lipid bilayer surrounding cells is on the order of 6 nm thick. Nanoscale devices smaller than 50 nanometers can easily enter most cells, while those smaller than 20 nanometers can transit out of blood vessels. As a result, nanoscale devices can readily interact with biomolecules on both the cell surface and within the cell, often in ways that do not alter the behavior and biochemical properties
of those molecules. From a scientific viewpoint, the actual construction and characterization of nanoscale devices may contribute to understanding carcinogenesis.
Noninvasive access to the interior of a living cell affords the opportunity for unprecedented gains on both clinical and basic research frontiers. The ability to simultaneously interact with multiple critical proteins and nucleic acids at the molecular scale should provide better understanding of the complex regulatory and signaling networks that govern the behavior of cells in their normal state and as they undergo malignant transformation.
Nanotechnology provides a platform for integrating efforts in proteomics with other scientific investigations into the molecular nature of cancer by giving researchers the opportunity to simultaneously measure gene and protein expression, recognize specific protein structures and structural domains, and follow protein transport among different cellular compartments. Similarly, nanoscale devices are already proving that they can deliver therapeutic agents that can act where they are likely to be most effective, that is, within the cell or even within specific organelles. Yet despite their small size, nanoscale devices can also hold tens of thousands of small molecules, such as a contrast agent or a multicomponent diagnostic system capable of assaying a cell’s metabolic state, creating the opportunity for unmatched sensitivity in detecting cancer in its earliest stages. For example, current approaches may link a monoclonal antibody to a single molecule of an MRI contrast agent, requiring that many hundreds or thousands of this construct reach and bind to a targeted cancer cell in order to create a strong enough signal to be detected via MRI. Now imagine the same cancer-homing monoclonal antibody attached to a nanoparticle that contains tens of thousands of the same contrast agent—if even one such construct reaches and binds to a cancer cell, it would be detectable.
unexpectedly from those of the corresponding bulk material because the quantum mechanical properties of atomic interactions are influenced by material variations on the nanometer scale. In fact, by creating nanometer-scale structures, it is possible to control fundamental characteristics of a material, including its melting point, magnetic properties, and even color, without changing the material’s chemical composition.
Nanoscale devices and nanoscale components of larger devices are of the same size as biological entities. They are smaller than human cells (10,000 to 20,000 nanometers in diameter) and organelles and similar in size to large biological macromolecules such as enzymes and receptors— hemoglobin, for example, is approximately 5 nm in diameter, while the lipid bilayer surrounding cells is on the order of 6 nm thick. Nanoscale devices smaller than 50 nanometers can easily enter most cells, while those smaller than 20 nanometers can transit out of blood vessels. As a result, nanoscale devices can readily interact with biomolecules on both the cell surface and within the cell, often in ways that do not alter the behavior and biochemical properties
of those molecules. From a scientific viewpoint, the actual construction and characterization of nanoscale devices may contribute to understanding carcinogenesis.
Noninvasive access to the interior of a living cell affords the opportunity for unprecedented gains on both clinical and basic research frontiers. The ability to simultaneously interact with multiple critical proteins and nucleic acids at the molecular scale should provide better understanding of the complex regulatory and signaling networks that govern the behavior of cells in their normal state and as they undergo malignant transformation.
Nanotechnology provides a platform for integrating efforts in proteomics with other scientific investigations into the molecular nature of cancer by giving researchers the opportunity to simultaneously measure gene and protein expression, recognize specific protein structures and structural domains, and follow protein transport among different cellular compartments. Similarly, nanoscale devices are already proving that they can deliver therapeutic agents that can act where they are likely to be most effective, that is, within the cell or even within specific organelles. Yet despite their small size, nanoscale devices can also hold tens of thousands of small molecules, such as a contrast agent or a multicomponent diagnostic system capable of assaying a cell’s metabolic state, creating the opportunity for unmatched sensitivity in detecting cancer in its earliest stages. For example, current approaches may link a monoclonal antibody to a single molecule of an MRI contrast agent, requiring that many hundreds or thousands of this construct reach and bind to a targeted cancer cell in order to create a strong enough signal to be detected via MRI. Now imagine the same cancer-homing monoclonal antibody attached to a nanoparticle that contains tens of thousands of the same contrast agent—if even one such construct reaches and binds to a cancer cell, it would be detectable.
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