The idea is that one would ingest this capsule and its outer layer would dissolve in the digestive tract, exposing all these features that start to churn through the mucus and clear it. So in the drug delivery research, a new drug capsule that can be taken orally has been developed at MIT which can tunnel through mucus in the GI tract and aid large proteins such as insulin and small molecule drugs to be absorbed in the digestive tract. It is thought that one day these drug capsules may be able to replace insulin injections in diabetic patients.

The capsule developed has been named the ‘RoboCap’ capsule which is the size of a multivitamin, carries its drug payload in a small reservoir at one end and carries the tunneling features in its main body and surface. There is a robotic cap on the capsule which spins and tunnels through the mucus barrier on reaching the small intestine, permitting the drugs carried in the capsule to pass into cells lining the intestine. The capsule has gelatin coating on it which can be tuned to dissolve at a specific pH.

When the coating dissolves, the change in pH triggers a tiny motor inside the capsule to start spinning. This movement aids the capsule to tunnel into the mucus and displace it. With this displacement of mucus we can maximise the drug dispersion within the local area and enhance the absorption of both small and macromolecules. This displacement of mucus happens with the small studs which are coated on the capsule to brush away mucus. The spinning motion also helps to erode the compartment that carries the drug which is gradually released into the GI tract.

The RoboCap thus combines all the elements of tunneling, then displacing the mucus and delivering the drug optimally so that there is maximum drug absorption at the delivery site.

In tests in animals, the researchers used this capsule to deliver either insulin or vancomycin which is a large peptide antibiotic used to treat a broad range of infections including skin infections, infections affecting orthopedic implants. It was found that they were able to deliver 20 to 40 times more drug than a similar capsule without the tunneling mechanism. Once the drug is released, the capsule itself passes through the digestive tract on its own. There were no signs of inflammation or irritation in the digestive tract once the capsule passed through and also the mucus layer reformed within a few hours after being displaced by the capsule.

The study has been published in Science Robotics. In this study the capsule has released its payload in the small intestine but it could also be used to target the colon or stomach by changing the pH at which the coating of gelatin dissolves. The research team intends to explore the possibility of delivering other protein drugs like GLP1 receptor agonist which is sometimes used in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and also use these capsules to deliver topical drugs to treat ulcerative colitis and other inflammatory conditions by maximizing the local concentration of the drugs in the tissue to help treat the inflammation.

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The POWER Translation Grant will enable women academicians to fast-track the commercialisation of their technologies, and the POWER Mobility Grant will provide travel support for women scientists, engineers, and technologists to gain international research exposure.

Prof Sandeep Verma, Secretary, SERB, announced the new verticals under SERB’s POWER (Promoting Opportunities for Women in Exploratory Research) scheme. 

“We are glad to partner with IITGN in creating the right footprint to bring together the Indian women researcher’s community. With four verticals under the SERB’s POWER scheme, including the two newly launched grants, our women researchers would have the right kind of funding to come up with their original ideas and take it forward to the level that it can be benchmarked globally,” said Prof Verma.

Prof Amit Prashant, Officiating Director, IITGN, said, “These deliberations help nurture new friendships and lead to better productivity through collaborations.”

The inaugural session of the conclave was virtually addressed by Dr Archana Sharma, the only Indian staff scientist involved in the discovery of the ‘God particle’ and also the first Indian to get recruited by European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva. 

While addressing the women scientists, she highlighted various opportunities for curious minds in core and applied science, technology, and theory.  

“Studying science, engineering, or physics prepares you with a new set of very multidisciplinary skills and can have implications far outside our fields to make a huge social impact. In our country, science and engineering are being facilitated like never before. We should focus on strategic national priorities and engage in international projects in such a way that we are able to make a difference that is meaningful to our country. Articulate your dreams very well, hook on to what you want to do, and never stop,” said Dr Sharma.

Nearly 200 women scientists, researchers, academicians, industry professionals, entrepreneurs, students, and postdoctoral fellows from across the country participated in the two-day conclave, and discussed challenges and opportunities in the field. (India Science Wire).

ISW/USM/IITGN-SERB/Grant schemes/ENG/10/03/2022

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A very serious and common complication that can develop post cardiac surgery is acute kidney injury affecting nearly one-third of patients who have undergone heart surgeries in the UK. This scenario costs almost 1.2 billion pounds to the NHS per year. Acute kidney injury is 100 times more deadly than MRSAN (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) which is associated with short term and long term morbidity and mortality for patients. Taking a note of this, clinicians at Rinicare which is a Manchester based healthcare company, have devised a risk-prediction technology known as Stability UO (urine output).

This uses artificial intelligence to analyse routinely captured patient data particularly urine output of patients who are in recovery post-surgery. This platform can identify even subtle signs of deterioration and act as an early-warning system to prevent the development of serious and dangerous complications.

This system is also enabled to identify low-risk patients, allowing them to be safely removed from critical care units to free up bed space more quickly. It has been approved for use in the UK and is being evaluated in many NHS hospitals.

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Traditionally, these sectors have relied on coal, oil, and natural gas and have been some of the largest CO₂ emitters. The cost of green Hydrogen generation in India can be brought down by using low-cost renewable energy generating plants. As per a NITI Aayog Report, global demand for Hydrogen could grow by almost 400 percent by 2050, led by industry and transportation. The Ministry of Power (MoP) unveiled the first part of India’s Green Hydrogen Policy on 17 February 2022. It is one of the critical outcomes of the National Hydrogen Mission, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2021. 

Hydrogen gas on burning (combustion) with oxygen (air) generates a considerable amount of energy, generally 286,000 joules per mole of Hydrogen gas burned. It has a high energy density/mass of 120-142 MJ/kg; for gasoline, it is 44.5 MJ/kg. The process does not produce any toxic combustion by-products. Currently, Hydrogen used for the process is largely produced from conventional fuels. 

White Hydrogen is a naturally occurring version that can occasionally be found underground. In the US, nearly 80% of the Hydrogen is produced through Steam-Methane Reforming (SMR), known as grey Hydrogen. The fuel used is natural gas or methane. This process generates just a smaller amount of emissions than black or brown Hydrogen, which uses black (bituminous) or brown (lignite) coal in the Hydrogen-making process. It is the most damaging from the environmental point of view as it generates both carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. 

The Hydrogen is labelled blue whenever the carbon generated from steam reforming is captured and stored underground with the help of industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS). Blue Hydrogen is often referred to as carbon neutral as the emissions are not dispersed in the atmosphere. According to a study conducted by the International Energy Agency, the blue Hydrogen production is responsible for around 830 million tons of CO₂ emission annually. 

Hydrogen produced with the water electrolysis process (splitting water into Hydrogen and Oxygen) is known as green Hydrogen or “clean Hydrogen” as it is produced by using clean energy from surplus renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power and biomass. Alkaline and polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolysers are two commercially available green Hydrogen production technologies. Advanced electrolyser technologies like solid oxide and anion exchange membranes are also nearing commercial deployment. 

Reducing emissions from existing Hydrogen production is a challenge but also presents an opportunity to increase the scale of clean Hydrogen worldwide. It is possible by capturing, storing, or utilising the CO₂ produced from manufacturing Hydrogen using fossil fuels. There are currently several industrial facilities around the world, including India, that use this process. Efforts should be taken to increase the number of such facilities for enhanced impact. Expanding the use of clean Hydrogen in other sectors – such as transportation, steel, and energy management for commercial buildings would also create more traction.

India has a distinct advantage in low-cost renewable energy generation, which is said to be the factor making it most competitive in green Hydrogen. As per the analysis performed by RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute), adopting green Hydrogen will also result in 3.6 Giga tonnes of cumulative CO₂ emissions reductions between 2020 and 2050. 

Other than direct combustion, Hydrogen can be consumed by electricity generation through fuel cells and industrial processes to be used as chemical feedstock like fertilizer, plastics, fuel refining, metallurgy, steel, food, and glass industries. India’s first indigenous Hydrogen fuel cell bus was unveiled on 24 August 2022 in Pune, Maharashtra, by Union minister of state for science and technology Dr Jitendra Singh. It is a joint development effort of KPIT Technologies and the National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL). 

In the cell, the Hydrogen is fed to the anode and air to the cathode. A catalyst at the anode separates Hydrogen molecules into protons and electrons, and the electrons going through an external circuit create the flow of electricity, producing only heat and water as tailpipe emissions. A single diesel bus plying on long-distance routes typically emits 100 tons of CO₂ annually, and there are over a million such buses in India. Green Hydrogen-run buses will be the right solution to curb such pollution. In addition, it can also help reduce the nation’s reliance on oil imports and strengthen the domestic job market. 

Challenges of a Hydrogen economy are high costs, technicalities involving transporting and storing Hydrogen, supply chain complexity, regulations, and policy. The cost of green Hydrogen largely depends on the cost of electrolysers and electricity, operating price, transmission and distribution costs, local duties and taxes, etc. It is relatively high in India and lies between $7-4.10/kg but has the potential to reach $1.60/kg by 2030 and $0.70/kg by 2050. Such aspirational price targets will be conducive to green Hydrogen market development. 

India is undertaking a resolute march to scale up green Hydrogen production and utilisation. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has already developed an alkali water electrolysis technology for commercialization that can produce 10 Nm³/hr of Hydrogen. Central Electrochemical Research Institute (CSIR-CECRI) is currently designing electrodes and electrolytes for Hydrogen generation using seawater. The University of Lucknow is exploring the use of transition metal mixed oxides for alkaline water electrolysis and preparing electrodes. 

A consortium of institutes, including IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, IIT Jodhpur, CSIR-CECRI, BARC, and Dayalbagh Educational Institute, is developing a scalable design for a Solar-Hydrogen generation system using multiple technologies. Oil and Natural Gas Commission Energy Centre and IIT Delhi are utilizing the Sulphur-iodine thermochemical Hydrogen cycle to generate low-cost clean Hydrogen fuel for industrial consumption. A research group from the Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIR-CSIO), Chandigarh, headed by Dr Pooja Devi, Principal Scientist, is investigating wastewater as a feedstock for Hydrogen production instead of potable water. It can solve both the problem of wastewater management and clean Hydrogen generation. (India Science Wire)

ISW/SM/GREEN HYDROGEN/ENERGY/31/08/2022 

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Since all risk factors cannot be optimally managed before surgery, fragile patients need to be assessed properly and require particular pre-, peri and post-operative care when they are slated for major surgical procedures like primary joint replacement, hip arthroplasty and especially fracture treatment. Arthroplasty treatment for fragile patients is a major challenge for orthopedic surgeons.

So treating femoral neck fractures: Hemiarthroplasty is considered a good option for fragile patients. Hip fractures like proximal femoral fractures(neck fractures) occur frequently in geriatric cases occurring due to a fall, mostly facilitated by osteoporosis and other comorbidities. These severe injuries must and need to be taken seriously and require prompt surgical intervention. It is equally important to prevent and contain post-operative complications that occur at a much higher rate in this group of patients.

Another point of significance is targeted rehabilitation measures, which need to be taken in time so that it aids the patient recovery and helps them attain their mobility quickly after a hip fracture. Thus for patients who have poor general health, limited mobility and limited life expectancy, Hemiarthroplasty is a good option after a femoral neck fracture. Short duration of surgery and rapid mobilization after surgery with good and satisfactory functional, clinical and radiological outcomes are the positives of Hemiarthroplasty.

Preventing infection is absolutely essential when a surgeon is treating femoral fractures. Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) is a rare but devastating post-operative complication which occurs most commonly with proximal femoral fractures than with elective procedures. Particularly in polymorbid patients, treatment of a PJI is associated with a high rate of complications and high mortality. The 1 year mortality for older patients with a femoral neck fracture is twice as high as the control group of the same age with no fracture. Experts have expressed that the success rate decreases the more local and systemic risk factors there are.

Prevention of complications should be the highest priority since infection therapy is also associated with high costs and leads to financial loss for the hospitals. So a comprehensive package of measures needs to be taken for infection prevention. Bone cement containing antibiotics should be used to help prevent serious deep infections. Evidence shows that when treating femoral neck fractures with hemiarthroplasty with dual antibiotic loaded bone cement, the risk of PJI can be lowered upto 69% as compared to a low dose of single loaded bone cement. In some clinics in Germany, the use of dual loaded antibiotic bone cement has become standard for arthroplasty procedures in geriatric patients to avoid complications.

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The development of the vaccine was supported by DBT and BIRAC under the aegis of Mission COVID Suraksha. DBT launched the mission, and BIRAC implemented it to reinforce and accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development efforts as part of the Aatmanirbhar 3.0 programme. This is the fourth success story for the COVID-19 vaccine under mission COVID Suraksha.

Named BBV154, it is an intranasal replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus SARS-CoV-2 vector vaccine. It consists of a replication-deficient ChAd vector expressing the stabilized Spike SARS-CoV-2 (Wuhan variant).

DBT’s Autonomous Institute, National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi, utilized its Human Immune Monitoring and T-cell Immunoassay platform to examine the vaccine-induced SARS-CoV-2-specific systemic and mucosal cellular immune responses in the trial participants. Interactive Research School for Health Affairs (IRSHA), Pune, completed the Plaque Reduction Neutralization Assay (PRNT) to quantify the titer of neutralizing antibodies for the virus from three trial sites.

Commenting on the development, Dr, Rajesh S Gokhale, Secretary, DBT, and Chairperson, BIRAC, said, “The Department, through Mission COVID Suraksha, is committed to the development of safe and efficacious COVID-19 vaccines. BBV154 COVID Vaccine is the first intranasal vaccine approved by DCGI for primary immunization against COVID-19 in the 18+ age group, for restricted use in an emergency situation. An excellent example of the Aatmanirbharta initiative of the Government of India. I congratulate our scientists for partnering with Bharat Biotech and providing scientific leadership throughout the development of the vaccine”. (India Science Wire)

ISW/SP/DBT/COVIDVACCINE/07/09/2022

Corona virus (credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org)

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In comparison to a conventional endoscopic biopsy, the need of the hour is to have something which is more quick, cheap and comfortable to identify cases of Barret’s oesophagus and this has been achieved by Cyted which has developed a test kit known as ‘CYTOSPONGE’.

This is in the form of a pill-sized capsule attached to a length of fine thread. The patient ingests the capsule and most of the thread. Its cover dissolves in the stomach after a few minutes of ingestion, leaving a spherical rough sponge which collects a tissue sample from the oesophagus as it is pulled back up by the thread to be regurgitated.

In England and Scotland, the NHS is rolling out 3500 kits of cytosponge. NHS bodies are also working with Danish firm CorporateHealth International and West Midlands 5G on a pill-sized device containing two tiny cameras. Once it reaches the patient’s large intestine, this piece of smart tech will capture and send images straight to the lab for analysis via a 5G network, delivering what is known as a colon capsule endoscopy.

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The research team created an airway-on-a-chip which mimics respiratory organs consisting of airway epithelial cells and vascular epithelial cells and used this device to find out that SARS-COV-2 disrupts the vascular endothelial barrier by suppressing the expression of CLDN5 (Claudin 5,a protein involved in the adhesive junctions between vascular endothelial cells) and resultantly weakening the vascular endothelial cadherin-mediated junctions. It was also confirmed that CLDN5 gena and protein expression levels were decreased in the lungs of a patient with COVID-19. The team also demonstrated that increasing CLDN5 expression in vascular endothelial cells by gene transfer or small molecule drugs like Fluvastatin suppressed SARS-COV-2 induced vascular endothelial barrier disruption.

The ability of this organ-on-a-chip technology to reproduce the respiratory pathology of COVID-19 makes it a promising tool for elucidating the pathogenesis of severe respiratory tract infections including COVID-19 and developing therapeutic drugs in the future. The study is published in Science Advances.

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Artificial pancreas or closed-loop control systems are automated insulin delivery systems which track the users’ sugar levels in a continuous pattern and automatically deliver the insulin hormone when needed using an insulin pump. The bionic pancreas in comparison to other available artificial pancreas technologies, require less user input and provides more automation because it has algorithms which continuously adjust insulin doses automatically as per users’ needs. First time users of bionic pancreas initialize it by entering their body weight into the device’s dosing software where they do not have to count carbohydrates, nor initiate doses of insulin to correct for high blood sugar. Also the healthcare providers need not make periodic adjustments to the settings of the device, leading to a new level of ease to the day-to-day management of type 1 diabetes.

The trial was conducted across 16 clinical sites across the United States over a period of 13 weeks with 326 enrolled participants aged between 6 to 79 years who had type 1 diabetes and had been using insulin injections for at least one year.  There was random assignment of participants to either the treatment group using the bionic pancreas or a standard-of-care control group using their personal pre-study insulin delivery method. The control group participants were provided with a continuous glucose monitor and almost one-third of them were using commercially available artificial pancreas technology during the study period.

Glycated hemoglobin improved from 7.9% to 7.3% in participants using bionic pancreas in comparison to the standard-of-care control group, where it remained unchanged. The bionic pancreas group participants spent 11% (nearly 2.5 hours per day) more time within the targeted blood sugar range compared to the control group. Improvements were most evident in participants who had higher blood sugar levels at the beginning of the study, these results were the same in youth and adult participants.

In the bionic pancreas group, the most frequently reported adverse event was high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) caused by problems with insulin pump equipment. The number of episodes of low blood sugar was low and was not different between the groups. This study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Four companion papers were also published in Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics, two of which give more detailed results among the adult and youth participants. An extension study was also done, the results of which are published in a third paper in which the participants from the control group switched to using bionic pancreas for 13 weeks and experienced improvements in glucose control same as to the bionic pancreas group in the randomized trial. A fourth published paper showed that using the bionic pancreas with a faster acting insulin in 114 adult participants improved sugar control as effectively as using the device with standard insulin.

It is praiseworthy to have a device like bionic pancreas which can permit people to worry less about their blood sugar levels and focus on living their healthiest and fullest lives.

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