Southeast Asian Language Discovered

February 6, 2018 -- A previously unknown language has been found in the Malay Peninsula by linguists from Lund University in Sweden. The language has been given the name Jedek.

“Documentation of endangered minority languages such as Jedek is important, as it provides new insights into human cognition and culture”, says Joanne Yager, doctoral student at Lund University.

“Jedek is not a language spoken by an unknown tribe in the jungle, as you would perhaps imagine, but in a village previously studied by anthropologists. As linguists, we had a different set of questions and found something that the anthropologists missed”, says Niclas Burenhult, Associate Professor of General Linguistics at Lund University, who collected the first linguistic material from Jedek speakers.

The language is an Aslian variety within the Austroasiatic language family and is spoken by 280 people who are settled hunter-gatherers in northern Peninsular Malaysia.

The researchers discovered the language during a language documentation project, Tongues of the Semang, in which they visited several villages to collect language data from different groups who speak Aslian languages.

The discovery of Jedek was made while they were studying the Jahai language in the same area.

“We realised that a large part of the village spoke a different language. They used words, phonemes and grammatical structures that are not used in Jahai. Some of these words suggested a link with other Aslian languages spoken far away in other parts of the Malay Peninsula”, says Joanne Yager.

The community in which Jedek is spoken is more gender-equal than Western societies, there is almost no interpersonal violence, they consciously encourage their children not to compete, and there are no laws or courts. There are no professions either, rather everyone has the skills that are required in a hunter-gatherer community. This way of life is reflected in the language. There are no indigenous words for occupations or for courts of law, and no indigenous verbs to denote ownership such as borrow, steal, buy or sell, but there is a rich vocabulary of words to describe exchanging and sharing.

“There are so many ways to be human, but all too often our own modern and mainly urban societies are used as the yardstick for what is universally human. We have so much to learn, not least about ourselves, from the largely undocumented and endangered linguistic and cultural riches that are out there”, states Niclas Burenhult.

Joanne Yager and Niclas Burenhult have spent long periods of time working with speakers of Aslian languages. This is necessary in order to systematically study, observe and document the languages – it is not enough to simply conduct interviews.

“This work depends on devoted field workers with a strong passion for discovering more about linguistic diversity”, explains Niclas Burenhult.

An estimated 6,000 languages are currently spoken in the world. About 80 per cent of the world’s population speak one of the major world languages, while approximately 20 per cent speak one of the 3,600 smaller languages. Researchers believe that about half of the world’s languages will be extinct 100 years from now.

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/listen-unknown-language-discovered-in-southeast-asia

Magnesium Challenges Lithium Batteries

Texas A&M-Led Team Doubles Down on Energy Storage with Novel Metal-Oxide Magnesium Battery

College Station, Texas, Februry 1, 2018 -- A multi-institution team of scientists led by Texas A&M University chemist Sarbajit Banerjee has discovered an exceptional metal-oxide magnesium battery cathode material, moving researchers one step closer to delivering batteries that promise higher density of energy storage on top of transformative advances in safety, cost and performance in comparison to their ubiquitous lithium-ion (Li-ion) counterparts.

"The worldwide push to advance renewable energy is limited by the availability of energy storage vectors," says Banerjee in the team's paper, published today (Feb. 1) in the journal Chem, a new chemistry-focused journal by Cell Press. "Currently, lithium-ion technology dominates; however, the safety and long-term supply of lithium remain serious concerns. By contrast, magnesium is much more abundant than lithium, has a higher melting point, forms smooth surfaces when recharging, and has the potential to deliver more than a five-fold increase in energy density if an appropriate cathode can be identified."

Ironically, the team's futuristic solution hinges on a redesigned form of an old Li-ion cathode material, vanadium pentoxide, which they proved is capable of reversibly inserting magnesium ions.

"We've essentially reconfigured the atoms to provide a different pathway for magnesium ions to travel along, thereby obtaining a viable cathode material in which they can readily be inserted and extracted during discharging and charging of the battery," Banerjee says.

This rare phenomenon is achieved by limiting the location of the magnesium ions to relatively uncomfortable atomic positions by design, based on the way the vanadium pentoxide is made -- a property known as metastability. This metastability helps prevent the magnesium ions from getting trapped within the material and promotes complete harvesting of their charge-storing capacity with negligible degradation of the material after many charge-recharge cycles.

The Ins and Outs of Intercalation

Banerjee, a Davidson Professor of Science in the Texas A&M Department of Chemistry and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been working for a number of years to better understand ion intercalation -- the critical process by which ions like lithium and magnesium move in and out of other materials within intercalation batteries.

Using one of the world's most powerful soft X-ray microscopes -- the Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscope (STXM) and X-ray Emission beamlines -- at the Canadian Light Source in tandem with one of the world's highest resolution aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopes housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Banerjee and collaborators from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the UIC and Argonne National Laboratory were able to observe the unique electronic properties of their novel vanadium pentoxide and directly prove magnesium-ion intercalation into the material. Collectively, the team applied decades of combined experience in materials science to explain the fundamental reasons why this new type of vanadium pentoxide is superior to the old version as well as to Li-ion batteries.

Laptops and cell phones are two examples of the many technologies enabled by the rapid development of the lithium-ion battery, which revolutionized energy storage capacity and rechargeability in comparison to its lead-acid and nickel-metal hydride predecessors. However, given the widespread use of lithium not only in portable electronic devices but increasingly in the much larger batteries required for electric vehicles and grid energy storage, lithium is expected to be in increasingly short supply in the long-term. Furthermore, Li-ion batteries are a risky game, as highlighted by recent widely publicized reports detailed in Scientific American, Reuters and Forbes, for example, in which Li-ion-powered devices have either caught fire or exploded as a result of the fundamental flammability and reactivity of lithium.

"Apart from being much safer for consumer applications, magnesium-ion technology is appealing fundamentally because each magnesium ion gives up two electrons per ion -- twice the charge, whereas each lithium ion gives up only one," says Texas A&M chemistry graduate student and NASA Space Technology Research Fellow Justin Andrews, first author on the team's paper. "This means that, all other considerations aside, if you can store as much magnesium in a material as you can store lithium, you immediately almost double the capacity of the battery."

Double the Capacity, Double the Trouble

But for all their perceived advantages, magnesium batteries have proven too good to be true since they were first proposed in the 1990s and essentially sidelined by a variety of problems; primarily, the lack of a suitable cathode, or positive electrode -- otherwise known as the part of a battery where the magnesium ions enter during discharge of the battery to power an electronic device and then exit during charging.

"Indeed, the most exciting thing about magnesium ions -- namely, that they store twice the charge in battery applications -- also forms the basis for the biggest challenge," says collaborating UIC chemist Jordi Cabana. "The higher charge of the magnesium ions make them 'stick' much more strongly with surrounding atoms."

In other words, Banerjee says, the magnesium ions get waylaid as they are traversing through the paths within the cathode material. Their sluggish movement is what makes it so difficult to make viable magnesium batteries.

"In many structures, some of these interactions are very favorable, meaning that the magnesium is quite happy to sit and stay a while in those specific sites," Andrews explains. "In our material, the magnesium is 'frustrated' as it moves through the lattice, because it encounters many less-than-optimal environments. In this sense, it is more than happy to just keep moving right along, leading to an improvement in capacity and diffusion."

The team's National Science Foundation-funded research features two additional current and former Texas A&M graduate students, Abhishek Parija and Peter M. Marley, respectively. David Prendergast, a Facility Director at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy National User Facility for Nanoscale Science Research, helped the Texas A&M team design and interpret their calculations, which were experimentally verified in part by Fakra using Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source along with structural data collected at Argonne National Lab's Advanced Photon Source. Atomic resolution images of the new form of vanadium pentoxide were collected in collaboration with UIC physicist Robert F. Klie and physics graduate student Arijita Mukherjee and show direct evidence of magnesium intercalated within the material. Battery measurements that show reversibility and confirm the robustness of the cathode material complete the story and were conducted in collaboration with Cabana and former Cabana group member Hyun Deog Yoo.

"On paper, magnesium batteries are highly desirable because they promise greater energy density on top of the ability to solve several of the key issues researchers -- and unfortunately consumers -- are discovering with lithium-ion batteries, including cost, safety, and performance at the most fundamental levels," Andrews says. "But the shift from lithium- to magnesium-ion technologies is not straightforward, and the many problems encountered when designing magnesium-ion cathodes have stymied the development of these more sustainable and safer batteries."

Working Toward a Safer Energy Future

Andrews says the team's research marks an important turning point in the field because it represents a significant advance toward solving the cathode problem while also highlighting the inherent advantages of using much more imaginative, metastable materials like this new form of vanadium pentoxide. But even he admits there's much more work to do before this particular '90s trend comes back in vogue.

"While this research has provided a great deal of insight, there are still several other fundamental problems to overcome before magnesium batteries become a reality," Andrews adds. "Nevertheless, this work moves magnesium batteries one step closer to reality -- namely, a reality where batteries would be less-expensive, lighter and safer for allowing for easier adoption to large-area formats necessary for electric vehicles and to store energy generated by solar and wind sources."

The team's Chem paper, "Reversible Mg-Ion Insertion in a Metastable One-Dimensional Polymorph of V₂O₅," can be viewed online along with related figures and captions.

http://www.science.tamu.edu/news/story.php?story_ID=1929#.WnpLveRy66q

Planets Found Outside Milky Way

Norman, Oklahoma – February 2, 2018 -- A University of Oklahoma astrophysics team has discovered for the first time a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Using microlensing—an astronomical phenomenon and the only known method capable of discovering planets at truly great distances from the Earth among other detection techniques—OU researchers were able to detect objects in extragalactic galaxies that range from the mass of the Moon to the mass of Jupiter.

Xinyu Dai, professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, OU College of Arts and Sciences, with OU postdoctoral researcher Eduardo Guerras, made the discovery with data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, a telescope in space that is controlled by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

“We are very excited about this discovery. This is the first time anyone has discovered planets outside our galaxy,” said Dai. “These small planets are the best candidate for the signature we observed in this study using the microlensing technique. We analyzed the high frequency of the signature by modeling the data to determine the mass.”

While planets are often discovered within the Milky Way using microlensing, the gravitational effect of even small objects can create high magnification leading to a signature that can be modeled and explained in extragalactic galaxies. Until this study, there has been no evidence of planets in other galaxies.

“This is an example of how powerful the techniques of analysis of extragalactic microlensing can be. This galaxy is located 3.8 billion light years away, and there is not the slightest chance of observing these planets directly, not even with the best telescope one can imagine in a science fiction scenario,” said Guerras. “However, we are able to study them, unveil their presence and even have an idea of their masses. This is very cool science.”

For this study, OU researchers used the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The microlensing models were calculated at the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research.

A paper, “Probing Planets in Extragalactic Galaxies Using Quasar Microlensing,” by Dai and Guerras on this study has been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. For more information about this research, contact OU Professor Dai at xdai@ou.edu.

http://www.ou.edu/content/publicaffairs/archives/2018/OUAstrophysictsDiscoverPlanetsinExtragalacticGalaxies.html

Basics of Euclidean Geometry

Euclidean geometry is a mathematical system attributed to the Alexandrian Greek mathematician Euclid, which he described in his textbook on geometry: the Elements. Euclid's method consists in assuming a small set of intuitively appealing axioms, and deducing many other propositions (theorems) from these. Although many of Euclid's results had been stated by earlier mathematicians, Euclid was the first to show how these propositions could fit into a comprehensive deductive and logical system. The Elements begins with plane geometry, still taught in secondary school as the first axiomatic system and the first examples of formal proof. It goes on to the solid geometry of three dimensions. Much of the Elements states results of what are now called algebra and number theory, explained in geometrical language.

For more than two thousand years, the adjective "Euclidean" was unnecessary because no other sort of geometry had been conceived. Euclid's axioms seemed so intuitively obvious (with the possible exception of the parallel postulate) that any theorem proved from them was deemed true in an absolute, often metaphysical, sense. Today, however, many other self-consistent non-Euclidean geometries are known, the first ones having been discovered in the early 19th century. An implication of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity is that physical space itself is not Euclidean, and Euclidean space is a good approximation for it only where the gravitational field is weak.

Euclidean geometry is an example of synthetic geometry, in that it proceeds logically from axioms to propositions without the use of coordinates. This is in contrast to analytic geometry, which uses coordinates.

Methods of Proof

Euclidean Geometry is constructive. Postulates 1, 2, 3, and 5 assert the existence and uniqueness of certain geometric figures, and these assertions are of a constructive nature: that is, we are not only told that certain things exist, but are also given methods for creating them with no more than a compass and an unmarked straightedge. In this sense, Euclidean geometry is more concrete than many modern axiomatic systems such as set theory, which often assert the existence of objects without saying how to construct them, or even assert the existence of objects that cannot be constructed within the theory. Strictly speaking, the lines on paper are models of the objects defined within the formal system, rather than instances of those objects. For example, a Euclidean straight line has no width, but any real drawn line will. Though nearly all modern mathematicians consider nonconstructive methods just as sound as constructive ones, Euclid's constructive proofs often supplanted fallacious nonconstructive ones—e.g., some of the Pythagoreans' proofs that involved irrational numbers, which usually required a statement such as "Find the greatest common measure of ..."

Euclid often used proof by contradiction. Euclidean geometry also allows the method of superposition, in which a figure is transferred to another point in space. For example, proposition I.4, side-angle-side congruence of triangles, is proved by moving one of the two triangles so that one of its sides coincides with the other triangle's equal side, and then proving that the other sides coincide as well. Some modern treatments add a sixth postulate, the rigidity of the triangle, which can be used as an alternative to superposition.

                                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_geometry

Monitoring Potential Asteroid Impacts

A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit can bring it into proximity with Earth. By definition, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical unit (AU). If a NEO's orbit crosses that of the Earth's and the object is larger than 140 meters across, it is considered a potentially hazardous object (PHO). Most known PHOs and NEOs are asteroids.

Known NEOs include more than seventeen thousand near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), more than one hundred near-Earth comets (NECs), and a number of solar-orbiting spacecraft and meteoroids, large enough to be tracked in space before striking the Earth. It is now widely accepted that collisions in the past have had a significant role in shaping the geological and biological history of the Earth. NEOs have become of increased interest since the 1980s because of increased awareness of the potential danger some of the asteroids or comets pose, and methods of mitigation are being researched.

Based on the orbit calculations of NEOs, the risk of future impacts is assessed on two scales, the Torino scale and the more complex Palermo scale, both of which rate a risk of any significance with values above 0. Some NEOs have had positive initial Torino or Palermo scale ratings after their discovery, but as of January 2018, more precise calculations based on subsequent observations led to a reduction of the rating to or below 0 in all cases.

The United States, European Union, and other nations are currently scanning for NEOs in an effort called Spaceguard. In the United States and since 1998, NASA has a congressional mandate to catalogue all NEOs that are at least 1 kilometer (km) wide, as the impact of such an object would be globally catastrophic. In 2006, it was estimated that 20% of the mandated objects had not yet been found. In 2011, NASA estimated that, largely as a result of its NEOWISE survey program, 93% of the NEAs larger than 1 km had been found and that only about 70 remained to be discovered. As of January 5, 2018, 886 NEAs larger than 1 km have been discovered, of which 157 are potentially hazardous. The inventory is much less complete for smaller objects, which still have potential for large scale, though not global, damage. To improve on that, NASA's Spaceguard mandate was extended in 2005 to objects at least 140 meters in diameter, and since 2016, NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office aims to track NEOs larger than 30 to 50 meters in diameter.

Due to their Earth-like orbits and low surface gravity, some NEOs can be approached by spacecraft with a relatively low energy (and thus fuel) expenditure. Since the 1970s, both manned and unmanned missions have been proposed. As of January 2018, three near-Earth asteroids have been visited by spacecraft, and two more are en route for future rendezvous. Plans to mine NEAs commercially have been picked up by a private company.

Risk as a Near Earth Object Frame of Reference

From the late 1990s, a typical frame of reference for looking at NEOs has been through the scientific concept of risk. In this frame, the risk that any near-Earth object poses is typically seen through a lens that is a function of both the culture and the technology of human society. Through history, humans have associated NEOs with changing risks, based on religious, philosophical or scientific views, as well as humanity's technological or economical capability to deal with risks. Thus, NEOs have been seen as omens of natural disasters or wars, harmless spectacle in an unchanging universe, the source of era-changing cataclysms, the source of potentially poisonous fumes (during Earth's passage through the tail of Halley's Comet in 1910), and finally as the causes of crater-forming impacts that can even cause extinction.

For near-Earth comets, the potential of catastrophic impacts was recognised as soon as orbit calculations have been made: in 1694, Edmond Halley presented a theory that Noah's flood in the Bible was caused by a comet impact. Human perception of near-Earth asteroids as benign objects of fascination or killer objects with high risk to human society has ebbed and flowed in the short period of human history that NEAs have been scientifically observed. The modern awareness of the threat of impacts that create craters much bigger than the impacting bodies and have indirect effects on an even wider area arose in the 1990s, after the confirmation of a theory that the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (in which dinosaurs died out) 65 million years ago was caused by a large asteroid impact, and the observation of the impact of the fragments of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 into Jupiter in July 1994.

                               https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object

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See Also

Asteroid Impact Avoidance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance

Friction Found in Superfluids

Friction Found Where There Should Be None: in Superfluids near Absolute Zero
Physicists at Aalto University have discovered
unexpected friction while rotating superfluid helium

Otaniemi, Finland -- February 1, 2018 -- Understanding the causes and effects of the friction could pave the way for explorations into the composition of neutron stars and our universe. Here on Earth, the Aalto researchers’ results will be invaluable for curtailing the production of heat and unwanted glitches in quantum computer components.

“For now, we have to study the phenomenon itself more in depth, before we can have insight exhaustive enough to be applied to experimental research and developing technologies,” notes Jere Mäkinen, doctoral researcher at Aalto University.

The researchers have rotated a container filled with superfluid helium-3 isotopes near absolute zero temperature. The rotating fluid mimics the motion of solid bodies, creating tiny, identical hurricanes called vortices.

When the vortices are in stable and ordered laminar motion at zero temperature, as opposed in endlessly chaotic turbulence, there should be no friction nor means for a vortex to transfer any kinetic energy to its surroundings.

Yet that is exactly what Mäkinen and his supervisor, Dr. Vladimir Eltsov, have now found to happen.

“What we suspect could be a source of the friction are quasi-particles trapped in the cores of the vortices. When the vortices accelerate, the particles gain kinetic energy which dissipates to surrounding particles and creates friction,” explains Mäkinen.

“In turbulent systems, kinetic energy always dissipates from the motion of vortices, but up to now everyone had thought that when vortices are in laminar motion the dissipation of energy is zero at zero temperature. But it turns out, it’s not,” continues Vladimir Eltsov.

Mäkinen compares the dissipation of heat to shaking a box full of table tennis balls: they gain kinetic energy from the moving box and the other balls bouncing around.

Preventing the vortices from dissipating heat and therefore friction, would, for example, enhance the performance of and the ability to retain data in superconducting components used to construct quantum computers.

A neutron star in a lab – the first step towards understanding turbulence

The holy grail of studies on quantum turbulence is to understand and explain turbulence in everyday liquids and gases. The work of Mäkinen and Eltsov is an initial step towards coming to grips with the inner workings of vortices in superfluids. From there, one could move on to comprehending turbulence in our everyday environment, in a ‘classic’ state.

The implications could spin entire industries around. New ways to improve aerodynamics of planes and vehicles of all kinds or controlling the flow of oil or gas in pipelines would open up, just to name a few.

Mysteries of the universe are also contained in these experiments. Collapsed, massively heavy neutron stars are believed to contain complex superfluid systems. Glitches and abnormalities like sudden changes in the stars’ rotation speed, could be caused by bursts of vortices and similar energy dissipation to the one now discovered in the experiments at Aalto University.

J. T. Mäkinen and V. B. Eltsov: ‘Mutual friction in superfluid 3He−B in the low-temperature regime’ Phys. Rev. B 97, 014527

https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.014527

doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.014527

    Above text all unedited from: http://www.aalto.fi/en/current/news/2018-02-01-002/

Cancer "Vaccine" Eliminates Tumors in Mice

Activating T cells in tumors eliminated even distant metastases in mice, Stanford researchers found. Lymphoma patients are being recruited to test the technique in a clinical trial.

Stanford Medicine – January 31, 2018 -- Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer in the animals, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The approach works for many different types of cancers, including those that arise spontaneously, the study found.

The researchers believe the local application of very small amounts of the agents could serve as a rapid and relatively inexpensive cancer therapy that is unlikely to cause the adverse side effects often seen with bodywide immune stimulation.

“When we use these two agents together, we see the elimination of tumors all over the body,” said Ronald Levy, MD, professor of oncology. “This approach bypasses the need to identify tumor-specific immune targets and doesn’t require wholesale activation of the immune system or customization of a patient’s immune cells.”

One agent is currently already approved for use in humans; the other has been tested for human use in several unrelated clinical trials. A clinical trial was launched in January to test the effect of the treatment in patients with lymphoma.

Levy, who holds the Robert K. and Helen K. Summy Professorship in the School of Medicine, is the senior author of the study, which was published Jan. 31 in Science Translational Medicine. Instructor of medicine Idit Sagiv-Barfi, PhD, is the lead author.

‘Amazing, bodywide effects’

Levy is a pioneer in the field of cancer immunotherapy, in which researchers try to harness the immune system to combat cancer. Research in his laboratory led to the development of rituximab, one of the first monoclonal antibodies approved for use as an anticancer treatment in humans.

Some immunotherapy approaches rely on stimulating the immune system throughout the body. Others target naturally occurring checkpoints that limit the anti-cancer activity of immune cells. Still others, like the CAR T-cell therapy recently approved to treat some types of leukemia and lymphomas, require a patient’s immune cells to be removed from the body and genetically engineered to attack the tumor cells. Many of these approaches have been successful, but they each have downsides — from difficult-to-handle side effects to high-cost and lengthy preparation or treatment times.

“All of these immunotherapy advances are changing medical practice,” Levy said. “Our approach uses a one-time application of very small amounts of two agents to stimulate the immune cells only within the tumor itself. In the mice, we saw amazing, bodywide effects, including the elimination of tumors all over the animal.”

Cancers often exist in a strange kind of limbo with regard to the immune system. Immune cells like T cells recognize the abnormal proteins often present on cancer cells and infiltrate to attack the tumor. However, as the tumor grows, it often devises ways to suppress the activity of the T cells.

Levy’s method works to reactivate the cancer-specific T cells by injecting microgram amounts of two agents directly into the tumor site. (A microgram is one-millionth of a gram). One, a short stretch of DNA called a CpG oligonucleotide, works with other nearby immune cells to amplify the expression of an activating receptor called OX40 on the surface of the T cells. The other, an antibody that binds to OX40, activates the T cells to lead the charge against the cancer cells. Because the two agents are injected directly into the tumor, only T cells that have infiltrated it are activated. In effect, these T cells are “prescreened” by the body to recognize only cancer-specific proteins.

Cancer-destroying rangers

Some of these tumor-specific, activated T cells then leave the original tumor to find and destroy other identical tumors throughout the body.

The approach worked startlingly well in laboratory mice with transplanted mouse lymphoma tumors in two sites on their bodies. Injecting one tumor site with the two agents caused the regression not just of the treated tumor, but also of the second, untreated tumor. In this way, 87 of 90 mice were cured of the cancer. Although the cancer recurred in three of the mice, the tumors again regressed after a second treatment. The researchers saw similar results in mice bearing breast, colon and melanoma tumors.

I don’t think there’s a limit to the type of tumor we could potentially treat, as long as it has been infiltrated by the immune system.

Mice genetically engineered to spontaneously develop breast cancers in all 10 of their mammary pads also responded to the treatment. Treating the first tumor that arose often prevented the occurrence of future tumors and significantly increased the animals’ life span, the researchers found.

Finally, Sagiv-Barfi explored the specificity of the T cells by transplanting two types of tumors into the mice. She transplanted the same lymphoma cancer cells in two locations, and she transplanted a colon cancer cell line in a third location. Treatment of one of the lymphoma sites caused the regression of both lymphoma tumors but did not affect the growth of the colon cancer cells.

“This is a very targeted approach,” Levy said. “Only the tumor that shares the protein targets displayed by the treated site is affected. We’re attacking specific targets without having to identify exactly what proteins the T cells are recognizing.”

The current clinical trial is expected to recruit about 15 patients with low-grade lymphoma. If successful, Levy believes the treatment could be useful for many tumor types. He envisions a future in which clinicians inject the two agents into solid tumors in humans prior to surgical removal of the cancer as a way to prevent recurrence due to unidentified metastases or lingering cancer cells, or even to head off the development of future tumors that arise due to genetic mutations like BRCA1 and 2.

“I don’t think there’s a limit to the type of tumor we could potentially treat, as long as it has been infiltrated by the immune system,” Levy said.

The work is an example of Stanford Medicine’s focus on precision health, the goal of which is to anticipate and prevent disease in the healthy and precisely diagnose and treat disease in the ill.

The study’s other Stanford co-authors are senior research assistant and lab manager Debra Czerwinski; professor of medicine Shoshana Levy, PhD; postdoctoral scholar Israt Alam, PhD; graduate student Aaron Mayer; and professor of radiology Sanjiv Gambhir, MD, PhD.

http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/01/cancer-vaccine-eliminates-tumors-in-mice.html