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May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
April 22, 2013
US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer
April 19, 2013
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy
Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds
April 17, 2013
Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom
Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
April 15, 2013
Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral
Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators
April 12, 2013
Mark Clayton: New cybersecurity bill: Privacy threat or crucial band-aid?
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jackie Robinson's Friend, Hank Greenberg; CNN's Jake Tapper; Texas County in the News is named for 19thC. Jewish soldier and Congressman
The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: FRUITY QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS: A flavorful, colorful and edible vessel of delicately fluffy, mildly nutty filling combined with chewy apricots, tangy cherries, and crunchy pistachios
April 10, 2013
Peter Grier: North Korean missiles: Could US shoot them down?
Morgan Housel: Warning: Don't waste your capital being fooled by profit prophets
Donald Hensrud, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Take vitamin supplements with caution --- even approved, they may actually do damage
Eryn Brown: 74 DNA discoveries move cure closer for three cancers
April 8, 2013
Jonathan Tobin: What Part of No Preconditions Do American Jews Not Get?
Fred Weir: Is Putin finally trading his own party for a new power base?
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Jewish World Review
Discovery could pave way for new technology to deliver drugs directly through the skin
By
Helen Thomson
New Scientist Magazine
Revolutionary research could substantially impact success of conventional healing techniques
JewishWorldReview.com |
Considering we know it like the back of our hands, we understand surprisingly little about how skin forms the watertight barrier that protects our body from the environment. Now, for the first time, the basic molecular structure of the skin layer that forms this barrier has been identified. The discovery could pave the way for new technology to deliver drugs directly through the skin in order to reduce side effects.
The structure and function of the skin barrier has long intrigued researchers. The barrier is known to lie in the outermost layer of skin the stratum corneum and more specifically in the fat that occupies the space between cells within this layer.
To get a clearer view of the fat, Lars Norlen at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues shaved a layer of skin from the forearm of five volunteers. They put the tissue in a high pressure freezer that immediately cooled it to below -140 degrees C. Using this technique, every atom is preserved in its native location, says Norlen.
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They then sliced the tissue into layers just 25 to 50 nanometres thick using a cooled diamond knife and examined the layers using an electron microscope, itself cooled to -180 degrees C. Elements of the freezing, tissue positioning and slicing process are difficult to perfect and can take a lot of practice to get right. "It takes months to get a single slice that thin but it gives you unprecedented resolution," Norlen says.
HAIRPIN TURN
What the researchers saw surprised them. Lipids have a hydrophilic (water-attracting) head and two hydrophobic (water-repelling) tails. Normally, the two tails point in the same direction, giving the molecule a hairpin-like appearance.
A group of lipid molecules typically arrange themselves into a two-layered sheet or bilayer with all of the tails pointing inwards. However, the lipid molecules in between the cells of the stratum corneum are splayed outwards so that the two tails of each molecule point in opposite directions.
These lipid molecules are stacked on top of one another in an alternating fashion. "By stretching out like this they form a more condensed structure which is much more impermeable than a normal bilayer," says Norlen.
COMPLETELY ROBUST
This uniquely structured fatty layer prevents any water from getting past in either direction except where the skin layer is modified to form pores. "There's no water present within this extracellular space," says Norlen. "It cannot perturb the barrier so it's completely robust to hydration, which is necessary for the changing environment that we live in."
The team now intend to construct a computer model of the skin to help them screen drugs that could potentially open this seemingly impermeable barrier. They hope this will enable widespread administration of drugs through the skin and directly into the blood supply, sidestepping side effects that are caused when orally administered drugs are metabolised in the liver and intestines.
Administering drugs through the skin would also allow doctors to target specific areas and over a more controlled time period. A further application would be the development of more realistic artificial skin.
"I think it's an excellent paper. They have developed a new model for skin structure that should be very helpful in transdermal drug delivery," says Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has previously experimented using ultrasound to increase the skin's permeability to drugs.
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