Nutrition and Lifestyle Intervention on Mood and Neurological Disorders.

This group study explored how an intervention of diet and lifestyle, including a vegan diet, fruit and vegetable juicing, nutritional supplements, regular exercise, and destressing techniques, would affect 27 subjects with anxiety, depression, poor memory, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, history of stroke, or multiple sclerosis. Several subjects had overlapping conditions. Videotaped testimonials were obtained describing subjective results. Testimonials stated multiple benefits across all conditions addressed by the study, with subjects often reporting substantial benefits. These results demonstrate that an intervention of diet, juicing, supplements, exercise, and lifestyle may provide considerable benefits for all conditions addressed.

A needle probe to detect surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) within solid specimen.

A needle probe has been developed to obtain surface enhanced Raman scattering data from within a solid specimen located remotely from the spectrometer. It produces the high signal strength of a single mode optical fiber but with a negligible fiber induced background. The observed Raman signal strength is comparable to that obtained with a microscope objective of the same numerical aperture in a conventional spectrometer arrangement and many times larger than that of probes using two fibers.

Blazed grating fabrication through gray-scale Xray lithography.

Blazed gratings have been fabricated using gray-scale X-ray lithography. The gratings have high efficiency, low parasitic light, and high groove quality. The fabrication technique and resist characterization are described. The gratings can be generated over a considerable range of distances from the X-ray mask, thus demonstrating the ability to write gratings on a substrate of effectively arbitrary shape.

Clinical probe utilizing surface enhanced Raman scattering.

Conventional Raman scattering is a well-known technique for detecting and identifying complex molecular samples. In surface enhanced Raman scattering, a nanorough metallic surface close to the sample enormously enhances the Raman signal. In previous work, the metallic surface was a thin layer of gold deposited on a rough transparent epoxy substrate. The advantage of the clear substrate was that the Raman signal could be obtained by passing light through the substrate, on to opaque samples simply placed against its surface. In this work, a commercially available Raman spectrometer was coupled to a distant probe. Raman signals were obtained from the surface, and from the interior, of a solid specimen located more than 1 m away from the spectrometer. The practical advantage of this arrangement is that it opens up surface enhanced Raman spectrometry to a clinical environment, with a patient simply sitting or lying near the spectrometer.

Nanorough gold for enhanced Raman scattering.

Conventional Raman scattering is a workhorse technique for detecting and identifying complex molecular samples. In surface enhanced Raman scattering, a nanorough metallic surface close to the sample enhances the Raman signal enormously. In this work, the surface is on a clear epoxy substrate. The epoxy is cast on a silicon wafer, using 20 nm of gold as a mold release. This single step process already produces useful enhanced Raman signals. However, the Raman signal is further enhanced by (1) depositing additional gold on the epoxy substrate and (2) by using a combination of wet and dry etches to roughen the silicon substrate before casting the epoxy. The advantage of a clear substrate is that the Raman signal may be obtained by passing light through the substrate, with opaque samples simply placed against the surface. Results were obtained with solutions of Rhodamine 6G in deionized water over a range of concentrations from 1 nM to 1 mM. In all cases, the signal to noise ratio was greater than 10:1.

A novel somatostatin conjugate with a high affinity to all five somatostatin receptor subtypes.

BACKGROUND: Somatostatin receptors (SRS, five subtypes) are expressed in a variety of human tumors, including most tumors of neuroendocrine origin, breast tumors, certain brain tumors, renal cell tumors, lymphomas, and prostate cancer. Somatostatin (SMS) triggers cytostatic and cytotoxic effects and has a general inhibitory effect on secretion mediated through its interaction with SRS. That is the basis for its use in the treatment of SRS-positive tumors. Radiolabeled SMS analogs can also be used for systemic radiotherapy and for diagnostic investigations. METHODS: Sms-14 was conjugated to a periodate-activated dextran70 (mean molecular weight, 70 kD) by reductive amination. The human tumor cell line LCC-18, from a neuroendocrine colonic tumor, was used for stable transfection with each SRS gene separately; transfection was achieved with the expression system TETon (Clontech, Palo Alto, CA). Clones were selected by culturing with G418 and hygromycin B, and positive clones were identified by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction and binding of iodine-125-labeled SMS-14. The binding affinity for each SRS subtype was then determined for the SMS-dextran conjugate (with SMS-14 used as a positive control). RESULTS: Sms-dextran70 showed high affinity binding to all five receptor subtypes. The IC50 values were between 3 and 80 nM. CONCLUSIONS: This conjugate has a long circulation half-life (i.e., approximately 27 hours after subcutaneous administration in mice) and, with high SRS pan-affinity demonstrated in this study, it has potential in the therapy of SRS-positive tumors. Currently, the clinical significance of SMS-dextran70 is being explored in a clinical Phase I-II study of patients with hormone-refractory prostate cancer. The outcome of this study will be reported when it is available.