Anne Kiltie and her team.

By 2066, its predicted that around a quarter of the total UK population will be over 65 years old. A number approximately equivalent to the population of London.

This is in part due to increasing life expectancy, a result of progress made through medical research. But as life expectancy increases, an ageing population brings up a whole host of new challenges for healthcare, as weve blogged about before.

One of these problems is considering the side effects of cancer treatments, which can often be experienced more intensely by older patients.

We can see this with radiosensitisation, where additional treatment, such as small doses of chemotherapy, can be added to enhance the sensitivity of a tumour to radiotherapy.

But this comes at the cost of harmful side effects.

We caught up with Professor Anne Kiltie and PhD student, Chee Then, who are part of a team looking into the relationship between the gut microbiome and radiosensitisation in bladder cancer.

A radiosensitiser can be thought of as an enhancer, an additional agent that increases the sensitivity of tumour cells to radiotherapy.

So classically, radiotherapy was given on its own for any sort of tumour. And then people discovered that if you add a little bit of chemo at the same time as giving radiotherapy,it acts locally to enhance the effects of the radiotherapy, explains Kiltie.

This is often the case for patients who are being treated for pelvic tumours including cervical, rectal and bladder cancers. The problem, Kiltie explains, is that the radiosensitising chemotherapy frequently results in increased toxicity in local organs and tissues, causing negative side effects.

And these negative side effects may be too much for older people to cope with. Kiltie has witnessed this first-hand in her clinics. The median age of my radiotherapy patients is about 81 to 82, Kiltie explains, and patients older than this end up having radiotherapy alone.

So Kiltie and Then set out on the hunt for a radiosensitiser with reduced side effects, which led them to the gut.

The gut is one of the most widely researched parts of the body, but scientists are finding out eye-opening information about the gut and its unusual inhabitants every day.

More specifically, the trillions of bacteria, fungi and viruses that call the human body home, often called the microbiome.

The vibrant community of bugs can help protect us from harm, programming our immune system as well as providing nutrients for our cells. And its a real area of interest for cancer research.

Scientists, including our OPTIMISTICC Cancer Grand Challenges team, are interested in a whole host of possible links between the gut and cancer, from looking for cancer clues in poo, to discovering unique strains of bacteria that could act as a genetic marker for bowel cancer.

So far, changes to the gut microbiome enhancing anti-cancer treatment have only been explored in the context of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, but there is not any study about radiotherapy and the gut microbiome, says Then.

Because of its effect on the microbiome, scientists are also interested in the role that diet particularly high fibre foods can play in cancer. Previous studies have looked at how a high fibre diet has the capacity to reduce tumour growth, but havent looked explicitly at the mechanism behind how a high fibre diet could change the bacterial composition in the gut.

Kiltie and her team wanted to explore this gap in the research by further examining the connection between the microbiome and radiotherapy.

The lab focussed their work on mice with a compromised immune system and bladder cancer, who were fed a variety of fibre diets. We treated the mice with either a low fibre diet, or a high soluble fibre or insoluble fibre diet or a mix of the two, Then explains.

The team went on to analyse the composition of the gut microbiome of the different groups of mice, and how they responded to radiotherapy.

The team found that the mice fed with the high soluble fibre diet on average had the slowest tumour growth rate following small doses of radiotherapy.

Changes to fibre consumption can be seen almost immediately in the mices poo. With an indication of an increased amount of a short chain fatty acid known to confer anti-cancer effects, called butyrate.

Interestingly, and more unexpectedly, of the mice administered the high soluble fibre diet, those who responded to radiotherapy were enriched with a strain of bacterium known as Bacteroides acidifaciens. A relatively newly-discovered bacterium, I suppose isolated in 2000, Then comments.

The team believe the increase in the Bacteroides acidifaciens could be the missing link between the change in fibre consumption, short chain fatty acids and radiosensitisation. And that this bacterial strain plays a crucial role in the production of short chain fatty acids.

So, the gut microbiota needs the fibre to produce short chain fatty acids and we think that this might be a potential radiosensitiser, Then explains.

Like Kiltie and Chee, Our Cancer Grand Challenges OPTIMISTICC team are also investigating correlations between the microbiome and treatment response. Some of their latest work has identified a bacterial strain which is associated with a higher chance of relapse of patients with rectal cancer who have been treated with chemotherapy.

Kiltie and her team believe the proof is in the fibre. And it wont take any expensive medicine to get this into practice, but repurposing of an existing treatment.

The team are looking into different types of fibre, including ispaghula husk. This is currently administered as a standard treatment for radiotherapy patients, but as a way to reduce diarrhoea.

Currently, patients only start taking it halfway through their radiotherapy to help the side effects, explains Kiltie. But the argument is that the fibre can actually increase the short chain fatty acid production.

The idea would be to get patients to take the fibre supplement before and during their radiotherapy to act as a radiosensitiser, whilst also reducing side effects. And most importantly, this would be something easily administered to older patients.

The beauty of ispaghula husk, or whatever fibre supplement we end up giving, is its a medicine and old people take lots medicines and theyre generally pretty compliant, says Kiltie. To try and modify somebodys diet is unlikely to work in a 78-year old, theyre probably going to say no way.

Its early days, and the team have lots planned before they can trial it in humans, but the latest results are promising. The idea has been kind of boiling, bubbling along for two or three years, says Kiltie, but to actually show something in the mice is really exciting.

Lilly

Then, C.K., Paillas, S., Wang, X. et al. (2020). Association of Bacteroides acidifaciens relative abundance with high-fibre diet-associated radiosensitisation. BMC Biol 18, 102. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-020-00836-x

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The team tackling the serious side effects of cancer treatment in an ageing population - Cancer Research UK - Science Blog

For 20 years, thousands of eager adults signed up for personal and professional development classes through a little-known upstate New York company blandly called Executive Success Programs, or ESP.

Started in 1998, the lessons beginning at five-day sessions taught students to change habitual behaviors, reject needless fear and gain full control over their response to any situation. Empowering as that sounds, however, these teachings had a much more insidious goal.

In 2017, it was revealed that the workshops, operating near Albany under an umbrella group called Nxivm, were concealing a reprehensible sex cult. It was later alleged in high-profile criminal prosecutions of several Nxivm members that pretty young women were turned into slaves, made to eat restricted-calorie diets, forced into bed with the companys founder and, most barbarically, branded on their pelvis with the pervs initials.

The rise and fall of Nxivm is the subject of a captivating nine-part HBO documentary series, called The Vow, which starts Sunday night and exposes how one persons charisma and calm-voiced coercion can destroy countless lives.

Nxivm was unlike any cult youve heard about before. For one, it was not a religion or a commune, but a reputable business, albeit an alleged pyramid scheme. Even now, it is repeatedly referred to by its defectors as the company, as though it offered health insurance rather than bunk science and PTSD. Bucking the usual cult cliches, Nxivms members were not financially struggling runaways, but millionaires, TV stars and even royalty. Seagram Company heiress Clare Bronfman reportedly bankrolled Nxivm to the tune of $150 million over 15 years.

And they were all in the snare of Keith Raniere, a short, bespectacled, Brooklyn-born man with a Jesus haircut and hypnotists voice. He called himself Vanguard, and everyone else had to as well. Its creepy.

Filmmaker and former high-ranking member of ESP, Mark Vicente, whose wealth of archival footage makes the doc extraordinary, said of their strange first meeting, There was part of me that was like, This is the dude?

A pianist, judo master and self-styled scientist, Raniere, now 59, also enjoyed kissing everybody on the lips as a greeting.

If this guy created all these things that are helping so many people, who cares about the kissing-on-the-lips thing?, Bonnie Piesse, the actress who played young Aunt Beru in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, said in the doc.

Women were especially transfixed by Ranieres ideas and often fell in love with him. Early in the organizations history, he was having sexual relationships with at least 12 female employees at once, according to a spurned lover in the documentary.

At their compound in Albany, the founder would host bizarre late-night volleyball games past 1 a.m., an odd obsession of his, and followers would flock to the gym to compete and ask him questions. As he rambles New Age gobbledygook, we see Nxivm members shower him in adoration in footage captured by Vicente.

These theories that so enamored the crowd that pain could feel good, or that fear was a choice would later be used to enforce sexual servitude.

Piesse, who was recruited by and later married Vicente, recorded a conversation between her and Raniere during a walk one evening. She was expressing to him her concerns about her job as a proctor, working 23-hour days for no money with little time to eat, leading her to nearly pass out during a Nxivm singing rehearsal.

If you pass out, you pass out, Raniere said. Ive done that. But when there are higher values, when youre connecting with people, when you are serving humanity, which is serving your inner self? And that sort of servitude is not slavery.

The leader said, What are you scared of? Whats really gonna happen to you? Im not going to put you in a chamber and torture you.

Longtime members Piesse, Vicente and Sarah Edmondson unceremoniously left Nxivm in 2017. Their move was risky because the group is known for being highly litigious, breaking and entering into former employees homes and seeking revenge. But the departure was unavoidable after they made the disturbing discovery of a faction called DOS.

Nxivm contained many different specific entities. Jness was a subset meant to embolden powerful women, while the SOP (Society of Protectors) was a macho bunch of dudes building the leaders of tomorrow; Exo/eso was exercise- and arts-focused. Thousands of people took classes, and the most dedicated ascended the stripe path, a tiered, color-coded system of seniority determined by recruitment and dedication.

But DOS wasnt mentioned on the groups website or fliers.

Started by Raniere and Smallville actress Allison Mack, Dominus Obsequious Sororium was a horrific secret society of masters and slaves, in which one woman would recruit another woman and then have total control over everything she did, according to court papers. To join, which is described in audio recordings as a high honor, women needed to continuously provide collateral usually nude photos and damaging information. Sometimes, they signed over the deed to their home.

Once the woman made the sacred vow, she was branded like cattle with a symbol combining Raniere and Macks initials. In Edmondsons case, she was taken blindfolded to Macks house for the two-hour ritual, and then forced to watch her friends scream as their flesh was seared before her own torture.

I was just thinking, How the fk am I gonna get out?, Edmondson said in the doc. And they werent doing well. They were squirming, they were crying, they were twitching, they were sweating. And at one point Lauren [Salzman, daughter of Nxivm co-founder Nancy Salzman] pulled me aside and said, Youre green [a level in the company]. You need to show them how to do this. Edmondson had to be the example, and choose to not feel fear.

I was just thinking, How the f--k am I gonna get out?

In the doc, viewers learn about Readiness Drills, in which a master texts her slave, ? and then the slave must reply, RM, short for Ready, Master, within one minute. Before every meal, calories must be counted and approved by the master. And, in one of the sickest assignments, the women were tasked with seducing Raniere and having him take a nude photo to prove the encounter occurred.

All the while, they were forced to continue doing the day-to-day work of Nxivm for little to no money, and the perv-protecting organization kept teaching as if nothing was going on.

The groups wrongdoings finally came to light in 2017, first by a blog called the Frank Report, run by Nxivms former publicist, Frank Parlato, and then in the New York Times, The Post and other publications. Although the efforts of Edmondson, Vicente and Piesse to expose the organizations wrongdoings are heroic, this is where the series starts to lose steam.

Its moving to witness actress Catherine Oxenberg work to rescue her brainwashed then 26-year-old daughter India, who was branded and made a slave, from the clutches of Nxivm, but we no longer get as many rare glimpses into the mysterious organization, which would collapse in 2019 after Raniere was found guilty of sex trafficking, forced labor and racketeering. Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering, while Bronfman, who bankrolled the group, pleaded guilty to harboring illegal aliens. Bronfman and Raniere both await sentencing.

Still, the elder Oxenberg gets the most memorable line in the show, when she is on the phone with her mother, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia.

Can you call Charles and get him in direct contact with the Dalai Lama? Oxenberg said on the phone. I want to tell [the Dalai Lama] that my daughter is being held as a sex slave to this organization that he received money from.

Whos Charles?, asked the producer.

Prince Charles, said Oxenberg. Hes moms second cousin.

View original post here:
'The Vow' gives horrific look inside the Nxivm sex cult that branded women - New York Post

I am thoroughly enjoying a novel with the unusual title The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, by Lisa See.

The novel is set in the Yunnan province of China and is a story of the Akha people, a Chinese ethnic minority. Before I decided to read it, I noticed some negative reviews about the amount of "tea discussion" and thought "great this looks like a book for me" and it is, what a gem!

Tea and tea trade have a long history in many countries including China, India, Sri Lanka and of course the United Kingdom although why we colonials insist on butchering tea with milk is beyond me.

Prior to lockdown, I wrote one of my columns while in India, on my way to Sri Lanka. At the time, I promised to write my next column about my Sri Lankan experience, but the Covid-19 drama on return meant I put those reflections aside.

Reading about the tea plantations in China has reminded me of being up on the Sri Lanka tea plantations watching Sri Lankan women harvest tea, nimbly climbing mountainous slopes in the heat, deftly handpicking leaves into backpacks.

There are parallels of our economy with Sri Lankas, both being heavily land and tourism based. Like New Zealand, Sri Lanka is genuinely beautiful and has that same small country feel being so close to its big brother India.

I went to Sri Lanka to work with a UK company, Capital Agri, led by an ex Otago-ite, Hadyn Craig. They have invested significantly into a leafy green business, Lanka Salads and I was there to meet people involved in Ayurvedic medicine, with a view to adding some of the wonderful medicinal herbs grown in Sri Lanka to their leafy green salad mixes.

Anyone who knows me understands that I get ridiculously excited about seeing exotic food plants grow in their native environment. I was treated to cinnamon plantations, turmeric, nutmeg, cocoa beans and the fabulous red-medicinal pineapple.

Imagine my delight when I met (and ate) red bananas and saw multiple other varieties in the world of big-food, we only ever experience the cavendish banana, which is a real problem in terms of genetic diversity and disease management.

I was treated to a tour of Associate Professor Marasinghes fabulous medicinal plant garden he is a botanist with an encyclopedia knowledge of Ayurvedic plants and medical practices. When I showed him the herbs we were interested in for digestive health, he quickly pointed out that my photo of one herb was the right genus but wrong species. Desktop research can only get you so far, clearly Uncle Google let me down.

On a more sober note, when we were staying in a remote hotel, the proprietors asked for a photo as we were the first Westerners to have visited since the Easter Sunday bombings of 2019. We were a sign to them that much needed tourists might be coming back.

Given the Covid-19 situation, Sri Lankas tourism industry will be faring worse than ours, having already been decimated prior to the virus. One older man I met, who relied on the tourist dollar to live told me he had limited pension and life had been very difficult since the bombing a reminder to be thankful for what we have.

Food businesses have been the first to recover and I am pleased to hear Lanka Salads is doing well again. As we imagine what a post-Covid-19 economy looks like, I hope too that we will take the opportunity to bring greater diversity into our diets and food systems. I hope that those food systems do more to protect and nurture the growers themselves technology should be able to play a role in connecting us to food producers in a way we havent been before. This will work for New Zealand farmers as well as those growing red pineapples in Sri Lanka.

Big-food has given us efficiency, profits and processed food. How can a new economy shape a more sustainable food model?

Anna Campbell is managing director of AbacusBio Ltd, a Dunedin based agri-technology company.

See the original post:
It is time to diversify our diets and food systems - Otago Daily Times

First Nations are essentially in a never-ending battle of trying to assert their indigenous rights to manage resources, says Burt. Though British Columbia was the first Canadian province to sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into law in 2019, it has yet to be endorsed at a national level.

Each time we want to have one of the things we did pre-history we have to go to court, and its dragged on for decades, says Wilson. Canada has enacted blanket laws like the Fisheries Act and Indian Act that generically undermines rights of indigenous peoples to resource sovereignty on traditional territories. Yet in regaining the recognition of resource rights and sovereignty, each nation has to go separately, says Wilson. Its like having a bully at school.

Swimming forward

Though a return to their once widespread global distribution is still not secured, in its ability to come back, the sea otter is a remarkable story of resilience, says Angela Doroff, scientist with the International Union for Conservation of Natures sea otter specialist group. Sea otters have some special traits that have made a comeback possible. These, she says, include its diversity of prey, its ability to learn and share learning.

Shared learning, it appears, benefits otters and humans alike. From the beginning of the project, we have all been willing to learn from each other and trust each other, says Salomon. That positive relationship fostered between First Nations and Western scientists around study design, focus, and implementation, is not typically done in science or resource management, argues Salomon. It ought to be. It needs to be, she says.

Towards more harmonious sea otter-First Nations coexistence, Wilson sees collaborations between scientists and indigenous communities as the kind of outside the box [solutions] that we have to do.

From a purely species-driven ecological perspective, the sea otter boom along the British Columbian coast might seem like a simple success story. Otters were locally extinct. Now they are thriving and recolonising. But setting aside that narrow, colonialist conservation lens, a more complex picture emerges. The story of rebounding otters, notes Burt, is a narrative where the costs and benefits differ depending on what perspective you come from.

With First Nations increasingly leading research efforts, the next chapter of the story could benefit from a new view: that the humans that have lived alongside otters for millennia are an important thread not separate from, but woven into the rich fabric of Pacific coast ecosystems.

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Lesley Evans Ogden is @ljevanso on Twitter.

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The sea otter rescue plan that worked too well - BBC News