News 1 :
Woman swims with hammerhead shark
Ilena Zanella, the co-founder of the non-profit organisation, Misión Tiburón, which is campaigning for better protection for the shark says:"I saw the vulnerability of this endangered species and when her daughter is 16 she will take her to the island of Cocos to swim with sharks just like she did.”
Swimming off Cocos Island in the Pacific Ocean, Ilena Zanella had her first close encounter with hammerhead sharks. As social creatures, the sharks gather in their hundreds, and soon she found herself surrounded. Easily spooked by the bubbles coming from her diving equipment, the sharks appeared shy, vulnerable and beautiful.
Hammerhead sharks are something of a curiosity in the animal kingdom, with their elongated heads and pinprick eyes. Of the nine known species, several are endangered, including the scalloped hammerhead, which is found off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.
In Costa Rica, ceviche, the national dish, is commonly made from hammerheads. And Zanella was shocked and saddened to see juveniles being used as fishing bait. "It's an endangered species used as bait," she says. "Actions like that are destroying our oceans and we need to act, we need to do something."
Illena Zanella recently won a Whitley Award for her conservation work. She says she will use the award to get better protection for the hammerhead shark.
Based on research by her team, the tropical fjord of Golfo Dulce in Costa Rica was declared a shark sanctuary last year, including a large no take zone. The inlet is a crucial nursery ground for the hammerhead.
Misión Tiburón is working with the local community to reduce the use of juveniles as fishing bait and to dispel myths around sharks. The hammerhead is only rarely a threat to humans, and, like all sharks, has an important role in the health of the ocean ecosystem.
She hopes to have persuaded the world to put better protection in place for the curious shark.
News 2 :
'Living drug' a blood cancel killer?
Doctors at King's College Hospital, London, said, “some patients were being completely cured in a way that had never been seen before”. CAR-T, is a "living drug" that is tailor-made for each patient using their body's own cells.
How does the treatment work?
CAR-T is the pinnacle of personalized medicine as it has to be developed for each individual patient.
Firstly, parts of the immune system - specifically white blood cells called T-cells - are removed from the patient's blood.
They are frozen in liquid nitrogen and sent to laboratories in the United States. There, the white blood cells are genetically reprogrammed so that rather than killing bacteria and viruses, they will seek out and destroy cancer.
They are now "chimeric antigen receptor T-cells" - or CAR-T cells.
Millions of the modified cells are grown in the lab, before being shipped back to the UK where they are infused into the patient's bloodstream. The whole manufacturing process takes a month.
As this is a "living drug", the cancer-killing T-cells stay in the body for a long time and will continue to grow and work inside the patient.
Who is benefiting?
Mike Simpson was one of the first NHS patients to be treated. He was diagnosed with large B-cell lymphoma - a type of blood cancer - in 2015 when he returned from a holiday with a stiff and swollen neck. Two bouts of chemotherapy initially controlled his cancer, but each time it returned. By the end of 2018, he was given less than two, unpleasant and probably painful, years to live.
"If this treatment wasn't offered to me, I'd be saying goodbye in a relatively short period of time," he told the BBC.
He started the treatment in February and follow-up scans show the CAR-T therapy is working. He added: "I feel the treatment really is being effective, that we've got the cancer pretty much on the run.
"Obviously I'm really happy about that and optimistic for the future and glad that I committed to the treatment."
He started the treatment in February and follow-up scans show the CAR-T therapy is working. He added: "I feel the treatment really is being effective, that we've got the cancer pretty much on the run. Up to 200 patients a year like Mike could benefit from the therapy.
How effective is it?
This is a new therapy and very long-term data is still lacking. Clinical trials have shown that 40% of patients had all signs of their otherwise untreatable, terminal lymphoma eliminated from their body 15 months after treatment.
"It is a very exciting new development and it gives new hope to a lot of our patients," Victoria Potter, consultant hematologist at King's College Hospital told the BBC.
She added: "It's amazing to be able to see these people, who you may have not been able to give any hope to, actually achieving remission.
"And that is a situation we have never seen before and it's an incredibly impressive change in the treatment paradigm."
The possibilities of personalized medicine
Is it safe?
Mike says the side-effects of his treatment were worse than either of his two batches of chemotherapy.
Short-term neurotically, where the brain and nerves are affected, can lead to confusion, difficultly speaking and a loss of consciousness. There are five days after the treatment, when Mike was on intensive care, that he cannot remember at all. Other side-effects include fever, vomiting and diarrhea.
"It might be a magic bullet, but it hurts," said Mike.
His brain function is back to normal, but Mike says fatigue means he's not ready to go back to work.
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