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Home > UC Science Today > The weekly roundup - August 12
Podcast: UC Science Today
Episode:

The weekly roundup - August 12
Category: Science & Medicine
Duration: 00:01:36
Publish Date: 2016-08-11 19:00:00
Description: This week on Science Today. Your brain is a precious organ, and one way your body protects it is by using the blood-brain barrier. This is basically a filter set up between the blood in your circulatory system and your brain. The barrier determines which things will or will not pass through. At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, bioengineer Monica Moya is hoping their 3D bioprinting technology can help recreate the structure. "So we’re trying to build the blood-brain barrier, which is the blood vessels in your brain that are responsible for making sure that not just anything gets across, but that’s an interesting field because sometimes you do want things to get across." A 3D printed blood-brain barrier would be helpful for something like drug research, because you actually want certain medications to pass through. We also speak with UC Berkeley chemist Chris Chang about another surprising feature of the brain – the metal nutrient copper. Chang explains how copper helps your body metabolize fat. "There’s a process which stops normal fat burning, and what we found was that copper stops or blocks what normally blocks fat burning. And so by blocking the block, then you actually allow fat burning to proceed." And did you know that NSAIDs, a common type of anti-inflammatory, can be bad for your heart? Researcher Aldrin Gomes of the University of California, Davis found that vitamin C might prevent this toxicity. "We pretreated the cells with vitamin C before we gave NSAIDs, and this prevented cell death." If you want to keep on top of the latest University of California research. Subscribe to UC Science Today on iTunes or Stitcher. You can also follow us on Facebook. I’m Larissa Branin, thanks for listening. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/blood_brain_barrier https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/copper_fat https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/vitamin_c
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