Lifeboat Foundation

An adult human’s immune system is made up of more than 1 trillion cells. In total, it weighs around 1 kilogram, depending on the size of the person.

By Chen Ly

An international team of researchers led by the University of Bristol report they have discovered a potential treatment for the world’s leading cause of kidney failure in children needing dialysis.

The findings are published in Med in an article titled, “Shiga toxin targets the podocyte causing hemolytic uremic syndrome through endothelial complement activation.”

“The most common cause of kidney failure in children is due to toxin-producing bacteria that enter the circulation through the gut resulting in a disease called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS),” wrote the researchers. “This commonly requires kidney dialysis, with approximately 5% of children developing life-long kidney failure or dying. It has been unclear why this toxin has a predilection for the kidney and what its mechanism of action is. This study shows the kidney podocyte cell is an important target of the toxin and signals to blood vessels through cellular crosstalk, causing complement activation and HUS.”

Recently, we partnered with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) to build a VR simulation that places medical students and staff in rare yet high-risk pediatric trauma situations where split-second decisions determine whether a patient lives or dies. Thanks to the immersive power of VR, we can replicate these training scenarios in true-to-life fashion, complete with paramedics rattling off symptoms, nurses and techs urging you to make a decision, and distraught parents praying for their child’s survival.

These visceral, interactive exercises up the stakes compared to traditional educational tools like non-VR simulations and mannequins. Powered by AiSolve and brought to life by the Hollywood VFX magic of BioflightVR, these virtual scenarios based on actual CHLA case studies let doctors and students practice and learn in realistic workplace conditions. Not only does this new innovation stand to significantly reduce the time and cost associated with mannequin-based training, it also better prepares people to respond in the real world.

Continue reading “VR’s Healthcare Revolution: Transforming Medical Training at CHLA” »

Small cell lung cancers often metastasize to the brain. A Stanford Medicine study shows they thrive there by emulating developing neurons and recruiting surrounding cells for protection.

Investigators have discovered a new subtype of interneurons in the retina that allows the eye to see and identify objects better in both the light and in the dark, according to a Northwestern Medicine study published in Nature Communications.

The findings dismantle previous notions about the inner workings of the eye and also have broader implications for informing future neuroscience research, according to Yongling Zhu, Ph.D., assistant professor of Ophthalmology, of Neuroscience and senior author of the study.

In a mammalian eye, the retina converts light into electrical signals that the optic nerve then sends to the brain, enabling vision. Before being transmitted to the brain, the electrical signals are processed in a dense, synaptic layer within the retina, which is divided into two halves.

Currently, the most common and accurate methods for diagnosing type 2 diabetes involve blood work. A new study, however, asserts that type 2 diabetes can now be diagnosed based on the sound of a person’s voice.

Researchers from Klick Applied Science have developed a tool they say can diagnose type 2 diabetes in women and men, respectively, with up to 0.89 and 0.86 accuracy.

To achieve this, the researchers used an ensemble model that also factored in women’s body mass index (BMI) and men’s age and BMI.

An international research team led by scientists at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research has found a way to determine which species of gut microbiota are important in certain diseases, and how they interact with other microorganisms to create a healthy microbiome.

The team developed a computational metabolite exchange scoring system to identify microbial cross feeding relationships—the use of metabolites produced by one microorganism as an essential nutrients by another—and how these may be altered in disease. The researchers suggest that understanding such relationships could point to therapeutic approaches for a range of disorders including inflammatory bowel disease, infections, autoimmune diseases and cancer.

“There are roughly 1,000 different bacterial species in a healthy gut—it’s a microscopic multicultural community with over a trillion individual members,” said research lead Samuel Forster, PhD. “Bacteria in our microbiomes exist as communities that rely on each other to produce and share key nutrients between them … We have developed a new computational way to understand these dependencies and their role in shaping our microbiome. This new method unlocks our understanding of the gut microbiome and provides a foundation for new treatment options that selectively remodel microbial communities.”

Pediatric cardiologist Mohammed Numan, MD, recently appeared on KHOU-11 to talk about sudden cardiac arrest in adolescents when playing sports. He shares signs that parents and teachers should be aware of and what tools and training they should have.

Watch Numan’s segment to learn more.

Although it’s rare, doctors at UT Physicians want parents and teachers to know when a student-athlete has a sudden cardiac arrest.

Continue reading “Cardiac arrest cases in young athletes” »

An international team of interdisciplinary researchers has successfully created a method for better 3D modeling of complex cancers. The University of Waterloo-based team combined cutting-edge bioprinting techniques with synthetic structures or microfluidic chips. The method will help lab researchers more accurately understand heterogeneous tumors: tumors with more than one kind of cancer cell, often dispersed in unpredictable patterns.

The research, “Controlled tumor heterogeneity in a co-culture system by 3D bio-printed tumor-on-chip model,” appears in Scientific Reports.

Traditionally, medical practitioners would biopsy a patient’s tumor, extract cells, and then grow them in flat petri dishes in a lab. “For 50 years, this was how biologists understood tumors,” said Nafiseh Moghimi, an applied mathematics post-doctoral researcher and the lead author of the study. “But a decade ago, repeated treatment failures in human trials made scientists realize that a 2D model does not capture the real tumor structure inside the body.”