Tissue engineering has long-depended on geometrically static scaffolds seeded with cells in the lab to create new tissues and even organs. The scaffolding material—usually a biodegradable polymer structure—is supplied with cells and the cells, if supplied with the right nutrients, then develop into tissue as the underlying scaffold biodegrades. But this model ignores the extraordinarily dynamic morphological processes that underlie the natural development of tissues. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have developed new 4D hydrogels—3D materials that have the ability to change shape over time in response to stimuli—that can morph multiple times in a preprogrammed or on-demand manner in response to external trigger signals. In a new Advanced Science study, the UIC researchers, led by Eben Alsberg, show that these new materials may be used to help develop tissues that more closely resemble their natural counterparts, which are subject to forces that drive movement during their formation.
This is a detailed summary of plasma dilution and at 58:38 the future is explained where they will publish human results from 25 people, then start a company whose first order of business will be phase 3 trials with more people and placebo and hopefully funding. It appears you can pay to have the procedure. The hopeful start is this year in may.
Irina will present her recent findings on plasma dilution, showing that age-reversing effects, such as rejuvenating tissues in mice, can be achieved by. diluting the blood plasma of old mice: Rejuvenation of three germ layers tissues by exchanging old blood plasma with saline-albumin.
Irina’s research focus. A key direction of my laboratory is to understand age-imposed and pathological changes in molecular compositions of systemic and local environments of adult stem cells and to calibrate these to health — youth. In the past few years this direction has been ramified into synthetic biology, CRISPR technologies, bio-orthogonal proteomics and development of innovative digital bio-sensors that we collaboratively applied to the fields of aging and diagnostics of genetic diseases. Success in this research will improve our understanding of the determinants of homeostatic health and will enable novel rational approaches to treat a number of degenerative, fibrotic, metabolic and inflammatory diseases, as a class.
George Church, Antonio Regalado, and Josiah Zayner discuss designer babies, moratorium on human germ line engineering, and the future of the genomic revolution with Jane Metcalfe, co-founder of Wired Magizine and founder of Neolife (https://neo.life/)
Muscle constitutes the largest organ in humans, accounting for 40% of body mass, and it plays an essential role in maintaining life. Muscle tissue is notable for its unique ability for spontaneous regeneration. However, in serious injuries such as those sustained in car accidents or tumor resection which results in a volumetric muscle loss (VML), the muscle’s ability to recover is greatly diminished. Currently, VML treatments comprise surgical interventions with autologous muscle flaps or grafts accompanied by physical therapy. However, surgical procedures often lead to reduced muscular function, and in some cases result in a complete graft failure. Thus, there is a demand for additional therapeutic options to improve muscle loss recovery.
A promising strategy to improve the functional capacity of the damaged muscle is to induce de novo regeneration of skeletal muscle via the integration of transplanted cells. Diverse types of cells, including satellite cells (muscle stem cells), myoblasts, and mesenchymal stem cells, have been used to treat muscle loss. However, invasive muscle biopsies, poor cell availability, and limited long-term maintenance impede clinical translation, where millions to billions of mature cells may be needed to provide therapeutic benefits.
Bonny Lemma. Originally published in the HIR Winter 2019 Issue.
Jennifer Lopez has one more industry to add to her illustrious résumé: molecular biology. In 2016, she was asked to be the executive producer of a new futuristic bio-crime drama for NBC called C.R.I.S.P.R. While that project is a work of science fiction, the CRISPR technology that it is based on is very real.
CRISPR, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is not just a gene editing technique, but also a phenomenon that carries significant implications for the future of biotechnology. Therefore, the interactions between the countless players in this field and the objectives driving them are crucial to understanding of CRISPR and the promise it holds.
Chair emeritus, SETI institute — the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Dr. Jill Tarter is Chair Emeritus for SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Research at the SETI Institute, a not-for-profit research organization whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to apply the knowledge gained to inspire and guide present and future generations.
Dr. Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey, and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide. Since the termination of funding for NASA’s SETI program in 1993, she has served in a leadership role to secure private funding to continue the exploratory science. Currently, she serves on the management board for the Allen Telescope Array, an innovative array of 350 (when fully realized) 6-m antennas at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, it will simultaneously survey the radio universe for known and unexpected sources of astrophysical emissions, and speed up the search for radio emissions from other distant technologies by orders of magnitude.
Dr. Tarter’s work has brought her wide recognition in the scientific community, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA, Chabot Observatory’s Person of the Year award (1997), Women of Achievement Award in the Science and Technology category by the Women’s Fund and the San Jose Mercury News (1998), and the Tesla Award of Technology at the Telluride Tech Festival (2001). She was elected an AAAS Fellow in 2002 and a California Academy of Sciences Fellow in 2003. In 2004 Time Magazine named her one of the Time 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2005 Dr. Tarter was awarded the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization at Wonderfest, the biannual San Francisco Bay Area Festival of Science.
Dr. Tarter is deeply involved in the education of future citizens and scientists. In addition to her scientific leadership at NASA and SETI Institute, Dr. Tarter was the Principal Investigator for two curriculum development projects funded by NSF, NASA, and others. The first, the Life in the Universe series, created 6 science teaching guides for grades 3–9 (published 1994–96). Her second project, Voyages Through Time, is an integrated high school science curriculum on the fundamental theme of evolution in six modules: Cosmic Evolution, Planetary Evolution, Origin of Life, Evolution of Life, Hominid Evolution and Evolution of Technology (published 2003).
Is a postdoctoral scholar at Tufts University, where she conducts research in their Human Robot Interaction Lab (https://hrilab.tufts.edu/).
With a background in psychology and the social sciences, Dr. Chita-Tegmark is interested in topics at the intersection of technology and psychology, such as using artificial social agents in healthcare and the impact of such emerging technologies on human social interactions and well-being.
Dr. Chita-Tegmark has her Ph.D from Boston University in Psychology and Developmental Sciences, and she is an alumna of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she spent time studying role of social information in children’s lives, how social information influences the way children cooperate and engage in strategic decision-making, as well as on projects related to the development of social attention and language skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Dr. Chita-Tegmark is also a Co-Founder of the Future of Life Institute (https://futureoflife.org/), a non-profit research institute and outreach organization that works to mitigate existential risks facing humanity, including those from advanced artificial intelligence (AI), to bio-engineering, to autonomous weapons, and to help promote positive uses of technology.
Richard Feynman, one of the most respected physicists of the twentieth century, said “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” Not surprisingly, many physicists and mathematicians have observed fundamental biological processes with the aim of precisely identifying the minimum ingredients that could generate them. One such example are the patterns of nature observed by Alan Turing. The brilliant English mathematician demonstrated in 1952 that it was possible to explain how a completely homogeneous tissue could be used to create a complex embryo, and he did so using one of the simplest, most elegant mathematical models ever written. One of the results of such models is that the symmetry shown by a cell or a tissue can break under a set of conditions.
An anthropologist dives into the world of genetic engineering to explore whether gene-editing tools such as CRISPR fulfill the hope of redesigning our species for the better.
The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans by Eben Kirksey. St. Martin’s Press, November 2020. Excerpt previously published by Black Inc.
Surreal artwork in the hotel lobby—a gorilla peeking out of a peeled orange, smoking a cigarette; an astronaut riding a cyborg giraffe—was the backdrop for bombshell news rocking the world. In November 2018, Hong Kong’s Le Méridien Cyberport hotel became the epicenter of controversy about Jiankui He, a Chinese researcher who was staying there when a journalist revealed he had created the world’s first “edited” babies. Select experts were gathering in the hotel for the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing—a meeting that had been called to deliberate about the future of the human species.
