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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1009

The pursuit of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease is becoming an increasingly competitive and contentious quest with recent years witnessing several important controversies.

In July 2022, Science magazine reported that a key 2006 research paper, published in the prestigious journal Nature, which identified a subtype of brain protein called beta-amyloid as the cause of Alzheimer’s, may have been based on fabricated data.

One year earlier, in June 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration had approved aducanumab, an antibody-targeting beta-amyloid, as a treatment for Alzheimer’s, even though the data supporting its use were incomplete and contradictory.

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Young people seeking to slake their curiosity are increasingly turning to TikTok as a substitute search engine, with the addictive video-sharing app filled with everything from fried chicken recipes to music history deep dives. This is typically fine if you’re just after movie recommendations or a place to have lunch. Unfortunately, new research by NewsGuard has found TikTok also contains a concerning volume of misinformation about serious topics.

When looking for prominent news stories in September, the fact checking organisation found misinformation in almost 20 percent of videos surfaced by the app’s search engine. 540 TikTok videos were analysed as part of this investigation, with 105 found to contain “false or misleading claims.”

“This means that for searches on topics ranging from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to school shootings and COVID vaccines, TikTok’s users are consistently fed false and misleading claims,” wrote NewsGuard.

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Don’t think about living forever. Just think about never getting sick, ever again.

At least that’s how Aubrey de Grey would like you to contextualize his work. The notoriously bearded biomedical gerontologist is the scientific spark that lights up so many all-caps “immortality” headlines. De Grey wants to increase human longevity so significantly that death could become a thing of the past, a condition people fell prey to before they developed the medical technology to stop it. It’s been the center of his work for approximately 20 years.

De Grey started as a software guy at the genetics department of Cambridge University in 1992, maintaining a database of genetic information on fruit flies. In 1999 he published a book called “The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging,” where he first laid out the key idea we know him for today: preventing damage to mitochondrial DNA ought to make people live much longer. The idea was so well-received that Cambridge awarded him a PhD the following year. De Grey condensed his thesis to a sound byte in a 2007 interview: “[Humans] are machines, and aging is the wearing out of a machine, the accumulation of damage to a machine, and hence potentially fixable.”

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Enrollment of 51 patients exceeds target by ~10% due to high interest in the study

16-week data anticipated in Q1 2023 and 24-week data anticipated in Q2 2023

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Sept. 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — UNITY Biotechnology, Inc. (“UNITY”) [NASDAQ: UBX], a biotechnology company developing therapeutics to slow, halt, or reverse diseases of aging, has completed enrollment for the ENVISION study, its Phase 2 clinical trial of UBX1325 in patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This is an active comparator study, examining the efficacy of two doses of UBX1325 compared to every other month treatment with aflibercept through 24 weeks.

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Scientific publishers such as the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and Taylor & Francis have begun attempting to detect fraud in academic paper submissions with an AI image-checking program called Proofig, reports The Register. Proofig, a product of an Israeli firm of the same name, aims to help use “artificial intelligence, computer vision and image processing to review image integrity in scientific publications,” according to the company’s website.

During a trial that ran from January 2021 to May 2022, AACR used Proofig to screen 1,367 papers accepted for publication, according to The Register. Of those, 208 papers required author contact to clear up issues such as mistaken duplications, and four papers were withdrawn.

In particular, many journals need help detecting image duplication fraud in Western blots, which are a specific style of protein-detection imagery consisting of line segments of various widths. Subtle differences in a blot’s appearance can translate to dramatically different conclusions about test results, and many cases of academic fraud have seen unscrupulous researchers duplicate, crop, stretch, and rotate Western blots to make it appear like they have more (or different) data than they really do. Detecting duplicate images can be tedious work for human eyes, which is why some firms like Proofig and ImageTwin, a German firm, are attempting to automate the process.

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AI at the Edge, NAD-Enhancing Drugs, and Laser Beam Toting Sharks!! — Discovering, Enabling & Transitioning Technology For Special Operations Forces — Lisa R. Sanders, Director of Science and Technology for Special Operations Forces, USSOCOM.

Lisa R. Sanders is the Director of Science and Technology for Special Operations Forces, Acquisition, Technology & Logistics (SOF AT&L), U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM — https://www.socom.mil/), located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, where she is responsible for all research and development funded activities — https://www.socom.mil/SOF-ATL/Pages/eSOF_cap_of_interest.aspx.

Ms. Sanders has over 30 years of civilian Federal service. She entered Federal Service as an Electronics Engineer at Naval Avionics Center in Indianapolis, Indiana where she served in quality engineering, production engineering and program management. In 1996, she transferred to Naval Air Warfare Center and Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), Patuxent River, Maryland, serving as an Electronics Engineer and Program Manager for the E-2C Hawkeye aircraft. In 2003, she assumed responsibility for the production and modification of the CV-22 (a Vertical takeoff and landing aircraft). During her time at NAVAIR, she managed one of the first Multi-Year Procurements, and executed the modification and delivery of CV-22 production and developmental test aircraft.

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A new study recently published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, suggests that physical and mental activities, such as doing chores around the home, exercising, and visiting family and friends, may help reduce the risk of dementia. The research examined how these activities, together with mental activities and the use of electronic devices, affected individuals with and without increased hereditary risk for dementia.

“Many studies have identified potential risk factors for dementia, but we wanted to know more about a wide variety of lifestyle habits and their potential role in the prevention of dementia,” said study author Huan Song, MD, Ph.D., of Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. “Our study found that exercise, household chores, and social visits were linked to a reduced risk of various types of dementia.”

The study involved 501,376 people from a UK database without dementia. The participants had an average age of 36.

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We look at the latest in regenerative medicine for treating knee problems. Osteoarthritis happens when the meniscus and cartilage wear out. Researchers aim to repair meniscal damage with autologous synovial stem cell transplants. Ligament tears, an injury common among athletes, are also usually treated with transplants using the patient’s own tendons or artificial ligaments. A bovine tendon has successfully been transplanted into a sheep, and a clinical trial will soon begin for use in humans.

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The brain is an extremely complex organ whose exact functioning remains difficult to understand. On average, the human brain contains 100 billion neurons that fire upon receiving input signals from multiple sensory organs. But, what is truly remarkable about our brain is the synchronization of this neural firing when triggered by a common input. Put simply, common inputs can generate a collective response in neurons that are not only spatially separated but also have different firing characteristics.

The neural synchronization has been observed before in experiments, and is commonly demonstrated during rest and activities involving tasks. However, the common inputs which produce this are typically unknown in real-world situations. This raises an interesting question: is it possible to reconstruct this input by looking at the output of the ?

In a new study published in Physical Review E on September 12, 2022, a team of researchers from Japan, led by Professor Tohru Ikeguchi from Tokyo University of Science (TUS), set out to answer this question. The team, including Associate Professor Ryota Nomura of Waseda University (formerly TUS), and Associate Professor Kantaro Fujiwara of The University of Tokyo, looked at the firing rates of neurons and managed to reconstruct the using a method called “superposed recurrence plot” (SRP).

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Brian Cummings, UCI professor of physical medicine & rehabilitation and founding member of the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, has received a five-year, $2.7 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to establish a training program that supports first-generation and underserved students pursuing careers in public health and regenerative medicine. The Creating Opportunities Through Mentorship and Partnership Across Stem Cell Science program will pair student scholars with faculty mentors. With their tuition covered and a stipend provided during their two years as scholars, the students will learn hands-on lab skills and human cell culture; be introduced to good manufacturing procedures in UCI’s new GMP facility; and earn a certificate in clinical research coordination. “COMPASS provides the opportunity for students to explore a variety of ways in which their education and research skills can be applied toward improving human health through career paths in the public and private sectors. UCI’s COMPASS scholars program will produce a cadre of well-trained individuals who are ready to contribute to the workforce,” said Cummings, who is also the School of Medicine’s associate dean for faculty development. “A parallel objective is to foster greater awareness and appreciation of diversity, equity and inclusion in trainees, mentors and other program participants.” Administered via the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, the program will train 25 undergraduate and two-year college transfer students.

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