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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,071

Cambridge scientists have created a comprehensive tool for predicting an individual’s risk of developing prostate cancer, which they say could help ensure that those men at greatest risk will receive the appropriate testing while reducing unnecessary—and potentially invasive—testing for those at very low risk.

CanRisk-Prostate, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, will be incorporated into the group’s CanRisk web tool, which has now recorded almost 1.2 million risk predictions. The free tool is already used by health care professionals worldwide to help predict the risk of developing breast and .

Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer in men. According to Cancer Research UK, more than 52,000 men are diagnosed with the disease each year and there are more than 12,000 deaths. Over three-quarters (78%) of men diagnosed with survive for over ten years, but this proportion has barely changed over the past decade in the U.K.

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By Joe Bennett.

Methylation tests have proven themselves to be the world’s most accurate form of biological age tests, along with being the most accurate form of life expectancy prediction to date. Unfortunately up until very recently these tests have largely been confirmed to only be available to those in the scientific community, or those with especially deep pockets. However, this is no longer the case, as this Christmas Steve Horvath’s Clock Foundation is offering a DNA methylation age test (often referred to as a GrimAge test) for the unbelievably low price of $175. This is a remarkably low price considering that last year these tests would normally be at least $450, and were not widely available at the best of times.

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Research has shown that people with shorter genes age faster, die sooner and are more prone to disease, and this applies to all animals — scientists found that longer and shorter genes linked to longer and shorter lifespans, respectively Scientists have discovered a “single concise” phenomenon that will be able to determine how long you will live, according to new research.

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Summary: Three to four one-minute bouts of vigorous physical activity a day, such as running for a bus or walking fast to complete tasks reduces the risk of all-cause and cancer-related death by 40%, and a 49% reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Source: University of Sydney.

In good news for those who don’t like playing sport or going to the gym, new research finds just three to four one-minute bursts of huffing and puffing during daily tasks is associated with large reductions in the risk of premature death, particularly from cardiovascular disease.

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Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have found that a unique bacteria found in the gut may be responsible for causing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in patients who are already predisposed to the autoimmune disease.

A group of researchers from the Division of Rheumatology worked on the study under the leadership of Kristine Kuhn, MD, Ph.D., an associate professor of rheumatology. The study was recently published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Meagan Chriswell, a medical student at CU, is the paper’s lead author.

“Work led by co-authors Drs. Kevin Deane, Kristen Demoruelle, and Mike Holers here at CU helped establish that we can identify people who are at risk for RA based on serologic markers, and that these markers can be present in the blood for many years before diagnosis,” Kuhn says. “When they looked at those antibodies, one is the normal class of antibody we normally see in circulation, but the other is an antibody that we usually associate with our mucosa, whether it be the oral mucosa, the gut mucosa, or the lung mucosa. We started to wonder, ‘Could there be something at a mucosal barrier site that could be driving RA?’”

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Check out the on-demand sessions from the Low-Code/No-Code Summit to learn how to successfully innovate and achieve efficiency by upskilling and scaling citizen developers. Watch now.

Effects from the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic disruption still loom large over businesses around the world.

Digital-native organizations (DNOs) already using cloud infrastructures and mobile apps to conduct business with customers adapted quickly to the new digital normal. However, despite their best efforts, some established enterprises remain stuck in their digital transformations and cloud adoption journeys. Companies that have struggled to adapt face a huge — and perhaps existential — challenge on how to remain relevant in this new digitally-oriented world.

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The world’s first artificial womb facility, EctoLife, will be able to grow 30,000 babies a year. It’s based on over 50 years of groundbreaking scientific research conducted by researchers worldwide.

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Using new machine learning techniques, researchers at UC San Francisco (UCSF), in collaboration with a team at IBM Research, have developed a virtual molecular library of thousands of “command sentences” for cells, based on combinations of “words” that guided engineered immune cells to seek out and tirelessly kill cancer cells.

The work, published online Dec. 8, 2022, in Science, represents the first time such sophisticated computational approaches have been applied to a field that until now has progressed largely through ad hoc tinkering and engineering cells with existing—rather than synthesized—molecules.

The advance allows scientists to predict which elements—natural or synthesized—they should include in a cell to give it the precise behaviors required to respond effectively to complex diseases.

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Earlier research by Dr. Li-Huei Tsai of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others found that APOE4 might raise Alzheimer’s risk by altering lipid metabolism in certain brain cells. But the underlying details of the process remained unclear.

To build on these findings, the team conducted a multi-pronged study that assessed gene activity of all major cell types in post-mortem human brain tissue from 32 men and women who had one, two, or no copies of the APOE4 gene. Results were published in Nature on November 24, 2022.

The researchers found that APOE4 affected gene expression across all measured cell types. The team then took a closer look at genes related to cholesterol and other lipids. Cholesterol-manufacturing genes were overly expressed, and cholesterol-transporting genes dysregulated, in brain cells called oligodendrocytes with the APOE4 gene. Oligodendrocytes are found in the brain and spinal cord. They make and maintain a fatty substance called myelin that surrounds and insulates long nerve fibers. The abnormalities were more extreme in oligodendrocytes with two copies of APOE4 rather than one.

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