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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,191

Scientists identify genes that can repair the retina and reverse vision loss in humans

There is an army of dormant cells in our eyes that prefer to stay asleep. However, waking them up in patients living with degenerative retinal disease can prevent blindness.

Researchers at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) have proposed a novel treatment strategy that promises to restore vision in patients living with degenerative retinal disease, an inherited medical condition that gradually impairs a person’s ability to read text, sense colors, see objects that are placed sideways, and eventually makes them completely blind.

3drenderings/iStock.

The researchers claim that, unlike the few existing treatment options that can slow down or prevent retinal degeneration in patients only at an early stage, their approach also works for patients who are at an advanced stage of the illness.

This Longevity Study Across 5 Species Found a New Pathway to Reverse Aging

A new study in Nature hunted down another piece to the aging puzzle. In five species across the evolutionary scale—worms, flies, mice, rats, and humans—the team honed in on a critical molecular process that powers every single cell inside the body and degrades with age.

The process, called transcription, is the first step in turning our genetic material into proteins. Here, DNA letters are reworked into a “messenger” called RNA, which then shuttles the information to other parts of the cell to make proteins.

Scientists have long suspected that transcription may go awry with aging, but the new study offers proof that it doesn’t—with a twist. In all five of the species tested, as the organism grew older the process surprisingly sped up. But like trying to type faster when blindfolded, error rates also shot up.

Vitamin B6: Did It Increase NAD? (Test Results)

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Continue reading “Vitamin B6: Did It Increase NAD? (Test Results)” | >

Resurrecting a 2.6 billion-year-old ancient CRISPR system

Incapable of replicating on their own, viruses must hijack other organisms, like bacteria, to continue their existence. Little wonder, then, that bacteria had to develop ways to fight back.

Among them is CRISPR, a kind of an immune system that keeps DNA records of previous infections and then uses a protein called Cas to attack viruses that show up again. When Cas reaches a targeted virus, it cleaves the viral DNA, protecting the bacteria from infection.

Researchers have harnessed that targeted, DNA-snipping ability as a gene editing tool for all kinds of organisms. CRISPR can now be found in a variety of fields doing a variety of jobs, from helping to fight sickle cell and high cholesterol in humans to gene editing animals and crops. It’s proven to be an amazingly versatile tool.

New Alzheimer’s Drug Shows 35% Reduction in Cognitive Decline in Late-Stage Trial

American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced last week that it had seen encouraging clinical trial results of its new Alzheimer’s medication.

According to the company, their experimental drug, donanemab, was shown in a late-stage trial to slow cognitive decline by 35 percent.

While these results do sound promising, the full data is not yet released, so there’s still a lot we don’t know.

Can We Live Longer than 120? Lecture

Never heard of this fellow before but if you have a spare 50 minutes it’s a good listen. A summary of aging and what we might do about it with the goal (after about 26 minutes) of making an aging vaccine.

Lecture given by Dr. Ronjon Nag at “The Peter Wells Memorial Lecture 2023″ which took place in London on May 3rd, 2023.
https://events.theiet.org/events/the-peter-wells-memorial-lecture-2023/

The event was hosted by the Biomedical Engineering Joint Steering Group of The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).
https://engx.theiet.org/technical-networks/biomedeng

Using Oncolytic Viruses to Treat Cancer

Great overview of progress in the field of oncolytic viruses. Take home message: it’s super important to develop viruses that not only attack tumors directly, but also stimulate immune strong responses against the cancer. #genetherapy #biotechnology

Cancer treatments known as oncolytic viruses are being tested in clinical trials, and one, T-VEC or Imlygic®, has been approved by the FDA. Research now suggests that these treatments work not only by infecting and killing tumor cells, but that they may also be a form of cancer immunotherapy.

Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s: Ultra-long protein fibrils give clues on dementia risk

The early detection and treatment of dementia such as Alzheimer’s is still one of the great challenges of modern medicine. It is already known that certain proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid can be used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. However, the current detection methods for such biomarkers by means of biochemical tests can only confirm and quantify the presence of such pathological proteins. No conclusions can be drawn about their original morphology of the proteins using biochemical assays, which holds information on disease stages.

However, such information if obtained directly in a label-free manner could allow conclusions to be drawn about the stage of the disease and evaluate the efficiency of a prescribed treatment. A team from the Transport at Nanoscale Interfaces Laboratory at Empa and the Department of Neurology at the Cantonal Hospital in St. Gallen has now used (AFM) to visualize the proteins that are indicative of Alzheimer’s disease under conditions that are as close to reality as possible. The researchers recently published their results in the journal Communications Biology.

With the new study, the researchers add another piece of the puzzle to their insights into Alzheimer’s development and diagnosis.

New therapy helps immune system eradicate brain tumors

Researchers from Uppsala University have developed a method that helps immune cells exit from blood vessels into a tumor to kill cancer cells. The goal is to improve treatment of aggressive brain tumors. The study has been published in the journal Cancer Cell.

Glioblastoma is an aggressive brain tumor that lacks efficient treatment. This is in part due to the ability of the tumor to suppress or evade the body’s natural anti-cancer immune response. Immunotherapy, using checkpoint inhibitors, can reactivate the immune system against cancer. However, for this type of treatment to be effective, specific known as killer T cells must be present within the tumor.

Unfortunately, in brain cancer are dysfunctional and act as a barrier, preventing killer T cells from reaching the tumor. As a result, this form of immunotherapy, which is effective against many forms of cancer, is ineffective against brain cancers.

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