There are at least 10,000 virus species in vertebrate animals with the capacity to infect humans. Climate change will facilitate this.
Research study forecasts that 4,000 diseases currently found in the wild will leap to humans in the next 50 years.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,330
The reluctance of many in the medical field to classify aging as a disease is causing significant roadblocks for those trying to find a solution.
Many people will swear to the life extending properties of coffee, be it saving them from keeling over from exhausting in the early hours of the morning or saving an annoying co-worker from the unbridled rage of someone who hasn’t yet acquired their caffeine fix. Yes, coffee is without a doubt one of the most powerful (and mostly metaphorical) lifesavers of the modern world. However, recent studies into the effects of drinking coffee on human lifespan have found that it might very well have a significant impact on health and longevity. A study of 170,000 people from the UK found that those who drank between two and four cups of coffee a day were 30% less likely to die from all causes compared to those who did not drink coffee at all.
Summary: An older person’s posture may give clues to hidden cognitive decline, a new study reports.
Source: Shinshu University.
A mass survey of citizens aged 50 to 89 years examined whether cognitive decline could be detected by sagittal spinal balance measurement based on a radiological approach. Doctors from Shinshu University observed associations of sagittal vertical axis (SVA) anteriorization and higher age with lower cognitive function.
Cells not replaced, but old cells that are still there are rejuvenated.
Dr David Sinclair explains the mechanism behind how to reprogramm the old cells rejuvenate to be young again. He also clarify the process is based on cell autonomous effect and does not involve or rely on any stem cells in this clip.
David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, where he and his colleagues study sirtuins—protein-modifying enzymes that respond to changing NAD+ levels and to caloric restriction—as well as chromatin, energy metabolism, mitochondria, learning and memory, neurodegeneration, cancer, and cellular reprogramming.
Dr David Sinclair has suggested that aging is a disease—and that we may soon have the tools to put it into remission—and he has called for greater international attention to the social, economic and political and benefits of a world in which billions of people can live much longer and much healthier lives.
Dr David Sinclair is the co-founder of several biotechnology companies (Life Biosciences, Sirtris, Genocea, Cohbar, MetroBiotech, ArcBio, Liberty Biosecurity) and is on the boards of several others.
To begin the process of bioprinting an organ, doctors typically start with a patient’s own cells. They take a small needle biopsy of an organ or do a minimally invasive surgical procedure that removes a small piece of tissue, “less than half the size of a postage stamp,” Atala said. “By taking this small piece of tissue, we are able to tease cells apart (and) we grow and expand the cells outside the body.”
This growth happens inside a sterile incubator or bioreactor, a pressurized stainless steel vessel that helps the cells stay fed with nutrients – called “media” – the doctors feed them every 24 hours, since cells have their own metabolism, Lewis said. Each cell type has a different media, and the incubator or bioreactor acts as an oven-like device mimicking the internal temperature and oxygenation of the human body, Atala said.
“Then we mix it with this gel, which is like a glue,” Atala said. “Every organ in your body has the cells and the glue that holds it together. Basically, that’s also called ‘extracellular matrix.’”.
A team from UT Dallas has discovered a molecule that destroys adamant cancer cells. Experiments on mice and human tissue found that the compound was effective even in the most aggressive tumors, offering hope.
“When the Human Genome Project began in 1990, it had a projected budget of $3 billion. […] Now, one company claims to have achieved the major milestone of whole genome sequencing for just $100.”
Ultima Genomics, a biotech company based in California, has emerged from stealth mode with a new high-throughput, low-cost sequencing platform that it claims can deliver a $100 genome.
When the Human Genome Project began in 1990, it had a projected budget of $3 billion. Some researchers believed it would take centuries to map all 20,000+ genes and to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs making up DNA, though in the end it took 13 years. Since then, genome sequencing has undergone technology and cost improvements at a rate faster than Moore’s Law (a long-term trend in the computer industry that involves a doubling of performance every two years). What used to require billions of dollars and many years of work is now several orders of magnitude cheaper and possible in a matter of hours.
Companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com have been offering DNA test kits at the consumer level. These can generate reports relating to a customer’s ancestry and genetic predispositions to health-related issues. While most people have opted for tests based on partial (i.e. incomplete) sequencing, the costs are now becoming so low that whole genome sequencing may soon be affordable. Veritas Genetics made headlines in 2016 by breaking the $1,000 barrier and in 2021 the price fell to $562.
Roswell Biotechnologies wants you to believe its new chip will revolutionize the detection of viruses, DNA, and more. But it still has to prove itself.
The U.K. has reported more than 300 cases.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ramped up its alert level for the ongoing monkeypox outbreak as the nation’s case count hit 30 and the global case count rose above 1,000.
The CDC now advises that travelers “practice enhanced precautions” to avoid contracting and spreading the rare viral disease, the agency’s website states (opens in new tab). The CDC says that people should avoid close contact with sick people, including those with rashes on their skin or genitals, and with dead or live wild animals, especially rodents, such as rats and squirrels, and non-human primates, meaning monkeys and apes.
Solving the 3D structure at near atomic level resolution, one of the world’s hardest, giant jigsaw puzzles—the nuclear pore complex—the largest molecular machine in human cells, with structure-based AI prediction @ScienceMagazine