Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,366

Artificial womb: Video shows what pregnancy may be like in the future

Would you want to take one home if it freed you up from the hassles of pregnancy?

The concept of the world’s first-ever artificial womb facility has been unveiled. Called EctoLife, the facility can produce up to 30,000 babies every year. The use of the word “produce” is deliberate since, as one can see in the video below, the facility aims to give parents a wide range of tools to get a baby customized to their desires.

Hashem Al-Ghaili/ YouTube.

The concept and need for such a facility are pretty clear. The global human population is now reaching its peak and is expected to fall from here. The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has been vocal about this and, by fathering nine children so far, believes he is doing his best to prevent the world from suffering a population collapse.

Daycares in Finland Built a ‘Forest’, And It Changed Kids’ Immune Systems

Playing through the greenery and litter of a mini forest’s undergrowth for just one month may be enough to change a child’s immune system, according to an experiment in Finland.

When daycare workers rolled out a lawn, planted forest undergrowth (such as dwarf heather and blueberries), and allowed children to care for crops in planter boxes, the diversity of microbes in the guts and on the skin of the young kids appeared healthier in a very short space of time.

Compared to other city kids who play in standard urban daycares with yards of pavement, tile, and gravel, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds at these greened-up daycare centers in Finland showed increased T-cells and other important immune markers in their blood within 28 days.

Science Saturday: Early research toward a cell-free solution for stress urinary incontinence

Mayo Clinic researchers found a noncellular substance suggested improvement in restoring muscle function and bladder control in preclinical models. The teams of Atta Behfar, M.D., Ph.D. and Emanuel Trabuco, M.D., led this research in a collaboration between Mayo Clinic Departments of Cardiovascular Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology. The paper is published in NPJ Regenerative Medicine.

“Surgical treatment for stress urinary incontinence, a condition afflicting 25 million women, has significantly declined over concerns about negative side effects,” says Dr. Trabuco. “This has led many women to delay therapy and suffer needlessly. We hope to develop a minimally invasive, noncellular, exosome-based approach to muscle regeneration for urinary incontinence that not only targets the underlying cause of the condition but also avoids the problem with invasive surgical options presently available.”

The research team used regenerative purified exosome product, known as PEP, derived from platelets to deliver messages into the cells of preclinical models. Exosomes are extracellular vesicles that are like a delivery service moving cargo from one cell to another, with instructions for targeting exact tissues that need repair. The study suggests that the use of purified exosome product alleviates stress urinary incontinence from musculoskeletal breakdown in animals. The team did not detect any infection or off-target toxicity with application of PEP.

Hearts and bodies change with age, heart disease treatments may need to change, too

For people ages 75 and older, age-related changes in general health and in the heart and blood vessels require consideration and likely modifications in how heart attacks and heart disease are treated, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement published today in the Association’s flagship, peer-reviewed journal Circulation.

The new statement, “Management of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in the older adult population,” highlights recent evidence to help clinicians better care for patients over age 75. According to the statement, 30–40% of people hospitalized with ACS are age 75 or older. ACS includes and unstable angina (heart-related chest pain).

The statement is an update of a 2007 American Heart Association statement on the treatment of heart attacks in the elderly.

Pilot trial sees tumors shrink or disappear in 78% of patients

The study brings much hope to patients with brain and spinal cord cancers.

A small pilot trial involving patients with lymphoma of the brain and/or spinal cord has shown that CAR-T-cell therapy known as axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel) can be a viable treatment option for patients who often have little hope, according to a press release by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators published on Sunday. “For many patients with lymphoma of the central nervous system, there aren’t great treatment options,” said Dana-Farber’s Caron Jacobson, MD, MMSc, who led the trial.

Our early results suggest that expanding the applicability of CAR-T cells to this indication could improve patient outcomes.

Mohammed Haneefa Nizamudeen/iStock.

Lymphomas typically feature aggressive tumors that can spread to the brain and spinal cord after they originate in other parts of the body. These cancers are often difficult to treat and patients do not survive more than two years.

Largest study of its kind reveals adjuvant chemotherapy improves overall survival for pancreatic cancer patients

Today, the University of Colorado Cancer Center released new research that showcases chemotherapy treatment before and after surgery for pancreatic cancer as the most effective combination for patients.

The study findings were published in JAMA Oncology and led by Marco Del Chiaro, MD, division chief of surgical oncology in the University of Colorado Department of Surgery and visiting researcher Toshitaka Sugawara, MD, Ph.D.

“It’s critical to have large scale data that doctors can use to make decisions about plans for patients who qualify for surgery,” said author Marco Del Chiaro, MD, division chief of surgical oncology at the CU Cancer Center on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

Experimental cancer therapy shows success in more than 70% of patients in global clinical trials

A new therapy that makes the immune system kill bone marrow cancer cells was successful in as many as 73% of patients in two clinical trials, according to researchers from The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The therapy, known as a bispecific antibody, binds to both T cells and multiple and directs the T cells— that can be enlisted to fight off diseases—to kill multiple cells. The researchers described this strategy as “bringing your army right to the enemy.”

The success of the off-the-shelf immunotherapy, called talquetamab, was even seen in patients whose was resistant to all approved multiple myeloma therapies. It uses a different target than other approved therapies: a receptor expressed on the surface of cancer cells known as GPRC5D.

A 1.3-micrometer-thin elastic conductor for wearable and implantable devices

In recent years, engineers have been working to develop increasingly sophisticated and smaller electronic components that could power the devices of the future. This includes thin and stretchable components that could be easily worn on the skin or implanted inside the human body.

Researchers at RIKEN, Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore, University of Tokyo, and other institutes in Japan, Singapore and China have recently realized a new, elastic electrical conductor that is 1.3-micrometers thin. This conductor, introduced in a paper published in Nature Electronics, could advance the development of both wearable and implantable sensors.

“Ultrathin electronic devices can form a conformal interface with curved surfaces, are not perceivable by human when wearing, and do not induce strong foreign body rejection (FBR) when implanted in animals,” Zhi Jiang, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore.

Gene expression data point to exercise as the most effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease

An analysis of 22 large-scale gene expression datasets pointed to exercise and activity in general as the most effective theoretical treatment for reversing gene expressions typical of Alzheimer’s disease. Fluoxetine, a well-known antidepressant, also showed effect, particularly when combined with exercise. Curcumin showed positive effects as well. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

Alzheimer’s disease is a complex neurodegenerative disorder that affects multiple brain regions. It is the most common disease that causes dementia and is very difficult to treat. In the course of the disease, abnormal collections of proteins called tau accumulate inside neurons.

Another type of protein clumps together to form so-called amyloid plaques that collect between neurons and disrupt cell functions. These and other changes harm the functioning of the brain across different regions and lead to dysfunction and death of brain cells.

/* */