Biotech/medical – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Mar 23
2022

Brain implant helps completely ‘locked-in’ man communicate

𝙇𝙤𝙪 𝙂𝙚𝙝𝙧𝙞𝙜’𝙨 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚—𝙖𝙢𝙮𝙤𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙝𝙞𝙘 𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙨𝙘𝙡𝙚𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙞𝙨 (𝘼𝙇𝙎)—𝙞𝙨 𝙖 𝙣𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙙𝙫𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙙 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢, 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙥𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙢𝙚𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙣𝙚𝙚𝙙𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙬𝙞𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙨. 𝘽𝙪𝙩 𝙖 𝙣𝙚𝙬 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙝𝙖𝙨 𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙙 𝙖 34-𝙮𝙚𝙖𝙧-𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙙-𝙞𝙣 𝘼𝙇𝙎 𝙥𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙛𝙖𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣… See more.

The Neuro-Network.

𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲 ‘𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝-𝐢𝐧’ 𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞

𝙐𝙣𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙖 𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙚 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙘𝙡𝙚, 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙚𝙮𝙚𝙨. 𝘾𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙮 𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙤𝙬𝙣 𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙮, 𝙮𝙚𝙩 𝙛𝙪𝙡… See more.

Unable to move a single muscle, even to open your eyes. Completely locked into your own body, yet fully conscious and aware.

Lou Gehrig’s disease— amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—is a nightmare in its advanced form, leaving patients without any means of communicating their needs and wishes.

Continue reading “Brain implant helps completely ‘locked-in’ man communicate” | >

Mar 23
2022

Al Sandrock, former top scientist at Biogen, named CEO at Voyager Therapeutics

Al Sandrock, the top scientist at Biogen who exited last year in a dispute over its controversial Alzheimer’s treatment, has landed a new job as the CEO of Voyager Therapeutics, the company said Tuesday.

Voyager’s appointment of Sandrock as its new CEO is the latest in a series of moves aimed at refocusing the company on a new gene therapy delivery technology, following setbacks with its earlier pipeline.

Mar 23
2022

Looking at Russia’s war on Ukraine and just wondering if the inventors of these weapons of mass destructions really intended for it to be used for this purpose

Did they purposely set out to create inventions that will bring death and blood shed?🤔

Usually when drafting a Patent Claim for any invention, the Inventor states the benefits of the invention to the society.

Looking at the picture below i am tempted to ask, of what use are Nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction of benefit to the society?

I know that Innovations and Inventions are necessary for a nation’s growth and development but it should not be at the expense of human life.

I pray and hope that peace will be restored soon for the sake of her Citizens.

#inventions.
#patents

Mar 22
2022

Lecture by Aubrey de Grey, PhD (see more in

Rejuvenation biotechnology: good progress, but a long way still to go.

Mar 22
2022

Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

Mar 22
2022

Scientists uncover new targets for treating Parkinson’s disease

Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have found that people with Parkinson’s disease have a clear “genetic signature” of the disease in their memory T cells. The scientists hope that targeting these genes may open the door to new Parkinson’s treatments and diagnostics.

Mar 22
2022

Dr. Emilio Emini, Ph.D. — CEO — Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute

Biomedical Interventions For Substantial Global Health Concerns — Dr. Emilio Emini, Ph.D., CEO, Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute

Dr. Emilio A. Emini, Ph.D. is the CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute (https://www.gatesmri.org/), a non-profit organization dedicated to the development and effective use of novel biomedical interventions addressing substantial global health concerns, for which investment incentives are limited, and he leads the Institute’s research and development of novel products and interventions for diseases disproportionately impacting the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Before joining the Gates MRI, Dr. Emini served as director of the HIV and Tuberculosis program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he led the foundation’s efforts focused on accelerating the reduction in the incidence of HIV and TB in high-burden geographies, with the goal of achieving sustained epidemic control.

Over the course of his previous 30-year career in the bio-pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Emini led teams involved in the research and development of novel anti-infectives and vaccines. From 1983 to 2004, he led research at the Merck Research Laboratories involved in the development of one of the first highly active anti-retroviral therapies for HIV and, as senior vice president of vaccine research, the successful development of a number of vaccines including vaccines for human papillomavirus and rotavirus.

Dr. Emini later served as senior vice president of vaccine development at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. From 2005 to 2015, he was senior vice president of vaccine R&D at Pfizer Inc., leading the development of Prevnar 13® for prevention of pneumococcal disease.

Continue reading “Dr. Emilio Emini, Ph.D. — CEO — Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute” | >

Mar 22
2022

Scientists discover how molecule becomes anticancer weapon

Years of toil in the laboratory have revealed how a marine bacterium makes a potent anti-cancer molecule.

The anti-cancer molecule salinosporamide A, also called Marizomb, is in Phase III clinical trials to treat glioblastoma, a brain cancer. Scientists now for the first time understand the enzyme-driven process that activates the molecule.

Researchers at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that an enzyme called SalC assembles what the team calls the salinosporamide anti-cancer “warhead.” Scripps graduate student Katherine Bauman is the lead author of a paper that explains the assembly process in the March 21 issue of Nature Chemical Biology.

Mar 22
2022

Looking at a Human Face Triggers Activity in Our Brains Unlike Any Other Object

It may not feel like it, but our eyes are constantly making rapid, tiny movements called saccades, taking in new information as we focus our gaze on various things in the world. As we do so, our brains receive the input – and depending on what the object of our gaze is, it turns out the brain activity triggered can be quite unique.

“While we typically do not perceive our own eye movements, the abrupt change in visual input with each saccade has substantial consequences at the neuronal level,” researchers explain in a new study led by first author and cognitive neuroscientist Tobias Staudigl from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.

In an experiment, Staudigl and fellow researchers worked with 13 epilepsy patients, who had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor their condition. This kind of intervention can be helpful for brain scientists, so they often turn to such patients with electrodes already implanted, in case they’d be willing to volunteer their time.

Mar 21
2022

An artificial intelligence invents 40,000 chemical weapons in just 6 hours

A.I. is only beginning to show what it can do for modern medicine.

In today’s society, artificial intelligence (A.I.) is mostly used for good. But what if it was not?

Naive thinking “The thought had never previously struck us. We were vaguely aware of security concerns around work with pathogens or toxic chemicals, but that did not relate to us; we primarily operate in a virtual setting. Our work is rooted in building machine learning models for therapeutic and toxic targets to better assist in the design of new molecules for drug discovery,” wrote the researchers in their paper. “We have spent decades using computers and A.I. to improve human health—not to degrade it. We were naive in thinking about the potential misuse of our trade, as our aim had always been to avoid molecular features that could interfere with the many different classes of proteins essential to human life.”

Full Story:

Researchers from Collaborations Pharmaceuticals tweaked artificial intelligence to look for chemical weapons, and impressively enough the machine learning algorithm found 40,000 options in just six hours.