University of Missouri scientists are partnering with Harvard and Georgia Tech to create a new diabetes treatment that involves transplanting insulin-producing pancreatic cells. Type 1 diabetes is estimated to affect around 1.8 million Americans. Although type 1 diabetes often develops in childhood or adolescence, it can occur in adulthood…
Circa 2020
You’ve no doubt heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the massive particle accelerator straddling the border between France and Switzerland. The large size of this instrument allows scientists to do cutting-edge research, but particle accelerators could be useful in many fields if they weren’t so huge. The age of room-sized (and larger) colliders may be coming to an end now that researchers from Stanford have developed a nano-scale particle accelerator that fits on a single silicon chip.
Full-sized accelerators like the LHC push beams of particles to extremely high speeds, allowing scientists to study the minutiae of the universe when two particles collide. The longer the beamline, the higher the maximum speed. Keeping these beams confined requires extremely powerful magnets, as well. It all adds up to a bulky piece of equipment that isn’t practical for most applications. For example, cancer radiation treatments with a particle accelerator could be much safer and more effective than traditional methods.
The team from Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory didn’t set out to build something as powerful as an accelerator that takes up a whole room. The chip features a vacuum-sealed tunnel 30 micrometers long and thinner than a human hair. You can see one of the channels above — electrons travel from left to right, propelled by 100,000 infrared laser pulses per second, all of them carefully synchronized to create a continuous electron beam.
Tel Aviv University researchers have published a new study in Nature outlining how a type of white blood cell can be engineered to secrete anti-human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibodies. Based on the results of this study, the team are hopeful that they will be able to produce a one-time medication for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and other diseases.
Gene therapy for HIV
The introduction of treatments such as anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for HIV has helped patients diagnosed with the infection to live longer and healthier lives. Patients are required to take the medicine daily in order to reduce the amount of virus in the body (viral load) so that it is undetectable. If a viral load is undetectable, patients with HIV have effectively zero risk of transmitting the virus. However, a one-time treatment for HIV, which can develop into AIDS, is still desirable to improve HIV patients’ quality of life.
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Can AI enable us to live forever? In A.rtificial I.mmortality, filmmaker Ann Shin sets out on a journey, exploring the latest AI and biotech with scientists and visionaries who foresee a ‘post-biological’ world where humans and AI merge. Will AI be the best, or the last thing we ever do?
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Ken OtwellIt’s an awkward situation. Was the engineer continuing to do his job? Was his public claim about internal corporate technology interfering with his duties or causing harm to Google? Was it breaking a voluntary non-disclosure?
Kevin CuevasWith neurocyte based computing, it is a question worth exploring since we are already blurring that line anyway.
Neurons are amazing little microbes capable of learning and making decisions. Modern AI tries to take inspiration from living neurons, but why settle for the synthetic version? By growing human neurons directly connected to a computer it’s possible to make a living AI of sorts capable of even complex tasks like flying a plane in a simulation.
Today we explore our first attempt at doing exactly that. We cover building the first prototype multi electrode array, growing the neurons and attempting to take some readings from them. This is the first part of what will hopefully be a many part series, so stay tuned for updates!
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In cancer, healthy cells turn into malignant ones with very different characteristics, such as the ability to divide in an uncontrolled manner. In recent decades, much research has uncovered various molecular alterations responsible for this conversion from healthy to tumor tissue. But until now, scientists have known very little about the opposite process – reversing a cancer cell, turning it into a physiological, noncancerous one, and what factors might mediate this process.
“We know that one strategy that human tumors have to dodge the effectiveness of drugs is to change their appearance, becoming another similar cancer but insensitive to the drug used,” the team said. “For example, leukemias of the lymphoid lineage are switched to the myeloid strain to escape treatment.”
With this idea in mind, they wanted to know more about the molecular pathways involved in this cellular transformation. They studied an in vitro model (experiment performed outside of a living organism, usually in a test tube or petri dish) in which leukemia cells can be forced to turn into a type of harmless immune cells called macrophages.
David Sinclair shares another side of himself. Compassion for all people. He wants to make sure that longevity technologies are available for all people, not just for the super wealthy and their pets. He also speaks of emerging elderly populations who can live well up until death rather than suffering for so long, and instead start new careers and hobbies.
Researchers have restored vision in animal by resetting some of the thousands of chemical marks that accumulate on DNA as cells age. The work, by Dr David Sinclair Lab, published in Nature Dec 2020, suggests a new approach to reversing age-related decline, by reprogramming some cells to a ‘younger’ state in which they are better able to repair or replace damaged tissue.
David A. Sinclair, Ph.D. A.O. is a tenured Professor in the Genetics Department at the Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston & Co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research, honorary Professor at the University of Sydney, and co-founder of the journal Aging. He obtained a BS and a Ph.D. at UNSW, worked as a postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T., was hired at Harvard Medical School in 1999 as an Assistant Professor, and promoted to tenured Professor in 2008. His book Lifespan: Why We Age and Why We Don’t Have To, a NYT bestseller, is published in more than 20 languages.
Dr. Sinclair is an inventor on more than 50 patents, 170 papers, an h-index of 103 & cited 73,000+ times. His more than 40 awards include an Excellence in Teaching Award, Harvard, AFAR Fellowship, the Ellison Medical Foundation Scholarships, Genzyme Outstanding Achievement Award, Telluride Technology Award, Innovator of the Year, MERIT Award, Nathan Shock Award, Denham Harman Award, ASMR Medal, Advance Global Australian, Pioneer Award, TIME100’s most influential people, TIME magazine’s Heathcare 50, Irving Wright Award, AFAR, and is an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).
He cofounded Sirtris Pharma (Cambridge; NASDAQ: SIRT, bought by GSK), Genocea (Cambridge, MA; NASDAQ: GNCA); Ovascience (NASDAQ: OVAS), Cohbar (Menlo Park NASDAQ: CWBR)), MetroBiotech, ArcBio, Liberty Biosecurity, Galilei, Immetas, EdenRoc Sciences and affiliates, and Life Biosciences and affiliates.