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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,529

Lab-Grown Pancreas Reverse Diabetes In Mice

Circa 2017

AsianScientist (Feb. 8, 2017) – Mouse pancreases grown in rats generate functional, insulin-producing cells that can reverse diabetes when transplanted into mice with the disease, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Tokyo.

These findings, published in Nature, suggest that a similar technique could one day be used to generate matched, transplantable human organs in large animals like pigs or sheep.

About 76,000 people in the United States are currently waiting for an organ transplant, but organs are in short supply. Generating genetically matched human organs in large animals could relieve the shortage and release transplant recipients from the need for lifelong immunosuppression, the researchers say.

Researchers make regenerative medicine breakthrough with volumetric 3D bioprinted livers

A research team from Utrecht University has successfully fabricated working livers using a newly developed ultrafast volumetric 3D bioprinting method.

By means of visible light tomography, the volumetric bioprinting method enabled the successful printing of miniature stem cell units by making the cells “transparent”, which meant they retained their resolution and ability to perform biological processes.

Printed in less than 20 seconds, the liver units were able to perform key toxin elimination processes mimicking those that natural livers perform in our bodies, and could open new opportunities for regenerative medicine and personalized drug testing.

World’s smallest battery can power dust-sized computers

The new microbattery is roughly the size of a gain of dust – less than one square millimeter – and has a minimum energy density of 100 microwatt hours per square centimeter. To achieve this, the team winded up current collectors and electrode strips made of polymeric, metallic, and dielectric materials at the microscale. The researchers used Swiss-roll or micro-origami process.

The layered system with inherent tension is created by consecutively coating thin layers of polymeric, metallic, and dielectric materials onto a wafer surface. The mechanical tension is released by peeling off the thin layers, which then automatically snap back to roll up into a Swiss-Roll architecture to create a self-wound cylinder microbattery. The method is compatible with established chip manufacturing technologies and capable of producing high throughput microbatteries on a wafer surface.

The team behind the world’s smallest battery says it could be used in the human body, where tiny sensors and actuators require a continuous power supply. They also claim that the rechargeable microbatteries could also power the world’s smallest computer chips for about ten hours – for example, to measure the local ambient temperature continuously. In addition, it has great potential in future micro-and nanoelectronic sensorics and actuator technologies, in the Internet of Things, miniaturized medical implants, microrobotic systems, and ultra–flexible electronics.

Human Hibernation Isn’t Just for Space Travel

The science of human hibernation and ‘torpor’ may soon catch up with science fiction, not only facilitating space travel but potentially helping treat cancer.

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New project creates digital clones of human brains to help treat neurological disorders

More recently, digital twins have been the focus of a European Union-funded project that seeks to clone a patient’s entire brain. Dubbed Neurotwin, the research project aims to create virtual models that can be used to predict the effects of stimulation for the treatment of neurological disorders—including epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. When it comes to epilepsy, non-invasive stimulations (where electrical currents are painlessly delivered to the brain) have proven effective in tackling seizures. Given how drugs don’t help a third of epilepsy patients, the technology is coveted yet needs refinement. This is where virtual clones come in.

“The digital avatar is essentially a mathematical model running on a computer,” Giulio Ruffini, coordinator of the Neurotwin project, told WIRED. Including a network of embedded “neural mass models,” the technology hopes to create a map of the neural connections in the brain—a concept termed as the ‘connectome’. “In the case of epilepsy, some areas of the connectome could become overexcited,” the outlet mentioned. “In the case of, say, stroke, the connectome might be altered.” Once the digital clone has been created by the team, with about half an hour-worth of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and ten minutes of electroencephalography (EEG) readings to capture electrical activities and realistically simulate the brain’s main tissues (including the scalp, skull, cerebrospinal fluid, and grey and white matter), it can then be used to optimise stimulation of the real patient’s brain.

According to Ruffini, this is possible “because we can run endless simulations on the computer until we find what we need. It is, in this sense, like a weather forecasting computational model.”

Reflections on the ethics of genetic enhancement

Public policy includes efforts by governmental as well as nongovernmental agencies (other than professional associations) to manage genetic enhancement. For example, the International Olympic Committee has a policy on performance-enhancing drugs in sport. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration classified synthetic anabolic steroids as a restricted class of drugs, making it more difficult to get access to them. Such measures will not always be successful. Epoetin alfa (EPO) is a useful medication for the many people who suffer from chronic anemia, including people who must undergo regular renal dialysis. As a consequence, it is in very wide supply for legitimate therapeutic purposes, unlike the synthetic anabolic steroids. Imposing strict limitations on access to EPO would create an enormous inconvenience for the large number of people who benefit from the drug. The fact that some athletes are able to get their hands on EPO is an unintended consequence of having the drug widely available for legitimate therapeutic uses. The appropriate public policy will not be the same, necessarily, for every drug.

By “personal policy” we mean the moral understandings and social practices of individuals, parents, and families, including those moral convictions that would cause them to refrain from unwise or unfair use of genetic enhancement technologies. The Worth of a Child, for example, focuses on ethical issues involving children and parents.11 How does one engage that sort of personal policy response? The means we have are limited but powerful: education, public dialogue, and the encouragement of ethical reflection.

In conclusion, there are four points worth reiterating. First, as we think about genetic enhancement, we should use a broad definition of genetic-enhancement technologies, not merely gene manipulation, but indirect genetic technologies, such as biosynthetic drugs. Second, we should try to anticipate the enhancement temptations of new therapies. Such anticipation may help us in shaping the marketing, availability, or other aspects of those technologies. Third, we should promote the adoption of appropriate public and professional policies. Finally, we should provide public education and dialogue to encourage personal ethical reflection on the appropriate uses and limits of genetic-enhancement technologies.

Long-Standing Enigma Finally Cracked — Link Discovered Between High Blood Pressure and Diabetes

The long-standing enigma of why so many patients suffering with high blood pressure (known as hypertension) also have diabetes (high blood sugar) has finally been cracked by an international team led by the universities of Bristol, UK, and Auckland, New Zealand.

The important new discovery has shown that a small protein cell glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) couples the body’s control of blood sugar and blood pressure.

Professor Julian Paton, a senior author, and Director of Manaaki Mãnawa – The Centre for Heart Research at the University of Auckland, said: “We’ve known for a long time that hypertension and diabetes are inextricably linked and have finally discovered the reason, which will now inform new treatment strategies.”

£3 Million Funding For Research Into Technology That Could Cure Heart Failure

Eight cutting-edge heart failure projects are set to receive millions of pounds’ worth of funding from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) this year, with the money raised, fittingly enough, by the London Marathon.

Longevity. Technology: Heart disease is the world’s greatest killer, with cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) taking an estimated 17.9 million lives each year [1]. With organs for transplant in short supply, the focus is turning to regenerative medicine – getting the heart to repair itself – and the BHF is planning to fund eight projects all aimed at finding ways to cure heart failure. Given that a picture paints a thousand words, BHF has made the smart move of showcasing this regenerative research through a stunning set of images that shows the Foundation’s desire to not just ameliorate the symptoms of heart disease, or to extend patients’ lives, but to cure heart disease by regenerating, regrowing or replacing damaged cells and tissues.

“Heart failure is a debilitating condition that dramatically affects the lives of almost 1 million people in the UK,” commented Professor Metin Avkiran, BHF Associate Medical Director. “BHF-funded research has spear-headed treatments to give people with heart failure longer, healthier lives, but there is no cure. Regenerative medicine offers that hope.

Sound waves convert stem cells into bone in regenerative breakthrough

Regrowing or replacing bone lost to disease is tricky and often painful. In a new study Australian researchers have found a relatively simple way to induce stem cells to turn into bone cells quickly and efficiently, using high-frequency sound waves.

Stem cells have enormous medical potential in helping to regenerate various tissues in the body, but bone has proven particularly hard to work with. Bone originates from what are known as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which mostly reside in the bone marrow. Collecting these is a painful procedure, then converting them into bone cells is difficult to scale up to useful levels.

But researchers from RMIT have now found a faster and simpler way to induce MSCs to turn into bone cells. Previous studies have suggested that the vibrations from sound waves can induce cell differentiation, but it typically took over a week with mixed results. These experiments have been limited to low frequencies, and it was thought that higher frequencies would have little benefit. So for the new study, the RMIT team investigated these higher frequencies.

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