Lifeboat Foundation

It’s a “precise new approach” to targeting and replacing mutated genes, scientists say.

His technology platforms have benefited genomics, diagnostics, and drug screening.

Okay, Science time.

• Article
• Published: 21 October 2019

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We’re continuing to release talks from Ending Age-Related Diseases 2019, our highly successful two-day conference that featured talks from leading researchers and investors, bringing them together to discuss the future of aging and rejuvenation biotechnology.

John Lewis of Oisin Biotechnologies discussed senolytics, which are drugs that kill senescent cells. He explained the differences between healthy and senescent cells along with the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) responsible for systemic inflammation. He went into detail about senolytics and what his company looks for when creating them, including details about suicide genes and biomarkers of senescence. He also discussed issues with bringing these drugs to humans and suggested oncology as a possible method for bringing them to the clinic.

Just in time for Halloween, doctors in France say they witnessed a real-life horror tale involving an antibiotic-resistant superbug. In less than a month, their patient’s infection evolved resistance to the last-resort drug they had used to treat it. Thankfully, the doctors were still able to defeat the microscopic threat—and the case may have uncovered a peculiar weakness in the germ.

According to the report, published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a young child had been dealing with recurrent infections of the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa for over two years. P. aeruginosa is an opportunistic infection that sickens tens of thousands of already weakened people in hospitals and other health-care settings in the U.S. a year. In these people, it can cause serious infections.

Cells are the fundamental “building blocks” that make up living organisms. Yet, we don’t know exactly how cells were formed in the first place. We also don’t know what all the molecules that make up any natural cell do. Finally, we can’t yet put molecules together ourselves to make new synthetic cells.

Addressing the questions and challenges posed above requires significant collaboration and cooperation. The Build-a-Cell community welcomes all who wish to learn about and cooperate in the work of fully understanding and engineering a diversity of synthetic cells.

The future of biotechnology is in realizing fully understood, lineage agnostic organisms, beginning with single cells.

Researchers at Australia’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience are exploring new frontiers in healthcare and energy storage. Bec Crew reports.