Lifeboat Foundation

A Maltese scientist working with a group of researchers have found a way to re-activate the human immune system to fight cancer cells that can develop.

Dr. David Saliba is optimistic that their research will pave the way for the development of new therapies to fight cancer.

Together with a group of researchers from the University of Malta and the University of Oxford, Dr. David Saliba has for the last four years researched about how immune system cells communicate with each other, especially when it comes to combating cancer.

Every time you inhale through your nose, olfactory receptors in your nasal passages enable your sense of smell to function. These receptors consist of protein complexes that help you detect chemicals floating in the air.

But research now shows that those types of receptors aren’t only found along your breathing passages. They’re all over the body in a wide variety of organs, and they influence what organs like your liver and intestines are doing.

Added to that, cancer cells possess their own collection of olfactory receptors that affect how they function. And those receptors, some researchers believe, might represent one of cancer’s vulnerabilities – and a key to destroying cancers with scents.

The method has been trialled successfully, and could be ready for use in as little as four years.

Metabesity 2019: Epigenetic resetting of cellular age mediated by nuclear reprogramming – A new paradigm in overcoming aging and aging-associated diseases.
Featuring Vittorio Sebastiano, PhD, Assistant Professor of Stanford University; Co-Founder of Turn Biotechnologies, USA

For more information, see www.metabesity2019.com

On a farm in Bavaria, German researchers are using gene editing to create pigs that could provide organs to save thousands of lives.

Very interesting.

Numerous vaccines, from flu shots to those those that help thwart chickenpox and measles, are widely used to guard against contagion, but researchers in France are proposing a breakthrough role for rotavirus vaccines: deploying them in cancer treatment.

Scientists from throughout France—Paris, Lyon, Villejuif and beyond—are part of a large research team that has asked a tantalizing question: Can rotavirus vaccines be repurposed to overcome resistance in cancer immunotherapy? The team is focusing on resistance that emerges to the form of cancer treatment known as checkpoint blockade immunotherapy.

Continue reading “Rotavirus vaccine: A potential new role as an anticancer agent” »

Researchers at the University of Dundee have made a discovery they believe has the potential to put the brakes on the ‘runaway train’ that is Parkinson’s disease.

The team, based at the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit (MRC-PPU) in the School of Life Sciences, have discovered a new enzyme that inhibits the LRRK2 pathway. Mutations of the LRRK2 gene are the most common cause of genetic Parkinson’s.

Enzymes are molecular machines that regulate the biological processes required to maintain healthy functioning life. They can also be targeted by drugs to increase or decrease the level of certain activity –in this instance the LRRK2 pathway.

A Portland teen won second place in a national technology contest, taking home $2,500 that he can use to attend science camp next summer.

Rishab Jain, 14, is a freshman at Westview High School. His winning project, which he calls the Pancreas Detective, is an artificial intelligence tool that can help diagnose pancreatic cancer through gene sequencing. The algorithm helps doctors focus on the organ during examinations, which is often obscured because it moves around the abdominal area as patients breathe and other bodily functions shift other organs as well.

Last year, the same project netted $25,000 from 3M when he attended Stoller Middle School. He used that money to fund his nonprofit, Samyak Science Society, which promotes science, technology, engineering and math education for other children, Time Magazine reported.

Unlike chemotherapy or radiation, which attack cancer directly, CAR-T engineers patients’ immune cells so they can do it themselves. T-cells are removed from the blood and given new genes that produce receptors that let the T-cells recognize and bind to leukemia cells with a specific protein, CD19.

The genetically modified T-cells are then multiplied in the lab and infused back into the patient, where they ideally multiply even further and begin to target and kill cancer cells with CD19.