Lifeboat Foundation

Lyme disease is an infectious condition spread by ticks that affects as many as 300,000 people in the US every year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Today’s treatment is largely effective in treating the infection, but a good portion of patients do not respond and go on to endure lingering symptoms. A new study has revealed that an already-approved antibiotic can completely eliminate the underlying bacteria that causes the disease in mice, offering new hope of a more comprehensive therapy for humans.

While the standard antibiotics used to treat Lyme disease do the job for the majority of patients, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent go on to experience its symptoms. These include muscle pain, fatigue, fever, headaches and heart problems. There are couple of theories for why this might be.

“Some researchers think this may be due to drug-tolerant bacteria living in the body and continuing to cause disease,” said study author Jayakumar Rajadas. “Others believe it’s an immune disorder caused by bacteria during the first exposure, which causes a perpetual inflammation condition. Whatever the cause, the pain for patients is still very real.”

Uncertainty and fear about coronavirus’ spread and the course of the illness is causing shockwaves in our daily lives. A simple paper test could provide answers to basic questions and shape a sensible course forward.

:333 this could be used for coronavirus: 3.

Microfluidic devices lined with living human cells for drug development, disease modeling, and personalized medicine.

A new approach would use RNA or DNA to help the body develop antibodies to the rapidly spreading illness.

A U.S. military research program that seeks a new way to boost a body’s immunity to viruses could change how governments and militaries prepare for pandemics — and might even arrive soon enough to help with the COVID −19 outbreak.

DARPAs Pandemic Prevention Platform isn’t looking to create a vaccine, which can take years to produce and weeks to take effect in the body. Rather, the goal is to identify the specific monoclonal antibodies that the body naturally produces when it encounters a virus, and then trick the body into producing the one that guards against a specific illness. That could serve as a temporary, months-long shield that can protect the individual from the pathogen until a vaccine can be brought online.

And others in the research community, like this nuclear physicist at the Large Hadron Collider, are realizing how close they came to catching the virus.

The first COVID-19 case may have started as early as November 17. A good chunk of my reararch group, and our particular slice of the nuclear physics community, were literally in Wuhan until just a week before this. To think what could have been… https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro…raced-back

— Dennis V. Perepelitsa (@dvperepelitsa) March 13, 2020

Coronavirus Research : A recent study published on an open platform but has yet to be peer reviewed caught our eyes as it was strangely conducted by the prestigious Spiez Laboratory In Switzerland by a team of leading virologists and microbiologists, but what intrigued me was that why would a prestigious research centre like the Spiez laboratory that had enormous funds and had some of the leading specialist post a ‘half-baked’ research on an open platform?

Echinacea Flowers

Scientists have struggled to develop new antibiotics. Enter: the machines.

Although the majority of the synthetic biology market is concentrated in North America and Europe, the synthetic biology landscape is growing worldwide — with some of the fastest growing areas developing outside of the United States. There are several hotspots — formed when innovation at one company or university lab sparks new spinoffs — that synthetic biology followers should pay close attention to in the coming months and years.

The United Kingdom and Ireland

Among non-US hotspots for synthetic biology, the United Kingdom stands out. While most US universities still lack programs in synthetic biology, they are not hard to come by in the UK. Imperial College London, the University of Warwick, Cambridge University, and the University of Edinburgh are all particularly noteworthy for the depth and breadth of synthetic biology research. And, OpenPlant, a joint initiative between the University of Cambridge, John Innes Centre, and the Earlham Institute, is advancing synthetic biology by engineering the next generation of DNA tools for “smart” crop breeding systems.

Scientists at MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute and MIT’s CSAIL built a deep learning network that can acquire a broad representation of molecular structure and thereby discover novel antibiotics. The resulting compound, halicin, can destroy a pathogen for which no cure has existed, and it could even help in the fight against coronavirus.