A father and daughter duo took organ donor awareness to new heights this weekend at the Great Reno Balloon Race. Koh Murai and Laura Ingram said they have been flying together as a family for decades. The two have teamed up to promote organ donation during the race by flying The Donor Network West Hot Air Balloon. In 2006, Murai was grounded by kidney failure.
Dr. Kevin Strange is the CEO and co-founder of Novo Biosciences, a biotechnology company focused on regenerating the heart and other organs. We recently had the opportunity to interview him about MSI-1436 (trodusquemine), a compound that promotes regeneration in multiple animal models.
What, if anything, happens to existing scar tissue in the presence of MSI-1436?
More detailed studies need to be conducted to fully understand how MSI-1436 impacts existing scar tissue. However, our published work is very encouraging. We induced ischemic injury in the adult mouse heart by permanently ligating the left anterior descending coronary artery. This is a standard heart attack model. Twenty-four hours after ligation of the artery, we began treating with MSI-1436 or vehicle (placebo). Hearts were isolated from mice for histological analysis 3 days and 28 days after injury and collagen deposition (i.e., scarring) was quantified. In hearts isolated after 3 days, the scarring index measured as area was the same, ~40%, in both MSI-1436- and vehicle-treated mice. In other words, there was no difference in the extent of initial scarring in the two groups of animals.
Is this for real? The future is here, and it’s alive and beating. Scientists at Tel Aviv University have printed the world’s first 3D heart complete with blood vessels using personalized “ink” made of collagen, a protein that supports the cell structures, and other biological molecules.
While trying to regenerate the thymus gland, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers might have found a solution to not only slowing down the ageing problem but actually reversing it, a new study claims.
Scientists volunteers in a California study were given a cocktail of three common drugs for one year- a growth hormone and two diabetes medications in order to stimulate the regeneration of thymus gland. However, according to a study published in Nature journal, researchers found that participants had lost an average of 2.5 years on their “epigenetic clock,” measured by analyzing marks on a person’s genomes.
“I’d expected to see slowing down of the clock, but not a reversal,” UCLA researcher Steve Horvath told Nature. “That felt kind of futuristic.”
Read the review article published in Frontiers in Pharmacology: https://fro.ntiers.in/BjeD
Prevention is better than cure. This simple rule applies to any disease and is especially valuable when symptoms are not properly acknowledged.
We will describe crucial symptoms that might occur one month (or even earlier) before a heart attack. You don’t need to become a total hypochondriac, but a bit of health awareness never hurt anybody. Pay close attention in case you are at risk. Several often-missed indicators are listed at the end of the article. health, medicine, science, health, medicine, science, health, science, health, science.
After what has been a summer of “crippling ransomware attacks,” there has now been some respite courtesy of the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, which has proven that the playing field can be levelled. The city was hit back in July, with its data held hostage, ransomed for more than $5 million in bitcoin. But as the attackers waited for their payment, the city’s law enforcement agencies and technology teams had other ideas.
No types of organisations are immune from these types of attacks these days,” Mayor Jon Mitchell told reporters. The city government, he said, had been taking steps to strengthen our defences—but any network is only one keyword click away from an attack. Thankfully, he acknowledged, “the attack could have been much worse.” It hit on the July 4 holiday when many systems were shut down.
“The attack was a variant of the RYUK virus,” Mitchell confirmed. “The victim needs to make a ransom payment to acquire the decryption key from the attacker.” The attack did not affect all systems or disrupt all services, and on the return to work on July 5, the city kept systems turned off as they isolated the attack.
A gene that appeared sometime after humans began processing their food seems to protect some people from type 2 diabetes.
During pivotal trials that led to the drug’s approval, approximately 40% of patients saw their tumors shrink in size.
