Lifeboat Foundation

Could the response to cancer immunotherapy depend on bacteria that originate in the gut and travel to the tumor?

Circa 2018

Numerous experimental vaccines that aim to provide multi-season protection are in human studies.

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A Stanford University professor and stem cell pioneer whose first job in science paid $25 a month is poised to receive a $191 million windfall from the sale of the immunotherapy biotech firm he co-founded.

Irv Weissman, 80, owns 4.2% of Forty Seven Inc., which Gilead Sciences Inc. agreed to buy for about $4.9 billion, a remarkable amount considering the company’s market value was less than $250 million just five months ago.

Researchers at Princeton University have revealed the inner workings of a gene repression mechanism in fruit fly embryos, adding insight to the study of human diseases.

Led by graduate student Shannon Keenan, the team used light to activate chemical signals in developing fruit flies and traced the effects on a protein called Capicua, or Cic. Located in a cell’s nucleus, Cic binds to DNA and performs the specialized task of silencing genes. The study, published in Developmental Cell and made available online March 5, reveals the dynamics of gene repression by this protein.

In a complex piece of music, the silences running through the melody contribute as much to the score’s effect as the sounded notes. The biological processes that control development rely on highly sophisticated temporal patterns of gene activation and repression to create life’s beautiful symphonies. When a pattern is disrupted, it’s like a wrong note in the music. In this case, Cic is a repressor protein that silences certain parts of the genome, allowing other genes to express in harmony with one another. Understanding how repressors like Cic work allows researchers to better conduct the orchestra.

The origins are still too unknown. This is entirely new life a more parasitic lifeform. Bit still new lifeforms entirely. My experiencers tell me of alien origin though the rate of spread also the complexity. No human could make this no even government can make this. We can mimic life not create something new. Sure new things can be added but the signature tells me it is definitely of alien origin. Not even nature can create something this quick nor even governments. Sure there may be like similar things but why does it spread so fast in near systematic precision. Which leads to essentially of exterrestial origin. This is essentially new life we are dealing with.

Nat Rev Microbiol. 2019 Mar;17:181–192. doi: 10.1038/s41579-018‑0118-9.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) are two highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses that emerged in humans at the beginning of the 21st century. Both viruses likely originated in bats, and genetically diverse coronaviruses that are related to SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV were discovered in bats worldwide. In this Review, we summarize the current knowledge on the origin and evolution of these two pathogenic coronaviruses and discuss their receptor usage; we also highlight the diversity and potential of spillover of bat-borne coronaviruses, as evidenced by the recent spillover of swine acute diarrhoea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV) to pigs.

Whether man made or alien made or whatever a chimeric vaccine could essentially cure the illness.

Chimeric vaccines consisting of a series of immunodominant epitopes have been explored in the development of vaccines against malaria ( Hanson and Edelman, 2004 ; Caro-Aguilar et al., 2005 ), group A streptococci ( Dale, 1999 ; Hu et al., 2002 ; Kotloff et al., 2004 ; Kotloff and Dale, 2004 ; Dale et al., 2005 ; McNeil et al., 2005 ), and several viruses ( Wang et al., 1999d ; Bouche et al., 2005 ; Fan et al., 2005 ; Apt et al., 2006 ). Data suggest that a broadly protective OspC vaccine will require the inclusion of epitopes from approximately 28 OspC types ( Earnhart and Marconi, 2007c ). Such a construct is predicted to provide protection against all major Lyme disease spirochete species associated with human disease, and to be effective in both Europe and North America. Possible cross-protection elicited by some epitopes may reduce the total number of epitopes required to achieve this goal.

A prototype tetravalent chimeric recombinant OspC-based vaccine has been produced that incorporates epitope-containing regions from types A, B, K, and D. This “ABKD” vaccine elicited antibodies in mice that bind OspC as presented on the surface of intact and viable spirochetes and mediate bactericidal activity by a complement-dependent mechanism ( Buckles et al., 2006 ; Earnhart et al., 2007 ). It is noteworthy that a decrease in epitope-specific titer was observed for epitopes progressing from the N- to the C-terminus of the chimeric protein. The antibody titer to the type D epitope was 1.7 logs lower than that observed for the N-terminally located type A epitope ( Earnhart et al., 2007 ). This effect did not appear to be due to C-terminal degradation of the construct since the addition of C-terminal tags that have been reported to stabilize recombinant proteins did not improve antibody titer ( Earnhart and Marconi, 2007a ).

Quantum computing isn’t yet far enough along that it could have helped curb the spread of this coronavirus outbreak. But this emerging field of computing will almost certainly help scientists and researchers confront future crises.

“Can we compress the rate at which we discover, for example, a treatment or an approach to this?” asks Dario Gil, the director of IBM Research. “The goal is to do everything that we are doing today in terms of discovery of materials, chemistry, things like that, (in) factors of 10 times better, 100 times better,”

And that, he says, “could be game-changing.”

A population of stem cells with the ability to generate new bone has been newly discovered by a group of researchers at the UConn School of Dental Medicine.

In the journal Stem Cells, lead investigator Dr. Ivo Kalajzic, professor of reconstructive sciences, postdoctoral fellows Dr. Sierra Root and Dr. Natalie Wee, and collaborators at Harvard, Maine Medical Research Center, and the University of Auckland present a new population of cells that reside along the vascular channels that stretch across the bone and connect the inner and outer parts of the bone.

“This is a new discovery of perivascular cells residing within the bone itself that can generate new bone forming cells,” said Kalajzic. “These cells likely regulate bone formation or participate in bone mass maintenance and repair.”