Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,822

Statins Used to Lower Cholesterol Linked to Doubled Risk of Developing Dementia

If concerned, speak to your physician.

In patients with mild cognitive impairment, taking lipophilic statins more than doubles their risk of developing dementia compared to those who do not take statins. According to research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2021 Annual Meeting, positron emission tomography (PET) scans of lipophilic statin users revealed a highly significant decline in metabolism in the area of the brain that is first impacted by Alzheimer’s disease.

Statins are medications used to lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. They are the most commonly used drugs in the developed world, and nearly 50 percent of Americans over age 75 use a statin. Different types of statins are available based on a patient’s health needs, including hydrophilic statins that focus on the liver and lipophilic statins that are distributed to tissues throughout the body.

Lipophilic statins include simvastatin, fluvastatin, pitavastatin, lovastatin and atorvastatin. Hydrophilic statins include rosuvastatin and pravastatin.

Researchers engineer cells to destroy malignant tumor cells but leave the rest alone

Researchers at McMaster University have developed a promising new cancer immunotherapy that uses cancer-killing cells genetically engineered outside the body to find and destroy malignant tumors.

The modified “natural killer” can differentiate between and that are often intermingled in and around tumors, destroying only the targeted cells.

The natural killer cells’ ability to distinguish the , even from healthy cells that bear similar markers, brings new promise to this branch of immunotherapy, say members of the research team behind a paper published in the current issue of the journal iScience, newly posted on the PubMed database.

Gottlieb says parts of U.S. could see “very dense outbreaks” as Delta variant spreads

Washington — As the U.S. continues to navigate its way through the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said areas of the country could experience “very dense outbreaks” with the concerning Delta variant continuing to circulate.

“It’s going to be hyper-regionalized, where there are certain pockets of the country [where] we can have very dense outbreaks,” Gottlieb said Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

The most vulnerable areas continue to be those with low vaccination rates and low rates of immunity from prior infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many southern states have vaccination rates that lag behind the national average.

Compound Tested for Alcoholic Liver Disease

Investigators at Cedars-Sinai and UC San Diego found that a synthetic compound given orally protected the liver against injury in an animal model for alcoholic hepatitis.

The study, co-authored by Dr. Ekihiro Seki, was published in the Proceedings of the Na… See More.

The most prevalent forms of ALD are fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis and cirrhosis. Corticosteroids are the only treatment option for alcoholic hepatitis, or chronic inflammation of the liver, despite little evidence of long-term efficacy and considerable adverse side effects.

Investigators at Cedars-Sinai and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), found that a synthetic compound given orally protected the liver against injury in an animal model for alcoholic hepatitis. The study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ekihiro Seki, MD, PhD of Cedars-Sinai and Dennis A. Carson, MD, of UCSD are co-senior authors of the paper.

“Interleukin-22 (IL-22) is a beneficial cytokine that can help protect the body against invading pathogens, repair damage caused by intestinal or liver disease and potentially prevent the development of ALD,” said Seki, professor of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Loss of circadian regulation allows for increase in glucose production during lung cancer

This research places the circadian clock as a central regulator of glucose production during lung cancer progression and provides important insight toward the development of novel therapeutics to target REV-ERBα to suppress cancer cell growth.

New research from the University of California, Irvine reveals how the circadian regulation of glucose production in the liver is lost during lung cancer progression, and how the resulting increase in glucose production may fuel cancer cell growth.

The new study titled, “Glucagon regulates the stability of REV-ERBα to modulate hepatic in a model of lung cancer-associated cachexia,” published today in Science Advances, illustrates how the is regulated under conditions of stress such as during lung cancer progression and cancer-associated tissue wasting disease called cachexia.

“Our research shows that a critical circadian protein, REV-ERBα, controls glucose production in the liver. During lung cancer progression and specifically under conditions of cachexia, this circadian regulation is lost, resulting in increased glucose production from the liver,” said senior author Selma Masri, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biological Chemistry at UCI School of Medicine. “Based on our findings, we identified that lung tumors are able to provide instructive cues to the liver to increase glucose production, a major for cancer cells.”

The quantum world of diamonds

3 mins. This is really fascinating. Several applications, including quantum computing. Need special diamonds that scientists now can produce.

Diamonds are dazzling physicists with their powerful quantum properties. A particular impurity — the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre — allows diamonds to be used for everything from geolocation to diagnosing disease. This animation takes a closer look at these NV centres, and the carefully crafted artificial diamonds that make them possible.

Major Funding Announced for Nanobody Research

AgomAb Therapeutics have announced the successful acquisition of a second round of funding ($74M) for research into the applications of antibodies for use in the field of regenerative medicine. Antibodies have already received a large amount of attention for their ability to positively effect numerous conditions such as inflammation, metabolic disorders, and non-healing wounds.

Antibodies are small protein molecules which are used by the body to ‘tag’ foreign pathogens in order for the immune system to identify and destroy them. What is unique about these antibodies is that due to their structure they will only attach themselves to a particular pathogen (at a particular site known as an antigen). In many cases, the binding of an antibody to a pathogen such as a virus is enough to completely inactive the pathogen, making it effectively harmless.

Live streaming is the gig economy of the pandemic era, Uplive says

Livestreaming is a trillion-dollar industry in China, where social networking and entertainment meet marketing and e-commerce. China’s retail economy has become influencer-driven, with almost all online consumers buying products based on recommendations by their idols. That trend has enabled livestreaming and video platforms like Kuaishou and Douyin, which cultivated a roster of hugely popular influencers, to participate in the e-commerce market through partnerships with the online sales platforms.

Many people and businesses would not have survived the pandemic if it were not for the gig economy, says the co-founder of Asia Innovations Group, the start-up behind the live-streaming platform Uplive.

CRISPR gene editing breakthrough could treat many more diseases

CRISPR gene editing already promises to fight diseases that were once thought unassailable, but techniques so far have required injecting the tools directly into affected cells. That’s not very practical for some conditions. However, there’s just been a breakthrough. NPR reports that researchers have published results showing that you can inject CRISPR-Cas9 into the bloodstream to make edits, opening the door to the use of gene editing for treating many common diseases.

The experimental treatment tackled a rare genetic disease, transthyretin amyloidosis. Scientists injected volunteers with CRISPR-loaded nanoparticles that were absorbed by the patients’ livers, editing a gene in the organ to disable production of a harmful protein. Levels of that protein plunged within weeks of the injection, saving patients from an illness that can rapidly destroy nerves and other tissues in their bodies.

The test involved just six people, and the research team still has to conduct long-term studies to check for possible negative effects. If this method proves viable on a large scale, though, it could be used to treat illnesses where existing CRISPR techniques aren’t practical, ranging from Alzheimer’s to heart disease.

/* */