Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,869

Whole genome duplication followed by massive gene loss has shaped many genomes, including the human genome. Why some gene duplicates are retained while most perish has puzzled scientists for decades.

A study, published today in Science, has found that gene retention depends on the degree of “functional and structural entanglement”, which measures interdependency between gene structure and function. In other words, while most duplicates either become obsolete or they evolve new roles, some are retained forever because, evolutionarily speaking, they’re simply stuck.

“When we scan genomes there are some gene pairs that remain from events that occurred millions of years ago,” says Elena Kuzmin, a co-lead author of the study and former graduate student who trained with Charles Boone, professor of molecular genetics in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, at the University of Toronto, who co-led the study.

Read more | >

🤔

Gilead’s Covid-19 drug remdesivir will be priced at $3,120 for a typical U.S. patient with commercial insurance.

Gilead Sciences Inc. detailed its pricing plans for Covid-19 drug remdesivir, saying it will charge U.S. hospitals $3,120 for a typical patient with commercial insurance.

The drugmaker on Monday disclosed its pricing plans as it prepares to begin charging for the drug in July. The U.S. has been distributing remdesivir donated by Gilead since the drug was authorized for emergency use in May.

Read more | >

However, the situation has been improving as Chinese tech giants including e-commerce company Alibaba, search engine Baidu, on-demand delivery company Meituan Dianping, ride-hailing operator Didi Chuxing and smartphone maker Xiaomi now offer more affordable health care plans via mutual aid platforms, which operate as a collective claim-sharing mechanism.

China’s online mutual aid platforms are disrupting old school insurance companies by leveraging big data and internet finance technologies to offer low cost medical coverage.

Read more | >

Animal experiments demonstrating the anti-aging effects of exchanging young blood plasma for old have been prominent in the last two months. Several groups are saying it’s time to translate their findings into human trials. But I’ve recently learned that others have been doing this for several years. What can we learn from their results to guide the next steps in experimentation?

I had never heard of Grifols, the Spanish pharmaceutical company that is the world’s largest supplier of albumin. Since 2005, Grifols has been quietly funding world leaders in plasma exchange research in humans. Albutein ® is their brand-name solution of human albumin.

Last month, the first results of the Grifol’s AMBAR trial were released. (AMBAR stands for A lzheimer’s M odulation B y A lbumin R eplacement). It was a much larger-scale phase 2.5 trial, with 496 subjects recruited from sites in Spain and USA, and treated for 14 months. A single treatment consisted of removing 2.5 to 3 litres of blood (more than half the body’s inventory) and replacing it with Albutein. Patients began with 6 weekly treatments, and thereafter there were 12 monthly smaller plasma replacements (0.7 litres), again with Albutein.

Read more | >

More than 500,000 people throughout the world have died of the new coronavirus, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The staggering milestone comes as virus cases have surged in the U.S. in recent weeks, and as South America has emerged as a virus hotspot.

More than a quarter of the world’s reported coronavirus deaths have occurred in the U.S., where 31 states have seen a jump in cases compared to two weeks ago. The number of new confirmed coronavirus cases nationwide hit a record high of 45,300 on Friday — a more than 5,000-case spike from the day before.

In Texas and Florida, governors are now rolling back reopening measures in an effort to stem the virus’ spread. The intensive care units in some Texas hospitals are now 100% full, after the state broke hospitalization records for 15 days in a row.

Read more | >

June 25, 2020 — The rapid politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen in messages members of the U.S. Congress sent about the issue on the social media site Twitter, a new analysis found.

Using artificial intelligence and resources from the Ohio Supercomputer Center, researchers conducted an analysis that covered all 30,887 tweets that members sent about COVID-19 from the first one on Jan. 17 through March 31.

Read more | >

New Delhi could select its new fighter in 2019. If it picks the F-21 and opts to keep Lockheed’s designation for the type, it rightfully could claim to be the first operator of a brand-new fighter.

Lockheed Martin in mid-February 2019 offered to sell India a new fighter the company calls the “F-21.”

Only it doesn’t look like a new fighter at all. The F-21 looks like an F-16.

Read more | >