Lifeboat Foundation

Clumps of harmful proteins that interfere with brain functions have been partially cleared in mice using nothing but light and sound.

Research led by MIT earlier this year found strobe lights and a low pitched buzz can be used to recreate brain waves lost in the disease, which in turn remove plaque and improve cognitive function in mice engineered to display Alzheimer’s-like behaviour.

It’s a little like using light and sound to trigger their own brain waves to help fight the disease.

The second thing to mention is that in many instances, we actually have cracked it, at least medically. There are endless cutting-edge treatments being deployed as we speak, and endless additional cutting-edge research projects being conducted. There are new breakthroughs all the time, much of which are awaiting FDA approval, but one thing many of these treatments and cures have in common is that they are developed in a tiny country smaller than New Jersey that happens to be located in perhaps the worst neighborhood on Earth. When it comes to cancer research, Israel leads the way.

Finally, the last time I wrote about cutting-edge cancer treatments, I was contacted by a close friend who is a leading oncologist. He pointed out that a disclaimer is very much necessary when I write these articles. The last thing oncologists need is for their patients to think there is some magical solution here and show up to their appointments with a cut-out of an article. In fact, the last thing a cancer patient needs is false hope.

So the disclaimer is that this company is in the clinical trial phase, and if all goes according to plan, tumors might be much more manageable and treatable than they are today, but a lot has to happen before we get there.

Professor Varda Shoshan-Barmatz of the Department of Life Sciences and the founding Director of the NIBN, in collaboration with Dr. Jay Chung of the NIH, have successfully demonstrated that the mitochondrial protein VDAC1 is critical for the release of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) associated with the lupus disease.

They demonstrated that restricting of VDAC1 with a newly developed molecule resulted in substantial improvement in pathological aspects of the disease.

“When VDAC1 is over-expressed, as found in several diseases, a large pore composed of several VDAC1 units is formed, allowing the release of pro-cell death factors and mtDNA,” BGU explained in a statement.

We thank Drs. Michel Bernier and Anne E. Burke for valuable input, Mr. Marc Raley for work on previous versions of the figures, Dr. David G. Le Couteur for assistance with the preparation of an earlier version of the manuscript, and the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, for its support.

#18 in our top science stories of 2019.

Engineering Food: The Impossible Whopper.

“Now, let’s compare the estrogen hormone in an impossible whopper to the whopper made from hormone implanted beef. The impossible whopper has 44 mg of estrogen and the whopper has 2.5 ng of estrogen. Now let me refresh your metric system. There are 1 million nanograms (ng) in one milligram (mg). That means an impossible whopper has 18 million times as much estrogen as a regular whopper. Just six glasses of soy milk per day has enough estrogen to grow boobs on a male. That’s the equivalent of eating four impossible whoppers per day. You would have to eat 880 pounds of beef from an implanted steer to equal the amount of estrogen in one birth control pill.”

The impossible whopper is being advertised by Burger King as a plant based alternative to the whopper. When food manufacturers started talking about making artificial meat, I, too, thought it would be impossible to make a hamburger cheaply enough to make it competitive. You see, I assumed that they would have to buy the individual amino acids (the building blocks for protein) and chemically string them together in the proper order, then remove the reagents (chemicals needed to cause the chain reactions) and then add something to give it the right textures.

Continue reading “Stangle: Impossible burgers are made of what?” »

Writing in Nature Medicine, an international team headed by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe a new way to effectively deliver a gene-silencing vector to adult amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) mice, resulting in long-term suppression of the degenerative motor neuron disorder if treatment vector is delivered prior to disease onset, and blockage of disease progression in adult animals if treatment is initiated when symptoms have already appeared.

The findings are published in the December 23, 2019 online issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Martin Marsala, MD, professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a member of the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, is senior author of the study.

ALS is a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Motor neurons responsible for communicating movement are specifically harmed, with subsequent, progressive loss of muscle control affecting the ability to speak, eat, move and breathe. More than 5,000 Americans are diagnosed with ALS each year, with an estimated 30,000 persons currently living with the disease. While there are symptomatic treatments for ALS, there is currently no cure. The majority of patients succumb to the disease two to five years after diagnosis.

Raising hope of effective treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), researchers have found that the brain knows how to integrate natural and artificial vision, while maintaining information processing that is important for vision.

AMD is a common cause of severe vision loss in among those aged 50 and over.

Though there is no cure for AMD, significant recent advancements in artificial retina implants may lead to effective treatment.

When it comes to kefir benefits, there are more than you can shake a well populated gut microbiome at. Because the drink – typically made from cow, goat or sheep milk, that gets the funky, fermented treatment – is resplendent in potential wins for your health.

But it can be a bit of a, erm, challenging concept. Why? Well, the texture can wind up somewhat lumpy, and the taste is distinctly sour. It’s fermented by adding kefir grains, which are colonies of yeast and lactic acid bacteria that look like tiny gel-like beads, similar to those used for sourdough, to milk and leaving for 24 hours, allowing the microorganisms to multiply and ferment the lactose to lactic acid. Bang: you’ve got DIY kefir.

Though — shocker — is isn’t vegan, it is possible to make from non-dairy milks or drinks, like coconut water, but the benefits proven in the same way. It is however low in lactose (the natural sugar in the milk), as the process of making kefir turns the lactose into lactic acid, so often lactose intolerant people can drink it.