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Category: biotech/medical – Page 197

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Emerging technologies of today have the power to reshape industries, achieve significant scale, and shift the economic landscape.

From AI-driven advancements in disease detection to carbon-capturing microbes, these technologies stand to improve future society. Meanwhile, greater efficiencies in wireless connectivity allow networks to drive higher data rates and enhance robust communications across 6G networks and the industrial internet-of-things.

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An AI model developed by scientists at King’s College London, in close collaboration with University College London, has produced three-dimensional, synthetic images of the human brain that are realistic and accurate enough to use in medical research.

The model and images have helped scientists better understand what the human brain looks like, supporting research to predict, diagnose and treat such as dementia, stroke, and multiple sclerosis.

The algorithm was created using the NVIDIA Cambridge-1, the UK’s most powerful supercomputer. One of the fastest supercomputers in the world, the Cambridge-1 allowed researchers to train the AI in weeks rather than months and produce images of far higher quality.

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A 60-year-old man in Germany has become at least the seventh person with HIV to be announced free of the virus after receiving a stem-cell transplant1. But the man, who has been virus-free for close to six years, is only the second person to receive stem cells that are not resistant to the virus.

“I am quite surprised that it worked,” says Ravindra Gupta, a microbiologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who led a team that treated one of the other people who is now free of HIV2,3. “It’s a big deal.”

The first person found to be HIV-free after a bone-marrow transplant to treat blood cancer4 was Timothy Ray Brown, who is known as the Berlin patient. Brown and a handful of others received special donor stem cells2,3. These carried a mutation in the gene that encodes a receptor called CCR5, which is used by most HIV virus strains to enter immune cells. To many scientists, these cases suggested that CCR5 was the best target for an HIV cure.

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At the mere flick of a magnetic field, mice engineered with nanoparticle-activated ‘switches’ inside their brains were driven to feed, socialize, and act like clucky new mothers in an experiment designed to test an innovative research tool.

While ’mind control’ animal experiments are far from new, they have generally relied on cumbersome electrodes tethering the subject to an external system, which not only requires invasive surgery but also sets limits on how freely the test subject can move about.

In what is claimed to be a breakthrough in neurology, researchers from the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Korea have developed a method for targeting pathways in the brain using a combination of genetics, nanoparticles, and magnetic fields.

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Drugs that selectively kill senescent cells may benefit otherwise healthy older women but are not a “one-size-fits-all” remedy, Mayo Clinic researchers have found. Specifically, these drugs may only benefit people with a high number of senescent cells, according to findings publishing July 2 in Nature Medicine.

Senescent cells are malfunctioning cells in the body that lapse into a state of dormancy. These cells, also known as “zombie cells,” can’t divide but can drive chronic inflammation and tissue dysfunction linked to aging and chronic diseases. Senolytic drugs clear tissues of senescent cells.

In the 20-week, phase 2 randomized controlled trial, 60 healthy women past menopause intermittently received a senolytic combination composed of FDA-approved dasatinib and quercetin, a natural product found in some foods. It is the first randomized controlled trial of intermittent senolytic treatment in healthy aging women, and the investigators used bone metabolism as a marker for efficacy.

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