Lifeboat Foundation

This article is a year old, but it is the first I’ve seen it. This guy has access to hundreds of millions of dollars per year and has this wonderful quote to go with it: “If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” Bill Maris says.

Bill Maris has $425 million to invest this year, and the freedom to invest it however he wants. He’s looking for companies that will slow aging, reverse disease, and extend life.

Though their use is marred by controversy and debate, stem cells are one of our best bets when it comes to developing regenerative treatments for a plethora of different conditions. Now, scientists believe they’ve found a brand new type of stem cell hidden in plain sight called XEN, also referred to as iXEN, and it could lead to new ways to study birth defects and reproductive problems.

Before we dive into the latest discovery, it’s worth mentioning how researchers have been using stem cells up to this point. Pluripotent stem cells are so important because they have the potential to develop into every cell in the body, effectively allowing researchers to heal any type of tissue. In the past, these cells were harvested from embryos, but researchers have now figured out how to unlock the potential of pluripotent stem cells using adult cells — avoiding the controversy.

These cells are known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) and researchers create them by “reactivating embryonic genes to ‘reprogram’ mature adult cells”. By doing so, researchers can to an extent, control what these cells become, which means they have the power to regrow damaged tissues.

Continue reading “Researchers think they’ve just found a new kind of stem cell” »

The project is a joint venture by Russian and South Korean scientists at the Joint Foundation of Molecular Paleontology at North East Russia University in the city of Yakutsk. They will use one of the cubs for the cloning process whilst the other will be kept in a museum.

Remains of two lion cubs were found in Russia’s north-eastern Sakha Republic in August 2015.

This looks very promising.

The human body is designed pretty well: Our muscles are able to switch between strength and dexterity, limbs stiffening when we do an energy-fueled task like lifting a bowling ball and softening when we do something delicate like painting with a brush. This ability is very rarely replicated in engineering systems, namely because it’s expensive, but also because it’s been damn hard to clone.

Continue reading “New Metal Can Become Soft and Stiff Just Like Human Muscles” »

What happens when you no longer own your own DNA sequencing and the person who has it refuses to release it to you?.

Having your genome sequenced doesn’t always mean you have full access to the data.

Frankly, in the US this makes me really nervous. Placing drug making 3D printers in your local pharmacies. I hope that the manufacturer has a mechanism setup to cause the machine not to work if it is stolen by the local drug gangs.

The brave new world of 3D-printed drugs in the healthcare industry is heating up.

The company’s CEO, Andy Conrad: The most important tool in medicine is a computer.

The researchers sequenced bacteria samples sourced from all over the world to reconstruct a phylogenetic tree and learn how it evolved to have multidrug resistance.

Finding the missing link in RNAi Pathways.

By comparing Cryptococcus genomes, Duke researchers found that C. deuterogattii lacks certain RNAi pathway genes, possibly contributing to its high virulence.