Lifeboat Foundation

A team of scientists from the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences have successfully tested a laser that can track down cancer cells and kill them — all from outside the skin.

While being completely non-invasive, “this technology has the potential to significantly inhibit metastasis progression,” Vladimir Zharov, author of the paper that was published today in Science Translational Medicine, tells IEEE Spectrum. The idea is to kill of cancer cells before they are able to metastasize, or spread, through the body — the primary cause of cancer-related deaths.

A relatively inexpensive egg-based formula and a Star Trek-like plasma patch can accelerate healing of serious and chronic wounds, which affect millions of Europeans every year.

According to trade association MedTech Europe, around 4 million people in the EU develop non-healing wounds each year. These are most commonly bedsores or diabetic ulcers, and the problem is likely to become worse as lower birth rates and higher life expectancy means the European population is getting older.

Dr. Carsten Mahrenholz from German company COLDPLASMATECH says that physicians tend to just re-dress chronic wounds as they are very hard to heal. But he warns that the current issues we are experiencing with multidrug-resistant bacteria means that we are on the brink of a return to the Middle Ages in terms of our susceptibility to infection.

Continue reading “Science fiction and folk medicine inspire novel wound dressings” »

This fantastic project will involve sharing visual images between two brains. It will read the vision of a sighted person and transfer the images this person sees into the brain of a blind person “telepathically” in less than 1/20th of a second.

A team of neuroengineers has begun working on a headset or a helmet that directly links the human brain to machines without the need for surgery. This headset and the technologies that power it will enable this telepathic visual sharing.

The gold vapor laser has been widely used in the treatment of cancer using photodynamic therapy.

Using Blue Light to See Through Fire in Optical Imaging Dr Matthew Hoehler AZoOptics talks to Dr Matthew Hoehler about his recent research, using blue light to see through fires and make previously impossible qualitative observations about material damage during a fire.

Scientists really never back down. A new dental replacement procedure is in the works, and it could be a whole lot better than getting regular dentures or standard implants.

Losing a tooth is a source of major pain, and it also comes with a lot of issues and long-term discomforts. Dentures are one way to replace a lost or bad tooth, but they come with a lot of burdens on their own.

It takes a while to get used to having teeth you were not born with, and some people’s gums and jaw bones are just not suitable to receive implants.

Continue reading “Stem Cell Dental Implants Grow New Teeth In 2 Months!” »

The first study of a new treatment in humans demonstrates a noninvasive, harmless cancer killer.

Automatic system could speed up drug discovery by conducting time-consuming single-cell electrophysiology measurements without human supervision.

Age is a leading risk factor for a number of conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease among others, such conditions make a real need for development of anti-aging therapies urgent. Salk Institute researchers may have developed a new gene therapy to help decelerate the aging process, as published in the journal Nature Medicine.

CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing therapy has been shown by the Salk Institute team to suppress the accelerated aging observed in mice with Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome; and provided insight into the molecular pathways involved in accelerated aging, and how to reduce toxic proteins via gene therapy.

Having an early onset and fast progression progeria is a severe form of degenerative disorder caused by LMNA gene mutations; signs of accelerated aging include DNA damage, cardiac dysfunction, and dramatically shortened lifespan. LMNA genes produce lamin A and lamin C inside a cell, progeria shifts production of lamin A to progerin which is a toxic shortened form of lamin A that accumulates with age and becomes exacerbated with the condition.

Continue reading “CRISPR-Cas9 Therapy May Suppress Aging” »

Doctors in London have used sound waves to successfully operate deep inside the brain.

They treated a man from Cornwall who suffered from uncontrollable tremors in his right hand.

The ultrasound machine Exablate Neuro, is produced by Insightec, a technology firm based in Israel. Their graphic explains how it works.

Continue reading “Brain surgery using sound waves” »