Lifeboat Foundation

A field 400 times as strong as an MRI should reveal new physics of nanoscale materials.

Invokana, a drug that’s used to help control blood sugar in people with diabetes, may also help thousands of people who require dialysis.

A patient undergoes dialysis at a clinic in Sacramento, California, on Sept. 24, 2018. Rich Pedroncelli / AP file.

We have known since the 19th century that young blood has surprising curative and rejuvenation abilities. It’s quite strange, but it happens to be true. In recent years, scientific efforts to understand what it is about young blood that causes rejuvenation have ramped up.

We now know that young and old mice with surgically connected circulatory systems will experience altered aging: the young mouse will prematurely grow old, and the old mouse will, in many cases, miraculously grow young. This is known as heterochronic parabiosis, and it is a large source of the legitimate excitement about the potential of young plasma to lead to human rejuvenation [1].

The challenge, of course, is how to achieve these benefits in more acceptable and less disturbing ways.

Continue reading “An Interview with Dr. Steven Braithwaite of Alkahest” »

The cause of cancer is written into the DNA of tumours, scientists have discovered, in a breakthrough which could finally show how much disease is attributable to factors like air pollution or pesticides.

Until now the roots of many cancers have proved elusive, with doctors unable to tease out the impact of a myriad of carcinogenic causes which people encounter everyday.

Even with lung cancer, it is not known just how much can be attributed to smoking and how much could be linked to other factors, such as living by a busy road, or inhaling pollutants at work.

Continue reading “Cause of cancer is written into DNA of tumours, scientists find, creating a ‘black box’ for origin of disease” »

A team of Tel Aviv University researchers revealed the heart, which was made using a patient’s own cells and biological materials.

Israeli researchers have printed a 3D heart using a patient’s own cells, something they say could be used to patch diseased hearts — and possibly, full transplants.

The heart the Tel Aviv University team printed in about three hours is too small for humans — about 2.5 centimeters, or the size of a rabbit’s heart. But it’s the first to be printed with all blood vessels, ventricles and chambers, using an ink made from the patient’s own biological materials.

Researchers have invented a new type of cancer immunotherapy by injecting tumours with a series of stimulants. The experimental therapy attracts the body’s own immune system’s attention, so it can come and destroy the cancerous masses.

The radical new approach has already shown promise in patients with an advanced form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that resists conventional treatments, and is currently being tested on a variety of stubborn cancers.

The result can be described as turning the tumours into “cancer vaccine factories”, because attracting the body’s immune cells to the cancer site is a method known as in situ vaccination.

Continue reading “New Kind of Cancer ‘Vaccine’ Teaches The Immune System to Destroy Tumours” »

She had a series of bone fractures, but when doctors did blood tests, the supplements she took for treatment were nowhere to be found.