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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 2059

May 18, 2019

Inside TransTime Cryonics Facility: Bodies Frozen, Awaiting A Future Reawakening

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cryonics, life extension

SAN LEANDRO (KPIX) — It is the stuff of science fiction and Hollywood movies. The promise: upon your death, your body is frozen until some future medical breakthrough restores you to full health.

Roughly 400 Americans — before they died — decided to bank on the possibility that this will happen. Their bodies are now being held at three facilities in the United States, including one in the East Bay.

“This is like a hospital,” explained Steve Garan, who took KPIX 5 reporter Juliette Goodrich on a tour of Trans Time, a Bay Area Cryonics facility in San Leandro.

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May 18, 2019

Sugary drinks and fruit juice may increase risk of early death

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

(HealthDay)—Most folks know that sugary drinks aren’t healthy, but a new study finds fruit juices are not much better.

In fact, consuming them regularly may help shorten your life, researchers say.

“Older adults who drink more , which include juice as well as sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages, may be at risk of dying earlier,” said study author Jean Welsh. She is an associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

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May 18, 2019

How did Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video conquer the world in 2012? Researchers now think they know

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Do viral videos spread in the same way as infectious diseases?

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May 18, 2019

Tiny Human Brains Inside Rats Are Sparking Ethical Concern

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Clusters of human brain cells can integrate into rat brains, and that’s raising concerns about giving animals some form of human consciousness.

Researchers can grow stem cells into tiny clumps of cells, called organoids, that display similar activity and structure to human brains. To find out more about how exactly that works, read our primer from when we made the technique one of our Ten Breakthrough Technologies of 2015.

Now, though, reports Stat, several labs have inserted those organoids into rat brains and connected them to blood vessels; some of the organoids have even grown physical links with the rat brains. From Stat’s report:

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May 18, 2019

Scientists ‘went rogue’ and genetically engineered two human babies—or at least claimed to

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics

In the past 24 hours, a story of potentially world-changing import has surfaced. First reported by the MIT Technology Review and then not long after by the Associated Press, who seem to have been sitting on the story for a while, the news that a Chinese scientist named He Jiankui led an unprecedented experiment to edit human embryos and see them carried to term rocked the genetics community. Here’s what you need to know about this evolving story.

The science

Besides He, the most important players in this story may be twin baby girls named Nana and Lulu. As far as we know the twins were edited as embryos using CRISPR-cas9, a gene editing tool. The stated purpose of the edit was to disable CCR5, a gene involved in allowing HIV to invade cells, which is how a virus infects a host.

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May 17, 2019

Citrus Farmers Facing Deadly Bacteria Turn to Antibiotics, Alarming Health Officials

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health

Deadly Germs, Lost Cures

In its decision to approve two drugs for orange and grapefruit trees, the E.P.A. largely ignored objections from the C.D.C. and the F.D.A., which fear that expanding their use in cash crops could fuel antibiotic resistance in humans.

An orange picker collecting oranges on a grove in Zolfo Springs, Fla. Credit Credit.

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May 17, 2019

Genetically engineered immune cells fight off deadly virus in mice

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics

Researchers may have demonstrated a novel way to protect us from some of the world’s deadliest viruses. By genetically engineering immune cells to make more effective antibodies, they have defended mice from a potentially lethal lung virus. The same strategy could work in humans against diseases for which there are no vaccines.

“It’s a huge breakthrough,” says immunologist James Voss of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, who wasn’t connected to the study.

Vaccines typically contain a disabled microbial invader or shards of its molecules. They stimulate immune cells known as B cells to crank out antibodies that target the pathogen. Not everyone who receives a vaccine gains protection, however. Some patients’ antibodies aren’t up to snuff, for instance. And researchers haven’t been able to develop vaccines against some microbes, such as HIV and the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which causes lung infections mainly in children and people with impaired immune systems.

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May 17, 2019

Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Co-Founder and CSO of the SENS Research Foundation — ideaXme — Ira Pastor

Posted by in categories: aging, bioengineering, bioprinting, biotech/medical, business, cryonics, futurism, genetics, health, life extension

May 17, 2019

Scientists Created This Organism’s DNA From Scratch

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

For the first time, scientists have created life with genetic code that was developed from scratch.

A University of Cambridge team created living, reproducing E. coli bacteria with DNA coded entirely by humans, according to The New York Times. The new bacteria look a little wonky, but they behave more or less the same as natural E. coli. Learning to rebuild genomes from scratch could teach scientists how DNA originally came to be — and how we can manipulate it to create new life.

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May 17, 2019

Researchers develop electric field-based dressing to help heal wound infections

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, life extension

Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine have found a way to charge up the fight against bacterial infections using electricity.

Work conducted in the laboratories of the Indiana Center for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering, Chandan Sen, Ph.D. and Sashwati Roy, Ph.D. has led to the development of a dressing that uses an to disrupt biofilm . Their findings were recently published in the high-impact journal Annals of Surgery.

Bacterial biofilms are thin, slimy films of bacteria that form on some wounds, including burns or post-surgical infections, as well as after a , such as a catheter, is placed in the body. These bacteria generate their own electricity, using their own electric fields to communicate and form the biofilm, which makes them more hostile and difficult to treat. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 65 percent of all infections are caused by bacteria with this biofilm phenotype, while the National Institutes of Health estimates that number is closer to 80 percent.

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