Lifeboat Foundation

Many people believe that American biologist James Watson and English physicist Francis Crick discovered DNA in the 1950s. In reality, this is not the case. Rather, DNA was first identified in the late 1860s by Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher. Then, in the decades following Miescher’s discovery, other scientists—notably, Phoebus Levene and Erwin Chargaff—carried out a series of research efforts that revealed additional details about the DNA molecule, including its primary chemical components and the ways in which they joined with one another. Without the scientific foundation provided by these pioneers, Watson and Crick may never have reached their groundbreaking conclusion of 1953: that the DNA molecule exists in the form of a three-dimensional double helix.

LunaDNA and Nebula Genomics are offering incentives in hopes of getting consumers to share their data with scientific “bio-banks”.

M en with previously “untreatable” prostate cancer are being kept alive by a new drug in what experts believe may be a breakthrough for patients with the worst form of the disease.

A British trial has for the first time shown that state-of-the art immunotherapy can be used to target prostate tumours.

The study at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London found more than a third of men who had run out of existing options were still alive and one in ten had not seen their tumours grow after a year of taking Pembrolizumab, which targets a gateway helps the immune system to attack cancer cells.

A blood test could one day save millions by allowing doctors to screen for cancer before patients show symptoms.

The test, called a “liquid biopsy,” screens for 10 types of the disease by detecting trace amounts of DNA released into the bloodstream by cancer cells. So far, it has proven particularly capable of detecting ovarian and pancreatic cancer, both of which have significantly lower mortality rates when caught early enough to perform surgery as a means of removing the cancer. Unfortunately, most are caught after patients begin to show symptoms, which is often after the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

“This is potentially the holy grail of cancer research, to find cancers that are currently hard to cure at an earlier stage when they are easier to cure,” says Dr. Eric Klein of Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute. “We hope this test could save many lives.”

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The FDA has denied CRISPR Therapeutics’s application to move forward with a study intended to treat sickle cell disease with CRISPR.

8 Amazing CRISPR gene editing projects that could change life as we know it.

Since it burst onto the scene a decade ago, CRISPR-Cas9 has shaken the field of genetics to its core. Offering a new genomic editing tool that’s faster, cheaper and more accurate than previous approaches, it opens up an astonishing breadth of possible applications.

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Researchers have engineered an anti-cancer antibody that attaches specifically to cancer cells and summons immune killer cells to destroy the target.

Russian researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), the Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials (TISNCM), and the National University of Science and Technology MISIS have optimized the design of a nuclear battery generating power from the beta decay of nickel-63, a radioactive isotope. Their new battery prototype packs about 3,300 milliwatt-hours of energy per gram, which is more than in any other nuclear battery based on nickel-63, and 10 times more than the specific energy of commercial chemical cells. The paperwas published in the journal Diamond and Related Materials.

Conventional batteries

Ordinary batteries powering clocks, flashlights, toys, and other compact autonomous electrical devices use the energy of so-called redox chemical reactions. In them, electrons are transferred from one electrode to another via an electrolyte. This gives rise to a potential difference between the electrodes. If the two battery terminals are then connected by a conductor, electrons start flowing to remove the potential difference, generating an electric current. Chemical batteries, also known as galvanic cells, are characterized by a high power density — that is, the ratio between the power of the generated current and the volume of the battery. However, chemical cells discharge in a relatively short time, limiting their applications in autonomous devices. Some of these batteries, called accumulators, are rechargeable, but even they need to be replaced for charging. This may be dangerous, as in the case of a cardiac pacemaker, or even impossible, if the battery is powering a spacecraft.

The human eye is a remarkably sophisticated organ and like the lens to a camera, it’s the cornea that focuses the flood of photons into a perceptible image. But for an estimated 15 million people around the world, eye disease and trauma make surgery the only path to clear vision.

In the next few years, artificial corneas may become more accessible thanks to new research out of Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. There, researchers mixed stem cells from the cornea of a healthy donor with collagen and algae molecules to create a bio-ink, which they 3D-printed into an artificial cornea. The research is currently just a proof-of-concept but lays the groundwork for future techniques to create low-cost, easy-to-produce bionic eyes.

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