Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 2128
Apr 3, 2019
An Interview with Dr. Judith Campisi
Posted by Steve Hill in categories: biotech/medical, life extension
In this interview with Dr. Judith Campisi at Undoing Aging 2019, she talks about senolytics, immunotherapy, and other scientific topics.
At Undoing Aging 2019, we interviewed some of the best researchers who are involved in discovering therapies for the root causes of aging. Their research aims to ameliorate the damages of aging and may one day lead to a future without age-related diseases.
Apr 3, 2019
Scientists worry ‘zombie deer’ disease could jump to humans
Posted by Quinn Sena in categories: biotech/medical, food, health
If you’ve heard of “zombie deer,” you’ve heard of the horrors of chronic wasting disease. CWD causes infected animals to stumble through the forest, sometimes drooling and becoming aggressive towards humans they once feared. They lose weight. They’re listless. The spookiest thing about it, though, isn’t its resemblance to zombie-dom—it’s the fact that it’s an incurable prion disease.
Prions are misfolded proteins that are somehow infectious (we’re still not really sure how or why) and for which we have no treatments or cures. If you were to catch one, you’d basically deteriorate over the course of several months, possibly losing the ability to speak or move, and eventually you would die. Doctors wouldn’t be able to do anything to save you.
Right now, CWD appears limited to deer, moose, and elk. But University of Minnesota researchers warned local lawmakers this week that we should be taking action now to prevent the potential spread to humans. Michael Osterholm, director of the university’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Prevention, testified that “It is my best professional judgment based on my public health experience and the risk of BSE transmission to humans in the 1980s and 1990s and my extensive review and evaluation of laboratory research studies … that it is probable that human cases of CWD associated with the consumption of contaminated meat will be documented in the years ahead. It is possible that number of human cases will be substantial and will not be isolated events,” according to the Pioneer Press.
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Apr 3, 2019
New Spinoff Publication Highlights NASA Technology Everywhere
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: biotech/medical, business, food, space travel, sustainability
From precision GPS to batteries for one of the world’s first commercial all-electric airplanes, NASA technology turns up in nearly every corner of modern life. The latest edition of NASA’s Spinoff publication features dozens of commercial technologies that were developed or improved by the agency’s space program and benefit people everywhere.
“NASA works hard, not only to develop technology that pushes the boundaries of aeronautics and space exploration, but also to put those innovations into the hands of businesses and entrepreneurs who can turn them into solutions for challenges we all face here on Earth,” said Jim Reuter, acting associate administrator of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “These are sometimes predictable, like the many NASA technologies now adopted by the burgeoning commercial space industry, but more often they appear in places that may seem unrelated, like hospitals, farms, factories and family rooms.”
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Apr 3, 2019
A Second Patient Appears to Have Been Cured of HIV
Posted by Paul Battista in category: biotech/medical
I was asked last year what I felt was the best new drug on the market, my response was stem cells??? They said, “no stem cells are just cells from the body???” I explained how once stem cells are removed-extracted they are grown in vitro then injected back into the body in a serum form-making it then a medication-drug. This is amazing Stem cells lined up and sent into battle against the weakest disease on earth. Many children and Women and men have died innocently due to drug users and people living the so-called gay lifestyle.
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Apr 3, 2019
The brain’s auto-complete function
Posted by Xavier Rosseel in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience
When looking at a picture of a sunny day at the beach, we can almost smell the scent of sun screen. Our brain often completes memories and automatically brings back to mind the different elements of the original experience. A new collaborative study between the Universities of Birmingham and Bonn now reveals the underlying mechanisms of this auto-complete function. It is now published in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers presented participants with a number of different scene images. Importantly, they paired each scene image with one of two different objects, such as a raspberry or a scorpion. Participants were given 3 seconds to memorise a given scene-object combination. After a short break they were presented with the scene images again, but now had to reconstruct the associated object image from memory.
“At the same time, we examined participants’ brain activation,” explains Prof. Florian Mormann, who heads the Cognitive and Clinical Neurophysiology group at the University of Bonn Medical Centre. “We focused on two brain regions – the hippocampus and the neighbouring entorhinal cortex.” The hippocampus is known to play a role in associative memory, but how exactly it does so has remained poorly understood.
Apr 3, 2019
The Ultimate in Personalized Medicine: Your Body on a Chip
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: biotech/medical
Apr 2, 2019
Second example reported of a stem-cell transplant in the clinic leading to HIV remission
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: biotech/medical
A person infected with HIV who was treated for blood cancer with a stem-cell transplant has gone into viral remission, with no trace of the virus in their blood. A similar outcome in 2009 hadn’t been replicated until now. A person’s HIV infection became undetectable after a stem-cell transplant.
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Apr 2, 2019
‘Molecular surgery’ reshapes living tissue with electricity but no incisions
Posted by Paul Battista in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical
Traditional surgery to reshape a nose or ear entails cutting and suturing, sometimes followed by long recovery times and scars. But now, researchers have developed a “molecular surgery” process that uses tiny needles, electric current and 3D-printed molds to quickly reshape living tissue with no incisions, scarring or recovery time. The technique even shows promise as a way to fix immobile joints or as a noninvasive alternative to laser eye surgery.
The researchers will present their results today at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Spring 2019 National Meeting & Exposition.
“We envision this new technique as a low-cost office procedure done under local anesthesia,” says Michael Hill, Ph.D., one of the project’s principal investigators, who will discuss the work at the meeting. “The whole process would take about five minutes.”
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Apr 2, 2019
Gut microbiome directs the immune system to fight cancer
Posted by Paul Battista in categories: biotech/medical, health
The advent of immune checkpoint inhibitors—which “release the brakes” of the body’s immune system to launch an efficient tumor attack—are a major breakthrough in cancer immunotherapy. However, these treatments don’t work for everybody and are often associated with significant side effects. The ability to stratify patients based on potential response to immune checkpoint inhibitors could therefore personalize cancer treatment. Efforts to understand the regulation of anti-tumor immunity (when the immune system fights a tumor) point to the importance of the gut microbiome. However, the underlying molecular mechanism(s) remain largely elusive.
Now, a worldwide collaboration involving more than 40 scientists and three hospitals led by researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys has demonstrated a causal link between the gut microbiome and the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. Together, the researchers identified a cocktail of 11 bacterial strains that activated the immune system and slowed the growth of melanoma in mice. The study also points to the role of unfolded protein response (UPR), a cellular signaling pathway that maintains protein health (homeostasis). Reduced UPR was seen in melanoma patients who are responsive to immune checkpoint therapy, revealing potential markers for patient stratification. The study was published in Nature Communications.
“Immunotherapies have extended the lives of many cancer patients. However, the incredible effects we are seeing today are only the tip of the iceberg. By studying mechanisms of treatment response versus resistance, we can eventually expand the number of people who benefit from immunotherapy,” says Thomas Gajewski, M.D., Ph.D., the AbbVie Foundation Professor of Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Chicago Medicine. “This study provides an important step toward this goal. The investigators have pinpointed the UPR as an important link between the gut microbiota and anti-tumor immunity. Given previous work indicating a causal role for the host microbiota in the efficacy of checkpoint blockade immunotherapy, this additional mechanistic insight should help select patients who will respond to treatment and also help to guide new therapeutic development.”
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