Groundbreaking studies in mice have sparked a frenzy among longevity enthusiasts—but human trials are still in their infancy.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 218
Researchers at UC San Diego have developed SMART, a software package capable of realistically simulating cell-signaling networks.
This tool, tested across various biological systems, enhances the understanding of cellular responses and aids in advancing research in fields like systems biology and pharmacology.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) have developed and tested a new software tool called Spatial Modeling Algorithms for Reactions and Transport (SMART). This innovative software can accurately simulate cell-signaling networks — the intricate systems of molecular interactions that enable cells to respond to signals from their environment. These networks are complex due to the many steps involved and the three-dimensional shapes of cells and their components, making them challenging to model with existing tools. SMART addresses these challenges, promising to accelerate research in fields such as systems biology, pharmacology, and biomedical engineering.
Researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and University of Maryland recently developed MyTimeMachine (MyTM), a new AI-powered method for personalized age transformation that can make human faces in images or videos appear younger or older, accounting for subjective factors influencing aging.
This algorithm, introduced in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server, could be used to broaden or enhance the features of consumer-facing picture-editing platforms, but could also be a valuable tool for the film, TV and entertainment industries.
“Virtual aging techniques are widely used in visual effects (VFX) in movies, but they require good prosthetics and makeup, often tiresome and inconvenient for actors to wear regularly during shooting,” Roni Sengupta, the researcher who supervised the study, told Tech Xplore.
Different types of cancer have distinct molecular “fingerprints” that can be identified in the early stages of the disease with remarkable accuracy. Small, portable scanners can detect these fingerprints within just a few hours, according to a study published today in Molecular Cell.
Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona made this breakthrough, paving the way for non-invasive diagnostic tests that could identify various types of cancer more quickly and at earlier stages than current methods allow.
The study centers around the ribosome, the protein factories of a cell. For decades, ribosomes were thought to have the same blueprint across the human body. However, researchers discovered a hidden layer of complexity – tiny chemical modifications which vary between different tissues, developmental stages, and diseases.
Sharks differ from one another, so there are no other examples within the kingdom. Only this shark. All the same, researchers intend to analyze the Greenland shark’s DNA further and compare it to other sharks and fish to continue to unravel this mystery.
Scientists are exploring ways to prolong human life.
“The goal is to have better DNA repair,” an expert told CNN, and scientists have to study all the animals with an unusually long lifespan to determine which ones would “more easily adapt to human use.”
No mirror-image life exists yet, but scientists are calling for the research to stop before it gets close to a breakthrough.
A spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomics map of the mouse brain at different ages reveals signatures of ageing, rejuvenation and disease, including ageing effects associated with T cells and rejuvenation associated with neural stem cells.
*Project AMIE: progress towards specialist-level medical expertise*.
We present two new advancements for Project AMIE: progress towards specialist-level medical expertise and a new partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for safe, prospective real-world validation.
Internal emails from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) reveal that the regulator withheld knowledge of DNA contamination risks relating to the modRNA vaccines from the public, presenting a picture of certainty on safety where there is none.
Released under Freedom of Information (FOI), the cache of emails shows that high-level TGA staff knew elements of the modRNA vaccines can enter the cell nucleus and integrate into the genome, despite the agency’s official line that such events are not possible.
However, TGA personnel appear more preoccupied with “allaying fears in the public” than with investigating the potential risks.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new funding opportunity through the launch of the PROactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience, or PROSPR, program. The big question that drives the program is, “What if we had therapies to extend healthspan and prevent the onset of age-related diseases?”
ARPA-H PROSPR Program Manager Andrew Brack, Ph.D., says, “the ultimate goal is to extend healthspan—meaning the number of years aging adults live healthy lives and enjoy overall well-being by compressing the frailty and disability that comes with aging, into a shorter duration of time near the end of life.” The PROSPR program builds on foundational work by the National Institute of Aging and will work with industry and regulators to accelerate the testing and availability of new therapeutics targeted at healthspan.
This commitment by ARPA-H is not only an investment in national health, but an impactful economic investment. The number of people 65 and older accounts for 18% of the U.S. population and is projected to increase to 23% by 2054. Considering their increased care needs relative to younger ages, health care costs will increase by 75% if nothing is done to prevent the progressive loss of physical functioning during aging, according to a Pew Research Center Study. It is estimated that increasing the average American healthspan would lessen health care costs due to a combination of fewer medical needs, less reliance on assistance by others, and increased potential for individuals and their family caregivers to remain in the workforce. Because of these and other factors, it is estimated that extending healthspan by one year in only 10 percent of the aging population would reduce costs of U.S.