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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,225

Israeli treatment could delay deadly effects of ALS – new study

Specifically, AstroRx is a cell therapy product containing functional healthy astrocytes derived from human embryonic stem cells that aim to protect diseased motor neurons. The cells are injected in the patient through the spinal canal.

The company initiated its first ALS clinical trials in March 2018.

Prof. Michel Revel, founder and CEO of the company and winner of both the EMET Prize and the Israel Prize, said that the clinical trial results “provide the confidence needed to move forward” with cohorts B and C, which he said both “hold the potential for a prolonged response.”

Engrams emerging as the basic unit of memory

Experiments in rodents have revealed that engrams exist as multiscale networks of neurons. An experience becomes stored as a potentially retrievable memory in the brain when excited neurons in a brain region such as the hippocampus or amygdala become recruited into a local ensemble. These ensembles combine with others in other regions, such as the cortex, into an “engram complex.” Crucial to this process of linking engram cells is the ability of neurons to forge new circuit connections, via processes known as “synaptic plasticity” and “dendritic spine formation.” Importantly, experiments show that the memory initially stored across an engram complex can be retrieved by its reactivation but may also persist “silently” even when memories cannot be naturally recalled, for instance in mouse models used to study memory disorders such as early stage Alzheimer’s disease.

“More than 100 years ago Semon put forth a law of engraphy,” wrote Josselyn, Senior Scientist at SickKids, Professor of Psychology and Physiology at the University of Toronto and Senior Fellow in the Brain, Mind & Consciousness Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, (CIFAR) and Tonegawa, Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at the RIKEN-MIT Laboratory for Neural Circuit Genetics at MIT and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “Combining these theoretical ideas with the new tools that allow researchers to image and manipulate engrams at the level of cell ensembles facilitated many important insights into memory function.”

“For instance, evidence indicates that both increased intrinsic excitability and synaptic plasticity work hand in hand to form engrams and that these processes may also be important in memory linking, memory retrieval, and memory consolidation.”

For as much as the field has learned, Josselyn and Tonegawa wrote, there are still important unanswered questions and untapped potential applications: How do engrams change over time? How can engrams and memories be studied more directly in humans? And can applying knowledge about biological engrams inspire advances in artificial intelligence, which in turn could feedback new insights into the workings of engrams?

A review in Science traces neuroscientists’ progress in studying the neural substrate for storing memories and raises key future questions for the field.

Scientists Print Functional Human “Mini-Livers”

A team of Brazilian researchers have succesfully bioprinted tiny organoids that perform all of the human liver’s functions, Brazilian news service Agência FAPESP reports — functions including building proteins, storing vitamins and secreting bile.

The researchers had to cultivate and reprogram human stem cells, and then 3D print them in layers to form tissue.

While the “mini-livers” perform the functions of a liver, they’re unfortunately still a far cry from an actual full-scale liver.

Keep exercising: New study finds it’s good for your brain’s gray matter

Cardiorespiratory exercise—walking briskly, running, biking and just about any other exercise that gets your heart pumping—is good for your body, but can it also slow cognitive changes in your brain?

A study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases provides new evidence of an association between and brain health, particularly in and total brain volume—regions of the brain involved with cognitive decline and aging.

Brain tissue is made up of gray matter and filaments called white matter that extend from the gray matter cells. The volume of gray matter appears to correlate with various skills and cognitive abilities. The researchers found that increases in peak oxygen uptake are strongly associated with increased gray matter volume.

A new way to warm up frozen tissue could help with the organ shortage

This technology may one day be used to revive patient suspended in cryonics.

A new way to warm up frozen tissue using tiny vibrating particles could one day help with the problem of organ shortages.

We know how to cool organs to cryogenic temperatures, which is usually below 320 degrees Fahrenheit. But the organs can’t be stored for long — sometimes only four hours for heart and lungs — because they get damaged when you try to warm them up. As a result, more than 60 percent of donor hearts and lungs aren’t transplanted. In a study published today in Science Translational Medicine, scientists used nanoparticles to warm up frozen tissue quickly and without damaging the organs. Within a decade, this could lead to being able to store entire organs in organ banks for a long period of time, the authors say.

For today’s study, the team rewarmed 50 milliliters of tissue and solution with magnetic nanoparticles. Magnetic particles create heat in electromagnetic fields, says study co-author Zhe Gao, an post-doc studying nanotechnology at the University of Minnesota. Basically, the scientists infused a tissue with a special kind of nanoparticle made of silica-coated iron oxide. Then, they expose it to a magnetic field. Think of the nanoparticles as antennae. Once they get pick up the “signal” from the magnetic fields, they start to vibrate, and this creates the heat that warms up the organ quickly.