Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists have discovered a “Big Bang” of Alzheimer’s disease – the precise point at which a healthy protein becomes toxic but has not yet formed deadly tangles in the brain.

A study from UT Southwestern’s O’Donnell Brain Institute provides novel insight into the shape-shifting nature of a tau molecule just before it begins sticking to itself to form larger aggregates. The revelation offers a new strategy to detect the devastating disease before it takes hold and has spawned an effort to develop treatments that stabilize tau proteins before they shift shape.

“This is perhaps the biggest finding we have made to date, though it will likely be some time before any benefits materialize in the clinic. This changes much of how we think about the problem,” said Dr. Marc Diamond, Director for UT Southwestern’s Center for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases and a leading dementia expert credited with determining that tau acts like a prion – an infectious protein that can self-replicate.

Continue reading “The ‘Big Bang’ of Alzheimer’s: Scientists ID genesis of disease, focus efforts on shape-shifting tau” »

Project Recode may be the most ambitious science experiment of our time – genetically engineering humans to be virus-resistant.

“Every time you miss a protein crystal, because they are so rare, you risk missing on an important biomedical discovery.”

- Patrick Charbonneau, Duke University Dept. of Chemistry and Lead Researcher, MARCO initiative.

Protein crystallization is a key step to biomedical research concerned with discovering the structure of complex biomolecules. Because that structure determines the molecule’s function, it helps scientists design new drugs that are specifically targeted to that function. However, protein crystals are rare and difficult to find. Hundreds of experiments are typically run for each protein, and while the setup and imaging are mostly automated, finding individual protein crystals remains largely performed through visual inspection and thus prone to human error. Critically, missing these structures can result in lost opportunity for important biomedical discoveries for advancing the state of medicine.

Continue reading “Automating Drug Discoveries Using Computer Vision” »

The technique offers a potential way to combat the deadly pest.

Sleep deprivation may speed up development of Alzheimer’s disease.

“Our main goal is to let patients control them as naturally as though they were their biological limbs,” says Professor Dario Farina from Imperial College.

A team of scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Göttingen have teamed up to create a ‘next generation’ bionic hand. This bionic hand is special because it uses artificial intelligence to improve its functionality.

Human lungs are coated with a substance called surfactant which allows us to breathe easily. When lung surfactant is missing or depleted, which can happen with premature birth or lung injury, breathing becomes difficult. In a collaborative study between Lawson Health Research Institute and Stanford University, scientists have developed and tested a new synthetic surfactant that could lead to improved treatments for lung disease and injury.

Lung surfactant is made up of lipids and proteins which help lower tension on the lung’s surface, reducing the amount of effort needed to take a breath. The proteins, called surfactant-associated proteins, are very difficult to create in a laboratory and so the surfactant most commonly used in medicine is obtained from animal lungs.

London, Ontario has a rich legacy in surfactant research and innovation. Dr. Fred Possmayer, a scientist at Lawson and Western University, pioneered the technique used to purify and sterilize lung surfactant extracted from cows. Called bovine lipid extract surfactant (BLES), the therapeutic is made in London, Ontario and used by nearly all neonatal intensive care units in Canada to treat premature babies with respiratory distress.

Continue reading “Synthetic surfactant could ease breathing for patients with lung disease and injury” »

A commercially available “quantum computer” has been on the market since 2011, but it’s controversial. The D-Wave machine is nothing like other quantum computers, and until recently, scientists have doubted that it was even truly quantum at all. But the company has released an important new result, one that in part realizes Richard Feynman’s initial dreams for a quantum computer.

Scientists from D-Wave announced they have simulated a large quantum mechanical system with their 2000Q machine—essentially a cube of connected bar magnets. The D-Wave can’t take on the futuristic, mostly non-physics-related goals that many people have for quantum computers, such as finding solutions in medicine, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Nor does it work the same way as the rest of the competition. But it’s now delivering real physics results. It’s simulating a quantum system.

Wounds and burns could one day be treated by the material spiders use to make their webs.