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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,374

It May Be Possible To Avoid Developing Dementia

Scientists from the University of Exeter believe it may be possible to avoid developing dementia, and there are 5 ways that can help to reduce the risk, findings were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

As published in the journal JAMA living a healthy lifestyle may help reduce the risk of dementia even if you have a genetic risk; risk of dementia in those with a higher genetic risk who followed a healthy lifestyle were found to be at 32% lower risk than those with an unhealthy lifestyle.

Data was studied from 196,383 adults of European ancestry who were 60+ years old; 1,769 cases of dementia were identified over an 8 years follow up period; those with high genetic risk and an unhealthy lifestyle were found to be almost 3 times more likely to develop dementia.

New Cells Discovered That May Heal Hearts

A previously unidentified cell population in the pericardial fluid found within the sac around the heart has been identified in a collaborative study at the University of Calgary which may lead to new treatments for those with injured hearts, as published in the journal Immunity.

Discovered in the pericardial fluid of a mouse with heart injury, a Gata6+ pericardial cavity macrophage cell was found to help heal injured hearts in mice; the same cells were also found within human pericardium of those with injured hearts, confirming the repair cells offer promise of a new therapy for patients with heart disease.

“The fuel that powered this study is the funding from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the collaboration between two major research institutes at CSM (Snyder and Libin) and the important contribution of philanthropy from the Libin and Snyder families to obtain imaging equipment available to very few programs globally,” says Dr. Paul Kubes.

Regenerative Medicine: Fat-derived Stem Cells — Medical Frontiers-JAPAN Live & Programs

This 2-part series on “Regenerative Medicine” shows how it is possible to replace lost or damaged body parts by using human cells. Surviving a disease such as cancer can leave scars, both physical and emotional. Whether it’s due to a mastectomy or radiation therapy, scars are hard to avoid. Fat-derived stem cells can help patients return close to their original state, providing peace of mind. We also look at the benefits of using oil to balance the amount of fat in a body.

Mesenchymal stem cells: a new trend for cell therapy

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), the major stem cells for cell therapy, have been used in the clinic for approximately 10 years. From animal models to clinical trials, MSCs have afforded promise in the treatment of numerous diseases, mainly tissue injury and immune disorders. In this review, we summarize the recent opinions on methods, timing and cell sources for MSC administration in clinical applications, and provide an overview of mechanisms that are significant in MSC-mediated therapies. Although MSCs for cell therapy have been shown to be safe and effective, there are still challenges that need to be tackled before their wide application in the clinic.

Keywords: mesenchymal stem cell, cell therapy, tissue injury, degenerative disease, immune disorder, graft-versus-host disease, immunomodulation, trophic factor.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells with the ability to renew themselves for long periods without significant changes in their general properties. They can differentiate into various specialized cell types under certain physiological or experimental conditions. Cell therapy is a sub-type of regenerative medicine. Cell therapy based on stem cells describes the process of introducing stem cells into tissue to treat a disease with or without the addition of gene therapy. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have been widely used for allogeneic cell therapy. The successful isolation of pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells from the inner cell mass of early embryos has provided a powerful tool for biological research. ES cells can give rise to almost all cell lineages and are the most promising cells for regenerative medicine.

The First Complete Brain Wiring Diagram of Any Species Is Here

For a humble, microscopic worm with only 302 neurons, C. elegans has had a lot of firsts. It was the first multicellular animal to have its whole genome sequenced. It was also the spark that lit the connectome fire—the revolutionary idea that mapping the entirety of connections among neurons will unveil secrets of our minds, memory, and consciousness. And if the connectomists are to be believed, a map of individual brains may be the blueprint that will one day hurtle AI into human-level intelligence, or reconstruct an entire human mind in digital form.

More than 30 years ago, a pioneering group of scientists painstakingly traced and reconstructed the roundworm’s neural wiring by hand. The “heroic” effort, unaided by modern computers and brain-mapping algorithms, resulted in the first connectome in 1986.

Yet the “mind of the worm” map had significant lapses. For one, it only focused on one sex, the hermaphrodite—a “female” equivalent that can self-fertilize. This makes it hard to tell which connections are universal for the species, and which are dependent on sex and reproduction. For another, because the effort relied entirely on human beings who get tired, bored, and mess up, the map wasn’t entirely accurate. Even with multiple rounds of subsequent refinements, errors could linger, which would royally screw up any interpretation of results using these maps.