Scientists have developed gene therapy that lets deaf mice hear whispers – and humans could be next.
An extreme form of inherited deafness has been cured in the rodents, which could pave the way for life-changing treatments for humans born with gene defects that affect hearing and balance.
In a groundbreaking experiment, scientists used a laboratory-made virus to deliver corrective DNA into the inner ear.
Posted in biotech/medical
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Dr. Nina Shapiro about the practice of medicine. They discuss the unique resiliency of children, the importance of second opinions, bad doctors, how medical training has changed in recent years, medical uncertainty, risk perception, vaccine safety, and other topics.
Dr. Nina Shapiro is the award-winning Director of Pediatric Otolaryngology and a Professor of Head and Neck Surgery at UCLA. She is featured in The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and CNN.com among others. She is a regular on CBS’s The Doctors. She is the author of Hype: A Doctor’s Guide to Medical Myths, Exaggerated Claims, and Bad Advice – How to Tell What’s Real and What’s Not.
Dr. Aubrey de Grey gives his keynote speech at the Ending Age-Related Diseases 2018 conference in NYC. This was our first conference and we will be back every year from now on.
To learn more about the event check out the conference page here:
https://www.leafscience.org/ending-age-related-diseases-2018/
Depleting gut microbiome in mice leads to better insulin sensitivity.
Somewhat serendipitously, Salk Institute researchers discovered that depleting the microbiomes of mice causes the animals to have lower levels of blood glucose as well as improved insulin sensitivity [1].
Abstract
Antibiotic-induced microbiome depletion (AIMD) has been used frequently to study the role of the gut microbiome in pathological conditions. However, unlike germ-free mice, the effects of AIMD on host metabolism remain incompletely understood. Here we show the effects of AIMD to elucidate its effects on gut homeostasis, luminal signaling, and metabolism. We demonstrate that AIMD, which decreases luminal Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes species, decreases baseline serum glucose levels, reduces glucose surge in a tolerance test, and improves insulin sensitivity without altering adiposity.
By pure coincidence, the article by Seth Baum was published just 5 days after a small asteroid exploded over early warning Tule station in Greenland.
This paper studies the risk of collision between asteroids and Earth. It focuses on uncertainty in the human consequences of asteroid collisions, with emphasis on the possibility of global catastrophe to human civilization. A detailed survey of the asteroid risk literature shows that while human consequences are recognized as a major point of uncertainty, the studies focus mainly on physical and environmental dimensions of the risk. Some potential human consequences are omitted entirely, such as the possibility of asteroid explosions inadvertently causing nuclear war. Other human consequences are modeled with varying degrees of detail. Direct medical effects are relatively well-characterized, while human consequences of global environmental effects are more uncertain. The latter are evaluated mainly in terms of a global catastrophe threshold, but such a threshold is deeply uncertain and may not even exist. To handle threshold uncertainty in asteroid policy, this paper adapts the concept of policy boundaries from literature on anthropogenic global environmental change (i.e., planetary boundaries). The paper proposes policy boundaries of 100 m asteroid diameter for global environmental effects and 1 m for inadvertent nuclear war. Other policy implications include a more aggressive asteroid risk mitigation policy and measures to avoid inadvertent nuclear war. The paper argues that for rare events like large asteroid collisions, the absence of robust data means that a wide range of possible human consequences should be considered. This implies humility for risk analysis and erring on the side of caution in policy.
Today, we were pleased to hear that Samumed, a San Diego-based biotech company working on regenerative medicine, has just raised $438 million towards developing anti-aging therapies.
SAN DIEGO – August 6, 2018 – Samumed, LLC, announced today that it has closed its A-6 Round of equity issuance with $438 million, bringing its total equity raised to date to more than $650 million. The pre-money valuation for the round was $12 billion.
“We appreciate the strong support from our investors,” said Osman Kibar, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Samumed, “and we are now in a fortunate position to both move our later stage programs to commercialization, as well as expand on our earlier stage science and clinical portfolio.”
Ichor Therapeutics, a life science company in Lafayette, New York, is one of the big players in the world of rejuvenation biotechnologies. Since its founding in 2013, it has been growing and expanding its portfolio of companies working on therapies against the diseases of aging; on August 1, 2018, Ichor announced the formation of its strategic fund, Grapeseed.bio.
What is Grapeseed.bio
This new fund and accelerator program is meant to provide young life science startups with seed funding up to $100,000, technical training, mentorship, and full access to Ichor’s large research laboratory.
