Lifeboat Foundation

In a new study, pancreatic islet cell transplantation has shown promise as an effective treatment alternative for type 1 diabetes patients with severe hypoglycemia.

Telomerase, an enzyme naturally found in the human organism, is the closest of all known substances to a “cellular elixir of youth.” In a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Brazilian and US researchers show that sex hormones can stimulate production of this enzyme.

The strategy was tested in patients with genetic diseases associated with mutations in the gene that codes for telomerase, such as aplastic anemia and pulmonary fibrosis.

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Continue reading “Researchers find a male hormone that reversed cell aging in a clinical trial — ‘Cellular elixir of youth’” »

A new story with lots of transhumanism in it:

Zoltan Istvan is in the running for President of the United States. You may not have heard of him, but if elected, he hopes to put an end to death. All of it. (Yes, seriously).

There are people right now walking around with artificial hearts – something that many people believed would not happen for another decade (or even longer). There are quadriplegics no longer bound to a wheelchair, but walk with exoskeleton technology. There are hundreds of thousands of people with brain implants that help them with various ailments. In short, recent technological breakthroughs like these open up the possibility for humans to enhance themselves and their health—and perhaps to even become immortal (someday).

Continue reading “The U.S. Presidential Candidate Who Loves Science, Technology, And…Immortality?” »

NANOG. I just like the sound of it.

In the biology lab-based equivalent of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, researchers from the University at Buffalo have uncovered the human body’s internal fountain of eternal youth, in the form of a gene called NANOG. When expressing this gene in aged stem cells, the team found that it reactivated certain processes that had become exhausted, restoring their ability to develop into fully functioning muscle cells.

As we go about our lives, wear and tear causes the body’s cells to die via a process called senescence. When this occurs, new cells are created from stem cells in order to replace those that have become senescent, although when we hit old age our stem cells become depleted or unable to develop.

Continue reading “There’s A Gene That Reverses Cellular Aging, And Now We Know How” »

A new method for medicine.

Imagine a cross between one of those multi-color retractable pens and an epi-pen. But instead of colors, the device would have different medications. Now combine this with a tiny, droplet-sized sweatshop full of obedient single-celled organisms genetically engineered to produce those medications, and you’ve got what a team from MIT just published in Nature Communications: A new project, with funding from DARPA, that has demonstrated the ability to synthesize multiple medications on-demand and as-needed using yeast. The discovery could soon revolutionize our ability to deliver medicine after natural disasters or to remote locations.

Let’s stick with the metaphor of an epi-pen. First, the user presses the actuator, which mixes a chemical trigger into a culture of engineered Pichia pastoris cells. Upon exposure to certain chemical triggers, the cells are programmed to produce a protein: in the report, the team used estrogen β-estradiol, which caused the cells to express recombinant human growth hormone (rHGH), and also methanol, which induced the same culture of yeast to make interferon. By controlling the concentration of the chemical trigger and the population of P. pastoris, the team demonstrated that they could make their device produce a dose of either interferon or rHGH on command. To switch between products, they just pushed another button on the microbioreactor, which flushes out the cell culture with clean, sterile fluid.

Continue reading “Portable bioreactor from MIT produces medications, vaccines on-demand” »

With a new programming language, almost anyone create a DNA-encoded circuit.

Should all new technologies be used?

At the head of all this you will hear about the latest technology from the biotech world, such as CRISPR, that allows scientists to edit the very genome of a plant or animal, but not all technologies that can be used should be used.

While learning to grow massive quantities of organic food in urban landscapes without pesticides is great news, taking away human oversight from farming isn’t necessarily going to make our food better.

Continue reading “New Automation Technologies are Revolutionizing Farming” »

AWESOME.

New UCLA research suggests that a gene-based immunotherapy that has shown promising results against cancer could also be used against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

In a study to be published in an August issue of the bi-monthly peer-reviewed Journal of Virology, researchers with the UCLA AIDS Institute and Center for AIDS Research found that recently discovered potent antibodies can be used to generate chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs, that can be used to kill cells infected with HIV-1.

Continue reading “Promising Cancer-Fighting Gene Immunotherapy Could Be Used Against HIV, UCLA Research Suggests” »

This Catalonian chemistry wiz is developing a jet-pack engine to deliver medicine inside our bodies.