Toyota envisions smart cars and wearables saving lives in car crashes by working to predict heart attacks or diabetic blackouts among drivers.
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2495
A new vaccine targeting dozens of new strains of pneumonia could potentially save “hundreds of thousands of lives” according to researchers. Early studies show the new vaccine effectively protects against a variety of bacteria that causes pneumococcal disease including pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis.
Since the introduction in the early 2000s of vaccines targeting the most deadly forms of pneumonia, the World Health Organization has estimated global deaths of children from the disease have been cut in half. Alongside better nutrition and access to antibiotics, a vaccine against the 23 most deadly pneumonia-causing bacteria has been held as responsible for the millions of lives saved.
Now a team of scientists from the University at Buffalo and New York University’s Langone Medical Center has developed a new vaccine that targets another 50 strains of a bacterium called Streptococcus pneumoniae, the primary bacteria responsible for pneumococcal disease.
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I Am The Lifespan
Posted in biotech/medical, life extension
Over the past few years, there has been a tradition of longevity researchers and activists around the world to organize events on or around October 1 — the UN International Day of Older Persons, or Longevity Day. In recent years this has been extended to include the entire month of November as a Longevity Month where activists organize various activities and events to raise awareness for aging research.
This year we have continued this tradition with the Longevity Month “I am the Lifespan” event, where people tell us their story and how they got interested in aging research and doing something about age-related diseases. and it has been a great success so far. Lots of people have sent in their stories and we have been publishing them on our Facebook page the last few weeks. We wanted to share some of these stories with you and a little about the people behind them.
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Recently, we have explored the benefits that rejuvenation biotechnologies promise to bring to ourselves and the people close to us. I would imagine that most people have no difficulty acknowledging these benefits, but even so, many people tend to focus on potential large-scale downsides of rejuvenation while neglecting entirely its benefits on society at large.
The following is a brief discussion of how, in my opinion, anti-aging biotechnologies would positively impact the whole of humanity—assuming they were widely employed, as they should be.
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CHICAGO — Small RNA molecules originally developed as a tool to study gene function trigger a mechanism hidden in every cell that forces the cell to commit suicide, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study, the first to identify molecules to trigger a fail-safe mechanism that may protect us from cancer.
The mechanism — RNA suicide molecules — can potentially be developed into a novel form of cancer therapy, the study authors said.
Cancer cells treated with the RNA molecules never become resistant to them because they simultaneously eliminate multiple genes that cancer cells need for survival.
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A research team at MIT has used synthetic biology to create a gene circuit that triggers the immune system to attack cancer when it first detects the signs of the disease.
The circuit works by only activating the immune response when two specific cancer biomarkers are detected. The new study was published in the journal Cell this week and represents an exciting step forward for synthetic biology and cancer research.
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Man Modifies His Own Genes
Posted in biotech/medical
ProPublica has been documenting the many ways health care dollars are being wasted. We’ve shown how hospitals throw out brand new supplies, nursing homes flush tons of unexpired medication and drug companies concoct costly combinations of cheap medication. Recently we described how arbitrary drug expiration dates cause us to toss safe and potent medicine.
Often, large swaths of the medical and pharmaceutical communities know about this waste — even about solutions to it — but do nothing. Those who end up paying the bill, in one way or another, are consumers.
The makers of cancer drugs also make vials with too much medication for many patients. The excess drugs are tossed in the trash — another reason health care costs are so high.
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Can the process of aging be delayed or even reversed? Research led by specially appointed Professor Jun-Ichi Hayashi from the University of Tsukuba in Japan has shown that, in human cell lines at least, it can. They also found that the regulation of two genes involved with the production of glycine, the smallest and simplest amino acid, is partly responsible for some of the characteristics of aging.
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Last year, Dr. Sergio Canavero created quite the ruckus (to put it mildly) when he vowed to be the first person to transplant a human head onto a deceased donor’s body. Yes, he is planning on attempting the world’s first human head transplant (or body transplant, depending on how you look at it).
In fact, it has been about a year since his initial proclamation, and the Italian neurosurgeon still stands firm on his declaration, despite claims from other experts that it is nothing but a PR Stunt (at best) or a hoax. Some have even hypothesized it’s all just a plot meant to promote Metal Gear Solid.
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