Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,554
Smart building materials to watch in 2019
Smart building materials are altering the fabric of the housebuilding industry. Housebuilders are already looking ahead to the days when homes will fix themselves, serve their residents and tell us how we can build them better.
SMART CONCRETE
While housebuilders gaze into the future, researchers have been turning to the past for inspiration. Over the last few years, the DNA of concrete has been decoded and rewritten by scientists to make the material that built the Roman Empire fit for the future.
Understanding white blood cells’ defense mechanisms could lead to better treatments
Experiencing a bacterial infection? You’re generally prescribed antibiotics by your doctor. But how exactly do those antibiotics and your white blood cells work in tandem to improve your infection?
“The human body’s first line of defense against bacteria are certain white blood cells called neutrophils,” says J. Scott VanEpps, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine at Michigan Medicine. “One of their weapons are neutrophil extracellular traps, also called NETs.”
The traps are microscopic networks of fibers made primarily of DNA that are produced by the neutrophils to capture bacteria. But how exactly they work, VanEpps notes, is still unclear.
Senescent Cells and Senolytics
As your body ages, increasing amounts of your cells enter into a state of senescence. Senescent cells do not divide or support the tissues of which they are part; instead, they emit a range of potentially harmful chemical signals that encourage nearby cells to enter the same senescent state.
Their presence causes many problems: they degrade tissue function, increase levels of chronic inflammation, and can even eventually raise the risk of cancer. Today, we will talk about what senescent cells are, how they contribute to age-related diseases, and, perhaps most importantly, what science is hoping to do about the problem.
Translating Aging Research – Ending Age Related Diseases 2018
Ending Age-Related Diseases — October 3, 2018.
This is a video from the Ending Age-Related Diseases 2018 conference, which was held earlier this year at the Cooper Union in New York City. The conference was designed to bring the worlds of research and investment together in one place and explore the progress and challenges that the industry faces in developing and funding therapies to end age-related disease.
This was the second panel during the conference and featured Dr. Aubrey de Grey of the SENS Research Foundation, Keith Comito of Lifespan.io, Dr. James Peyer of Apollo Ventures, Dr. Mark Hammond of Deep Science Ventures, Joe Betts Lacroix of Y Combinator and Vium, Dr. Oliver Medvedik of Lifespan.io and The Cooper Union, and Ramphis Castro of ScienceVest.
Life Extension Advocacy Foundation Website — https://www.leafscience.org/
New Aging Clock Could Predict Your Future Lifespan
A new aging clock developed by Professor Steve Horvath and his research team takes measuring your biological age a step further and can accurately predict your future lifespan.
The epigenetic clock
As we age, our DNA experiences chemical changes called DNA methylation (DNAm); these changes are used as a way to measure age and are the basis of the epigenetic clock. As we age, the methylation patterns present on our DNA change, and researchers can measure these changes to work out how old an animal or person is.