Biotech/medical – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Jun 6
2019

First-of-its-kind platform aims to rapidly advance prosthetics

A new open-source, artificially intelligent prosthetic leg designed by researchers at the University of Michigan and Shirley Ryan AbilityLab is now available to the scientific community.

The leg’s free-to-copy design and programming are intended to improve the quality of life of patients and accelerate scientific advances by offering a unified platform to fragmented research efforts across the field of bionics.

“Our Open-Source Bionic Leg will enable investigators to efficiently solve challenges associated with controlling bionic legs across a range of activities in the lab and out in the community,” said lead designer Elliott Rouse, core faculty at U-M’s Robotics Institute and assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “In addition, we hope our bionic leg will unite researchers with a common hardware platform and enable new investigators from related fields to develop innovative control strategies.”

Jun 6
2019

HPV vaccine prevents anal cancer, too, Desperate Housewives’ Marcia Cross reminds us

“Desperate Housewives” star Marcia Cross said her anal cancer could be linked to her husband’s throat cancer diagnosis in 2009. USA TODAY

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Girls, boys, young men and women, parents: the HPV vaccine helps to prevent cervical, anal, penile, vulvar, throat and esophageal cancers.

Jun 6
2019

First-ever spider glue genes sequenced, paving way to next biomaterials breakthrough

UMBC postdoctoral fellow Sarah Stellwagen and co-author Rebecca Renberg at the Army Research Lab have published the first-ever complete sequences of two genes that allow spiders to produce glue—a sticky, modified version of spider silk that keeps a spider’s prey stuck in its web. The findings appeared in Genes, Genomes, Genetics.

The innovative method they employed could pave the way for others to sequence more silk and glue genes, which are challenging to sequence because of their length and repetitive structure. Better understanding of these genes could move scientists closer to the next big advance in biomaterials.

Jun 6
2019

Scientists identify gene that helps people live to a ripe old age

Researchers at Amsterdam’s UMC have identified a rare gene that halves people’s chances of developing dementia in old age.

People with the genetic variant, which occurs in around 1% of the population, are also more likely to live longer. The researchers studied 16 different sample populations in Europe and North America, including a number of people over the age of 100, for the study published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica.

The discovery could potentially be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative illnesses such as frontotemporal and Lewy body dementia.

Jun 5
2019

Yoga Isn’t Just For Your Mind—It’s Good For Your DNA

Yoga and meditation isn’t just good for your mind and body, it’s good for your DNA, too!

Jun 5
2019

DARPA’s New Project Is Investing Millions in Brain-Machine Interface Tech

When Elon Musk and DARPA both hop aboard the cyborg hypetrain, you know brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are about to achieve the impossible.

BMIs, already the stuff of science fiction, facilitate crosstalk between biological wetware with external computers, turning human users into literal cyborgs. Yet mind-controlled robotic arms, microelectrode “nerve patches”, or “memory Band-AIDS” are still purely experimental medical treatments for those with nervous system impairments.

With the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program, DARPA is looking to expand BMIs to the military. This month, the project tapped six academic teams to engineer radically different BMIs to hook up machines to the brains of able-bodied soldiers. The goal is to ditch surgery altogether—while minimizing any biological interventions—to link up brain and machine.

Jun 5
2019

Nanotechnology treatment shows promise against multiple sclerosis

A nanotechnology treatment derived from bone marrow stem cells has reversed multiple sclerosis symptoms in mice and could eventually be used to help humans, according to a new study led by University of California, Irvine researchers.

Jun 5
2019

Supercharging adoptive T cell therapy to overcome solid tumor–induced immunosuppression

The development of new cancer immunotherapies including checkpoint blockade and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has revolutionized cancer treatment. CAR T cells have shown tremendous success in certain B cell malignancies, resulting in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of this approach for certain types of leukemia and lymphoma. However, response rates against solid cancer have been less successful to date. Approaches to modulate the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment including targeting checkpoint pathways, modulating metabolic pathways, and generating cytokine-producing T cells have led to considerable enhancement of adoptive T cell immunotherapy, first in preclinical models and now in patients.

Jun 5
2019

David Sinclair – Slowing down Aging (VIDEO)

David A. Sinclair, Ph.D., A.O. is an Australian biologist and a Professor in the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his work on understanding why we age and how to slow its effects. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and received the Australian Commonwealth Prize. In 1995, he received a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Leonard Guarente. Since 1999 he has been a tenured professor in the Genetics Department of Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Sinclair is co-founder of several biotechnology companies (Sirtris, Ovascience, Genocea, Cohbar, MetroBiotech, ArcBio, Liberty Biosecurity) and is on the boards of several others. He is also co-founder and co-chief editor of the journal Aging. His work is featured in five books, two documentary movies, 60 Minutes, Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole” and other media.

Jun 5
2019

Signs & Symptoms of Bone Marrow Disease

Bone marrow is a soft spongy material that is located inside of the bones. Bone marrow is necessary for the transition that stem cells make to become one of the types of blood cells (red blood cells, platelets or white blood cells). Bone marrow disease occurs when there is some kind of abnormality or interference with the production of blood cells. Leukemia, aplastic anemia and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are three types of bone marrow disorders that affect the production of blood cells and the bone marrow. Symptoms of each type of bone marrow disease will vary according to its severity, but tend to be similar in nature.