Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,640

The new self-propelled, cancer-seeking bacteriobot swims right into the tumor and zaps it with a deadly payload of cancer drugs.

The recently perfected #bacteriobot holds ‘a lot of promise’ in treating #cancer says a physician. Cancer patients at a hospital in Montreal may be the first to be treated with these #nanorobots built out of bacteria.

Summary: The recently perfected bacteriobot holds ‘a lot of promise’ in treating cancer says a physician. Cancer patients at a hospital in Montreal may be the first to be treated with nanorobots built out of bacteria. The new self-propelled, cancer-seeking bacteriobot swims right into the tumor and zaps it with a deadly payload of cancer drugs. [Cover image: Getty Images/iStock.]

Google’s Futurist Ray Kurzweil once said that within decades, we will have nanobots, swimming through our veins keeping us healthy. The tiny robots will keep us healthy by correcting DNA errors, removing toxins, extending our memories and zapping cancer. The Futurist said that back in 2007, and his prophecy is becoming a reality, at least in the treatment of cancer.

Years spent developing bacteria-based nanobots are finally bearing fruit, and thanks to progress made by a physician at the Jewish General Hospital (JGH) in Montreal, cancer patients may be the first to be treated with tumor-killing nanorobots. The JGH doctors are using a newly-developed self-propelled, cancer-seeking nanorobot built out of bacteria and referred to as a bacteriobot, an amalgam of the words bacteria and nanorobot.

Read more

Full Interview ► https://goo.gl/PvUjjU

Michael B. Fossel, M.D., Ph.D. (born 1950, Greenwich, Connecticut) was a professor of clinical medicine at Michigan State University and is the author of several books on aging, who is best known for his views on telomerase therapy as a possible treatment for cellular senescence. Fossel has appeared on many major news programs to discuss aging and has appeared regularly on National Public Radio (NPR). He is also a respected lecturer, author, and the founder and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine (now known as Rejuvenation Research).

Prior to earning his M.D. at Stanford Medical School, Fossel earned a joint B.A. (cum laude) and M.A. in psychology at Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in neurobiology at Stanford University. He is also a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy. Prior to graduating from medical school in 1981, he was awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship and taught at Stanford University.

In addition to his position at Michigan State University, Fossel has lectured at the National Institute for Health, the Smithsonian Institution, and at various other universities and institutes in various parts of the world. Fossel served on the board of directors for the American Aging Association and was their executive director.

Fossel has written numerous articles on aging and ethics for the Journal of the American Medical Association and In Vivo, and his first book, entitled Reversing Human Aging was published in 1996. The book garnered favorable reviews from mainstream newspapers as well as Scientific American and was published in six languages. A magisterial academic textbook on by Fossel entitled Cells, Aging, and Human Disease was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press.

Since his days as a teacher at Stanford University, Fossel has studied aging from a medical and scientific perspective with a particular emphasis on premature aging syndromes such as progeria, and since at least 1996 he has been a strong and vocal advocate of [telomerase therapy]] as a potential treatment of age-related diseases, disorders, and syndromes such as progeria, Alzheimer’s disease, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, cancer, and other conditions. However, he is careful to qualify his advocacy of telomerase therapy as being a potential treatment for these conditions rather than a “cure for old age” and a panacea for age-related medical conditions, albeit a potential treatment that could radically extend the maximum human life span and reverse the aging process in most people. Specifically, Fossel sees the potential of telomerase therapy as being the single most effective point of intervention in a wide variety of age-related medical conditions. His new book, The Telomerase Revolution, (BenBella, 2015) gives a careful explanation of aging, age-related diseases, and the prospects for intervention, including upcoming human trials.

Continue reading “M. Fossel — How to Reverse Aging” | >

Shai Ben-David, Professor at the University of Waterloo, gave Machine Learning Course composed of 23 Lectures (CS 485/685) at the University of Waterloo on Jan 14, 2015…

Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. In the past decade, machine learning has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome. Machine learning is so pervasive today that you probably use it dozens of times a day without knowing it. Many researchers also think it is the best way to make progress towards human-level AI.

Shai Ben-David holds a PhD in mathematics from the Hebrew University is Jerusalem. He has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Toronto in both the Mathematics and CS departments. He was a professor of computer science at the Technion in Haifa, Israel. Ben-David has held visiting positions at the Australian National University and Cornell University, and since 2004 has been a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Read more

The US is in a opioid addiction crisis that has been described as a national epidemic by health officials. Each day 91 people die after overdosing on the drugs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More Americans now die from drug overdoses than in car accidents or from gun violence put together, and more than 2.6m are addicted to opioids, according to CDC figures.

Health insurance system is partly to blame for the epidemic that is costing companies $18bn a year.

Read more

Researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz, Germany, have made a breakthrough in understanding the origin of the ageing process. They have identified that genes belonging to a process called autophagy — one of the cells most critical survival processes — promote health and fitness in young worms but drive the process of ageing later in life. This research published in the journal Genes & Development gives some of the first clear evidence for how the ageing process arises as a quirk of evolution. These findings may also have broader implications for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease where autophagy is implicated. The researchers show that by promoting longevity through shutting down autophagy in old worms there is a strong improvement in neuronal and subsequent whole body health.

Getting old, it’s something that happens to everyone and nearly every species on this planet, but the question is, should it? In a recent publication in the journal Genes & Development titled “Neuronal inhibition of the nucleation complex extends lifespan in post-reproductive C. elegans,” the laboratory of Dr Holger Richly at IMB, has found some of the first genetic evidence that may put this question to rest.

As Charles Darwin explained, natural selection results in the fittest individuals for a given environment surviving to breed and pass on their genes to the next generation. The more fruitful a trait is at promoting reproductive success, the stronger the selection for that trait will be. In theory, this should give rise to individuals with traits which prevent ageing as their genes could be passed on nearly continuously. Thus, despite the obvious facts to the contrary, from the point of evolution ageing should never have happened. This evolutionary contradiction has been debated and theorised on since the 1800s. It was only in 1953 with his hypothesis of antagonistic pleiotropy (AP) that George C. Williams gave us a rational explanation for how ageing can arise in a population through evolution. Williams proposed that natural selection enriches genes promoting reproductive success but consequently ignores their negative effects on longevity.

Read more

Nanostructured systems have the potential to revolutionize both preventive and therapeutic approaches for treating cardiovascular disease. Given the unique physical and chemical properties of nanostructured systems, nanoscience and nanotechnology have recently demonstrated the potential to overcome many of the limitations of cardiovascular medicine through the development of new pharmaceuticals, imaging reagents and modalities, and biomedical devices. A recent review offers an outline of critical issues and emerging developments in cardiac nanotechnology.

Read more

Summary: Researchers are testing a new vaccine and oral medication that could delay or prevent Alzheimer’s disease from developing in those with a genetic predisposition.

Source: Keck Medicine USC.

The Keck School of Medicine of USC launches a study exploring whether two different therapies can prevent a leading cause of death.

Read more

Scientists at Tufts University were able to graft eyes to the tails of blind Xenopus, giving the tadpoles the ability to detect colors, focus on objects, and consistently follow patterns.

In a breakthrough for regenerative medicine, researchers have developed working eyes attached to the tails of blind Xenopus tadpoles. The tadpoles were able to process visual information from their environment upon the augmentation, helping scientist understand the process of promoting innervation (a part of the body’s nerve supply) in regenerative medicine.

Read more

Scientists in Australia are developing new compounds that they claimed could stop scars from forming in the first place. The compounds job is to stop an enzyme called lysyl oxidase, which enables the collagen in wound healing to crosslink, resulting in scar formation.

If you sustained an injury, whether it’s large or small, you’ll likely end up with a scar. Scars, after all, are the natural outcome of wound healing, and there’s typically few ways to avoid it. Until now, that is.

Read more