Scientists develop a new method to regrow microscopic hair cells that pick up sound.
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,643
Interest in rejuvenation biotechnology is growing rapidly and attracting investors.
- Jim Mellon has made an investment in Insilico Medicine to enable the company to validate the many molecules discovered using deep learning and launch multi-modal biomarkers of human aging
Monday, April 10, 2017, Baltimore, MD — Insilico Medicine, Inc, a big data analytics company applying deep learning techniques to drug discovery, biomarker development, and aging research today announced that it has closed an investment from the billionaire biotechnology investor Jim Mellon. Proceeds will be used to perform pre-clinical validation of multiple lead molecules developed using Insilico Medicine’s drug discovery pipelines and to advance research in deep learned biomarkers of aging and disease.
“Unlike many wealthy business people who rely entirely on their advisors to support their investment in biotechnology, Jim Mellon has spent a substantial amount of time familiarizing himself with recent developments in biogerontology. He does not just come in with the funding, but brings in expert knowledge and a network of biotechnology and pharmaceutical executives, who work very quickly and focus on the commercialization potential. We are thrilled to have Mr. Mellon as one of our investors and business partners”, said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder, and CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc.
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Everolimus heading for human clinical trials later this year to treat immune system decline.
The biotechnology company PureTech are moving towards human clinical trials with a new therapy that may slow down the aging process and combat age-related disease. The company has licensed two new drug candidates, derivatives of the drug Rapamycin, from pharmaceutical giant Novartis.
PureTech have recently announced a joint venture with Novartis called resTORbio and are moving to clinical trials of the new drugs later this year. The aim of the first test phase is to see if the new drug can rejuvenate the immune system of aged people a key reason why we lose the ability to resist diseases as we grow older.
Novartis already successfully completed two Phase IIa studies exploring the immune-enhancing potential of mTORC1 inhibitors in elderly patients. resTORbio plans to build on those findings and start a Phase IIb study with the two licensed candidates later this year. Excitingly the firm has also said that it plans to extend the program to other age-related disorders in the future.
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For people in that area, and it may be worth while to try reaching out to them for funding for anti aging stuff.
Why is RAND opening a Bay Area office?
The San Francisco Bay Area is really at the center of technology and transformation. That’s also been a focus at RAND since our very first report, Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship, in 1946, which foretold the creation of satellites more than a decade before Sputnik.
Today, our researchers are working on important questions related to autonomous vehicles, drones, cybersecurity, education technology, virtual medicine—the same questions driving Silicon Valley startups and billion-dollar Bay Area corporations. At the same time, we’re looking at issues surrounding social inequality, drug policy, water resource management, and transportation, all of which directly relate to the Bay Area.
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Technically, an animal could use RNA editing to change the nature of its proteins without completely altering the underlying DNA instructions. This makes the cephalopods’ ability to do it a very interesting phenomenon, but it’s unclear as to why the species requires this much RNA editing. Many of the edited proteins were found in the animals’ brains, which is why scientists think the editing and their brainpower could be linked.
More than any other species on earth, octopuses are particularly smart—they can solve puzzles, use tools, and communicate using color. Now scientists are saying they’re also capable of editing their RNA.
A team of scientists led by Joshua Rosenthal at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Noa Liscovitch-Braur and Eli Eisenberg at Tel Aviv University have discovered that octopuses and squid are capable of a type of genetic alteration called RNA editing. The process is rare among other species, leading scientists to believe that the cephalopods have evolved to follow a special kind of gene recoding.
Normally, living creatures use the information contained in DNA to make proteins, and RNA is the go-between, simply transmitting the message in the DNA. More than 60 percent of RNA transcripts in squid are recoded by editing, and similar levels of RNA editing were identified in other cephalopod species, including two octopuses and a cuttlefish. This changes the message that gets sent out, which in turn changes the proteins that get produced. In comparison, other species like fruit flies and humans experience recoding events only a fraction of one percent of the time. But exactly how the gene editing mechanics work is a mystery.
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Some weird religious stories w/ transhumanism Expect the conflict between religion and transhumanism to get worse, as closed-minded conservative viewpoints get challenged by radical science and a future with no need for an afterlife: http://barbwire.com/2017/04/06/cybernetic-messiah-transhuman…elligence/ & http://www.livebytheword.blog/google-directors-push-for-comp…s-explain/ & http://ctktexas.com/pastoral-backstory-march-30th-2017/
By J. Davila Ashcroft
The recent film Ghost in the Shell is a science fiction tale about a young girl (known as Major) used as an experiment in a Transhumanist/Artificial Intelligence experiment, turning her into a weapon. At first, she complies, thinking the company behind the experiment saved her life after her family died. The truth is, however, that the company took her forcefully while she was a runaway. Major finds out that this company has done the same to others as well, and this knowledge causes her to turn on the company. Throughout the story the viewer is confronted with the existential questions behind such an experiment as Major struggles with the trauma of not feeling things like the warmth of human skin, and the sensations of touch and taste, and feels less than human, though she is told many times she is better than human. While this is obviously a science fiction story, what might comes as a surprise to some is that the subject matter of the film is not just fiction. Transhumanism and Artificial Intelligence on the level of the things explored in this film are all too real, and seem to be only a few years around the corner.
Recently it was reported that Elon Musk of SpaceX fame had a rather disturbing meeting with Demis Hassabis. Hassabis is the man in charge of a very disturbing project with far reaching plans akin to the Ghost in the Shell story, known as DeepMind. DeepMind is a Google project dedicated to exploring and developing all the possible uses of Artificial Intelligence. Musk stated during this meeting that the colonization of Mars is important because Hassabis’ work will make earth too dangerous for humans. By way of demonstrating how dangerous the goals of DeepMind are, one of its business partners, Shane Lange is reported to have stated, “I think human extinction will probably occur, and this technology will play a part in it.” Lange likely understands what critics of artificial intelligence have been saying for years. That is, such technology has an almost certain probability of become “self aware”. That is, becoming aware of its own existence, abilities, and developing distinct opinions and protocols that override those of its creators. If artificial intelligence does become sentient, that would mean, for advocates of A.I., that we would then owe them moral consideration. They, however, would owe humanity no such consideration if they perceived us as a danger to their existence, since we could simply disconnect them. In that scenario we would be an existential threat, and what do you think would come of that? Thus Lange’s statement carries an important message.
Already so-called “deep learning” machines are capable of figuring out solutions that weren’t programmed into them, and actually teach themselves to improve. For example, AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence designed to play the game Go, developed its own strategies for winning at the game. Strategies which its creators cannot explain and are at a loss to understand.
Transhumanist Philosophy The fact is many of us have been physically altered in some way. Some of the most common examples are lasik surgery, hip and knee replacements, and heart valve replacements, and nearly everyone has had vaccines that enhance our normal physical ability to resist certain illnesses and disease. The question is, how far is too far? How “enhanced” is too enhanced?
What if doctors could monitor patients at home with the same degree of accuracy they’d get during a stay at the hospital? Bioelectronics innovator Todd Coleman shares his quest to develop wearable, flexible electronic health monitoring patches that promise to revolutionize healthcare and make medicine less invasive.
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Scientists have developed an artificial thymus, an organ crucial to the human immune system, that could produce special cancer-fighting T-cells in the body on demand.
T-cells are white blood cells that naturally combat disease as part of our immune system, but these artificially engineered versions would be targeted at specific forms of cancer, potentially giving our natural defences a boost in attacking the disease.
In the human body, the thymus sits in front of the heart and uses blood stem cells to make T-cells, which then go onto fight infection in the body. But as people get older or become sick, the thymus becomes less efficient.
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China has made the precision medicine field a focus of its 13th five-year plan, and its companies have been embarking on ambitious efforts to collect a vast trove of genetic and health data, researching how to identify cancer markers in blood, and launching consumer technologies that aim to tap potentially life-saving information. The push offers insight into China’s growing ambitions in science and biotechnology, areas where it has traditionally lagged developed nations like the United States.
Precision medicine a focus of latest five-year plan.
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 09 February, 2017, 1:42pm.
UPDATED : Thursday, 09 February, 2017, 1:42pm.
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