Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 27

Researchers have discovered that Daphne pseudomezereum (commonly known as Onishibari) contains a substance inhibiting replication of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The plants were cultivated at the Medicinal Plant Garden of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Toho University. This finding is expected to lead to the discovery of drug seeds for novel drugs with superior anti-HIV activity.

A paper reporting this study was published in the journal Phytochemistry. The research group was led by Professor Wei Li from the Department of Pharmacognosy, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Toho University, in collaboration with the Duke University Medical Center in the United States.

The Thymelaeaceae family consists of over 53 genera and 800 species distributed worldwide, except in polar and desert regions. These plants contain diterpenoids, which exhibit significant biological activities, including anticancer, anti-HIV, and .

Read more | >

A new study by UCLA Health has discovered what researchers say is the first drug to fully reproduce the effects of physical stroke rehabilitation in model mice, following from human studies.

The findings, published in Nature Communications, tested two candidate drugs derived from their studies on the mechanism of the brain effects of rehabilitation, of which one resulted in significant recovery in movement control after stroke in the mouse model.

Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability because most patients do not fully recover from the effects of stroke. There are no drugs in the field of stroke recovery, requiring stroke patients to undergo physical rehabilitation which has shown to be only modestly effective.

Read more | >

Memory engrams are formed through experience-dependent plasticity of neural circuits, but their detailed architectures remain unresolved. Using three-dimensional electron microscopy, we performed nanoscale reconstructions of the hippocampal CA3-CA1 pathway after chemogenetic labeling of cellular ensembles recruited during associative learning. Neurons with a remote history of activity coinciding with memory acquisition showed no strong preference for wiring with each other. Instead, their connectomes expanded through multisynaptic boutons independently of the coactivation state of postsynaptic partners. The rewiring of ensembles representing an initial engram was accompanied by input-specific, spatially restricted upscaling of individual synapses, as well as remodeling of mitochondria, smooth endoplasmic reticulum, and interactions with astrocytes.

Read more | >

“.

Gene therapy was used to increase levels of Klotho, one of the first longevity genes discovered in the 1990’s, in mice. This led to improved physical fitness, muscular regenerative capacity, bone micrstructure, neurogenesis and a 20% increase in lifespan.

Contents:

Intro 0:00
Figure 1 — Longevity experiment follow-up and AAV treatment effectivity assessment 1:20
Figure 2 — Physical tests and histological analysis of muscular tissue from treated naturally aged animals 4:04
Figure 3 — Histological analysis of muscle from s-KL-treated animals 7 days after transplantation 6:27
Figure 4 — MicroCT structural and gene expression analysis in treated bones of 24-MO mice 7:34
Figure 5 — Histological analysis of Iba1, GFAP, and neurogenesis markers in CNS from aged animals 8:52
Figure 6 — Transcriptomic analysis of hippocampal RNA-seq data 9:59
Graphical Abstract & Conclusion 11:04.

Study reviewed:

Continue reading “Klotho Gene Therapy Increases Lifespan” | >

Oxford BioTherapeutics (OBT) has entered a multi-year partnership with Roche to discover antibody-based therapeutics for cancer treatment.

The partnership will leverage OBT’s OGAP-Verify discovery platform, which claims to offer greater sensitivity and enables target selection with enhanced drug development attributes.

OBT has entered a multi-year partnership with Roche to discover antibody-based therapeutics for cancer treatment.

Read more | >

In addition, traditional techniques do not allow researchers to optimally handle diverse sample types, including DNA samples from common sources such as saliva, blood, or formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues. Such relative inflexibility limits the ability of scientists to efficiently compare sequencing results between different samples from the same individual as well as between different individuals, further complicating downstream data collection and reliability.

Library preparation kits that are designed to improve the efficiency and reproducibility of WGS workflows are a welcome addition to the sequencing repertoires of laboratory scientists engaged in cutting-edge and scalable translational research. Importantly, the versatility, adaptability, and turnaround time of novel library preparation solutions have the power to standardize protocols, eliminate workflow bottlenecks, preserve resources, and uncover new opportunities. Overall, preparation kits that have built-in adaptability to the inherent variability of WGS protocols enable more straightforward optimization and better results than traditional approaches.

Covaris’s truCOVER WGS PCR-free Library Prep Kit is a versatile, cutting-edge solution that addresses the inherent complexity of WGS workflows using a rapid, reliable, reproducible, efficient, and cost-effective approach. The kit enables adaptable PCR-free library preparation from different types of samples, including saliva, blood, and FFPE for a wide range of downstream sequencing workflow applications. The truCOVER kit streamlines library preparation processes by eradicating rate-limiting obstacles such as fragmentation bias and eliminating the need for PCR-based quality control steps.

Read more | >

A team of researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) has developed the world’s most advanced software to study the human cerebellum using high-resolution NMR images.

Called DeepCeres, this software will help in the research and diagnosis of diseases such as ALS, schizophrenia, autism and Alzheimer’s, among others. The work of the Spanish and French researchers has been published in the journal NeuroImage.

Despite its small size compared to the rest of the brain, the contains approximately 50% of all brain neurons and plays a fundamental role in cognitive, emotional and motor functions.

Read more | >

Magnetized algae micro swimmers retain speed and maneuverability, showing promise for targeted drug delivery in confined biological environments. A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart has developed a biohybrid microswimmer coated with magn

Read more | >

Scientists found that aggressive lung cancer cells create their own electrical network, helping them spread. This unique trait may reveal new treatment opportunities. Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have discovered that certain aggressive lung cancer cells can form their own electrical

Read more | >