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Physicist Luke MacQueen combines tissue engineering with stem cell technologies to produce synthetic meat whose texture mimics that of natural meat.

Winston Churchill—the well-known wartime leader and lesser-known Nobel Laureate in Literature—published an essay in 1931 in The Strand Magazine in which he imagined the future “Fifty Years Hence.” Many of his predictions turned out to be prophetic—wireless telephones, television, and nuclear power—while others read like science fiction. But one of his futuristic ideas—growing meat in a lab—may just be a few years away, if Luke MacQueen of Harvard University has his way.

Stem cells are special kinds of cells in our body that can become any other type of cell. They have huge potential for medicine, and trials are currently under way using stem cells to replace damaged cells in diseases like Parkinson’s.

One way to get stem cells is from human embryos, but this has ethical concerns and practical limitations. Another way is to turn adult cells from the skin or elsewhere into what are called “induced pluripotent stem cells” (iPS cells).

However, these cells sometimes carry a “memory” of the kind of cell they used to be, which can make them less predictable or efficient when we try to turn them into other types of cells.

Scientists have used advanced imaging techniques to identify brain activity and regions linked to cognitive motor dissociation (CMD), or ‘hidden consciousness’. CMD is a state in which a person appears comatose and unresponsive while inwardly showing signs of conscious brain activity.

The findings, reported by a team from Columbia University in the US, may help doctors more easily identify CMD in the future, and better tailor treatments for people who can understand what’s being said to them but can’t respond to it.

CMD happens in around 15–25 percent of people with brain injuries from head trauma, brain hemorrhage, or cardiac arrest. In these patients, something breaks between the instructions coming from the brain and the muscles needed to carry those instructions out.

The machine complements the work of skilled doctors without replacing them.

Surgical robots that can assist in medical procedures are increasingly gaining traction as they help doctors perform better and allow patients to heal faster.

There’s the famous DaVinci Surgery system that is equipped with highly dexterous robot arms that can be manipulated to complete precise cutting and stitching. In the UK, robots are helping thousands of women plagued by the painful womb condition endometriosis while in Canada robot-assisted deep brain stimulation surgeries are aiding patients suffering from epilepsy.

Artificial Intelligence makes art, knows more than many humans and works faster than they do. But will people accept AI-controlled social robots working in the service industry or entertaining those in need of care?

What does a robot need to have to be accepted as a social partner by a human being? Does it need a face? Should the machine understand — or even show — emotions?

Continue reading “Will humans love AI robots? | DW Documentary” »

The Tune Therapeutics results are the first published data showing successful CRISPR epigenome editing in non-human primates.

One way to put dentists out of the drilling and filling business is to find a way to re-establish and stimulate something our bodies do when our teeth first form. Stem cell researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle may have figured out a potential treatment to repair damaged teeth and regenerate those we lose.

Hai Zhang, a professor of restorative dentistry at the University, along with several colleagues has found a way to generate ameloblasts. What are they? Ameloblasts are one of two cells that exist in human embryos responsible for the formation of our teeth. The other cells are called odontoblasts—the former secrete enamel, the latter dentin.

The process of tooth development is called odontogenesis. The two cells mentioned above are critical to tooth formation. Enamel keeps our teeth surfaces hard and strong throughout our lifetimes. Mineralization of teeth begins early in embryonic development. Dentin precedes enamel production, both critical to giving us a healthy set of choppers.

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Continue reading “Uremic Metabolites: Kidney Function Biomarkers” »

SINGAPORE, 14 April 2023 – A preclinical study using stem cells to produce progenitor photoreceptor cells—light-detecting cells found in the eye—and then transplanting these into experimental models of damaged retinas has resulted in significant vision recovery. This finding, by scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School, the Singapore Eye Research Institute and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, marks a first step towards potentially restoring vision in eye diseases characterised by photoreceptor loss.

Research reveals a promising stem cell approach to correct photoreceptor cell degeneration, which underlies several forms of visual decline and blindness.