Lifeboat Foundation

Personalized regenerative medicine company Aspen Neuroscience has joined forces with Emerald Innovations and Rune Labs to integrate digital health monitoring technology into its Trial Ready Screening Cohort Study. The study, which began in 2022, seeks to identify potential patient candidates for a future clinical trial of Aspen’s personalized cell therapy (ANPD001) in Parkinson’s disease.

Aspen’s approach targets Parkinson’s disease by replenishing lost dopamine neurons, addressing both motor and non-motor symptoms of the disease. By combining cutting-edge biosensors, software analytics, and cellular therapies, the new collaboration aims to significantly improve the quality of life for those living with Parkinson’s disease.

Harnessing the capabilities of Emerald Innovations’ ‘invisible’ off-body sensors and Rune Labs’ precision neurology software, Aspen intends to bolster the collection of objective measures of motor function. The company says the partnership will enable long-term symptom capture, providing useful data on disease progression before treatment.

Summary: Researchers achieved a breakthrough in converting brain signals to audible speech with up to 100% accuracy. The team used brain implants and artificial intelligence to directly map brain activity to speech in patients with epilepsy.

This technology aims to give a voice back to people in a locked-in state, who are paralyzed and cannot speak. The researchers believe that the success of this project marks a significant advance in the realm of Brain-Computer Interfaces.

Hypotension is a common complication during general anesthesia associated with increased postoperative mortality and morbidity. Every episode of intraoperative hypotension, regardless of duration, is linked to the risk of acute kidney injury and cardiovascular events. The vulnerability to hemodynamic disturbances increases with age, underscoring the need for prompt interventions for elderly patients who experience hypotension during anaesthesia.

Using ephedrine resulted in a notable rise in mean arterial pressure (MAP) and cardiac output (CO). Still, no meaningful correlation with age was detected in patients aged 45 years or older. These results imply that ephedrine is reliable for managing low blood pressure during general anaesthesia, even in elderly patients, says Yuta Uemura in a recent study published in BMC Anesthesiology.

Ephedrine is a mixed α- and β-agonist vasopressor for correcting hypotension during general anaesthesia. β-responsiveness decreases with age; therefore, this study aimed to determine whether ageing would reduce the pressor effect of ephedrine on hypotension during general anaesthesia.

A recent study in mice adds to the evidence suggesting that Parkinson’s disease may actually start in the gut rather than the brain.

Scientists have found a way to reprogram human cells so that they mimic the highly plastic embryonic stem cells that have so much promise for use in regenerative medicine. By essentially wiping the cell’s “memory”, the team have created so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which could be used to regenerate or repair diseased tissue and organs.

IPS cells are a type of pluripotent cell that can be obtained by reprogramming mature human adult cells (“somatic” cells) into an embryonic stem cell-like state. This means that they have the capacity to differentiate into any cell of the body. They were first demonstrated in 2006, and have myriad potential biomedical and therapeutic uses, including disease modeling, drug screening, and cell-based therapies.

Despite this promise, researchers have continually hit a stumbling block that has prevented iPS cells from realizing their potential. “A persistent problem with the conventional reprograming process is that iPS cells can retain an epigenetic memory of their original somatic state, as well as other epigenetic abnormalities,” Professor Ryan Lister, lead author of a paper presenting the latest breakthrough, said in a statement.

I’m excited to share my new opinion article for Newsweek. It advocates for transforming America from a military-industrial complex into a science-industrial complex! Give it a read!

America spends 45 percent of its discretionary federal spending on defense and wars, while around us, the world burns in ways that have nothing to do with fighting or the military. Global warming has escalated into an enormous crisis. A fifth of everyone we know will die from heart disease. And an opioid crisis is reducing the average lifespans of Americans for the first time in decades. There’s plenty of tragedy, fear, and hardship all around us, but it has nothing to do with the need to make more bombs. It does, however, have to do with science.

It seems obvious America should do something different than spend so much of its tax dollars on defense. We should consider halving that money, and directing it to science, transforming America from a military-industrial complex into a science-industrial complex. Despite science and technological progress being broadly responsible for raising the standard of living around the world over the last 50 years, America spends only 3 percent of its GDP ($205 billion) on science and medical research across the federal government. Notably, this is dramatically less than the $877 billion the U.S. will spend on defense this year.

Continue reading “Could We Transform America Into a Science-Industrial Complex?” »

After decades of research the potential of regenerative medicine becomes a life-saving reality.

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