Lifeboat Foundation

Patients who come to any Northwestern Medicine location for colonoscopies now have access to advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which is improving the way gastroenterologists detect colon polyps and prevent colorectal cancer. According to new research by Northwestern Medicine, physicians who performed colonoscopies assisted by AI achieved a 13% increase in the detection and removal of colorectal polyps.

Computer-aided colonoscopies could reduce future colon cancer diagnoses by up to 39%.

“Most polyps do not become cancerous, but nearly all colorectal cancers begin as polyps,” says Rajesh N. Keswani, MD, MS, director of Endoscopy for Northwestern Memorial Hospital and director of quality for the Northwestern Medicine Digestive Health Center. “We want to detect them in their earliest stages and remove them to prevent future diagnoses of cancer. There’s nothing better than telling a patient that their decision to have a screening colonoscopy may have saved their life.”

We often discuss clinical trials, research studies that evaluate the efficacy of new medical approaches. Necessary for both improving healthcare and advancing medicine, clinical trials make up a vital part of the medical process. Here, we will begin a series of articles to provide an overview of the clinical trial process, which will help you understand all the exciting studies you read about!

Doctors and researchers use clinical trials to develop new drugs to treat cancer (or other diseases). What may be a surprise is that not all clinical trials aim to cure disease; some work to improve the quality of life for patients living with an illness. Clinical trials can also help us improve screening and diagnostic methods. Additionally, some clinical trials access new approaches for preventing disease.

Arguably the most crucial component of any clinical trial is the volunteers. Clinical trial participants may have the disease in question, but this isn’t always the case because some clinical trials rely on healthy volunteers.

Amino acids serve as the foundational elements of proteins, vital to the optimal functioning of biological structures. Proteins in all life forms are composed of 20 core amino acids.

<div class=””> <div class=””><br />Amino acids are a set of organic compounds used to build proteins. There are about 500 naturally occurring known amino acids, though only 20 appear in the genetic code. Proteins consist of one or more chains of amino acids called polypeptides. The sequence of the amino acid chain causes the polypeptide to fold into a shape that is biologically active. The amino acid sequences of proteins are encoded in the genes. Nine proteinogenic amino acids are called “essential” for humans because they cannot be produced from other compounds by the human body and so must be taken in as food.<br /></div> </div>

For many people, when they hear China and genetic engineering in the same sentence, it is often synonymous with scandal, and gene-edited babies may spring to mind.

And, although it is true that nearly five years ago, researcher He Jiankui infamously claimed he had created the first ever gene-edited babies, before going to prison for three years, China has continued to pour a lot of money into genetic engineering research, and aims to become a global leader in the field.

“The accumulative amount of financing in the gene therapy field in China has exceeded $3.3 billion. Also, according to a Frost & Sullivan study, it is estimated that by 2025, gene therapy will reach a scale of nearly $17.89 billion in China,” said Fiona Gao, founding partner of Chinsiders.

Bryton Shang, CEO, Aquabyte.

We are facing a daunting task. The world will have to feed 10 billion mouths by 2050, but our current methods are unsustainable. Eleven percent of global emissions come from agriculture. Water, land and biodiversity are rapidly declining. And more than 800 million people continue to suffer from hunger.

One of the most exciting technological developments of today is AI. The applications of vertical AI—which is trained to deeply understand a single industry—are limitless. In my earlier career, I harnessed the power of AI for financial markets, then for cancer treatments. In my current work, I think a lot about how AI can help us tackle another complicated behemoth: the food system.

A VERY interesting 6 minutes. People tests? One pill? Next Gen? Hurry, I’m 52! There is an ongoing idea that it will take several kinds of treatments, but many years ago I recall Cynthia Kenyan talking about how some research shows it might come down to a pill.

David Sinclair shares the latest incredible research they are doing.

Continue reading “David Sinclair — ONE PILL” »

Newly published research from Telethon Kids Institute and The University of Western Australia has found a gel applied during surgery to treat sarcoma tumors is both safe and highly effective at preventing the cancer from growing back.

The findings, published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine, have formed the scientific backbone of a trial underway in Perth to test the feasibility and safety of the gel on pet dogs.

The polymer-filled gel is packed with a type of immunotherapy and is applied inside the wound when the tumor is removed, drawing immune cells to the wound/resection site to “mop up” any remaining cancer cells.

Unraveling the mystery of how catalytic organic polymers first appeared on prebiotic Earth will unlock key understandings in the origin of life.

Researchers from Tohoku University recently discovered a probable setting where the creation of catalytic organic polymers could occur. To make this discovery, they evaporated solutions of amino acids.

<div class=””> <div class=””><br />Amino acids are a set of organic compounds used to build proteins. There are about 500 naturally occurring known amino acids, though only 20 appear in the genetic code. Proteins consist of one or more chains of amino acids called polypeptides. The sequence of the amino acid chain causes the polypeptide to fold into a shape that is biologically active. The amino acid sequences of proteins are encoded in the genes. Nine proteinogenic amino acids are called “essential” for humans because they cannot be produced from other compounds by the human body and so must be taken in as food.<br /></div> </div>

Recombinant BjADAT2 and BjADAT3 were individually expressed in E. coli and purified, and their enzyme activities were tested by in vitro tRNA deamination assay (Supplementary Fig. 4). Neither BjADAT2 nor BjADAT3 showed any A-to-I editing activity, but BjADAT2, in complex with BjADAT3, could perform A-to-I editing of amphioxus tRNA^Val_(AAC), and the apparent first-order deamination rate constant (k_app) of tRNA deamination was 0.0287 ± 0.00219 min⁻¹. Because the optimal RNA substrate for ADAT2 was the adenosines on the anticodon loop structure of tRNA, we wondered if BjADAT2 could mediate DNA deamination in a structure-specific fashion. Thus, we compared the deamination efficiency of BjADAT2 on DNA hairpin structure substrates (i.e., hpDNA-A and hpDNA-C, containing a single adenosine or cytidine in the loop region, respectively) and single-stranded linear structure substrates (i.e., ssDNA-A and ssDNA-C, containing a single adenosine or cytidine in the substrates, respectively). As shown in Fig. 3, both adenosine deamination of hpDNA-A and cytidine deamination of hpDNA-C were clearly observed under BjADAT2 treatment, and the change of the hairpin substrates to linear substrates resulted in about a threefold decrease in adenosine-and cytidine-deamination ratios. By contrast, no product band was seen in the lane of hpDNA-G or hpDNA-T treated with BjADAT2. Moreover, the BjADAT2-E58A protein purified in the same way as BjADAT2 showed no deamination activity (Supplementary Fig. 5f, g), ruling out the possibility that the observed deamination activity of BjADAT2 arose from a contaminant in the recombinant protein samples. In addition, BjADAT2-mediated adenosine-and cytidine deamination was inhibited by deoxycoformycin (DCF), an adenosine deaminase specific inhibitor, or tetrahydrouridine (THU), a cytidine deaminase specific inhibitor, or 1,10-o-phenanthroline, a zinc chelator. These indicated that BjADAT2 deaminated adenosine and cytidine in a zinc-dependent manner.

The k_app of BjADAT2-induced hpDNA-A deamination (0.00206 ± 0.00019 min⁻¹) was comparable with that of ABE7.10-induced DNA adenosine deamination (0.0010 ± 0.00030 min⁻¹)²². We compared the kinetics of BjADAT2-induced DNA deamination of the hairpin substrates and the linear substrates. The k_app was sixfold higher for the hpDNA-A substrate than for the ssDNA-A substrate (0.00032 ± 0.00004 min⁻¹). Similarly, the k_app was 24-fold higher for hpDNA-C (0.00801 ± 0.00037 min⁻¹) than for ssDNA-C (0.00033 ± 0.000026 min⁻¹) (Fig. 3e). These data together indicated that BjADAT2 preferentially deaminates adenosines and cytidines in the hairpin loop of substrates.

It was known that ADAT3, as a non-catalytic subunit, served a structural role in the adenosine deamination of tRNA^10,23. To date, only trypanosome ADAT2 was shown to be able to deaminate cytosines of DNA in the presence of ADAT3 in vitro⁶, but the specific role of the ADAT3 subunit in this DNA editing reaction was unclear. We demonstrated here that BjADAT3, though lacking catalytic function, could enhance the deamination activity of BjADAT2 toward hairpin structure substrates, including hpDNA-A and hpDNA-C (Fig. 3a, b). This was also supported by the results of kinetic analysis (Fig. 3e), which showed that the k_app of hpDNA-A deamination of BjADAT2/BjADAT3 complex (0.01092 ± 0.00062 min⁻¹) was 5.3-fold higher than that of BjADAT2 alone, and the k_app of hpDNA-C deamination by the complex (0.01066 ± 0.00083 min⁻¹) 1.3-fold higher than that of BjADAT2 alone. On the contrary, the k_app of ssDNA-A deamination of BjADAT2/BjADAT3 complex (0.00016 ± 0.