Lifeboat Foundation

In a new study, scientists have uncovered the mechanics of the blood-tumor barrier, one of the most significant obstacles to improving treatment efficacy and preventing the return of cancerous cells. The research team, led by Dr. Xi Huang, a Senior Scientist in Developmental & Stem Cell Biology program at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), lays the foundation for more effectively treating medulloblastoma, the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor.

“Despite decades of research on brain cancer, the mechanisms that govern the formation and function of the blood-tumor barrier have remained poorly understood,” says Huang, who is also a Principal Investigator at the Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumor Research Center and Canada Research Chair in Cancer Biophysics. “Our discoveries represent a breakthrough in the understanding of how the blood-tumor barrier forms and works.”

In a paper published today in Neuron, the research team identifies a way to reduce the impact of the blood-tumor barrier on medulloblastoma treatment.

Imagine the booming chords from a pipe organ echoing through the cavernous sanctuary of a massive, stone cathedral.

The sound a cathedral-goer will hear is affected by many factors, including the location of the organ, where the listener is standing, whether any columns, pews, or other obstacles stand between them, what the walls are made of, the locations of windows or doorways, etc. Hearing a sound can help someone envision their environment.

Continue reading “Using sound to model the world” »

ARTIFICIAL intelligence has discovered a new life-changing drug and human trials are already underway.

The biotech company behind the breakthrough has dosed its first patient with an AI-developed treatment for ALS patients.

Alice Zhang, 33, is the founder of Verge Genomics and a former neuroscience doctoral student at University of California.

Life on Earth would not exist as we know it, if not for the protein molecules that enable critical processes from photosynthesis and enzymatic degradation to sight and our immune system. And like most facets of the natural world, humanity has only just begun to discover the multitudes of protein types that actually exist. But rather scour the most inhospitable parts of the planet in search of novel microorganisms that might have a new flavor of organic molecule, Meta researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind metagenomic database, the ESM Metagenomic Atlas, that could accelerate existing protein-folding AI performance by 60x.

Metagenomics is just coincidentally named. It is a relatively new, but very real, scientific discipline that studies “the structure and function of entire nucleotide sequences isolated and analyzed from all the organisms (typically microbes) in a bulk sample.” Often used to identify the bacterial communities living on our skin or in the soil, these techniques are similar in function to gas chromatography, wherein you’re trying to identify what’s present in a given sample system.

Continue reading “Meta’s newest AI determines proper protein folds 60 times faster” »

The subvariants BQ.1.1 and XBB may somewhat evade prior immunity, however, further research is required.

𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐬 𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐧 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧’𝐬 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙜𝙚𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙡𝙖𝙢𝙪𝙨 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚 𝙘𝙪𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙨𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙚, 𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝙘𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙚, 𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙨 𝙖 𝙬𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙚 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙮𝙨𝙞𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙩𝙝𝙮 𝙬𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙙𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙙.

“We were surprised to see that this effect could be seen even with a single dose of nicotine, equivalent to just one cigarette, showing how powerful the effects of smoking are on a woman ’ s brain.”

Continue reading “Nicotine Blocks Estrogen Production in Women’s Brains” »

A study on a large sample of patients found chronic, long-lasting depression to be associated with reduced brain volume. The reduced volume was found in brain regions relevant for planning one’s behavior, focusing attention, thinking, learning and remembering and also in regions relevant for regulating emotions. The study was published in Neurobiology and Treatment of Depression.

Depression, also called major depressive disorder, is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. It changes the way a person feels, thinks and behaves. For many people suffering from it, depressive episodes become a recurring event. More than half of patients with depression experience a relapse after 2 years and the probability of recurrent depressive episodes rises to 90% after 3–4 episodes. Studies have indicated that recurring depressive episodes might be linked to structural changes in the brain, but the existing results are not uniform.

Ms. Hannah Lemke and her colleagues analyzed the data of 681 patients from the Marburg-Muenster-Affective-Cohort Study (MACS) in order to better link properties of the course of depressive disorder with specific changes in the brain structure. Patient data were collected at two sites in Germany – Muenster and Marburg.

Weill Cornell Medicine researchers have developed a computational method to map the architecture of human tissues in unprecedented detail. Their approach promises to accelerate studies on organ-scale cellular interactions and could enable powerful new diagnostic strategies for a wide range of diseases.

The method, published Oct. 31 in Nature Methods, grew out of the scientists’ frustration with the gap between classical microscopy and modern single-cell molecular analysis. “Looking at tissues under the microscope, you see a bunch of cells that are grouped together spatially—you see that organization in images almost immediately,” said lead author Junbum Kim, a graduate student in physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine.

“Now, cell biologists have gained the ability to examine individual cells in tremendous detail, down to which genes each cell is expressing, so they’re focused on the cells instead of focusing on the tissue structure,” he said.

The number of syphilis cases in Japan this year has exceeded 10,000 for the first time since comparable data became available in 1999.

Japan’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases says 10,141 cases were reported as of October 23. That is about 1.7 times the figure for the same period last year, which was a record high.

Syphilis is a bacterial infection transmitted mainly through sexual contact. Symptoms may quickly disappear, or not appear at all. So, infected people could spread the disease without knowing.