Lifeboat Foundation

All they need is electrical stimulation, and once activated, they re-establish the lost connection between different regions of the spinal cord.

Imagine you are stuck inside a room, you want to get out, but your body is not moving. No matter how hard you try, you are unable to move your body parts. You are not even able to move your finger, how would you feel? Well, that’s what chronic paralysis feels like.

Unfortunately, there is no known permanent cure for this neurological disorder, and this is what makes the situation worse. The physical and mental struggle that a patient with chronic paralysis goes through is unimaginable.

Continue reading “Weird magic neurons in the spine can make people with paralysis walk again” »

The cause of Alzheimer’s is still not fully understood, but we might be able to vaccinate against it anyway.

For over 30 years, toxic proteins were thought to cause Alzheimer’s. However, recent studies suggest it might be metabolic reprogramming.

Noradrenaline-targeting drugs, including blood pressure, depression, and ADHD meds, improve Alzheimer’s disease symptoms.

From wearable electronics to microscopic sensors to telemedicine, new advances like graphene and supercapacitors are already here.

Americans endlessly chatter about what to eat. Low fat, high protein, vegan, ketogenic — but what about electronic? Since the turn of the 21st century, a dedicated group of scientists, engineers, and technologists has been trying to create edible electronics, not necessarily for human nutrition, but rather for medical purposes.

Electronic devices composed of digestible materials that gradually break down in the body over a matter of days could precisely deliver medication inside the body and measure drug uptake. They could monitor symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders and the gut microbiome. They could allow doctors to remotely observe patients’ internal health without a visit to the hospital, further enhancing the telehealth revolution and allowing more people access to healthcare.

Several proteins have been identified in hosts that interact with Ebola virus and primarily function to inhibit the production of viral genetic material in cells and prevent Ebola virus infection, according to a study led by the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.

Zaire ebolavirus or Ebola virus, an RNA virus pathogen that belongs to the filovirus family, causes outbreaks of severe disease in humans. This public health threat has produced outbreaks where reported case fatality rates ranged up to 90 percent.

The West Africa Ebola virus epidemic from 2013–2016 resulted in more than 28,000 infections and more than 11,000 deaths. Four outbreaks occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2017–2021 and Ebola virus reemerged in Guinea in 2021.

Coronaviruses have brought about three massive outbreaks in the past two decades. Each step of its life cycle invariably depends on the interactions among virus and host molecules. The interaction between virus RNA and host protein (IVRHP) is unique compared to other virus-host molecular interactions, and has emerged to be a very hot topic in recent studies.

These studies provide essential information for a deeper understanding of IVRHP, which represents not only an attempt by viruses to promote their translation/replication, but also the host’s endeavor to combat viral pathogenicity. In other words, there is an urgent need to have a panorama of coronavirus RNA-Host protein interactions, which will then aid in the discovery of new antiviral therapies.

On October 6, 2022, Prof. Zhu Feng from College of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Zhejiang University, Prof. Han Lianyi from College of Life Sciences in Fudan University and Prof. Lin Tao from College of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Hangzhou Normal University published an article titled “CovInter: Interaction Data between Coronavirus RNAs and Host Proteins” in Nucleic Acids Research.

A team of scientists at Whitehead Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have systematically evaluated the functions of more than 5,000 essential human genes using a novel, pooled, imaged-based screening method. Their analysis harnesses CRISPR/Cas9 to knock out gene activity and forms a first-of-its-kind resource for understanding and visualizing gene function in a wide range of cellular processes with both spatial and temporal resolution.

The team’s findings, published in the journal Cell, span over 31 million individual cells and include quantitative data on hundreds of different parameters that enable predictions about how genes work and operate together.

“For my entire career, I’ve wanted to see what happens in cells when the function of an essential gene is eliminated,” said Iain Cheeseman, a senior author of the study and a member of Whitehead Institute. “Now, we can do that, not just for one gene but for every single gene that matters for a human cell dividing in a dish, and it’s enormously powerful. The resource we’ve created will benefit not just our own lab but labs around the world.”