Lifeboat Foundation

A researcher at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy is reporting an effective protocol for reprogramming human heart cells into specialized cells that conduct electricity throughout the heart to enable rhythmic heartbeat and repair diseased hearts. Bradley McConnell, professor of pharmacology, is the first to demonstrate the process and is reporting it in iScience.

It could be a massive breakthrough.

Currently, there are no treatments for cardiac cell death, the underlying basis of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which remains the leading cause of death globally. By 2035, CVD prevalence is expected to increase to 45.1% (more than 130 million people) in the U.S. while the financial cost is projected to increase by more than $131 million over the next two decades, reaching an astounding $1.1 trillion.

Research in the field continues to focus on seizure prevention, prediction and treatment. Dr. Van Gompel predicts that the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning will help neurologists and neurosurgeons continue to move toward better treatment options and outcomes.

“I think we will continue to move more and more toward removing less and less brain,” says Dr. Van Gompel. “And in fact, I do believe in decades, we’ll understand stimulation enough that maybe we’ll never cut out brain again. Maybe we’ll be able to treat that misbehaving brain with electricity or something else. Maybe sometimes it’s drug delivery, directly into the area, that will rehabilitate that area to make it functional cortex again. That’s at least our hope.”

Continue reading “Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast: The latest options for treating epilepsy” »

Greg Bear, the affable San Diego native who wrote such highly acclaimed and plausible science fiction novels as “Blood Music,” “Darwin’s Radio” and “Eon” and who helped create San Diego Comic-Con, died Saturday in Seattle. He was 71.

His books included “Blood Music” and “Darwin’s Radio,” which helped establish him as a “hard” sci-writer who created plausible tales with the help of scientists.

Continue reading “Greg Bear, prize-winning sci-fi author and Comic-Con co-founder, dies at 71” »

He has surpassed every medical expectation throughout his recovery. Gretarsson can now walk his dog, brush his teeth and give high-fives — as demonstrated when he met Iceland’s president.

“I have feelings in every finger, in the hand,” Gretarsson said recently alongside his wife, Silvia, Friday on “Good Morning Britain.”

Continue reading “I got world’s first double arm transplant — and can finally hug my grandkids” »

Former Neuralink president Max Hodak’s new BCI startup relies on photonics to send light through a patient’s optic nerve and transmit information.

The global COVID-19 epidemic has spread rapidly around the world and caused the death of more than 5 million people. It is urgent to develop effective strategies to treat COVID-19 patients. Here, we revealed that SARS-CoV-2 infection resulted in the dysregulation of genes associated with NAD+ metabolism, immune response, and cell death in mice, similar to that in COVID-19 patients. We therefore investigated the effect of treatment with NAD+ and its intermediate (NMN) and found that the pneumonia phenotypes, including excessive inflammatory cell infiltration, hemolysis, and embolization in SARS-CoV-2-infected lungs were significantly rescued. Cell death was suppressed substantially by NAD+ and NMN supplementation. More strikingly, NMN supplementation can protect 30% of aged mice infected with the lethal mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 from death.

A new technology developed at Tel Aviv University makes it possible to destroy cancerous tumors in a targeted manner, via a combination of ultrasound and the injection of nanobubbles into the bloodstream. According to the research team, unlike invasive treatment methods or the injection of microbubbles into the tumor itself, this latest technology enables the destruction of the tumor in a non-invasive manner.

The study was conducted under the leadership of doctoral student Mike Bismuth from the lab of Dr. Tali Ilovitsh at Tel Aviv University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, in collaboration with Dr. Dov Hershkovitz of the Department of Pathology. Prof. Agata Exner from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland also participated in the study. The study was published in the journal Nanoscale.

Dr. Tali Ilovitsh says that their “new technology makes it possible, in a relatively simple way, to inject nanobubbles into the bloodstream, which then congregate in the area of the cancerous tumor. After that, using a low-frequency ultrasound, we explode the nanobubbles, and thereby the tumor.”

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Liquid metals are a promising functional material due to their unique combination of metallic properties and fluidity at room temperature. They are of interest in wide-ranging fields including stretchable and flexible electronics, reconfigurable devices, microfluidics, biomedicine, material synthesis, and catalysis. Transformation of bulk liquid metal into particles has enabled further advances by allowing access to a broader palette of fabrication techniques for device manufacture or by increasing area available for surface-based applications. For gallium-based liquid metal alloys, particle stabilization is typically achieved by the oxide that forms spontaneously on the surface, even when only trace amounts of oxygen are present. The utility of the particles formed is governed by the chemical, electrical, and mechanical properties of this oxide. To overcome some of the intrinsic limitations of the native oxide, it is demonstrated here for the first time that 2D graphene-based materials can encapsulate liquid metal particles during fabrication and imbue them with previously unattainable properties. This outer encapsulation layer is used to physically stabilize particles in a broad range of pH environments, modify the particles’ mechanical behavior, and control the electrical behavior of resulting films. This demonstration of graphene-based encapsulation of liquid metal particles represents a first foray into the creation of a suite of hybridized 2D material coated liquid metal particles.

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UNSW researchers have overcome a major design challenge on the path to controlling the dimensions of so-called DNA nanobots—structures that assemble themselves from DNA components.

Continue reading “DNA nanobots build themselves: How can we help them grow the right way?” »