Lifeboat Foundation

ISM001-055 demonstrated highly promising results in multiple preclinical studies including in vitro biological studies, pharmacokinetic and safety studies. The compound significantly improved myofibroblast activation which contributes to the development of fibrosis. ISM001-055’s novel target is potentially relevant to a broad range of fibrotic indications.

“We are very pleased to see Insilico Medicine’s first antifibrotic drug candidate entering into the clinic,” said Feng Ren 0, PhD, CSO of Insilico Medicine. “We believe this is a significant milestone in the history of AI-powered drug discovery because to our knowledge the drug candidate is the first ever AI-discovered novel molecule based on an AI-discovered novel target. We have leveraged our end-to-end AI-powered drug discovery platform, including the usage of generative biology and generative chemistry, to discover novel biological targets and generate novel molecules with drug-like properties. ISM001-055 is the first such compound to enter the clinic, and we expect more to come in the near future [1].”

Previously, Insilico Medicine demonstrated its ability to generate drug-like hit molecules using AI with the publication of the Generative Tensorial Reinforcement Learning (GENTRL) system for a well-known target in record time [2]. It also demonstrated the target’s proof of concept by applying deep learning techniques for the identification of novel biological targets. This novel antifibrotic program combined these target discovery and generative chemistry capabilities. Notably, Insilico Medicine completed the entire discovery process from target discovery to preclinical candidate nomination within 18 months on a budget of $2.6 million.

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Kaleidoscope Presents: We Are Stars.

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The mysterious ways cancer spreads through the body, a process known as metastasis, is what can make it such a difficult enemy to keep at bay. Researchers at Princeton University working in this area have been tugging at a particular thread for more than 15 years, focusing on a single gene central to the ability of most major cancers to metastasize. They’ve now discovered what they describe as a “silver bullet” in the form of a compound that can disable this gene in mice and human tissue, with clinical trials possibly not too far away.

Metastatic cancer is a key focus for researchers and with good reason, as it is actually the primary cause of death from the disease. While surgery or chemotherapy might be effective at eliminating an initial tumor, cells that have broken away can discreetly make their way around the body and give rise to new tumors, months or even years later.

“Metastatic breast cancer causes more than 40,000 deaths every year in the US, and the patients do not respond well to standard treatments, such as chemotherapies, targeted therapies and immunotherapies,” says Minhong Shen, member of the Princeton team behind the new discovery. “Our work identified a series of chemical compounds that could significantly enhance the chemotherapy and immunotherapy response rates in metastatic breast cancer mouse models. These compounds have great therapeutic potential.”

Circa 2019

Cellular enhancement in banana leaves

Banana Leaf Technology started in 2010 when Tenith Adithyaa, then 11 years old, saw farmers in Southern India dump heaps of banana leaves as trash due to the lack of a preservation technology. The spark ignited when the question came to the mind, ‘can these leaves be enhanced biologically?’ By trial and error, he succeeded in preserving the leaves for about a year without using any chemicals. For four years, he perfected his technology of cellular enhancement. He received his first international award for this technology in 2014, at the global invention fair in Texas.

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The extra juice comes from a secret ingredient…corn starch.

Could a simple materials change make electric car batteries able to four times more energy? Scientists in South Korea think so. In a new paper in the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters, a research team details using silicon and repurposed corn starch to make better anodes for lithium ion batteries.

This team is based primarily in the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), where they’ve experimented with microemulsifying silicon, carbon, and corn starch into a new microstructured composite material for use as a battery anode. This is done by mixing silicon nanoparticles and corn starch with propylene gas and heating it all to combine.

Continue reading “Corny Lithium-Ion Batteries Could Hold Quadruple the Charge” »

A team of researchers from Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, has developed a type of living ink that can be used to print living materials. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group describes how they made their ink and possible uses for it.

For several years, microbial engineers have been working to develop a means to create living materials for use in a wide variety of applications such as medical devices. But getting such materials to conform to desired 3D structures has proven to be a daunting task. In this new effort, the researchers have taken a new approach to tackling the problem—engineering Escherichia coli to produce a product that can be used as the basis for an ink for use in a 3D printer.

The work began by bioengineering the bacteria to produce living nanofibers. The researchers then bundled the fibers and added other ingredients to produce a type of living ink that could be used in a conventional 3D printer. Once they found the concept viable, the team bioengineered other microbes to produce other types of living fibers or materials and added them to the ink. They then used the ink to print 3D objects that had living components. One was a material that secreted azurin—an anticancer drug—when stimulated by certain chemicals. Another was a material that sequestered Bisphenol A (a toxin that has found its way into the environment) without assistance from other chemicals or devices.

Solid-solution organic crystals have been brought into the quest for superior photon upconversion materials, which transform presently wasted long-wavelength light into more useful shorter wavelength light. Scientists from Tokyo Institute of Technology have revisited a materials approach previously deemed lackluster—using a molecule originally developed for organic LEDs—and have achieved outstanding performance and efficiency. Their findings pave the way for many novel photonic technologies, such as better solar cells and photocatalysts for hydrogen and hydrocarbon productions.

Light is a powerful source of energy that can, if leveraged correctly, be used to drive stubborn chemical reactions, generate electricity, and run optoelectronic devices. However, in most applications, not all the wavelengths of light can be used. This is because the energy that each photon carries is inversely proportional to its wavelength, and chemical and physical processes are triggered by light only when the energy provided by individual photons exceeds a certain threshold.

This means that devices like solar cells cannot benefit from all the color contained in sunlight, as it comprises a mixture of photons with both high and low energies. Scientists worldwide are actively exploring materials to realize photon upconversion (PUC), by which photons with lower energies (longer wavelengths) are captured and re-emitted as photons with higher energies (shorter wavelengths). One promising way to realize this is through triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA). This process requires the combination of a sensitizer material and an annihilator material. The sensitizer absorbs low energy photons (long-wavelength light) and transfers its excited energy to the annihilator, which emits higher energy photons (light of shorter wavelength) as a result of TTA.

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy—a technique that measures the frequencies emitted by the nuclei of some atoms exposed to radio waves in a strong magnetic field—can be used to determine chemical and 3D structures as well as the dynamics of molecules and materials.

A necessary initial step in the analysis is the so-called chemical shift assignment. This involves assigning each peak in the NMR spectrum to a given atom in the molecule or material under investigation. This can be a particularly complicated task. Assigning chemical shifts experimentally can be challenging and generally requires time-consuming multi-dimensional correlation experiments. Assignment by comparison to statistical analysis of experimental chemical shift databases would be an alternative solution, but there is no such database for molecular solids.

A team of researchers including EPFL professors Lyndon Emsley, head of the Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, Michele Ceriotti, head of the Laboratory of Computational Science and Modeling and Ph.D. student Manuel Cordova decided to tackle this problem by developing a method of assigning NMR spectra of organic crystals probabilistically, directly from their 2D chemical structures.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=C2kKgtCfUAY

“We are proud to be able to showcase the world’s first fully electric and self-propelled container ship,” said Svein Holsether, CEO of Norwegian chemical company Yara International. “It will cut 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ and replace 40,000 trips by diesel-powered trucks a year.”

Yara has collaborated since 2017 with maritime technology company Kongsberg to develop the ship, which sailed from Horten to Oslo, a distance of approximately 35 nautical miles (65 km). Powered by 7 MWh batteries, it uses an automatic identification system (AIS), cameras (including infrared), a lidar, and radar system. It will begin commercial operations in 2022, transporting mineral fertiliser between ports in southern Norway at up to 15 knots (28 km/h).

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