Lifeboat Foundation

It’s inevitable in life, but aging isn’t really something people look forward to. Researchers have been seeking ways to reduce the impact of aging, not only because of vanity but also because as we age, there is a greater risk of certain serious health conditions like cancer, heart disease and neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. Salk Institute scientists have now used CRISPR/Cas9, the gene-editing tool, to slow down aging. The work, reported in Nature Medicine, showed accelerated aging can be slowed in mice modeling a rare genetic disorder called Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome.

“Aging is a complex process in which cells start to lose their functionality, so it is critical for us to find effective ways to study the molecular drivers of aging,” said the senior author of the report Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory. “Progeria is an ideal aging model because it allows us to devise an intervention, refine it and test it again quickly.”

Continue reading “Slowing the Aging Process” »

“We were able to show that there is only a single type of microglia in the brain that exist in multiple flavours,” says project head Prof. Dr. Marco Prinz, medical director of the Institute of Neuropathology at the Medical Center — University of Freiburg. “These immune cells are very versatile all-rounders, not specialists, as has been the textbook opinion up to now,” sums up Prof. Prinz.

A team of researchers under the direction of the Medical Center — University of Freiburg has created an entirely new map of the brain’s own immune system in humans and mice. The scientists succeeded in demonstrating for the first time ever that the phagocytes in the brain, the so-called microglia, all have the same core signature but adopt in different ways depending on their function. It was previously assumed that these are different types of microglia. The discovery, made by means of a new, high-resolution method for analyzing single cells, is important for the understanding of brain diseases. Furthermore, the researchers from Freiburg, Göttingen, Berlin, Bochum, Essen, and Ghent (Belgium) demonstrated in detail how the human immune system in the brain changes in the course of multiple sclerosis (MS), which is significant for future therapeutic approaches. The study was published on 14. February 2019 in the journal Nature.

Groundbreaking neuroscience confirms what Sigmund Freud first theorized: that what we believe to be the objective reality surrounding us is actually formed by our subconscious. David Eagleman explains:

Neural stimulation is a developing technology that has beneficial therapeutic effects in neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. While many advancements have been made, the implanted devices deteriorate over time and cause scarring in neural tissue. In a recently published paper, the University of Pittsburgh’s Takashi D. Y. Kozai detailed a less invasive method of stimulation that would use an untethered ultrasmall electrode activated by light, a technique that may mitigate damage done by current methods.

LA JOLLA—(February 18, 2019) Aging is a leading risk factor for a number of debilitating conditions, including heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, to name a few. This makes the need for anti-aging therapies all the more urgent. Now, Salk Institute researchers have developed a new gene therapy to help decelerate the aging process.

The findings, published on February 18, 2019 in the journal Nature Medicine, highlight a novel CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing therapy that can suppress the accelerated aging observed in mice with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that also afflicts humans. This treatment provides important insight into the molecular pathways involved in accelerated aging, as well as how to reduce toxic proteins via gene therapy.

“Aging is a complex process in which cells start to lose their functionality, so it is critical for us to find effective ways to study the molecular drivers of aging,” says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and senior author of the paper. “Progeria is an ideal aging model because it allows us to devise an intervention, refine it and test it again quickly.”

Continue reading “A new CRISPR/Cas9 therapy can suppress aging” »

And you my good sir the psychiatrist… according to the newer than new 6th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual…you have a labeling disorder. 🤓😋.

After nearly a century of effort, psychiatry’s best diagnoses leave much to be desired.

• By Daniel S. Barron on February 19, 2019

Daydreaming, thinking about the past, planning for the future, or just letting your mind wander off from the current moment occupies our thoughts for a large part of every day. However, a new study has revealed patients suffering from a specific kind of early-onset dementia may have completely lost the ability to do this and seem perpetually “stuck in the moment”.

A decade from now, memory-boosting implants could be available commercially, but at what risk?

Researchers have shown that a type of magnetic resonance imaging—called neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NM-MRI)—is a potential biomarker for psychosis. NM-MRI signal was found to be a marker of dopamine function in people with schizophrenia and an indicator of the severity of psychotic symptoms in people with this mental illness. The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

“Disturbances affecting the neurotransmitter dopamine are associated with a host of mental and neurological disorders, such as schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease,” said Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIMH. “Because of the role dopamine plays in these disorders, the ability to measure dopamine activity is critical for furthering our understanding of these disorders, including how to best diagnose and treat them.”

Neuromelanin is a dark pigment created within dopamine neurons of the midbrain—particularly in the substantia nigra, a brain area that plays a role in reward and movement. Neuromelanin accumulates over the lifespan and is only cleared away from cells following cell death, as occurs in neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Researchers have found that NM-MRI signal is lower in the substantia nigra of people with Parkinson’s disease, reflecting the cell death that occurs in these patients.

Continue reading “Neuromelanin-sensitive MRI identified as a potential biomarker for psychosis” »