Lifeboat Foundation

Could humans regrow limbs? Genetic switches for regenerating tissue are traced back 420 million years…

But ultimately the researchers hope to see if the mechanism could be exploited to allow humans to regenerate limbs themselves, although they warn it could be several decades before that is possible.

Dr Yin said: ‘It depends on the pace of discovery, which is heavily dependent on funding.’

Continue reading “Scientists have found a set of genetic switches needed to regrow limbs” »

Russian scientists said they have artificially produced a unique molecule that can rapidly regenerate damaged human tissue, boasting both antibacterial and antiviral defenses, as well as stem cell growth stimulation.

The peptide, Acegram, was developed at a laboratory in the Russian Ural city of Chelyabinsk.

Continue reading “Russian scientists speed up human tissue regeneration with supermolecule” »

The US Department of Defense has developed a portable, on-demand biopharmaceutical production system that could be used in warzones to make treatments at point-of-care.

The platform was developed as part of a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program to provide far-forward-deployed Service members “what they need when they need it, obviating the need for individual drug stockpiling, cold storage, and complex logistics,” Tyler McQuade, program manager for DARPA’s Battlefield Medicine program, told Biopharma-Reporter.com.

The platform, developed in conjunction with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), consists of a biologics expression system engineered to secrete multiple therapeutic proteins and a millilitre-scale perfusion microfluidic platform.

Continue reading “Biologics on-demand: DARPA and MIT look to manufacture on the battlefield” »

Up to seven potential terror attacks across Britain have been uncovered and stopped over the past year by a special MI5 unit which reads the minds of would-be attackers, the agency says.

MI5’s Behavioural Science Unit (BSU), made up of criminologists, psychologists and other academics, was launched in 2004 to analyse suspects’ behaviours to determine whether they are about to carry out an attack.

Built-in optics could enable chips that use trapped ions as quantum bits…

Researchers from MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory report an important step toward practical quantum computers, with a paper describing a prototype chip that can trap ions in an electric field and, with built-in optics, direct laser light toward each of them.

There are calls to lift NIH’s restrictions on the controversial chimera studies. But are we ready for this most controversial study yet?

Neuroscientist Andrew B. Newberg provides the answer.

The upconversion of photons allows for a more efficient use of light: Two photons are converted into a single photon having higher energy. Researchers at KIT now showed for the first time that the inner interfaces between surface-mounted metal-organic frameworks (SURMOFs) are suited perfectly for this purpose — they turned green light blue. The result, which is now being published in Advanced Materials (“Photon Upconversion at Crystalline Organic–Organic Heterojunctions”), opens up new opportunities for optoelectronic applications such as solar cells or LEDs.

Photon upconversion: energy transfer between the molecules is based on electron exchange (Dexter electron transfer). (Image: Michael Oldenburg)

What if we tried to prevent future problems, instead of just solving the ones in front of us?