Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers headed by a team at Mass Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, reported positive data from a Phase I clinical study evaluating a stem cell treatment known as cultivated autologous limbal epithelial cell transplantation (CALEC), in patients with significant chemical burns in one eye. Results from the study, reported in Science Advances, showed treatment to be safe and well tolerated in four patients who were followed for 12 months. The CALEC recipients experienced restored cornea surfaces, with two trial participants able to undergo subsequent corneal transplant, and two reporting significant improvements in vision without additional treatment.

The Phase I study was designed to determine preliminary safety and feasibility before advancing to a second phase of the trial, and the researchers consider the newly reported early findings to be promising. On the basis of these initial results the team started recruiting for a second phase of the trial that will investigate longer-term safety and efficacy in greater numbers of patients.

“Our early results suggest that CALEC might offer hope to patients who had been left with untreatable vision loss and pain associated with major cornea injuries,” said principal investigator Ula Jurkunas, MD, associate director of the Cornea Service at Mass Eye and Ear and an associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. “Cornea specialists have been hindered by a lack of treatment options with a high safety profile to help our patients with chemical burns and injuries that render them unable to get an artificial cornea transplant. We are hopeful with further study, CALEC can one day fill this crucially needed treatment gap.”

Talk with Your Allergy Care Team About Your Concerns.

If managing the social and emotional impacts of your atopic condition feels stressful and overwhelming, know that you’re not alone. More importantly, know that you don’t have to navigate those feelings alone either!

Your allergy healthcare team is a great place to start if you feel like you need additional support in managing your allergic condition. By discussing your concerns or struggles with them, they can offer useful evidence-based information, skills, and resources, as well as allied health care referrals.

Materials scientists aim to develop autonomous materials that function beyond stimulus responsive actuation. In a new report in Science Advances, Yang Yang and a research team in the Center for Bioinspired Energy Science at the Northwestern University, U.S., developed photo-and electro-activated hydrogels to capture and deliver cargo and avoid obstacles on return.

To accomplish this, they used two spiropyran monomers (photoswitchable materials) in the hydrogel for photoregulated charge reversal and autonomous behaviors under a constant electric field. The photo/electro-active materials could autonomously perform tasks based on constant external stimuli to develop intelligent materials at the molecular scale.

Continue reading “Hydrogel locomotion regulated by light and electric fields” »

Most adult humans are innately able to pick up objects in their environment and hold them in ways that facilitate their use. For instance, when picking up a cooking utensil, they would normally grab it from the side that will not be placed inside the cooking pot or pan.

Robots, on the other hand, need to be trained on how to best pick up and hold objects while completing different tasks. This is often a tricky process, given that the robot might also come across objects that it never encountered before.

The University of Bonn’s Autonomous Intelligent Systems (AIS) research group recently developed a new learning pipeline to improve a robotic arm’s ability to manipulate objects in ways that better support their practical use. Their approach, introduced in a paper published on the pre-print server arXiv, could contribute to the development of robotic assistants that can tackle manual tasks more effectively.

Human Brain Project (HBP) researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich and the University of Cologne (Germany) have uncovered how neuron densities are distributed across and within cortical areas in the mammalian brain. They have unveiled a fundamental organizational principle of cortical cytoarchitecture: the ubiquitous lognormal distribution of neuron densities.

Numbers of neurons and their spatial arrangement play a crucial role in shaping the brain’s structure and function. Yet, despite the wealth of available cytoarchitectonic data, the statistical distributions of neuron densities remain largely undescribed. The new HBP study, published in Cerebral Cortex, advances our understanding of the organization of mammalian brains.

The team based their investigations on nine publicly available datasets of seven species: mouse, marmoset, macaque, galago, owl monkey, baboon and human. After analyzing the cortical areas of each, they found that neuron densities within these areas follow a consistent pattern—a lognormal distribution. This suggests a fundamental organizational principle underlying the densities of neurons in the mammalian brain.

Cellular solids are materials composed of many cells that have been packed together, such as in a honeycomb. The shape of those cells largely determines the material’s mechanical properties, including its stiffness or strength. Bones, for instance, are filled with a natural material that enables them to be lightweight, but stiff and strong.

Inspired by bones and other cellular solids found in nature, humans have used the same concept to develop architected materials. By changing the geometry of the unit cells that make up these materials, researchers can customize the material’s mechanical, thermal, or acoustic properties. Architected materials are used in many applications, from shock-absorbing packing foam to heat-regulating radiators.

Using kirigami, the ancient Japanese art of folding and cutting paper, MIT researchers have now manufactured a type of high-performance architected material known as a plate lattice, on a much larger scale than scientists have previously been able to achieve by additive fabrication. This technique allows them to create these structures from metal or other materials with custom shapes and specifically tailored mechanical properties.

Professor Ori Bar-Nur and his colleagues at ETH Zurich are pioneering the cultivation of muscle cells in the lab, currently using mouse cells as their primary model. While their current studies are centered on mouse cells, the team is also keen on exploring the potential of human and cow cells. The implications of their research are manifold: lab-cultured human muscle tissue could serve surgical needs, while human muscle stem cells might offer therapeutic solutions for those with muscle diseases. On the other hand, cultivating cow muscle tissue in labs could transform the meat industry by eliminating the necessity of animal slaughter.

For now, however, the ETH team’s research is focused on optimizing the generation of muscle stem cells and making it safer. They have now succeeded in doing so via a new approach.

The strange science experiment that blew a worm’s head off… and blew our minds.

This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation.

Continue reading “The beauty of collective intelligence, explained by a developmental biologist | Michael Levin” »

“Because of the heterogeneity of this disease, scientists haven’t found good ways of tackling it,” said Olivier Gevaert, PhD, associate professor of biomedical informatics and of data science.

Doctors and scientists also struggle with prognosis, as it can be difficult to parse which cancerous cells are driving each patient’s glioblastoma.

Continue reading “Scientists employ AI to predict brain cancer outcomes” »