Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 19

Scientists are looking at ways to tackle Alzheimer’s and dementia from all kinds of angles, and a new study has identified the molecule hevin (or SPARCL-1) as a potential way of preventing cognitive decline.

Hevin is a protein naturally produced in the brain by cells called astrocytes. These support-worker cells look after the connections or synapses between neurons, and it’s thought that hevin plays a role in this essential work.

In this new study, researchers from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and the University of São Paulo in Brazil boosted hevin production in the brains of both healthy mice and those with an Alzheimer’s-like disease.

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You stayed up too late scrolling through your phone, answering emails or watching just one more episode. The next morning, you feel groggy and irritable. That sugary pastry or greasy breakfast sandwich suddenly looks more appealing than your usual yogurt and berries. By the afternoon, chips or candy from the break room call your name. This isn’t just about willpower. Your brain, short on rest, is nudging you toward quick, high-calorie fixes.

There is a reason why this cycle repeats itself so predictably. Research shows that insufficient sleep disrupts hunger signals, weakens self-control, impairs glucose metabolism and increases your risk of weight gain. These changes can occur rapidly, even after a single night of poor sleep, and can become more harmful over time if left unaddressed.

I am a neurologist specializing in sleep science and its impact on health.

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Cancer plasticity allows tumor cells to change their identity, evade therapies, and adapt to environmental pressures, contributing to treatment resistance and metastasis. New research is targeting this adaptability through epigenetic drugs, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and strategies to limit phenotypic switching.

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Cells are constantly subjected to DNA damage from a range of internal and environmental sources. It is estimated that cells can experience as many as 100,000 DNA lesions per day. One of the most deleterious types of DNA lesions is the DNA double-strand break (DSB). Just one unrepaired DNA DSB may be enough to cause mutations or cell death leading to a wide range of pathologies including cancer, immune deficiency, premature aging and neurodegeneration.

To respond to the array of DNA lesions that occur, cells have developed a complex and coordinated series of steps involving DNA damage recognition, cell cycle arrest and signaling-induced activation of the DNA repair machinery—processes collectively referred to as the DNA damage response (DDR). In recent years, progress has been made in understanding how this process is initiated. However, the later stages of this process, including long range DNA end-resection, are not well understood.

In a new study published in Nature Cell Biology, researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School, identified several uncharacterized chromatin factors (proteins that regulate ) that are recruited to sites of DNA damage, including the gene ZNF280A. Importantly, this gene is hemizygously deleted—meaning one of the two copies of alleles is missing—in a subset of patients with a human developmental syndrome called 22q11.2 distal deletion syndrome.

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As the opioid epidemic persists across the United States, a team of researchers from Brown University has developed new diagnostic techniques for detecting opioid compounds in adults with opioid use disorder and infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome.

The new techniques, described in two recently published research studies, could equip with powerful new tools for more effectively treating conditions related to opioid exposure, the researchers say.

In a study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers describe a method that can rapidly detect six different opioid compounds from a tiny amount of serum—no more than a finger prick.

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A major medical breakthrough is giving new hope to those with Parkinson’s disease. Stem cell transplants into the brain are showing impressive results, leading to long-term improvements in motor symptoms for the first patients treated… Read more

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Our brains begin to create internal representations of the world around us from the first moment we open our eyes. We perceptually assemble components of scenes into recognizable objects thanks to neurons in the visual cortex.

This process occurs along the ventral visual cortical pathway, which extends from the primary at the back of the brain to the temporal lobes.

It’s long been thought that specific neurons along this pathway handle specific types of information depending on where they are located, and that the dominant flow of visual information is feedforward, up a hierarchy of visual cortical areas. Although the reverse direction of cortical connections, often referred to as feedback, has long been known to exist, its functional role has been little understood.

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