Lifeboat Foundation

There are many therapies that target cancer. The most well-known is chemotherapy, which is a toxic chemical that is directed at a tumor to kill the cells. This is currently the standard of care for most types of cancer. However, as science advances, less toxic and more direct therapies are discovered. The most recently discovered therapy is known as ‘immunotherapy’, which redirects the immune system to kill the tumor. There are many successful treatments with immunotherapy among different types of cancers, including melanoma and lung cancer. Unfortunately, immunotherapy is limited in many solid tumors due to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). The TME is a pro-tumor environment that the cancer has made by releasing specific proteins that allow it to progress. In this environment the tumor can remain undetected from the immune system and progress throughout the body. Different immune cells in the TME become polarized and alter their functions to help the tumor proliferate and grow. It is now becoming more common to pair therapies together including immunotherapy with chemotherapy. Scientists are still trying to find ways to improve treatment and completely eradicate the tumor.

In San Francisco, California, a group of scientists, led by Dr. Alex Marson, are working to modify gene expression to reprogram or change immune cells in the TME to attack cancer. There has been some success, but this immunotherapy does not help treat all patients. In addition, the screening process to determine genetic changes to determine which cells would result in the greatest treatment efficacy is a long, arduous process. A group at the Gladstone Institutes has worked with Marson at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) to develop a strategy that helps pair different genetic combinations in a faster amount of time to determine the most beneficial treatment outcomes. This screening technique is called Pooled Knockin Screening (ModPoKI). ModPoKI finds the best genetic modifications to express in immune cells that will have prolonged anti-tumor efficacy.

The study that demonstrated ModPoKI was published recently in Cell, which demonstrates our ability to now understand how to combine genetic programs. ModPoKI combines genes into long lines of DNA to generate roughly 10,000 combinations to match with a genetically engineered immune cell known as a T cells are major immune cells that primarily target foreign antigens, like cancer cells, and kill them. Once the optimal gene modification is found, it is put into the engineered immune cells that are polarized to kill cancer. After further investigation, the combinations made by ModPoKI resulted in the most polarized anti-tumor T cells.

Someone has made it. LONDON—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Self-driving technology company Wayve has launched LINGO-1, a first-of-its-kind vision-language-action model (VLAM) for self-driving that is set to revolutionise the learning and explainability of its AI Driver technology powering self-driving vehicles.

Prior to LINGO-1, end-to-end AI neural nets have been criticised as black boxes, providing limited insight into why and how they make decisions. Gaining deeper insight into the decision-making and reasoning capabilities of its AI models is critical to ensuring that Wayve can build a safe driving intelligence for self-driving. Wayve’s LINGO-1 opens up new capabilities to dramatically enhance the interpretability of Wayve’s AI Driver.

https://wayve.ai/

Continue reading “Robot car talk: Introducing Wayve’s new AI model LINGO-1” »

The healthcare lead at research and consulting giant Accenture lays out how to get proprietary data ready, establish the right controls and harmonize people with the tech.

Many healthcare organizations are onboarding generative AI fast and furious. Generative is the kind of AI behind the super popular ChatGPT application.

While it may seem like a miracle technology to many, it is by no means perfected. In fact, it even can have hallucinations (known to us humans as mistakes).

Source: stock_colors/iStock.

Coulomb drag.

We are introducing a new track on biomedical issues and possibilities at #NewWorlds in Austin Nov. 17. Come check it out!

Mercedes-Benz is using digital twins for production with help from NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for developing Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) applications to design, collaborate, plan and operate manufacturing and assembly facilities.

Mercedes-Benz’s new production techniques will bring its next-generation vehicle portfolio into its manufacturing facilities operating in Rastatt, Germany; Kecskemét, Hungary; and Beijing, China — and offer a blueprint for its more than 30 factories worldwide. This “Digital First” approach enhances efficiency, avoids defects and saves time, marking a step-change in the flexibility, resilience and intelligence of the Mercedes-Benz MO360 production system.

The digital twin in production helps ensure Mercedes-Benz assembly lines can be retooled, configured and optimized in physically accurate simulations first. The new assembly lines in the Kecskemét plant will enable production of vehicles based on the newly launched Mercedes Modular Architecture that are developed virtually using digital twins in Omniverse.

Just about everyone may want to look and feel younger and healthier, but multimillion-dollar investments and broccoli smoothies are not for everyone. Still, that doesn’t mean the less hardcore among us are out of luck if we’re hoping to turn back the clock on our brain health.

New research by a team of psychologists uncovered a simple way just about anyone can get their brain working like it’s decades younger.

You probably don’t need science to tell you this, but people’s cognitive acuity generally starts to level off in their 30s and 40s before declining more markedly in their 60s. Most of us write our slower responses and memory lapses off to the unavoidable indignities of aging. But what if they were just the adult equivalent of the “summer slide” that affects kids, a pair of researchers wanted to know.

And why many doctors do not realise it | Science & technology.

Wi-Fi signals can do much more than deliver streaming movies and music around the home, it turns out: they can also be used to identify shapes through solid walls, as demonstrated in recent experiments.

The ability for Wi-Fi to spot movement through walls has been shown off before, but the technology struggles with seeing anything that isn’t in motion.

Continue reading “Wi-Fi Can Decode Hidden Words Concealed Behind Walls” »