Lifeboat Foundation

Advancing Novel Therapeutic Interventions For Unmet Medical Needs — Dr. Michael Hufford, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO, LyGenesis; Interim CEO, Morphoceuticals; Scientific Advisor, Juvenescence.

Dr. Michael Hufford, Ph.D. is the Co-Founder and the Chief Executive Officer of LyGenesis (https://www.lygenesis.com/), a clinical-stage cell therapy company that transforms patient’s lymph nodes into bioreactors capable of growing functioning ectopic organs. He also serves as the Interim CEO of Morphoceuticals (https://www.morphoceuticals.com/) a company focused on modifying electric potentials in cells and tissues for a variety of applications in regenerative medicine, from improving amputation stump health and limb regeneration, to organogenesis, to creating a bioelectric atlas where numerous disease indications may be corrected.

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The patients had some, although severely diminished, visual function during the day, however, at night they were essentially blind, with light sensitivity 10,000–100,000 times less than normal.

According to researchers at the Scheie Eye Institute at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, adults with a genetic form of childhood-onset blindness experienced remarkable recoveries of night vision within days of receiving an experimental gene therapy.

The patients had Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA), a congenital blindness caused by GUCY2D gene mutations. The findings were published in the journal iScience. The researchers administered AAV gene therapy, which contains the DNA.

A team of researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, has found evidence of ions behaving differently than expected in their fusion reactions.

In their paper published in the journal Nature Physics, the group describes their study of ions in the plasma generated in their reactor. Stefano Atzeni, with Università di Roma “La Sapienza,” has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue giving an overview of the work being done at the NIF and the effort now being conducted by the team to better understand the unexpected ion behavior.

Scientists around the world have been trying for many years to replicate the fusion reactions that occur in the sun—this could provide humanity a nearly limitless source of energy. Such work has been step-by-step, with researchers tweaking reactors in search of the right combination of factors to produce more energy than is used to run the reactor.

A team of scientists from the Department of Energy’s Ames National Laboratory has developed a new characterization tool that allowed them to gain unique insight into a possible alternative material for solar cells. Under the leadership of Jigang Wang, senior scientist from Ames Lab, the team developed a microscope that uses terahertz waves to collect data on material samples. The team then used their microscope to explore methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI₃) perovskite, a material that could potentially replace silicon in solar cells.

Richard Kim, a scientist from Ames Lab, explained the two features that make the new scanning probe microscope unique. First, the microscope uses the terahertz range of electromagnetic frequencies to collect data on materials. This range is far below the visible light spectrum, falling between the infrared and microwave frequencies. Secondly, the terahertz light is shined through a sharp metallic tip that enhances the microscope’s capabilities toward nanometer length scales.

“Normally if you have a light wave, you cannot see things smaller than the wavelength of the light you’re using. And for this terahertz light, the wavelength is about a millimeter, so it’s quite large,” explained Kim. “But here we used this sharp metallic tip with an apex that is sharpened to a 20-nanometer radius curvature, and this acts as our antenna to see things smaller than the wavelength that we were using.”

Genetic diversity enables coral species to adapt to threats from climate change, so researchers have designed an aquarium coral “family tree” to help maintain and promote genetic diversity.

Scientists think the Ahyi Seamount’s explosions began in mid-October, but it’s difficult to confirm because the site, about 3,800 miles west of Honolulu, is so hard to reach.

Chip startup Cerebras Systems Inc. today debuted Andromeda, a supercomputer optimized to run artificial intelligence applications that features more than 13.5 million processor cores.

Sunnyvale, California-based Cerebras Systems is backed by more than $720 million in venture funding. The startup sells a chip called the WSE-2 that is specifically designed to run AI software. The new Andromeda supercomputer that Cerebras Systems debuted today is based on the WSE-2 chip.

According to Cerebras Systems, Andromeda can provide performance in excess of one exaflop when running AI applications. One exaflop equals 1 million trillion calculations per second. The startup says that Andromeda’s performance makes it suitable for, among other use cases, training large language models, which are complex neural networks that can perform tasks such as translating text and generating software code.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐮𝐭 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐬 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧

𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙝 𝙞𝙣 𝙛𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙨𝙪𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙜𝙪𝙩 𝙢𝙞𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙗𝙚𝙨 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙖 𝙘𝙧𝙪𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙮 𝙞𝙣𝙛𝙡𝙪𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣’𝙨 𝙨𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙙𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙥𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩.

New research in fish suggests that gut microbes can have a crucial early influence on the brain’s social development.

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A multidisciplinary team of Weill Cornell Medicine researchers has received a five-year $5.7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health to fund a center aimed at developing messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines to deter cancer development in at-risk groups.

The Weill Cornell Medicine CAP-IT Center for LNP RNA Immunoprevention was selected as one of two founding members of the Cancer Prevention-Interception Targeted Agent Discovery Program (CAP-IT), a collaborative research network funded by the NCI to discover agents that prevent or intercept cancer in high-risk populations.