Lifeboat Foundation

CGT are composed of a diverse group of medicinal products. Cell therapies (including ex vivo gene therapies) involve the transfer of cells with a relevant function into the patient. Cells can have different origins, i.e., human (autologous or allogeneic), different differentiation stages, i.e., stem cells or differentiated cells, and can be genetically modified to exert the intended therapeutic effect. In genetically modified cell therapy, a functional transgene is transfected into cells ex vivo using viral (for example, lentiviruses) or nonviral (e.g., electroporation) vectors. Next, the modified cells are administered to the patient where the transgene will promote a therapeutic effect. Examples of these therapies include chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and genetically modified human stem cells (HSCs).

This article highlights the importance of measuring potency for cell and gene therapies.

You really can’t call a raven a birdbrain, because they and other corvids (the avian family they belong to) are actually pretty smart. New research published in Scientific Reports suggests that, at just four months old, these birds can compete as well as adults chimpanzees and orangutans in certain cognitive tasks.

The work focused on eight hand-raised ravens. They were tested at the age of four, eight, 12, and 16 months using the Primate Cognition Test Battery (PCTB), a standardized test for assessing animal cognition. The researchers tested if the birds exhibited spatial memory, understood numbers and addition, and if they could learn from and communicate with their handlers. They even looked at object permanence, which is the ability to know that an object still exists even if it’s out of sight.

Continue reading “Four-Month-Old Ravens Can Be As Smart As Adult Apes, Cognitive Tests Shows” »

Coupled with subscription and as-a-service cloud offerings from companies such as IBM, HPE, Microsoft Azure and AWS, have made quantum computing infrastructure accessible.

The merging of two neutron stars emits both light and gravitational waves at the same time, so if gravity and light have the same speed, they should be detected on Earth at the same time. Given the distance of the galaxy that housed these two neutron stars, we know that the two types of waves had traveled for about 130 million years and arrived within two seconds of one another.

So, that’s the answer. Gravity and light travel at the same speed, determined by a precise measurement. It validates Einstein once again, and it hints at something profound about the nature of space. Scientists hope one day to fully understand why these two very different phenomena have identical speeds.

China has accelerated its Mighty Dragon, J-20 stealth fighter jet production at top-notch manufacturing facilities in the country to match the U.S.’s air-power technology in the region.

China has recently unveiled its third, and most advanced aircraft carrier, the “Fujian.” But how does it stack up against American aircraft carriers?

China recently hit the headlines with the launch of its third aircraft carrier.

Continue reading “US vs. Chinese aircraft carriers: Which is better?” »

Taylor Hill/Getty Images.

The tech billionaire, “chief Twit,” posted images of the company’s progress chart late on Saturday.

Musk said user active minutes were at a record high, averaging nearly eight billion active minutes per day in the last seven days as of November 15, an increase of 30% in comparison to the same week last year.

With the help of AI, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have succeeded in designing synthetic DNA that controls the cells’ protein production. The technology can contribute to the development and production of vaccines, drugs for severe diseases, as well as alternative food proteins much faster and at significantly lower costs than today. How our genes are expressed is a process that is fundamental to the functionality of cells in all living organisms. Simply put, the genetic code in DNA is transcribed to the molecule messenger RNA (mRNA), which tells the cell’s factory which protein to produce and in which quantities.

Researchers have put a lot of effort into trying to control gene expression because it can, among other things, contribute to the development of protein-based drugs. A recent example is the mRNA vaccine against Covid-19, which instructed the body’s cells to produce the same protein found on the surface of the coronavirus. The body’s immune system could then learn to form antibodies against the virus. Likewise, it is possible to teach the body’s immune system to defeat cancer cells or other complex diseases if one understands the genetic code behind the production of specific proteins. Most of today’s new drugs are protein-based, but the techniques for producing them are both expensive and slow, because it is difficult to control how the DNA is expressed. Last year, a research group at Chalmers, led by Aleksej Zelezniak, Associate Professor of Systems Biology, took an important step in understanding and controlling how much of a protein is made from a certain DNA sequence.

“First it was about being able to fully ‘read’ the DNA molecule’s instructions. Now we have succeeded in designing our own DNA that contains the exact instructions to control the quantity of a specific protein,” says Aleksej Zelezniak about the research group’s latest important breakthrough. The principle behind the new method is similar to when an AI generates faces that look like real people. By learning what a large selection of faces looks like, the AI can then create completely new but natural-looking faces. It is then easy to modify a face by, for example, saying that it should look older, or have a different hairstyle. On the other hand, programming a believable face from scratch, without the use of AI, would have been much more difficult and time-consuming. Similarly, the researchers’ AI has been taught the structure and regulatory code of DNA. The AI then designs synthetic DNA, where it is easy to modify its regulatory information in the desired direction of gene expression.