Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 6369

Quick vid and a reminder of the 4th conference of Lifespan.io is this weekend.

Gene editing can make stem cells invisible to the immune system, making it possible to carry out cell therapy transplants without suppressing the patients’ immune response. Scientists in the US and Germany used immune engineering to develop universal cell products that could be used in all transplant patients. The idea is to create stem cells that evade the immune system; these hypoimmune stem cells are then used to generate cells of the desired type that can be transplanted into any patient without the need for immunosuppression, since the cells won’t elicit an immune response. They used CRISPR-Cas9 to knock out two genes involved in the major histocompatibility complex, which is used for self/non-self discrimination. They also increased the expression of a protein that acts as a “don’t eat me” signal to protect cells from macrophages. Together, these changes made the stem cells look less foreign and avoid clearance by macrophages. The team then differentiated endothelial cells and cardiomyocytes from the engineered stem cells, and they used these to treat three different diseases in mice. Cell therapy treatments using the hypoimmune cells were effective in rescuing hindlimbs from vascular blockage, preventing lung damage in an engineered mouse model, and maintaining heart function following a myocardial infarction. Immunosuppression poses obvious risks to a patient, and generating custom cells for transplant therapy is often prohibitively expensive. The development of universal donor cells that can be used as therapeutics could bring the cost down significantly, making cellular therapeutics available to many more patients in a much safer way.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

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There’s a lot that scientists still don’t understand about pterosaurs, CNET reports, especially because so few fossils have been found. But uncovering this new fossil helps explain how the admittedly terrifying creature lived, hunted, and flourished millions of years ago.

The fossil — a massive jawbone — suggests that the Thapunngaka shawi was a ferocious hunter. The 3.2 foot-long jaw likely held as many as 40 huge, sharp teeth. The creature had a wingspan of 22 feet and a neck longer than a giraffe’s that it used to balance its humongous head, according to CNET.

“This thing would have been quite savage,” study coauthor and University of Queensland School of Biological Sciences PhD student Tim Richards told the site. “It would have cast a great shadow over some quivering little dinosaur that wouldn’t have heard it until it was too late.”

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Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is challenging a U.S. government contract with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop technology to land people on the moon again.

In a complaint filed Friday in the Court of Federal Claims in Washington, Blue Origin said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s evaluation process was “unlawful and improper.” The complaint was filed under seal but tandem documents seeking a protective order gave an indication of its contents.

NASA selected SpaceX’s human lander bid on April 16 leading Blue Origin and a bidding partner, Dynetics Inc., to file protests with the Government Accountability Office less than two weeks later alleging that the award process was flawed. The GAO denied that protest on July 30 saying that NASA’s SpaceX selection had been made properly. Blue Origin, which has offered to contribute more than $2 billion of work on the project at no cost to the government, had vowed to continue pursuing the matter.

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Summary: Opioid use disorder affects genes associated with proinflammatory immune molecule encoding and genes associated with remodeling the extracellular matrix, suggesting the connection between neurons may be altered as a result of opioid use. Additionally, those with OUD have higher levels of microglia in the brain.

Source: Elsevier.

The epidemic of opioid abuse affects millions of people worldwide, but researchers know surprisingly little about the molecular changes caused by opioids in the human brain.

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Despite strong support from the FAA, the airline industry, and aerospace companies, the U.S. Senate ceased funding the development of a supersonic airliner in 1971. Two years later, the FAA banned supersonic flight over land, a prohibition that remains to this day.

The Concorde went on to serve various destinations, including some in the United States, flying at supersonic speeds only over water. That continued until 2,003 when British Airways and Air France retired their fleets, together amounting to just 12 aircraft. (Fourteen production aircraft were manufactured, but one was scrapped in 1,994 and another crashed in 2000.)

While the Concorde successfully overcame the technical hurdles standing in the way of supersonic passenger service, it succumbed to economics: The cost of fuel and maintenance was especially high for these planes. A new generation of aeronautical engineers and entrepreneurs are, however, keen to once again take on the technical, environmental, and economic challenges.

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