Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 6581

Circa 2020

The FRESH technique of 3D bioprinting was invented in Feinberg’s lab to fill an unfilled demand for 3D printed soft polymers, which lack the rigidity to stand unsupported as in a normal print. FRESH 3D printing uses a needle to inject bioink into a bath of soft hydrogel, which supports the object as it prints. Once finished, a simple application of heat causes the hydrogel to melt away, leaving only the 3D bioprinted object.

While Feinberg, a professor of biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering, has proven both the versatility and the fidelity of the FRESH technique, the major obstacle to achieving this milestone was printing a human heart at full scale. This necessitated the building of a new 3D printer custom made to hold a gel support bath large enough to print at the desired size, as well as minor software changes to maintain the speed and fidelity of the print.

Continue reading “3D bioprinted heart provides new tool for surgeons” | >

OSAKA – An Osaka University team said it has carried out the world’s first transplant of cardiac muscle cells created from iPS cells in a physician-initiated clinical trial.

In the clinical project to verify the safety and efficacy of the therapy using induced pluripotent stem cells, Yoshiki Sawa, a professor in the university’s cardiovascular surgery unit, and colleagues aim to transplant heart muscle cell sheets over the course of three years into 10 patients suffering from serious heart malfunction caused by ischemic cardiomyopathy.

Read more | >

Summary: Neuroinflammation may be a key player in the pathological brain changes produced as a result of chronic opioid use. Microglia is likely responsible for the majority of the changes.

Source: boston university school of medicine.

Prevalence rates of opioid use disorder (OUD) have increased dramatically, accompanied by a surge of overdose deaths–nearly 50000 in the U.S. in 2019. While opioid dependence has been extensively studied in preclinical models, an understanding of the biological alterations that occur in the brains of people who chronically use opioids and who are diagnosed with OUD remains limited.

Read more | >

Stem cell biologist Hugo Vankelecom (KU Leuven) and his colleagues have discovered that the pituitary gland in mice ages as the result of an age-related form of chronic inflammation. It may be possible to slow down this process or even partially repair it. The researchers have published their findings in PNAS.

The pituitary is a small, globular gland located underneath the brain that plays a major role in the , explains Professor Hugo Vankelecom from the Department of Development and Regeneration at KU Leuven. “My research group discovered that the pituitary gland ages as a result of a form of chronic inflammation that affects tissue and even the organism as a whole. This usually goes unnoticed and is referred to as ‘inflammaging’—a contraction of inflammation and aging. Inflammaging has previously been linked to the aging of other organs.” Due to the central role played by the pituitary, its aging may contribute to the reduction of hormonal processes and hormone levels in our body—as is the case with menopause, for instance.

The study also provides significant insight into the stem cells in the aging . In 2012, Vankelecom and his colleagues showed that a prompt reaction of these stem cells to injury in the gland leads to repair of the tissue, even in adult animals. “As a result of this new study, we now know that stem cells in the pituitary do not lose this regenerative capacity when the organism ages. In fact, the stem cells are only unable to do their job because, over time, the pituitary becomes an ‘inflammatory environment’ as a result of the chronic inflammation. But as soon as the stem cells are taken out of this environment, they show the same properties as stem cells from a young pituitary.”

Read more | >

In a minute and 27 seconds we get the what from an eye regeneration for mice, to monkey trials to start later this year, to human trials by 2023, and full body in a decade.

David Sinclair—a world-leading biologist, Harvard Medical School Professor, and author of The New York Times best-selling book @Lifespan.

🧬 His work on understanding why we age and how to slow down the aging process has contributed significantly to getting the longevity science to where it is today. David’s numerous discoveries have been published in the most respected scientific journals. He co-founded many biotech companies, including Life Biosciences, MetroBiotech, and InsideTracker.

Continue reading “When can we begin to apply age reversal gene therapies to humans? Harvards David Sinclair explains” | >

The resulting implant consists of cells attached to the scaffold, which permits the targeted delivery of therapeutic cells to the diseased region within the eye. A non-cryopreserved formulation of this cellular therapy is being employed in an ongoing Phase I/IIa clinical trial sponsored by RPT. The cryopreserved formulation enabled by the work of Pennington and colleagues will facilitate anticipated Phase IIb and Phase III clinical trials as well as ultimate commercialization and clinical application of the product.

Scientists at UC Santa Barbara, University of Southern California (USC), and the biotechnology company Regenerative Patch Technologies LLC (RPT) have reported new methodology for preservation of RPT’s stem cell-based therapy for age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The new research, recently published in Scientific Reports, optimizes the conditions to cryopreserve, or freeze, an consisting of a single layer of ocular generated from supported by a flexible scaffold about 3×6 mm in size. This implant is currently in clinical trial for the treatment of AMD, the leading cause of blindness in aging populations. The results demonstrate that the implant can be frozen, stored for long periods and distributed in frozen form to clinical sites where it is designed to be thawed and immediately implanted into the eyes of patients with macular degeneration. The capacity to cryopreserve this and other cell-based therapeutics will extend and enable on-demand distribution to distant clinical sites, increasing the number of patients able to benefit from such treatments.

The report published by lead author Britney Pennington and colleagues achieves a milestone that brings ocular implants one step closer to the clinic. “This is the first published report that demonstrates high viability and function of adherent ocular cells following cryopreservation, even after long-term frozen storage,” said Pennington, head of process development at RPT and assistant project scientist at UC Santa Barbara.

Continue reading “A frozen leap forward for age-related macular degeneration stem cell-based therapy” | >

Not the most informative article, but it does have a map giving you an idea of how many of these facilities exist and in which countries. China is not the only place with labs.

Three of the 23 countries with BSL4 labs (Australia, Canada and the US) have national policies for oversight of dual-use research. At least three other countries (Germany, Switzerland and the UK) have some form of dual-use oversight, where, for instance, funding bodies require their grant recipients to review their research for dual-use implications.

Rising demand for BSL4 labs

That still leaves a large proportion of scientific research on coronaviruses carried out in countries with no oversight of dual-use research or gain-of-function experiments. This is particularly concerning as gain-of-function research with coronaviruses is likely to increase as scientists seek to better understand these viruses and to identify which viruses pose a higher risk of jumping from animals to humans or becoming transmissible between humans. More countries are expected to seek BSL4 labs, too, in the wake of the pandemic as part of a renewed emphasis on pandemic preparedness and response.

Continue reading “Fifty-nine labs around world handle the deadliest pathogens – only a quarter score high on safety” | >