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It’s happening…


MOSCOW — KFC has partnered with a Russian bioprinting company to bring 3D printed chicken nuggets to the table.

Coined as the “meat of the future,” the lab-created chicken meat is KFC’s response to the growing interest of healthy lifestyles, the rise in demand for meat alternatives and the increasing need to develop more environmentally friendly methods of food production.

It is also KFC’s next step in creating a “restaurant of the future.”

Scientists at Harvard University and the Black Hole Initiative (BHI) have developed a new method to find black holes in the outer solar system, and along with it, determine once-and-for-all the true nature of the hypothesized Planet Nine. The paper, accepted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, highlights the ability of the future Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) mission to observe accretion flares, the presence of which could prove or rule out Planet Nine as a black hole.

Dr. Avi Loeb, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard, and Amir Siraj, a Harvard undergraduate student, have developed the new method to search for black holes in the outer solar system based on flares that result from the disruption of intercepted comets. The study suggests that the LSST has the capability to find black holes by observing for accretion flares resulting from the impact of small Oort cloud objects.

“In the vicinity of a black hole, small bodies that approach it will melt as a result of heating from the background accretion of gas from the interstellar medium onto the black hole,” said Siraj. “Once they melt, the small bodies are subject to tidal disruption by the black hole, followed by accretion from the tidally disrupted body onto the black hole.” Loeb added, “Because black holes are intrinsically dark, the radiation that matter emits on its way to the mouth of the black hole is our only way to illuminate this dark environment.”

Summary: Tufts researchers have developed neurotransmitter-lipid hybrids that help transport therapeutic drugs and gene editing proteins across the blood-brain barrier in mice.

Source: Tufts University

Biomedical engineers at the Tufts University School of Engineering have developed tiny lipid-based nanoparticles that incorporate neurotranmitters to help carry drugs, large molecules, and even gene editing proteins across the blood-brain barrier and into the brain in mice. The innovation, published today in Science Advances, could overcome many of the current limitations encountered in delivering therapeutics into the central nervous system, and opens up the possibility of using a wide range of therapeutics that would otherwise not have access to the brain.

Interesting.


Audi has announced that it is testing out bidirectional charging technology for electric cars, this would incorporate the electric car into the domestic power grid and could provide additional power to the grid when not in use.

What this would do is make electric vehicles a storage unit for energy to be drawn on by the grid or the owners house when needed, for example when a vehicle was parked overnight or not in use.

Ready for the latest recommended weekly reads in the world of stem cells and the regenerative medicine space including a bunch of important new FDA posts & changes?

This post has quite a lot on the FDA since it had a very big week with several new items of major importance to the cellular and regenerative medicine arena. I’ve linked to each announcement below with the agency’s title of the announcements. Underneath I provide some analysis and ask questions.

I’ve also included some other stem cell news and exciting papers too as usual, which I’ll start with here.

People often talk about sugar intake and health 🤔

Researchers have successfully increased cancer cells’ sensitivity to chemotherapy to prevent glucose from entering the cancer cell.


Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have successfully increased cancer cells’ sensitivity to chemotherapy by preventing sugar uptake. Their study, “Targeting Glut1 In Acute Myeloid Leukemia To Overcome Cytarabine Resistance,” is published in Haematologica.

It is true that sugar feeds every cell in our body, even cancer cells. Researchers have long wondered if it would be possible to prevent glucose from entering the cancer cell and in that way increase the effect of chemotherapy.

Low levels of vitamin D may put people at risk for developing COVID-19, a new study by לאומית שירותי בריאות and the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University.


Vitamin D has long been understood to impact immune response. According to Dr. Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern, leader of the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine research group, as much as 70% of the adult population worldwide is vitamin D insufficient or deficient.

The Leumit and Bar-Ilan scientists analyzed if the risk of developing COVID-19 or becoming hospitalized because of it increases for people who have a low level of vitamin D.

They studied 782 Israeli COVID-19-positive patients and 7,825 negative patients and determined that a low plasma vitamin D level appears to be an independent risk factor for COVID-19 infection and hospitalization.