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Jul 3, 2018
Can the gene and cell therapy revolution scale up?
Posted by Alexandros El in categories: biotech/medical, genetics
“I believe gene therapy will become a mainstay in treating, and maybe curing, many of our most devastating and intractable illnesses,” said FDA commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb after Luxturna’s approval.
As innovative gene and cell therapies continue to make the transition from the laboratory to the clinic, they are bringing with them the promise of truly personalised medicine. The last few years have seen the regulatory approval of the first gene therapies that take a patient’s own immune cells and genetically engineer them to target cancer cells more effectively.
These chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies now represent a rapidly growing field, with Novartis’s Kymriah, the first CAR-T therapy approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in August 2017 for the treatment of a rare blood cancer, seen as the tip of the iceberg for this treatment class’ potential. Approval of Kite Pharma’s Yescarta, a CAR-T treatment for certain forms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, followed just a few months later.
Continue reading “Can the gene and cell therapy revolution scale up?” »
Jul 3, 2018
Drug gets body cells to ‘eat’ cancer
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biotech/medical, engineering
Scientists have designed a special type of drug that helps the body eat and destroy cancerous cells.
The treatment boosts the action of white blood cells, called macrophages, that the immune system uses to gobble up unwanted invaders.
Tests in mice showed the therapy worked for aggressive breast and skin tumours, Nature Biomedical Engineering journal reports.
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Jul 3, 2018
The New Energy Storage Tech Gates, Bezos, Ma, and Branson Are Investing In
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: energy
The advantages of flow batteries include easy scalability and long cycle life. Among its disadvantages are relatively low energy density and high component cost.
Form Energy’s use of sulfur, which is both cheap and abundant, lowers those costs dramatically.
Continue reading “The New Energy Storage Tech Gates, Bezos, Ma, and Branson Are Investing In” »
Jul 3, 2018
SpaceX mission will bring 3D bioprinter to ISS, plans to 3D print cardiac patches for damaged hearts
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: 3D printing, bioprinting, biotech/medical, space travel
The next phase of a NASA sponsored mission to 3D print human organs and tissues in space will launch in February 2019. A 3D BioFabrication Facility (BFF) developed by nScrypt and Techshot and destined for the International Space Station (ISS) will form part of the cargo of SpaceX CRS-17.
3D printing in zero gravity
Jul 3, 2018
First confirmed image of a newborn planet revealed
Posted by Michael Lance in category: space
Nascent planet seen carving a path through the disc of gas and dust surrounding the very young star PDS70.
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Jul 3, 2018
Scale of China’s dirty and deadly air and water problems means both nuclear and renewables are needed
Posted by Bill Kemp in category: sustainability
China’s anti-air and water pollution plan has 2020 targets:
* ‘good-air days’ reach over 80 percent annually * Over 70% of the surface water to be drinkable * around 70 percent of the country’s offshore area water should be of good quality.
Currently about 60% of China’s water is not safe for human contact.
Jul 3, 2018
Nanotechnology Takes Giant Leap Foward
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: nanotechnology, particle physics
Jul 3, 2018
Too healthy for your own good?
Posted by Nicola Bagalà in categories: business, life extension
Why on Earth would you ever want to be less than completely healthy?
Recently, Reason of Fight Aging! pointed out psychological research revealing a certain conservatism in terms of what people consider to be the “ideal” levels of happiness, intelligence, longevity, and even health.
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that significant numbers of people in the studies weren’t too keen on the idea of living much longer than the average (around 90 years), and even under the assumption of eternal youth, their preference didn’t go past 120 on average; after all, LEAF wouldn’t be in business if the idea of healthy life extension wasn’t so inexplicably frowned upon. What’s really flabbergasting, though, is that even health—health!—is apparently something you can have too much of; on a scale from 0 (“completely unhealthy”) to 100 (“completely healthy”), the average preference gravitated somewhere between 80 and 90. These results provide us with an occasion for reflection.
