Lifeboat Foundation

With the announcement today that Mammoth Biosciences has received the exclusive license from the University of California, Berkeley to the new CRISPR protein Cas14, the company now has the last piece of its diagnostics toolkit in place.

Cas14 is a newly discovered protein from the lab of Jennifer Doudna, a pioneer in gene-editing research and a member of the first research team to identify and unlock the power of CRISPR technology.

Doudna and Mammoth Biosciences co-founder Lucas Harrington were part of the team of researchers to identify the new Cas14 protein, which can identify single-stranded DNA. The journal Science published their findings in October 2018.

Continue reading “Mammoth Biosciences adds the final piece of the CRISPR diagnostics puzzle to its toolkit” »

Chinese doctors have reported success with a new type of immunotherapy for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer: 33 out of 35 patients in a clinical trial had clinical remission within two months.

The researchers used a type of T cell called “chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T.” In a phase I clinical trial in China, the patient’s own T cells were collected, genetically reprogrammed in a lab, and injected back into the patient. The reprogramming involved inserting an artificially designed gene into the T-cell genome, which helped the genetically reprogrammed cells find and destroy cancer cells throughout the body.

Continue reading “33 blood-cancer patients have dramatic clinical remission with new T-cell therapy” »

• New York City firefighters are worried they don’t have enough capacity to serve Hudson Yards, a $25 billion, 18-million-square-foot megadevelopment that opens Friday.
• By 2024, when the development is scheduled to be complete, it could have more than 125,000 daily residents, visitors, and office workers.
• Unless the city builds a new fire station in the neighborhood, these lives could be at stake, the president of New York’s firefighters union told Business Insider.

New York’s largest private real-estate development, the 18-million-square-foot Hudson Yards, can expect a flood of locals, tourists, and office workers at its grand opening on Friday.

For the first time, members of the public will be able to climb aboard Vessel, a 150-foot-tall honeycomb-shaped art installation in the public square; dine at the complex’s high-end restaurants, including Momofuku and D&D London; and browse its luxury retail stores.

In 2015, in a secret medical procedure carried out in Bogota, Colombia, the 44-year-old woman got dozens of experimental gene-therapy injections. Why? Because Parrish, the creator of a longevity company called BioViva, believes that science is on the cusp of delivering radically longer lifespans—and she wants to help bring on the revolution.

Today, we want to point out a new study suggesting that senescent cells in bone marrow cell populations contribute to the decline of the hematopoietic system, particularly the hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) that live in the bone marrow and produce our blood cells [1].

The hematopoietic system and immunosenescence

The hematopoietic system is the system of organs and tissues, including the bone marrow, spleen, thymus and lymph nodes, involved in the creation of cellular blood components.

Continue reading “Senescent Cells in Bone Marrow Contribute to Immunosenescence” »

When launched in 2017, the KO1 monowheel scooter – a kind of cross between a Segway and a Solowheel – offered a range of 20 miles and a top speed of 20 mph. The KO1+ has a very similar look to the original, but is quite a different animal.

Egg protein, gelatin etc, ha. I can imagine loads of curling toes among vegetarians vegans and investors alike…ranging from pure horror to utter excitement…yay vegan and gluten free pills… a hole in the market.

The medicines you take contain a soup of active and inactive ingredients.

Active ingredients are the ones that provide a therapeutic benefit, while inactive ingredients are just that — inactive — meaning they don’t react in the body and are instead there to enhance the properties of the medication itself, such as its taste, appearance and ability to be absorbed by the body. [7 Bizarre Drug Side Effects]

Continue reading “Inactive Ingredients in Drugs May Be Less Inactive Than You Think” »

Some sounds might possess a tiny but measurable amount of negative gravitational mass.

• By Jonathan O’Callaghan on March 11, 2019

If machines become truly intelligent or sentient, an ethicist at Victoria University Wellington named Nicholas Agar is sharing a dire warning: future machines may want payback for how we treat their insentient ancestors today.

Should robots ever become sentient, they may be pissed at how much we insult Alexa today.