Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 9745

Tobacco and alcohol use, both genetically inheritable behaviors, influence risk for many complex diseases and disorders and are leading causes of mortality.

The University of Minnesota was part of a research collaboration that conducted the first study, recently published in Nature Genetics, to identify hundreds of genomic locations associated with addictive behaviors. Researchers found more than 500 genetic variants that affect the use of and addiction to tobacco and alcohol. Until now, only a few of such variants had been identified.

Researchers studied 1.2 million people and looked five characteristics including the age when a participant began smoking; the number of cigarettes per day the participant smoked; whether the participant has ever been a regular smoker; whether the participant ever quit smoking; and the number of alcoholic drinks the participant had per week.

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Imperial researchers have developed a new bioinspired material that interacts with surrounding tissues to promote healing.

Materials are widely used to help heal wounds: Collagen sponges help treat burns and pressure sores, and scaffold-like implants are used to repair broken bones. However, the process of tissue repair changes over time, so scientists are looking to biomaterials that interact with tissues as healing takes place.

“Creatures from sea sponges to humans use cell movement to activate healing. Our approach mimics this by using the different cell varieties in wounds to drive healing.” –Dr Ben Almquist, Department of Bioengineering.

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TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 10, 2019 / The Wealthy Biotech Trader (or” WBT”), an investment newsletter focused on showing everyday investors new opportunities in rapidly growing, little-known biotech, pharma, medical device stocks making news and subsequent market moves, would like to update investors on several breakthroughs in cancer therapies hitting the market.

Stock investors have soured on biotech companies over the past several months, as demonstrated by the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI), off 30% since June, and the NYSE Biotechnology Index (NYSE: NBI), which has dropped from 3500 in mid-2018 to just under 3000 at year-end, and a host of their component companies and others in addition. Still, there is innovation and competitive potential brewing in the market at publicly-traded companies that are flying below the radar. One of those is Propanc Biopharma, Inc. (OTCQB: PPCB), an Australian biotech company with strong management and technology that has the potential to help millions of cancer patients worldwide.

Propanc Biopharma, Inc. Company Overview

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When you beam intense pulses of light into a thin circle, strange things will happen, according to new research based on the optical equivalent of a whispering gallery.

Inside tiny loops of transparent fibre, waves of light can be forced to break step and change the orientation of their wiggle in odd ways, bending the rules and potentially giving future engineers new tools for emerging optical technology.

Researchers from the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have watched light break its usual symmetrical patterns inside devices called optical ring resonators.

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A new antibiotic developed by a Flinders University researcher is being heralded as a breakthrough in the war against a drug resistant superbug. Bacteria are winning the fight against antibiotics as they evolve to fight off traditional treatments, threatening decades of advancements in modern medicine, with predictions they will kill over 10 million people by 2050. The scientific development of new, effective and safe antibiotics is crucial in addressing the ever-growing threat posed by drug resistant bacteria around the world.

Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a potentially deadly infection in the large intestine most common in people who need to take antibiotics for a long period of time, particularly in Australia’s ageing population. Dr Ramiz Boulos, adjunct research associate at Flinders University and CEO of Boulos & Cooper Pharmaceuticsals, says the fact CDI is becoming resistant to traditional antibiotics is alarming and highlights the need to develop more effective treatments.

“Cases of CDI disease are rising and the strains are becoming more lethal. If there is an imbalance in your intestines it can begin to grow and release toxins that attack the lining of the intestines which leads to symptoms,” says Dr Boulos. Over the past ten years, various strains of C. difficile have emerged, and are associated with outbreaks of severe infections worldwide. One particular strain is easily transmitted between people and has been responsible for large outbreaks in hospitals in the United States and Europe. “It’s concerning when you consider CDI is one of the most common infections acquired during hospital visits in the Western hemisphere, and the most likely cause of diarrhea for patients and staff in hospitals.”

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When a company reaches the top of the ladder, they typically kick it away so that others cannot climb up on it. The aim? To prevent competition. When this happens in the pharmaceutical world, in terms of patents, companies quickly apply for broad protection of their products, which can last decades, and, in doing so, they fence off entire research areas for others.

In this video, Tahir Amin an attorney Tahir Amin who specializes in patent law, explains how this “skewed” system hurts everyday people.

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