Lifeboat Foundation EM Launch Competition
Images of the research launcher and research glider, movie of a launch, and chapter one of the contestants' guide are now available at http://lifeboat.com/ex/grant1
Fighting Bioterrorism
One of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture-capital firms, Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers, has raised the nation's first fund to invest
in companies developing drugs and technologies to prevent and combat
pandemics. The $200 million fund, called the KPCB Pandemic and Bio
Defense Fund" will invest in four major areas — surveillance and
detection of disease, more efficient diagnosis, vaccines and anti-viral
drugs — that also would be significant in preventing and dealing with
biological attacks by terrorists.
It's not a surprise that Kleiner Perkins is the first firm to focus on
pandemics. John Doerr, a leading partner at Kleiner Perkins, has
previously spoken out on the avian flu threat. Another Kleiner Perkins
partner, Bill Joy, has for years fretted about a pandemic, and in 2000
penned an article about the risks of genetic engineering and
nanotechnology, which, if put in the wrong hands, could produce lethal
self-replicating organisms.
Lifeboat Podcast for iTunes
We are looking for someone to pledge a $2,500 matching grant to help launch this grant which will develop an entertaining and informative commercial for Lifeboat Foundation that will be a free podcast on iTunes. The grant page is at http://lifeboat.com/ex/grant2 and you can make donations at https://lifeboat.com/ex/donations
Scientific Advisory Board News
Suwan Jayasinghe, who has developed a process for printing out brain cells, and Se-Jin Lee, inventor of an inhibitor of myostatin which increases the muscle mass in mice by 60 percent, are some of the recent people to join our Scientific Advisory Board.
Dr. Suwan Jayasinghe
The NewScientist.com article "Missing a few brain cells? Print new ones"
said "A printer that spits out ultra-fine droplets of cells instead of
ink has been used to print live brain cells without causing them any
apparent harm. The technique could open up the possibility of building
replacement tissue cell by cell, giving doctors complete control over
the tissue they graft.
The device is a variant of a conventional ink-jet printer. Instead of
forcing individual droplets of ink through a needle-shaped nozzle and
onto the page, the cell printer uses a powerful electric field to
produce droplets just a few micrometres in diameter, far smaller than is
achievable by other means...
The 'electro-spray', developed by Suwan Jayasinghe of University College
London along with Peter Eagles and Amer Qureshi at King's College
London, has for the first time been able to produce droplets as small as
a few micrometres in diameter, each containing only a handful of living
cells."
Dr. Suwan Jayasinghe started his academic career in the Mechanical
Engineering Department at Brunel University where he was awarded both
his first and second degrees in Engineering. He then joined the
Materials Department at Queen Mary, University of London where he read
for his doctorate in Engineering, which he completed in 2002. In January
2005 he was awarded a RCUK Academic Fellowship (Professor Sir Gareth
Roberts Academic Fellow). He has published over 35 papers in
peer-reviewed journals and has given talks in China, Australia, USA and
in Europe.
Suwan was awarded the following medals at the Houses of Parliament,
United Kingdom: The De Montfort Medal for excellence in Science,
Engineering, Medicine and Technology and The Leonardo Da Vinci Gold
Medal for excellence in Engineering Sciences.
He is Junior Member of The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical
Sciences, UK Associate Member of The Institute of Mechanical Engineers,
UK, Graduate Member of The Institute Materials, Minerals and Mining, UK,
Member of the American Physical Society, Member of the Gesellschaft für
Aerosolforschung (GAeF), Germany, Member of The Aerosol Society, UK and
Member of the American Association for Aerosol Research.
Suwan coauthored "Electrostatic Atomization of a Ceramic Suspension at
Pico-Flow Rates" in Applied Physics A: Materials Science & Processing,
"High Resolution Print Patterning of a Nano-suspension" in Journal of
Nanoparticle Research, "In-Vitro Assessment of the Biological Response
to Nano-sized Hydroxyapatite" in Journal of Materials Science: Materials
in Medicine, and "Electric-field Driven Jetting from Dielectric Liquids"
in Applied Physics Letters.
His main research areas are Aerosol sciences, Electrostatic atomization
and Microfluidics, Solid freeforming, Molecular dynamics and Advanced
analytical techniques, Computational Fluid Dynamics and Finite Element
Analysis, Aerodynamics, Turbomachinery and Propulsion.
Professor Se-Jin Lee
Johns Hopkins Medicine reported that "The Johns Hopkins scientists who
first created 'mighty mice' have developed, with pharmaceutical company
Wyeth and the biotechnology firm MetaMorphix, an agent that's more
effective at increasing muscle mass in mice than a related potential
treatment for muscular dystrophy now in clinical trials.
The new agent is a version of a cellular docking point for the
muscle-limiting protein myostatin. In mice, just two weekly injections
of the new agent triggered a 60 percent increase in muscle size...
'This new inhibitor of myostatin, known as ACVR2B, is very potent and
gives very dramatic effects in the mice', says Se-Jin Lee, M.D., Ph.D.,
a professor of molecular biology and genetics in Johns Hopkins'
Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. 'Its effects were larger and
faster than we've seen with any other agent, and they were even larger
than we expected.'"
Professor Se-Jin Lee, M.D., Ph.D is Professor of Molecular Biology and
Genetics at Johns Hopkins University. He is also the scientific founder
and consultant for MetaMorphix, a privately held life sciences company
that uses the code of life, DNA, to improve the global food supply and
human health. He was on the Scientific Advisory Committee on
Developmental Biology for the American Cancer Society and a consultant
for Cambridge Neuroscience.
He authored or coauthored "Identification of proliferin mRNA and protein
in mouse placenta" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America (PNAS), "Proliferin secreted by cultured
cells binds to mannose-6-phosphate receptors" in the Journal of
Biological Chemistry, "Identification of a novel member (GDF - 1) of the
transforming growth factor-ß superfamily" in Molecular Endocrinology,
and "Suppression of body fat accumulation in myostatin-deficient mice"
in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Born in Seoul, South Korea in 1958, Se-Jin received a BA (summa cum
laude) in Biochemistry from Harvard College in 1981 and a MD and PhD in
Molecular Biology and Genetics from Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine in 1989.
