Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,773

Human appetites have transformed the tomato — DNA and all. After centuries of breeding, what was once a South American berry roughly the size of a pea now takes all sorts of shapes and sizes, from cherry-like to hefty heirloom fruit.

Today, scientists are teasing out how these physical changes show up at the level of genes — work that could guide modern efforts to tweak the tomato, says Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Zachary Lippman.

He and colleagues have now identified long-concealed hidden mutations within the genomes of 100 types of tomato, including an orange-berried wild plant from the Galapagos Islands and varieties typically processed into ketchup and sauce.

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New research on the two-dimensional (2-D) material graphene has allowed researchers to create smart adaptive clothing which can lower the body temperature of the wearer in hot climates.

A team of scientists from the University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute have created a prototype garment to demonstrate dynamic thermal radiation control within a piece of clothing by utilising the remarkable thermal properties and flexibility of graphene. The development also opens the door to new applications such as, interactive infrared displays and covert infrared communication on textiles.

The human body radiates energy in the form of electromagnetic waves in the (known as blackbody radiation). In a hot climate it is desirable to make use the full extent of the infrared radiation to lower the body which can be achieved by using infrared-transparent textiles. As for the opposite case, infrared-blocking covers are ideal to minimise the energy loss from the body. Emergency blankets are a common example used to deal with treating extreme cases of body temperature fluctuation.

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One of the human body’s greatest features is its natural antivirus protection. If your immune system is working normally, it produces legions of T-cells that go around looking for abnormalities like cancer cells just to gang up and destroy them. They do this by grabbing on to little protein fragments called antigens that live on the surface of the bad cells and tattle on their whereabouts to the immune system. Once the T-cells have a stranglehold on these antigens, they can release toxins that destroy the bad cell, while minimizing collateral damage to healthy cells.

This rather neat human trick doesn’t always work, however. Cancer cells sometimes mask themselves as healthy cells, or they otherwise thwart T-cell attacks by growing so many antigens on their surface that the T-cells have no place to grab onto.

Medical science has come up with a fairly new method of outfoxing these crafty cancer cells called CAR T-cell therapy. Basically, they withdraw blood from the patient, extract the T-cells, and replace the blood. The T-cells are sent off to a CRISPR lab, where they get injected with a modified, inactive virus that introduces a new gene which causes the T-cells to sprout a little hook on their surface.

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No damage caused by strong light, no artificial dyes or fluorescent tags needed.

The insides of living cells can be seen in their natural state in greater detail than ever before using a new technique developed by researchers in Japan. This advance should help reveal the complex and fragile biological interactions of medical mysteries, like how stem cells develop or how to deliver drugs more effectively.

“Our system is based on a simple concept, which is one of its advantages,” said Associate Professor Takuro Ideguchi from the University of Tokyo Research Institute for Photon Science and Technology. The results of Ideguchi’s team were published recently in Optica, the Optical Society’s research journal.

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The coronavirus has killed dozens of federal prisons and infected more than 6,000. Prisoners say they have been stuck in grim conditions that make social distancing impossible. To support their claims, some prisoners have used contraband cell phones that have been smuggled into prisons to post videos on Facebook and other social media sites.

VICE News contacted one of the prisoners, 34-year-old Aaron Campbell, held at a federal prison in Ohio, who said he was punished for making his video by being sent to solitary confinement. In a letter, Campbell said officials told him he would not face additional discipline if he issued a statement saying the video was fake. He refused. (The BOP did not respond to questions about his allegations.)

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Via Jacob Gunn Glanville

Here’s the Forbes article on our program. Press release and some media to follow. We will be publishing our manuscript within a week to bioarxiv.

Jacob Glanville is an admirer of the human immune system — but he thinks we can do better.

On Tuesday, his company Centivax announced that they have created optimized antibodies that protect hamsters from lethal amounts of the virus that causes COVID-19. Compared to animals that did not receive the antibody, treated hamsters were found to have 97 percent less virus in their lungs after 48 hours.

This is a milestone for Centivax, which is among many companies trying to develop antibody treatments for COVID-19. Centivax’s antibodies are unique, however, in how they are made. Rather than using mammalian cells to produce a protein drug, which is common, slow, and expensive, Centivax is using cheap bacteria.

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The Madison, Wisconsin-based startup Phoenix has scouted a team of nuclear elites for a new frontier: small reactors that can revolutionize medical imaging, munitions scanning, and even non-destructive testing for quality assurance.

And in the longer term, scientists say training people to run neutron generators helps to familiarize and speed up the future of nuclear fusion.

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Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells have transformed the treatment of refractory blood cancers. These genetically engineered immune cells seek out and destroy cancer cells with precision. Now, scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering are deploying them against other diseases, including those caused by senescence, a chronic “alarm state” in tissues. The scope of such ailments is vast and includes debilitating conditions, such as fibrotic liver disease, atherosclerosis, and diabetes.

Key to the success of CAR T cell therapy has been finding a good target. The first US Food and Drug Administration-approved CAR T cells target a molecule on the surface of blood cancers called CD19. It is present on but few other , so side effects are limited.

Taking their cue from this prior work, a team of investigators including Scott Lowe, Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program in the Sloan Kettering Institute, and Michel Sadelain, Director of the Center for Cell Engineering at MSK, along with their trainees Corina Amor, Judith Feucht, and Josef Leibold, sought to identify a target on senescent cells. These cells no longer divide, but they actively send “help me” signals to the immune system.

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