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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1898

Aug 27, 2019

The journal club will be returning on 27th August with your host Dr. Oliver Medvedik and special guest Alexander Tyshkovskiy

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The journal club will be returning on 27th August with your host Dr. Oliver Medvedik and special guest Alexander Tyshkovskiy, a Ph.D. student who works at the Gladyshev Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston. The topic for the journal club this month will be the recent paper, “Identification and Application of Gene Expression Signatures Associated with Lifespan Extension” published in Cell Metabolism. This study is Alexander Tyshkovskiys project and forms part of his Ph.D. so we are fortunate to have him joining us on the show to talk us through this fascinating study.

Sci-Hub link here: https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art…3119303729

Aug 27, 2019

Reducing Gut Dysbiosis Partially Alleviates Alzheimer’s Symptoms

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension, neuroscience

In a recent study, a team from the Neurobiota Research Center in Korea has discovered that reducing gut dysbiosis partially alleviates the cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer’s disease. This may seem puzzling, as the gut and the brain are separate and relatively distant organs, but this research makes sense in the context of chronic inflammation.

Inflammaging

Under normal circumstances, inflammation is a short-term measure in response to infection: immune cells are directed towards the inflamed area and handle the infection, and then the inflammation dies down. However, chronic inflammation causes harm to our organs; it is the main form of altered intercellular communication, which is one of the hallmarks of aging. The protein complex NF-kB, the master regulator of inflammation, is the main culprit of inflammaging, and it is specifically discussed in this paper.

Aug 27, 2019

What if you could live to be 150?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, futurism

According to the latest #research in regenerative #medicine this is no longer science fiction but will come true in the foreseeable future.

Aug 27, 2019

The brain-gut connection: how TCM has known for centuries what Western medicine is now discovering

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, neuroscience

Aren Jay shared this cogent article to my Timeline… It is not new even Hippocrates was able to determine that the gut causes and or assists in all diseases. But the 19th and 20th centuries researchers began saying that microbes are good for mankind which sent science reeling through generations until this day… Respect r.p.berry & AEWR wherein we have developed a formula and Algorithm that deals with this very serious problem completely. A very expensive cure but one that will take Woman-Man past the Escape Velocity so many have written about… https://gerevivify.blogspot.com/


Recent research has found that bacteria in the gut can affect people’s mental state, leading to mood, cognition and behavioural problems. But in TCM, the link between the gut and all of the body’s organs has long been recognised.

Aug 27, 2019

‘Antibiotic apocalypse’ New diseases and antibiotic resistance major threat to humanity

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, evolution, health

Dubbed ‘antibiotic apocalypse’, the antibiotic resistant superbugs have become a massive cause for concern for health professionals as their numbers continue to rise. Such is the worry around antibiotic superbugs that experts believe that they will claim 10 million lives by 2050, with 700,000 people dying a year after catching the infections, according to a recent report from the American Chemical Society’s Enviromental Science and Technology Journal. Humans, especially in the West, have become so reliant on antibiotics to help cure illnesses that many of the bacteria that they are trying to fight have become resistant to the drugs through evolution.

Aug 27, 2019

Scientists zero in on cancer treatments using CRISPR

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Chemotherapy works off of a basic premise: kill all rapidly-growing cells in an effort to wipe out tumor cells. The tactic, while generally effective, has quite a few off-target casualties, including cells that produce hair and cells that line the stomach.

Scientists have tried to skirt the problem by creating missile-like drugs that zero in on cancer cells specifically, sparing healthy cells.

These missile-like drugs, known as antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), have been in the works for decades, but only in recent years have they made it to clinical trials, Kimberly Tsui, a genetics graduate student, told me.

Aug 27, 2019

Biotech companies issue first declaration on human gene editing

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical

Industry declares that it will not make DNA changes affecting future generations.

Aug 27, 2019

A Successful Artificial Memory Has Been Created

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs

We learn from our personal interaction with the world, and our memories of those experiences help guide our behaviors. Experience and memory are inexorably linked, or at least they seemed to be before a recent report on the formation of completely artificial memories. Using laboratory animals, investigators reverse engineered a specific natural memory by mapped the brain circuits underlying its formation. They then “trained” another animal by stimulating brain cells in the pattern of the natural memory. Doing so created an artificial memory that was retained and recalled in a manner indistinguishable from a natural one.

Memories are essential to the sense of identity that emerges from the narrative of personal experience. This study is remarkable because it demonstrates that by manipulating specific circuits in the brain, memories can be separated from that narrative and formed in the complete absence of real experience. The work shows that brain circuits that normally respond to specific experiences can be artificially stimulated and linked together in an artificial memory. That memory can be elicited by the appropriate sensory cues in the real environment. The research provides some fundamental understanding of how memories are formed in the brain and is part of a burgeoning science of memory manipulation that includes the transfer, prosthetic enhancement and erasure of memory. These efforts could have a tremendous impact on a wide range of individuals, from those struggling with memory impairments to those enduring traumatic memories, and they also have broad social and ethical implications.

In the recent study, the natural memory was formed by training mice to associate a specific odor (cherry blossoms) with a foot shock, which they learned to avoid by passing down a rectangular test chamber to another end that was infused with a different odor (caraway). The caraway scent came from a chemical called carvone, while the cherry blossom scent came from another chemical, acetophenone. The researchers found that acetophenone activates a specific type of receptor on a discrete type of olfactory sensory nerve cell.

Aug 27, 2019

Adding Graphene to Fabrics Turns It Into a Perfect Force Field Against Mosquitoes

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, materials

Saying goodbye to the warm summer months is a little easier when it also means the war against mosquito bites is coming to an end. They’re not just an itchy annoyance, however, mosquitoes can spread dangerous diseases and viruses, but researchers at Brown University might have come up with the perfect mosquito forcefield: garments lined with graphene.

Aug 27, 2019

Enlisting CRISPR in the Quest for an HIV Cure

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Today, thanks to remarkable advances in antiretroviral drugs, most people with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can expect to live an almost normal lifespan. But that means staying on medications for life. If those are stopped, HIV comes roaring back in just weeks. Finding a permanent cure for HIV infection, where the virus is completely and permanently eliminated from the body, has proven much tougher. So, I’m encouraged by recent work that shows it may be possible to eliminate HIV in a mouse model, and perhaps—with continued progress—someday we will actually cure HIV in humans.

This innovative approach relies on a one-two punch: drugs and genetic editing. First, HIV-infected mice received an experimental, long-acting form of antiretroviral therapy (ART) that suppresses viral replication. This step cleared the active HIV infection. But more was needed because HIV can “hide” by inserting its DNA into its host’s chromosomes—lying dormant until conditions are right for viral replication. To get at this infectious reservoir, researchers infused the mice with a gene-editing system designed to snip out any HIV DNA still lurking in the genomes of their spleen, bone marrow, lymph nodes, and other cells. The result? Researchers detected no signs of HIV in more than one-third of mice that received the combination treatment.

The new study in Nature Communications is the product of a collaboration between the NIH-funded labs of Howard Gendelman, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, and Kamel Khalili, Temple University, Philadelphia [1]. A virologist by training, Khalili years ago realized that HIV’s ability to integrate into the genomes of its host’s cells meant that the disease couldn’t be thought of only as a typical viral infection. It had a genetic component too, suggesting that an HIV cure might require a genetic answer.