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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1909

Nov 12, 2019

Artificial wombs may soon become the future — but what are the risks?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, entertainment

The idea of growing babies outside the body has inspired novels and movies for decades.

Now, research groups around the world are exploring the possibility of artificial gestation. For instance, one group successfully grew a lamb in an artificial womb for four weeks. Australian researchers have also experimented with artificial gestation for lambs and sharks.

And in recent weeks, researchers in The Netherlands have received €2.9 million to develop a prototype for gestating premature babies.

Nov 12, 2019

Research team discovers epigenetic pathway that controls social behavior in carpenter ants

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, genetics, neuroscience

Through early adulthood, exposure to new experiences—like learning to drive a car or memorizing information for an exam—triggers change in the human brain, re-wiring neural pathways to imprint memories and modify behavior. Similar to humans, the behavior of Florida carpenter ants is not set in stone—their roles, whether it is protecting the colony or foraging for food, are determined by signals from the physical and social environment early in their life. But questions remain about how long they are vulnerable to epigenetic changes and what pathways govern social behavior in ants.

Now, a team led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania discovered that a protein called CoRest, a neural repressor that is also found in humans, plays a central role in determining the of . The results, published today in Molecular Cell, also revealed that called Majors, known as “brawny” soldiers that protect colonies, can be reprogrammed to perform the foraging role—generally reserved for their sisters, the Minor ants—up to five days after they emerge as an adult ant. However, the reprogramming is ineffective at the 10-day mark, revealing how narrow the window of epigenetic plasticity is in ants.

“How becomes established in humans is deeply fascinating—we know it’s quite plastic especially during childhood and early adolescence—however, of course, we cannot study or manipulate this experimentally,” said the study’s senior author Shelley Berger, Ph.D., the Daniel S. Och University Professor in the departments of Cell and Developmental Biology and Biology, and director of the Penn Epigenetics Institute. “Ants, with their complex societies and behavior, and similar plasticity, provide a wonderful laboratory model to understand the underlying mechanisms and pathways.

Nov 12, 2019

How Much Can We Delay Aging? A Gene Therapy Trial Is About to Find Out

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

The combination treatment reversed diabetes and obesity while improving heart and kidney function—even when those organs had already begun failing.

Nov 12, 2019

How Gene Therapy can Help You Stop Aging, Build Muscles, and Fight Diseases

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, education, genetics, life extension

On this episode of Anti-Aging Hacks show, we get into the following topics:

1. What is Gene Therapy and how Practical is it?

Continue reading “How Gene Therapy can Help You Stop Aging, Build Muscles, and Fight Diseases” »

Nov 12, 2019

The gut may be the ticket to reducing chemo’s side effects

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

In a new study, scientists observed several simultaneous reactions in mice given a common chemotherapy drug: Their gut bacteria and tissue changed, their blood and brains showed signs of inflammation, and their behaviors suggested they were fatigued and cognitively impaired.

The research is the first to show these combined events in the context of chemotherapy, and opens the door to the possibility that regulating could not only calm chemo side effects like nausea and diarrhea, but also potentially lessen the memory and concentration problems many cancer survivors report.

More research is needed to further understand how the chemo-modified gut influences the in a way that can have an impact on behavior. The same lab at The Ohio State University is continuing mouse studies to test the relationship and running a parallel clinical trial in .

Nov 12, 2019

Engineer Finds Way to Pull Diseases From Blood Using Magnets

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nanotechnology

A British engineer has found a way to filter unwanted cells from blood using magnets — and his tool could be used in clinical trials as soon as next year.

Thanks to existing research, biochemical scientist George Frodsham knew it was possible to force magnetic nanoparticles to bind to specific cells in the body. But while other researchers did so primarily to make those cells show up in images, he wondered whether the same technique might allow doctors to remove unwanted cells from the blood.

“When someone has a tumour you cut it out,” he told The Telegraph. “Blood cancer is a tumour in the blood, so why not just take it out in the same way?”

Nov 12, 2019

Gene-editing Gets Major Funding

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

The program, called Somatic Cell Genome Editing, will be investing $190 million. (2018)


Last year, I wrote about a team of Chinese scientists having received ethical approval to perform a clinical trial of gene-editing. The goal was to test whether gene-editing may be a potential cure for cancer. The technology used for the trial is called CRISPR/Cas9, not exactly a household name. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Cas9 stands for CRISPR associated protein 9, an RNA-guided DNA endonuclease enzyme. If you read all these words a few times, it can make your head hurt. The topic is complex, but I hope in this post to make it more understandable.

Continue reading “Gene-editing Gets Major Funding” »

Nov 12, 2019

Immortality Debate: Can Science Cheat Death?

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

Death means an end, but one recent research challenges the idea and fuels the possibility of reviving the brain. And it has plunged the scientific community into an ethical debate.

Physical movements, thoughts, and actions are traits that define how we know the difference between what’s alive and what’s lifeless i.e. death. But beyond that, we hardly understand what death means. We’ve known that death is an eventuality and irreversible. But recent research done back in April 2019 changed all that. Consequently, science is making us rethink the definition of death and the sheer fact that it is permanent.

Continue reading “Immortality Debate: Can Science Cheat Death?” »

Nov 12, 2019

Carol’s 30 years of back pain gone after stem cell therapy — Stemcures

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Carol has been suffering from back pain for 30 years.

Her MRI revealed disc degeneration, facet arthritis and nerve involvement.

Continue reading “Carol’s 30 years of back pain gone after stem cell therapy — Stemcures” »

Nov 12, 2019

Human Safety Trial of NMN Concludes

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A human trial of NMN has recently concluded, and the results are not impressive at all; however, this is perfectly fine because that was not the purpose of the study, and, despite the lackluster results, the study was a success!

This might sound strange, but perhaps the words of the study authors may make it a bit clearer why this is absolutely no cause for alarm.

We, therefore, conducted a clinical trial to investigate the safety of single NMN administration in 10 healthy men.