Lifeboat Foundation

While testing of the probiotic supplements is currently confined to the lab, Peixoto envisions the treatment being administered on wild reefs. The probiotics could be sprayed from a plane, similar to how pesticides are spread over fields, or dropped like little bacterial bombs to target areas more specifically. Peixoto acknowledges the risk of trying to deliberately manipulate microbial ecosystems in the oceans, but believes the probiotics could be a viable long-term solution to coral reefs’ declining health.

When faced with high heat and disease, coral treated with microbial supplements fared better.

Extreme cold can be our friend in other ways too!! Directed attacks on liver cancer and pancreatic cancer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4716077/

Pancreatic carcinoma is a common cancer of the digestive system with a poor prognosis. It is characterized by insidious onset, rapid progression, a high degree of malignancy and early metastasis. At present, radical surgery is considered the only curative option for treatment, however, the majority of patients with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed too late to undergo surgery. The sensitivity of pancreatic cancer to chemotherapy or radiotherapy is also poor. As a result, there is no standard treatment for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Cryoablation is generally considered to be an effective palliative treatment for pancreatic cancer. It has the advantages of minimal invasion and improved targeting, and is potentially safe with less pain to the patients. It is especially suitable in patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer. However, our initial findings suggest that cryotherapy combined with 125-iodine seed implantation, immunotherapy or various other treatments for advanced pancreatic cancer can improve survival in patients with unresectable or metastatic pancreatic cancer. Although these findings require further in-depth study, the initial results are encouraging. This paper reviews the safety and efficacy of cryoablation, including combined approaches, in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

Keywords: Pancreatic cancer, Cryoablation, Combination therapy, Cryoimmunotherapy.

Continue reading “Advances in cryoablation for pancreatic cancer” »

The portable, wearable peritoneal dialysis device by Singapore-based AWAK Technologies is intended for patients with end-stage renal disease as an alternative to long hours of connection to large dialysis machines.

A new study may have uncovered a previously unknown way to fight melanoma, one of the most deadly forms of skin cancer. A team led by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine has identified a gene that, when disrupted with a drug compound, can prevent melanoma from developing.

Scientists in Australia are looking at some pretty creative ways to tackle the Zika virus, which continues to pose a risk to millions across Africa, Asia and parts of the Americas. Following a trial last year where researchers were able to decimate disease-spreading mosquitos in the country’s north, scientists have now demonstrated an engineering technique that renders the biggest transmitter of the virus largely immune to it, raising hopes of a new way to control the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases.

Today, we conclude our ongoing series discussing the Hallmarks of Aging [1] by looking at the hallmark of altered intercellular communication, the change in signals between cells that can lead to some of the diseases and disabilities of aging.

As an integrative hallmark, altered intercellular communication is caused by other hallmarks of aging. As a result, there is some hope that therapies targeting these other hallmarks will be able to treat this one.

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A new drug cocktail could turn cells near damaged neurons into fully functional new ones.

An MIT-led research team has developed a drug capsule that could be used to deliver oral doses of insulin, potentially replacing the injections that people with type 2 diabetes have to give themselves every day.

About the size of a blueberry, the capsule contains a small needle made of compressed insulin, which is injected after the capsule reaches the stomach. In tests in animals, the researchers showed that they could deliver enough insulin to lower blood sugar to levels comparable to those produced by injections given through skin. They also demonstrated that the device can be adapted to deliver other protein drugs.

“We are really hopeful that this new type of capsule could someday help diabetic patients and perhaps anyone who requires therapies that can now only be given by injection or infusion,” says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and one of the senior authors of the study.

Continue reading “New Pill can Deliver Insulin Through the Stomach” »

Unlike animals, plants stably pass on their DNA methylomes from one generation to the next. The resulting gene silencing likely hides an abundance of phenotypic variation.