Lifeboat Foundation

In brief: An implantable cancer vaccine from Harvard has shown promising results in mice, and researchers are testing it in a clinical trial on humans. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

An implantable cancer vaccine being tested on patients by Harvard’s Wyss Institute is a new type of immunotherapy that holds promise to treat a wide range of cancers such as melanoma, as well as auto-immune conditions and infectious diseases. The aspirin-sized implant is made of a polymer scaffold containing growth factors and tissue samples from a patient’s tumors which trains a patient’s immune system to search and destroy cancer cells.

Harvard’s cancer vaccine is approaching the end of clinical testing, promising to be available 4 or 5 years sooner than Stanford’s vaccine with its 97% cure rate.

S cientists have warned against the risks of intensive IVF treatment as research suggests it increases the risk of heart disease in children.

The “high stimulation” method, where powerful drugs are used to stimulate egg production, is a commonly used practise in British fertility clinics.

But experts are now claiming there is growing evidence the treatment can result in offspring with higher blood pressure and thicker arteries than normal.

Continue reading “IVF children at risk of heart disease if procedure too intense, experts warn” »

Researchers and scientists say new discoveries and drug creation could be beneficial to future astronauts on deep space missions.

Sarah Betancourt

As might be expected, the CDC is spooked by these bacteria. If they spread, as infections are want to do, the agency is tasked with stopping them, and that’s no easy task.

On April 3, CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat announced the agency’s latest containment strategy, which recommends an aggressive response to the appearance of even a single case of drug-resistant infection. The germs usually appear in hospital settings, so the CDC says health care workers should be prepared to contain the drug-resistant microbes before they can travel beyond a hospital’s doors.

Continue reading “The CDC is terrified of these germs, so it’s trying to contain them” »

A 10-year-long study called the PanCancer Atlas is releasing a trove of genetic data in an effort to help doctors treat a wide variety of cancers more precisely.

The history: Over the past decade, 150 researchers from the US and around the world painstakingly analyzed DNA, RNA, and proteins from tumor samples of more than 11,000 patients with 33 different types of cancer.

The findings: From that data, scientists have identified about 300 genes that drive tumor growth. They also found that just over half the tumors samples analyzed carry genetic mutations that could be targeted by therapies that are already on the market. These findings and others appear in 29 different papers today in the journal Cell.

Continue reading “300 Genes Found at The Root of Cancers Could Spur More Personalized Treatments” »

Protein synthesis is a critical part of how our cells operate and keep us alive and when it goes wrong it drives the aging process. We take a look at how it works and what happens when things break down.

Suppose that your full-time job is to proofread machine-translated texts. The translation algorithm commits mistakes at a constant rate all day long; from this point of view, the quality of the translation stays the same. However, as a poor human proofreader, your ability to focus on this task will likely decline throughout the day; therefore, the number of missed errors, and therefore the number of translations that go out with mistakes, will likely go up with time, even though the machine doesn’t make any more errors at dusk than it did at dawn.

To an extent, this is pretty much what is going on with protein synthesis in your body.

Continue reading “Protein Synthesis in Aging” »

Harvard professor Dr. David Sinclair reports that the NAD boosting NMN compound reverses aging in blood vessels and restores muscle strength in a new study published March 22nd. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Using the NAD boosting molecule NMN, Dr. David Sinclair’s team reversed blood vessel and muscle aging in mice, while boosting their exercise endurance. As Dr. Sinclair says.

“We’ve discovered a way to reverse vascular aging by boosting the presence of naturally occurring molecules in the body that augment the physiological response to exercise” adding “The approach stimulates blood vessel growth and boosts stamina and endurance in mice and sets the stage for therapies in humans to address the spectrum of diseases that arise from vascular aging.”

Continue reading “NMN and NAD Reverse Aging of Blood Vessels in New Study” »

Researchers just overturned a 70-year-old fundamental understanding of how our brains learn – paving the way for faster, more advanced AI applications and a different approach to medical treatments for brain disorders. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Researchers just overturned the way scientists thought our brains learn – a view that up until now has been widely accepted for almost 70 years.

This discovery-based upon new experimental evidence – paves the way for more modern artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as machine learning and deep learning algorithms that imitate our brain functions at a much faster speed with advanced features. Moreover, the research may change how doctors view disorders of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s and may alter treatments for other forms of dementia.

Continue reading “Our Brain Learns Completely Differently Than Experts Assumed For Nearly A Century” »

Summary: Nicotinamide riboside (NR), a form of vitamin B, increased levels of NAD report researchers in a new study. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts and was updated on April 3, 2018. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) reported that nicotinamide riboside (NR) – a unique form of B vitamin – increased levels of NAD, in a clinical trial of healthy older adults. Senior study author Doug Seals, a professor and researcher in the Department of Integrative Physiology said

“This was the first ever study to give this novel compound to humans over a period of time,” adding “We found that it is well tolerated and appears to activate some of the same key biological pathways that calorie restriction does.”

Continue reading “New NR Vitamin Promising to Address Aging in Adults” »