Lifeboat Foundation

Highly specialized cartilage is characteristically avascular and non-neural in composition with low cell numbers in an aliphatic environment. Despite its apparent simplicity, bioengineering regenerative hyaline cartilage in a form effective for implantation remains challenging in musculoskeletal tissue engineering. Existing surgical techniques including autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) and matrix-induced autologous chondrocyte implantation (MACI) are considered superior to self-repair induction techniques. However, both MACI and ACI are complex, multistage procedures that require a double operation; first for surgical excision of native cartilage, followed by expansion of adult chondrocytes in vitro prior to implantation by a second operation.

Regenerating robust articular hyaline-like cartilage is a key priority in musculoskeletal tissue engineering to prevent cost-intensive degenerative osteoarthritis that limits the quality of life in global healthcare. Integrating mesenchymal stem cells and 3D printing technologies has shown significant promise in bone tissue engineering– although the key challenge remains in transferring the bench-based technology to the operating room for real-time applications. To tackle this, a team of Australian orthopedic surgeons and bioengineers collaboratively proposed an in situ additive manufacturing technique for effective cartilage regeneration. The handheld engineered extrusion device known as the BioPen offers an advanced, co-axial extrusion strategy to deposit cells embedded in a hydrogel material within a surgical setting.

Continue reading “3D bioPen: A hydrogel injection to regenerate cartilage” »

Today, we have an interview with Dr. Michael Bonkowski, an expert on NAD+ biology and aging from the David Sinclair Lab, Harvard Medical School.

Michael Bonkowski aims to advance our understanding of the links between metabolism, aging, and age-associated diseases. He has published 35 peer-reviewed journal articles and has conducted multiple successful longevity studies. In Dr. David Sinclair’s lab, his research efforts are focused on the role of nutrient sensors’ regulation of endocrine signaling and aging in the mouse. He is also working on direct and indirect ways to drive the activity of these nutrient sensors by using dietary manipulations, small molecules, and chemical treatments.

Michael is trained as a pharmacologist, physiologist, and animal scientist. Some of his areas of expertise include animal physiology, genetics, glucose, and insulin homeostasis, metabolism, assay development, protein biochemistry, and transmission electron microscopy imaging.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have developed a small handheld device that can scan for biomarkers to quickly and easily diagnose people with certain diseases and illnesses. Inspired (as always) by Star Trek’s tricorder, the new “multicorder” is designed to help doctors track the presence or progression of an illness from just about anywhere.

A duty to die at 75 by law?! No need to cure one disease because anyway you will die from another after 65?! A new article uncovers the dangers of going to ‘healthy’ and not longer lifespan:

2) A duty to die becomes greater as you grow older. As we age, we will be giving up less by giving up our lives, if only because we will sacrifice fewer remaining years of life and a smaller portion of our life plans… To have reached the age of, say, seventy-five or eighty years without being ready to die is itself a moral failing, the sign of a life out of touch with life’s basic realities.

3) A duty to die is more likely when you have already lived a full and rich life. You have already had a full share of the good things life offers.

Continue reading “‘Healthspan’ & ‘Duty to Die’ for the Elderly -- Bioethicists Push Health Care Rationing” »

New paper calls for the use of advances human-relevant methods to enable understanding of the initiation and progression of Parkinson’s disease.

Researchers have used gene editing to completely eliminate populations of mosquitoes in the lab.

The team tested their technique on the mosquito Anopheles gambiae, which transmits malaria.

They altered part of a gene called doublesex, which determines whether an individual mosquito develops as a male or as a female.

Adequate supply of blood and structural and functional integrity of blood vessels are key to normal brain functioning. On the other hand, cerebral blood flow shortfalls and blood–brain barrier dysfunction are early findings in neurodegenerative disorders in humans and animal models. Here we first examine molecular definition of cerebral blood vessels, as well as pathways regulating cerebral blood flow and blood–brain barrier integrity. Then we examine the role of cerebral blood flow and blood–brain barrier in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis. We focus on Alzheimer’s disease as a platform of our analysis because more is known about neurovascular dysfunction in this disease than in other neurodegenerative disorders. Finally, we propose a hypothetical model of Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers to include brain vasculature as a factor contributing to the disease onset and progression, and we suggest a common pathway linking brain vascular contributions to neurodegeneration in multiple neurodegenerative disorders.

Five years after he was paralysed in a snowmobile accident, a man in the US has learned to walk again aided by an electrical implant, in a potential breakthrough for spinal injury sufferers.

A team of doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota say the man, using a front-wheeled walker, was able to cover the equivalent of the length of a football pitch, issuing commands from his brain to transfer weight and maintain balance—all previously thought impossible for paralysed patients.

Continue reading “Implant helps paralysed man walk again” »