Lifeboat Foundation

Will the benefits of making data more widely available outweigh such risks? The signs are that they will. Plenty of countries are now opening up their medical records, but few have gone as far as Sweden. It aims to give all its citizens electronic access to their medical records by 2020; over a third of Swedes have already set up accounts. Studies show that patients with such access have a better understanding of their illnesses, and that their treatment is more successful. Trials in America and Canada have produced not just happier patients but lower costs, as clinicians fielded fewer inquiries. That should be no surprise. No one has a greater interest in your health than you do. Trust in Doctor You.

NO WONDER they are called “patients”. When people enter the health-care systems of rich countries today, they know what they will get: prodding doctors, endless tests, baffling jargon, rising costs and, above all, long waits. Some stoicism will always be needed, because health care is complex and diligence matters. But frustration is boiling over. This week three of the biggest names in American business—Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase—announced a new venture to provide better, cheaper health care for their employees. A fundamental problem with today’s system is that patients lack knowledge and control. Access to data can bestow both.

The internet already enables patients to seek online consultations when and where it suits them. You can take over-the-counter tests to analyse your blood, sequence your genome and check on the bacteria in your gut. Yet radical change demands a shift in emphasis, from providers to patients and from doctors to data. That shift is happening. Technologies such as the smartphone allow people to monitor their own health. The possibilities multiply when you add the crucial missing ingredients—access to your own medical records and the ability easily to share information with those you trust. That allows you to reduce inefficiencies in your own treatment and also to provide data to help train medical algorithms. You can enhance your own care and everyone else’s, too.

Continue reading “A revolution in health care is coming” »

Using a new technique they call “in-air microfluidics,” University of Twente scientists succeed in printing 3D structures with living cells. This special technique enable the fast and ‘on-the-fly’ production of micro building blocks that are viable and can be used for repairing damaged tissue, for example. The work is presented in Science Advances.

Microfluidics is all about manipulating tiny drops of fluid with sizes between a micrometer and a millimeter. Most often, chips with tiny fluidic channels, reactors and other components are used for this: lab-on-a-chip systems. Although these chips offer a broad range of possibilities, in producing emulsions for example—droplets carrying another substance – the speed at which droplets leave the chip is typically in the microliter per minute range. For clinical and industrial applications, this is not fast enough: filling a volume of a cubic centimeter would take about 1000 minutes or 17 hours. The technique that is presented now, does this in a couple of minutes.

Summary: Activating T cells in tumors destroyed most traces of cancer in mice, and had ‘amazing, bodywide effects,’ Stanford University researchers reported. The researchers are recruiting lymphoma patients to test the approach in a clinical trial. [This article first appeared on the website LongevityFacts.com. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine used two novel agents to activate immune system T cells in tumors. The immune-boosting treatment destroyed most traces of cancer in mice the researchers reported in a study published on Jan. 31 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Injecting tiny amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eradicate all traces of cancer in the rodents, including distant metastases, the researchers found. The novel approach works for many different types of cancers, including tumors that arise spontaneously, the new study found.

Continue reading “Cancer ‘vaccine’ eradicates tumors in mice, holds promise in humans” »

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cafeesotericaradio/2018/02/01/c…n-of-youth

Heart cells grown in a lab and assembled in the shape of the organ will eventually start beating in unison–and create a heart for a patient that has a higher chance of success in a transplant than one from another human.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dhFM8akm9a4

We are pleased to announce a special event in San Francisco on Friday, February 2, 2018, 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM PST the opportunity to meet Dr. Aubrey de Grey from the SENS Foundation who will also be attending. This is a special screening of Altered Carbon, a new science fiction series coming to Netflix and based on the superb book by Richard Morgan.

Aging is not a mystery, says famed researcher Dr. Aubrey de Grey, perhaps the world’s foremost advocate of the provocative view that medical technology will one day allow humans to control the aging process and live healthily into our hundreds—or even thousands.

“The cultural attitudes toward all of this are going to be completely turned upside down by sufficiently promising results in the lab, in mice.”

He likens aging to a car wearing down over time; as the body operates normally, it accumulates damage which can be tolerated for a while, but eventually sends us into steep decline. The most promising way to escape this biological reality, he says, is to repair the damage as needed with precise scientific tools.

Continue reading “Anti-Aging Pioneer Aubrey de Grey: ‘People in Middle Age Now Have a Fair Chance’” »

We’re not wired to feel safe all the time, but maybe one day we could be.

A new study investigating the neurological basis of anxiety in the brain has identified ‘anxiety cells’ located in the hippocampus – which not only regulate anxious behaviour but can be controlled by a beam of light.

The findings, so far demonstrated in experiments with lab mice, could offer a ray of hope for the millions of people worldwide who experience anxiety disorders (including almost one in five adults in the US), by leading to new drugs that silence these anxiety-controlling neurons.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Identified The Physical Source of Anxiety in The Brain” »

Your blood is slightly magnetic.