Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,481

Data centers are the new oil refineries, argues The Economist. Where black sludge and steam once marked the beating heart of the economy, now blinking servers laced with fiber optic cables indicate where the action is.

Biotechnology — like all other industries — must adapt. Synthetic biology teams that embrace modern tools like cloud computing, professionally built software, and laboratory automation will save time, reduce errors, streamline complex workflows, and maintain their agility in the digital economy. Those who fail to adopt new tools will be primed for disruption.

Software is already an integral part of biological research, but most scientific apps lag far behind the rest of the digital frontier. As the software giant Autodesk puts it:

Read more

What does it feel like when you know your doctor can’t really help you?

Some time ago, I noticed a stock photo of an old lady seeing her geriatrician, who was a much younger woman. Nothing special was happening in the picture, which showed just two people talking; however, it made me wonder what it must feel like to be an elderly person consulting a geriatrician.

One initial assumption could be that it isn’t much different than seeing a GP, but that seems unlikely. If you are seeing a GP, the odds are your disease or ailment is not debilitating, let alone life-threatening. Whatever it might be, you went to see your doctor knowing that, most likely, he or she would be able to cure you; especially if you are young, it’s probable that just taking a medicine for some time, or doing physical therapy, will make you better. You know that you will recover, and the discomfort or the suffering you’re going through is destined to go away. You will get back to your life as it used to be, healthy as ever.

Things are rather different when you are seeing a geriatrician. A geriatrician is a specialist who takes care of the needs of elderly patients, an activity that can be summarized as ensuring the highest possible life quality of a patient in spite of his or her failing body, which becomes increasingly less resilient and less able to respond to treatment with the passing of time. Existing drugs and exercise programs, for example, can ameliorate the symptoms that an elderly person experiences and improve his or her life quality, but the vast majority of age-related diseases simply cannot be cured right now.

Read more

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the biggest medical challenges of our time. About 30 million people worldwide are living with Alzheimer’s disease, and the numbers are predicted to increase to 100 million by 2050 if we do not find effective prevention or treatment strategies (1). Substantial evidence suggests that leading a healthy lifestyle, including regular exercise, may lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. However, the mechanisms through which exercise protects the brain and whether we could bottle these as a treatment remain controversial. On page 991 of this issue, Choi et al. (2) reveal that in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, exercise improves memory through a combination of encouraging neurogenesis in the hippocampus and increasing the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a growth factor that supports neuronal survival. Their findings suggest that agents that promote both BDNF signaling and neurogenesis might be effective in preventing or treating Alzheimer’s disease.

http://www.sciencemag.org/about/science-licenses-journal-article-reuse

This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.

Read more

Mumbai: A five-year-old child from Majalgaon village in Beed, who may soon undergo a genital reconstruction surgery, was admitted to St George Hospital on Thursday. Parents of Aiman Khan, who was raised as a girl, have now made her Aadhaar number with the new male identity as Aman.

Medical superintendent Dr. Madhukar Gaikwad said the child’s sonography was carried out on Thursday. “We will be doing all the required medical examinations and then schedule the surgery.” The child’s karyotype study, which determines chromosomes, shows the presence of male XY chromosomes.

Plastic surgeon Dr. Rajat Kapoor, who evaluated the minor, has found the presence of testes, a male reproductive organ, and absence of female internal organs. He said the genitalia looks like that of a female due to underdevelopment.

Read more

Today, we want to point out a new publication that dives into the world of senolytics, which are drugs or therapies that seek and destroy harmful non-dividing cells that resist the programmed cell death known as apoptosis.

These cells linger in the body, and, as we age, more and more of them accumulate and contribute to the chronic age-related inflammation known as “inflammaging” while reducing tissue regeneration and repair and contributing to the development of various age-related diseases.

One approach to dealing with these problem cells is to tip them over the edge and cause them to self-destruct, thus removing them and the inflammation they cause. A new class of drugs known as senolytics was discovered a few years ago, and the interest in developing them to potentially combat age-related diseases has been growing rapidly.

Read more

A new potential method to administer gene therapy without triggering an immune response.

Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine managed to administer effective gene therapy in mice without triggering an autoimmune reaction. The research, led by Dr. Peggy Ho, Ph.D., was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1].

Study abstract

In gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy there are two potential immunological obstacles. An individual with Duchenne muscular dystrophy has a genetic mutation in dystrophin, and therefore the wild-type protein is “foreign,” and thus potentially immunogenic. The adeno-associated virus serotype-6 (AAV6) vector for delivery of dystrophin is a viral-derived vector with its own inherent immunogenicity. We have developed a technology where an engineered plasmid DNA is delivered to reduce autoimmunity. We have taken this approach into humans, tolerizing to myelin proteins in multiple sclerosis and to proinsulin in type 1 diabetes. Here, we extend this technology to a model of gene therapy to reduce the immunogenicity of the AAV vector and of the wild-type protein product that is missing in the genetic disease.

Read more

An in depth print cover story out on life extension by Forbes Africa—probably destined to become one of the main go-to articles for people on the continent seeking info on the topic. Myself, Aubrey de Grey, and others are featured in it. Excited to see #Africa join the race to overcome death and disease:

Science is pumping in billions searching for solutions that will help humans live longer – and better – and one day even indefinitely.

Read more