Lifeboat Foundation

For the first time, researchers have found a functional link between the bacteria in the gut and the onset of Parkinson’s disease, one of the world’s most common debilitating brain disorders.

A team of scientists from several institutions in the United States and Europe showed how changing the bacteria in the guts of mice affected the manifestation of Parkinson’s symptoms — even including bacteria taken from the guts of humans with the disease.

The findings suggest a new way of treating the disease: The best target for treatment may be the gut, rather than the brain. The researchers hope the new information can be used to develop “next generation” probiotics, more sophisticated than the sort of probiotics found on the shelves of health food stores today.

Continue reading “Parkinson’s linked to gut bacteria” »

Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop — much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb. One day, this device could help to bring premature human babies to term outside the uterus — but right now, it has only been tested on sheep.

It’s appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. But it’s important not to get ahead of the data, says Alan Flake, fetal surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author of today’s study. “It’s complete science fiction to think that you can take an embryo and get it through the early developmental process and put it on our machine without the mother being the critical element there,” he says.

Instead, the point of developing an external womb — which his team calls the Biobag — is to give infants born months too early a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in, Flake says.

Continue reading “An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep — and humans could be next” »

Is the quest to collect comprehensive health data and use it as a map and compass, pointing the way to disease prevention.

A few weeks ago we unveiled the latest eight companies that are part of our URBAN-X smart cities accelerator in Brooklyn. This is the second time we’ve run this program, which differs a little from SOSV’s other ecosystem accelerators, in that the space isn’t constrained by the deep intricacies of a vertical (manufacturing, biotechnology, etc) as much as by environment and mission. The kind of companies we’re interested in working with through this program are changing the way that humans live in cities: they’re working on topics as various as mobility, urban health and safety, energy, waste, water, city planning, construction, and beyond.

We see hundreds of applicants to our program, and interface with hundreds more through our network, mentors, and co-investors. Here are some of the trends we’ve seen ticking up over the last 12 months or so:

Doctors have lots of tools for predicting a patient’s health. But—as even they will tell you—they’re no match for the complexity of the human body. Heart attacks in particular are hard to anticipate. Now, scientists have shown that computers capable of teaching themselves can perform even better than standard medical guidelines, significantly increasing prediction rates. If implemented, the new method could save thousands or even millions of lives a year.

“I can’t stress enough how important it is,” says Elsie Ross, a vascular surgeon at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who was not involved with the work, “and how much I really hope that doctors start to embrace the use of artificial intelligence to assist us in care of patients.”

Each year, nearly 20 million people die from the effects of cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks, strokes, blocked arteries, and other circulatory system malfunctions. In an effort to predict these cases, many doctors use guidelines similar to those of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA). Those are based on eight risk factors—including age, cholesterol level, and blood pressure—that physicians effectively add up.

Continue reading “Self-taught artificial intelligence beats doctors at predicting heart attacks” »

Where’s my money, you’re asking? Me too! There shouldn’t be poverty in America or people that can’t reasonably afford health insurance—it’s that simple. Below I’m resharing my TechCrunch California Governor policy article on a Universal Basic Income. If you’re in California, you will be able to vote for me to try to see this become a reality: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/10/is-monetizing-federal-land…ic-income/

What if doctors could monitor patients at home with the same degree of accuracy they’d get during a stay at the hospital? Bioelectronics innovator Todd Coleman shares his quest to develop wearable, flexible electronic health monitoring patches that promise to revolutionize healthcare and make medicine less invasive.

China has made the precision medicine field a focus of its 13th five-year plan, and its companies have been embarking on ambitious efforts to collect a vast trove of genetic and health data, researching how to identify cancer markers in blood, and launching consumer technologies that aim to tap potentially life-saving information. The push offers insight into China’s growing ambitions in science and biotechnology, areas where it has traditionally lagged developed nations like the United States.

Precision medicine a focus of latest five-year plan.

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 09 February, 2017, 1:42pm.

Continue reading “Chinese biotech scientists plan to use big data in war on cancer” »

At times, DNA testing can feel more like horoscopes than science. In many cases, we just don’t know enough about a gene to say what it means for our health. For this reason, the Food and Drug Administration has sought to protect consumers by preventing DNA testing companies from telling them whether or not they’re are at risk for a certain disease. Until now.