UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center member Ranmal Samarasinghe, MD, PhD presents his work using brain organoids to create better models of neurological disorders. An Assistant Professor in UCLA’s Neurology department, Dr. Samarasinghe splits his time between the clinic, seeing patients who have neurological conditions like epilepsy and autism, and in the lab working to create more detailed disease models using brain organoids. In this video, Dr. Samarasinghe discusses how brain organoids are becoming more sophisticated in their ability to replicate irregular brain wave patterns seen in conditions like Rett syndrome, an epilepsy primarily associated with infants. Ultimately, he hopes these stem cell-based models can be used to screen new drugs and discover new treatments for diseases like epilepsy.
Learn more about Dr. Samarasinghe’s work here:
https://stemcell.ucla.edu/member/sama… the full “The Power of Regenerative Medicine: Future Treatments for Brain Disease” webinar: • The Power of Regenerative Medicine: F…
Watch the full \.
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Depression’s Lasting Impact on Physical Health
Adults with a history of depression develop chronic physical conditions about 30% faster than those without, according to a study published on February 13 in PLOS Medicine. Researchers, led by Kelly Fleetwood from the University of Edinburgh, suggest that depression should be recognized as a “whole-body” condition, emphasizing the need for integrated care that addresses both mental and physical health.
Michigan Medicine researchers have developed a SCN1B gene therapy that restores brain function and survival in mice with severe developmental epileptic encephalopathy (DEE). The therapy reduced seizure severity and increased lifespan.
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered new details about how the human genome produces instructions for creating proteins and cells, the building blocks of life, according to a pioneering new study published in Science Advances.
While it’s understood that genes function as a set of instructions for creating RNA, and thus proteins and cells, the fundamental process by which this occurs has not been well-studied due to technological limitations, said Vadim Backman, Ph.D., the Sachs Family Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine, who was senior author of the study.
“It is still not fully understood how, despite having the same set of genes, cells turn into neurons, bones, skin, heart, or roughly 200 other kinds of cells, and then exhibit stable cellular behavior over a human lifespan which can last for more than a century—or why aging degrades this process,” said Backman, who directs the Center for Physical Genomics and Engineering at Northwestern. “This has been a long-standing open question in biology.”
Longevity Escape Velocity @ rc Austin with Aubrey de Grey and David Wood.
Every year, millions die prematurely around the world, and hundreds of millions more suffer – all from entirely preventable conditions. We lose billions of years of life, precious time, and human progress to a single insidious process: aging.
The good news? We don’t have to.
Many foods are marketed for their antioxidant benefits, which help neutralize reactive oxygen species.
A species is a group of living organisms that share a set of common characteristics and are able to breed and produce fertile offspring. The concept of a species is important in biology as it is used to classify and organize the diversity of life. There are different ways to define a species, but the most widely accepted one is the biological species concept, which defines a species as a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce viable offspring in nature. This definition is widely used in evolutionary biology and ecology to identify and classify living organisms.