Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists in Hong Kong recently completed a clinical study in which they found that administering a cocktail of three different anti-viral medications to patients enduring mild coronavirus symptoms “may rapidly suppress the amount of virus in a patient’s body.”

The three-drug anti-viral cocktail is made up of the HIV medication lopinavir-ritonavir, the hepatitis therapy drug ribavirin and the multiple sclerosis treatment interferon-beta.

If you really have the need for speed, you could get it on the ground. But if you’re looking more for stuff that can break the sound barrier many times over, you should consider looking up. That’s the hint casually dropped by aeronautic manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which has mulled over revisiting the idea of a hypersonic revamp. In this case, they’re reportedly looking at an upgrade of the old SR-71 “Blackbird” that first took to the air nearly 60 years ago.

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works department has been making noises about a revival of the legendary bomber, a jet that was capable of flying up to Mach 3. That’s slightly more than 3,700 mph, about one and a half times speedier than the .220 Swift, reportedly the fastest bullet ever produced.

But the Skunk Work’s brain trust claims the SR-72 might even double the speed of its predecessor. That’s a tricky proposition considering the plane’s air intake would be brutal at those speeds, like trying to start a campfire in gale-force winds.

Young blood plasma is known to confer beneficial effects on various organs in mice. However, it was not known whether young plasma rejuvenates cells and tissues at the epigenetic level; whether it alters the epigenetic clock, which is a highly-accurate molecular biomarker of aging. To address this question, we developed and validated six different epigenetic clocks for rat tissues that are based on DNA methylation values derived from n=593 tissue samples. As indicated by their respective names, the rat pan-tissue clock can be applied to DNA methylation profiles from all rat tissues, while the rat brain-, liver-, and blood clocks apply to the corresponding tissue types. We also developed two epigenetic clocks that apply to both human and rat tissues by adding n=850 human tissue samples to the training data. We employed these six clocks to investigate the rejuvenation effects of a plasma fraction treatment in different rat tissues. The treatment more than halved the epigenetic ages of blood, heart, and liver tissue. A less pronounced, but statistically significant, rejuvenation effect could be observed in the hypothalamus. The treatment was accompanied by progressive improvement in the function of these organs as ascertained through numerous biochemical/physiological biomarkers and behavioral responses to assess cognitive functions. Cellular senescence, which is not associated with epigenetic aging, was also considerably reduced in vital organs. Overall, this study demonstrates that a plasma-derived treatment markedly reverses aging according to epigenetic clocks and benchmark biomarkers of aging.

Several authors are founders, owners, employees (Harold Katcher and Akshay Sanghavi) or consultants of Nugenics Research (Steve Horvath and Agnivesh Shrivastava) which plans to commercialize the “Elixir” treatment. Other authors (Kavita Singh, Shraddha Khairnar) received financial support from Nugenics Research. The other authors do not have conflict of interest.

O,.o…

Organoids have become an important tool for studying many disease processes and testing potential drugs. Now, they are being used in a surprising and unexpected way: for the production of snake venom. On January 23 in the journal Cell, researchers are reporting that they have created organoids of the venom glands of the Cape coral snake (Aspidelaps lubricus cowlesi) and that these glands are capable of producing venom.

“More than 100,000 people die from snake bites every year, mostly in developing countries. Yet the methods for manufacturing antivenom haven’t changed since the 19th century,” says senior author Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “It’s clear there is a huge unmet medical need for new treatments.”

He adds: “Every snake has dozens of different components in their venom. These are extremely potent molecules that are designed to stop prey from running away. They affect systems as varied as the brain, neuromuscular junctions, blood coagulation, and more. Many of them have potential bioprospecting applications for new drugs.”

Education Saturday with Space Time.

Why is it that we can see these multiple histories play out on the quantum scale, and why do lose sight of them on our macroscopic scale? Many physicists believe that the answer lies in a process known as quantum decoherence.

Continue reading “How Decoherence Splits The Quantum Multiverse” »

Stem Cell Neurotherapy, which has achieved successful results with Parkinson’s, Essential Tremor, and Brain Tumor, can generate new cells and tissues in the lungs, liver, kidney, etc., to replace those cells and tissues that have been infected by COVID-19. This will improve the lung microenvironment, protect lung alveoli epithelial cells, and restore healthy functioning lungs.

These new cells will eliminate the fever, coughing, headaches, breathing problems, and other symptoms related to COVID-19.

At the 9:03 minute mark on the Stem Cell Neurotherapy recording, you will hear the therapeutic message:

Continue reading “Stem cell ‘mist’ cured COVID-19 patients in the Middle East, doctors say. Here’s how” »

face_with_colon_three could heal body parts in humans.

The generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from somatic cells using gene transfer opens new areas for precision medicine with personalized cell therapy and encourages the discovery of essential platforms for targeted drug development. iPSCs retain the genome of the donor, may regenerate indefinitely, and undergo differentiation into virtually any cell type of interest using a range of published protocols. There has been enormous interest among researchers regarding the application of iPSC technology to regenerative medicine and human disease modeling, in particular, modeling of neurologic diseases using patient-specific iPSCs. For instance, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and spinal cord injuries may be treated with iPSC therapy or replacement tissues obtained from iPSCs. In this review, we discuss the work so far on generation and characterization of iPSCs and focus on recent advances in the use of human iPSCs in clinical setting.

Stem cells exhibit the capacity of self-renewal and may undergo differentiation into various tissue types. These are divided into pluripotent stem cells (PSCs; embryonic stem cells [ESCs] and induced pluripotent stem cells [iPSCs]) and multipotent stem cells (adult stem cells [ASCs]) based on their differentiation capacity [⁴⁵]. PSCs, including ESCs derived from embryos and iPSCs derived by gene transfer, may undergo indefinite proliferation and differentiate into different types of tissues depending on the treatment conditions [⁸⁶]. Multipotent stem cells, however, may be obtained from tissue-derived precursors (umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, adipose tissue, placenta, or blood), which are already grown tissues.

Circa 2010 o.o

Futurists have long dreamed of making copies of themselves that will live forever – now researchers are working out how to do it for real.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an important cause of human mortality and morbidity, which can induce serious neurological damage. At present, clinical treatments for neurological dysfunction after TBI include hyperbaric oxygen, brain stimulation and behavioral therapy, but the therapeutic effect is not satisfactory. Recent studies have found that exogenous stem cells can migrate to damaged brain tissue, then participate in the repair of damaged brain tissue by further differentiation to replace damaged cells, while releasing anti-inflammatory factors and growth factors, thereby significantly improving neurological function. This article will mainly review the effects, deficiencies and related mechanisms of different types of stem cells in TBI.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common and frequently occurring disease. According to the World Health Organization, TBI will become the main cause of human mortality and morbidity after 2020, which brings a heavy economic burden to patients and families (Maas et al., 2017). TBI is a disease which causes the destruction of normal brain function, and leads to serious physical, cognitive and emotional disorders. The pathophysiology of TBI mainly includes the break of the blood brain barrier (BBB), extensive neuroinflammation, diffuse axonal injury, and neurodegenerative lesions (Xiong et al., 2008). The pathological changes of brain injury are mainly the loss of normal tissue structure, destruction of neuronal cells and internal environment disturbance, among which neuronal cells injury is the key point. There is no effective drug treatment so far.