Lifeboat Foundation

Previous versions of a vaccine that Mayo Clinic was working on were a lot more invasive than their current one. This shot is administered easily and requires no special bells and whistles.

“It’s supposed to be just off the shelf, kind of similar to when you get the flu shot or pneumonia shot,” Chumsri said.

The team is working on vaccines for every stage of breast cancer. They’ve already started using this vaccine on two new patients, and they are looking for additional trial subjects. If you’re interested in being a part of the next trial at the Mayo Clinic, you can search through your options here.

2019 is quite a milestone for LEAF; this will be our fourth year of bringing you the latest industry news, organizing online events, hosting our annual conference in New York, and crowdsourcing important research projects over at Lifespan.io. We have been incredibly busy and, as has been customary in previous years, we will be taking a look back at the year.

January

Continue reading “Looking Back at 2019 – and Forward to 2020” »

For your 2020 New Year’s resolutions, think about keeping the microbes that live inside your gut healthy. Look after them and they’ll look after you.

Utilizing a recently developed brain imaging technique new research suggests that measuring accumulated levels of a protein called tau may predict future neurodegeneration associated with Alzihemer’s disease. The discovery promises to accelerate clinical trial research offering a novel way to predict the progression of the disease before major symptoms appear.

Exactly what occurs in the human brain during the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease remains quite a mystery for dementia researchers. While studies have homed in on several pathological signs signaling moderate to severe cases of Alzheimer’s, it’s still unclear what the initial triggers for the disease are, and without this vital information scientists are struggling to generate effective drugs and treatments to slow or prevent the disease.

The two big pathological signs of Alzheimer’s most researchers agree on are accumulations of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain. Abnormal aggregations of amyloid proteins, into what are referred to as plaques, are generally considered to be the primary causative mechanism behind Alzheimer’s. Masses of misfolding tau proteins, forming what are known as neurofibrillary tangles, are also seen in the disease.

Physicists Neil Turok and Sabine Hossenfelder are among those who worry that physics is in a funk, in part because of the love of “beautiful” mathematics.

Brain organoids are made from human pluripotent stem cells, which are cells that can become any kind of cell in the adult body. When the stem cells are introduced to certain chemicals, they can be coaxed into becoming brain cells, then put into a liquid with the nutrients they need to survive.

“The amazing thing is that, after this, they pretty much do everything alone,” says Alysson Muotri, a molecular biologist at UC San Diego. The cells self-assemble into spheres that contain neural progenitor cells, or cells that will become brain cells. Over the course of a few weeks, those cells turn into different kinds of neurons that can act just like neurons in the human brain.

In a study preprint published on bioRxiv and presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference last month, Muotri and his colleagues reported that they recorded spontaneous and complex electrical activity from their lab-grown mini brains. It’s the first time that brain organoids have spontaneously produced brain waves similar to human brain activity, Nature reported.

No one at the Pentagon is saying that the objects are extraterrestrial, but the Navy has issued new classified guidance for reporting unexplained aerial phenomena.

The Pentagon launched an airstrike Thursday night that killed a powerful Iranian military leader, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at Baghdad’s international airport.

The Defense Department said it conducted the attack at President Donald Trump’s direction as a “defensive action” against Soleimani, who it said was planning further attacks on American diplomats and service members.

Soleimani is an extremely influential figure inside Iran, heading Iran’s elite Quds Force, part of the country’s hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps.

A wave of startups wants to make brain-computer interfaces accessible without needing surgery. Just strap on the device and think.