Lifeboat Foundation

In a new study, a molecule identified and synthesized by UCLA Health researchers was shown to restore cognitive functions in mice with symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease by effectively jumpstarting the brain’s memory circuitry.

If proven to have similar effects in humans, the candidate compound would be novel among Alzheimer’s disease treatments in its ability to revitalize memory and cognition, study authors said.

There is really nothing like this on the market or experimentally that has been shown to do this.

Anyone who’s tried to neatly gather a fitted sheet can tell you: folding is hard. Get it wrong with your laundry and the result can be a crumpled, wrinkled mess of fabric, but when folding fails among the approximately 7,000 proteins with an origami-like complexity that regulate essential cellular functions, the result can lead to one of a multitude of serious diseases ranging from emphysema and cystic fibrosis to Alzheimer’s disease.

For decades, scientists have focused on how the brain processes information in a hierarchical manner, with different brain areas specialized for different tasks. However, how these areas communicate and integrate information to form a coherent whole has remained a mystery.

Now, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have brought us closer to solving it by observing how neurons synchronize across the human brain while reading. The findings are published in Nature Human Behavior and are also the basis of a thesis by UC San Diego School of Medicine doctoral candidate Jacob Garrett.

“How the activity of the brain relates to the subjective experience of consciousness is one of the fundamental unanswered questions in modern neuroscience,” said study senior author Eric Halgren, Ph.D., professor in the Departments of Neurosciences and Radiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

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Scientists at Stanford University have developed a method for 3D-printing human heart tissue that could eventually be implanted into patients.

Continue reading “3D-Printing Heart Tissue With Human Stem Cells” »

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Pediatric Research volume 83, pages 223–231 (2018) Cite this article.

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The team created a cell-containing “bioink” and used it to 3D print the organ layer by layer.

Aging is the major risk factor for the development of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia. Therefore, drugs that slow the aging process may help extend both lifespan and healthspan (the length of time that people are healthy).

In a study published online on February 29 in Medical Research Archives, Albert Einstein College of Medicine researchers evaluated U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs for their anti-aging potential. In ranking those drugs, they gave equal weight to preclinical studies (i.e., effect on rodent lifespan and healthspan) and clinical studies (i.e., reduced mortality from diseases the drugs were not intended to treat). The four therapeutics judged most promising for targeting aging were SGLT2 inhibitors, metformin, bisphosphonates, and GLP-1 receptor agonists. Since these drugs have been approved for safety and used extensively, the researchers recommend they be evaluated for their anti-aging potential in large-scale clinical trials.

The study’s corresponding author was Nir Barzilai, M.D., director of Einstein’s Institute for Aging Research, professor of medicine and of genetics and the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research at Einstein, and a member of the National Cancer Institute–designated Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center. The lead author was Michael Leone, a medical student at Einstein.

This new titanium heart has a mag lev inside to spin continuously and pump at the same rate as a normal heart.

Heart failure is a global epidemic affecting at least 26 million people worldwide, 6.2 million adults in the U.S., and is increasing in prevalence. Heart transplantations are reserved for those with severe heart failure and are limited to fewer than 6,000 procedures per year globally.

Consequently, the U.S. National Institutes of Health estimated that up to 100,000 patients could immediately benefit from mechanical circulatory support (MCS), and the European market is similarly sized. Without intervention, patients with severe HF have a bleak outlook. For these patients, drug therapy is a limited, relatively ineffective option. Although a heart transplant would meet their needs, only 6,000 donor hearts are available globally each year.

Continue reading “Replacing Hearts. Restoring Lives” »

For the first time, the fully mechanical heart made by BiVACOR, which uses the same technology as high-speed rail lines, has been implanted inside a human being. The feat marks a major step in keeping people alive as they wait for heart transplants.

The total artificial heart (TAH) was implanted as part of an early feasibility study overseen by the US Food and Drug Administration. According to a statement from the Texas Heart Institute where the implantation surgery was carried out, the heart “is a titanium-constructed biventricular rotary blood pump with a single moving part that utilizes a magnetically levitated rotor that pumps the blood and replaces both ventricles of a failing heart.”

BiVACOR, which has been working on the device since 2013, says that the advantage of using a magnetically levitated rotor to drive the device’s blood-circulating function is that there is no friction, which can be such a damaging force to machinery that scientists are looking at ways to reduce its effects. The device is by no means the first artificial heart to be used – the first successful implant took place in 1969 – but it is the first to employ this novel use of maglev technology.