Lifeboat Foundation

Last week, the FDA approved the first 3D-printed prescription drug, essentially validating the technology as a new heavyweight player in big pharma. “This may be the first truly mass manufactured product made by 3D printing,” said Dr. Michael Cima, a professor at MIT who helped invent the pill-printing technology back in 1997, in an email to Singularity Hub. “It’s revolutionary.”

The printed pill, SPRITAM levetiracetam, is a drug that fights many kinds of epileptic seizures. The brainchild of a little-known Ohio-based company Aprecia, SPRITAM is essentially an old drug ingredient packaged into a brand new, more effective delivery system. Unlike current formulations of the same drug, SPRITAM immediately dissolves upon contact with water and bursts into effect — a property obviously beneficial when trying to curtail sudden-onset seizure episodes.

Read more

Checkout the latest Longevity Reporter Newsletter (15th August, 2015), covering this week’s top news in health, aging, longevity

This week: ‘Danielle’ — An Eye Opening Simulation Of The Aging Process; How Does Chronic Inflammation Lead To Cancer?; Low Inflammation and Telomere Maintenance Predict Healthy Longevity; 3-D Printing: Could Downloadable Medicine Be The Future?; And more.

Read more

Blind mice with destroyed retinas ran away from a swooping owl after treatment reprogrammed different cells in their eyes to detect light.

Read more

Researchers from the University of Bristol in the UK and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) in Japan, have developing an optical chip that can process photons in an infinite number of ways.

It’s a major step forward in creating a quantum computer to solve problems such as designing new drugs, superfast database searches, and performing otherwise intractable mathematics that aren’t possible for super computers.

The fully reprogrammable chip brings together a multitude of existing quantum experiments and can realise a plethora of future protocols that have not even been conceived yet, marking a new era of research for quantum scientists and engineers at the cutting edge of quantum technologies.

Read more

“A protein found in the blood of young animals called GDF-11 is inducing systemic rejuvenation effects on bone, muscle, heart, blood vessels, and brains of older animals.

“GDF” stands for growth differentiating factor. It functions to turn “on” senescent stem cells, which results in a restoration of youthful structure and function to senile tissues. This same protein (GDF-11) is found in young humans as well as animals.

Harvard, Stanford, and other universities are conducting remarkable studies showing age reversal in animal models. Researchers from these centers of medical innovation are optimistic that this approach might be applicable to humans.”

Continue reading “Report: Human Age Reversal Research” »

A universal therapy that targets mis-folded proteins is a very significant step forward if clinical trials in humans translate from animals. Obviously there is more work to be done but it this is the kind of technology we need in order to intervene against biological aging.

It is not hard to see that a therapy like this followed up by another that regenerates the brain eg, the Conboy Lab work by promoting neurogenesis could be a way to repair and restore the brain to healthy function.

A drug that breaks up different types of brain plaque shows promising results in animals and could prevent Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Read more

You may remember neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis — he built the brain-controlled exoskeleton that allowed a paralyzed man to kick the first ball of the 2014 World Cup. What’s he working on now? Building ways for two minds (rats and monkeys, for now) to send messages brain to brain. Watch to the end for an experiment that, as he says, will go to “the limit of your imagination.”

Read more

Research on a cell signalling pathway common to mammals has now uncovered a signalling pathway and specific protein, which might act as a regulator in regeneration.

Read more

Two-hit model of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (credit: ILSI Europe)

In an open-access paper in the British Journal of Nutrition, a coalition of 17 experts explain how elevated unresolved chronic inflammation is involved a range of chronic diseases, and how nutrition influences inflammatory processes and helps reduce chronic risk of diseases.

According to the authors, “the nutrition status of the individual with for example a deficiency or excess of certain micronutrients (e.g. folate, vitamin B12, vitamin B6, vitamin 1, vitamin E, zinc) may lead to an ineffective or excessive inflammatory response.

Continue reading “Controlling inflammation to reduce chronic disease risk” »