Lifeboat Foundation

Three studies showing large DNA deletions and reshuffling heighten safety concerns about heritable genome editing.

While there are ways to alleviate some symptoms, there is currently no way to prevent or cure Parkinson’s disease, so the prospect of a one-off treatment that completely eliminates it is certainly an exciting one. While such a therapy remains a while off, scientists have demonstrated an exciting proof of concept in mice, whereby inhibiting a single gene as a one-time treatment eradicated the disease entirely, and kept it at bay for the remainder of their lives.

The research was carried out at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and centers on a protein called PTB, which plays a role in which genes are switch on and off in a cell. The team was experimenting with techniques whereby the gene that encodes for PTB is switched off so researchers can determine the flow-on effects of a reduction in the that protein on other cell types, and found peculiar results when working with connective tissue cells called fibroblasts.

In one experiment, the team created a cell line that was permanently lacking PTB, and after a couple of weeks found that there was only a small amount of fibroblasts remaining in the dish, which was brimming with neurons instead. Building on this, the team was able to use a single treatment to inhibit the activity of PTB in mice, which reprogrammed support cells in the brain called astrocytes into neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Leading futurist Tracey Follows has written an article at Forbes on #transhumanism documentary IMMORTALITY OR BUST. Check it out!

Zoltan has a more radical idea of change than almost anything else you are seeing on your TV screens today but the mainstream media continue to miss him. That’s why it’s good to see he has made his own documentary film explaining to a broader audience what he’s doing, how it all works, and why they should be interested in transhumanism at all.

Continue reading “Immortality Or Bust: Transhumanism In The White House” »

Tweaking an immune protein called interleukin-18 can overcome tumors that lure it into binding with a decoy receptor protein and render it harmless to cancer cells, new research in mice shows. In conjunction with the paper, published Wednesday in Nature, a company founded by senior author Aaron Ring announced $25 million in initial financing to create and commercialize a drug based on the discovery.

The approach adds another weapon to an immunotherapy arsenal that activates immune responses hijacked by cancer. Checkpoint inhibitors, for example, take the brakes off immune cells that should battle invaders. IL-18 is a cytokine that normally activates T cells and natural killer cells, two immune forces that fight infection, but it’s disarmed by the decoy wielded by tumors.

Approach could lead to new ways to treat epilepsy, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease.

While some cholesterol is a healthy thing for properly functioning cells, too much of it can cause blockages in the arteries and heart trouble, along with a host of other negative health outcomes. Scientists have discovered a new mechanism by which a “bad” type of cholesterol gains entry to the cells, identifying a pair of proteins that work like an entry tunnel. These proteins show promise as new targets for drugs that could lower cholesterol levels in the blood to help prevent disease.

The discovery made by an international team of researchers was only possible thanks to advances in imaging technology that enabled them to inspect proteins at a near-atomic level. In this case, the team were investigating the role two proteins, NPC1 and NPC2, play in transporting low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, often referred to as “bad” cholesterol, into our cells.

“Before 2013 we often had to theorise about how membrane proteins worked and how they functioned, but now we can actually see them, and seeing is believing,” says study author Prof Rob Yang from the UNSW in Australia. “We were able to look at the NPC1 and NPC2 proteins and see exactly the role they play in transporting this LDL cholesterol into the cell.”

NDSU researchers recently developed a new method of creating quantum dots made of silicon. Quantum dots, or nanocrystals, are tiny nanometer-scale pieces of semiconductor that emit light when their electrons are exposed to UV light. The most common application of quantum dots is in QLED displays. Through their use, digital displays have become brighter and much thinner, resulting in improvements to television and, potentially, cell-phone technology.

Because silicon is abundant and nontoxic, silicon quantum dots have unique technological appeal. Silicon quantum dots are currently being used for applications such as windows that remain transparent while serving as active photovoltaic collectors of energy, and they hold promise in medicine where quantum dots are coated with organic molecules to create nontoxic fluorescent biomarkers.

While traditional methods for creating silicon quantum dots require dangerous materials such as silicon tetrahydride (silane) gas or hydrofluoric acid, the NDSU team’s research uses a liquid form of silicon to make the tiny particles at room temperature using relatively benign components.

As part of their studies, the scientists also examined the mechanisms by which some of the modified drugs were altered by the cultured microbiomes. To understand exactly how the transformations occurred, they traced the source of the chemical transformations to particular bacterial species and to genes within those bacteria. They also showed that microbiome-derived metabolic reactions discoverable using their approach could be recapitulated in a mouse model, which is the first step in adapting the approach for human drug development.

The framework could feasibly be used to aid drug discovery by identifying potential drug-microbiome interactions early in development, and so inform on formulation changes. It could also be used during clinical trials to better analyze drug toxicity and efficacy, and be harnessed to help personalize treatment to the microbiome of each patient. This could help to predict how a certain drug will behave, and suggest changes to the therapeutic strategy if undesired effects are predicted. “Our framework identifies novel drug-microbiome interactions that vary between individuals and demonstrates how the gut microbiome might be used in drug development and personalized medicine,” the team concluded.

“This is a case where medicine and ecology collide,” said Jaime Lopez, a graduate student in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and a co-first author on the study, who contributed the computational and quantitative analysis of the data. “The bacteria in these microbial communities help each other survive, and they influence each other’s enzymatic profiles. This is something you would never capture if you didn’t study it in a community.”

Continue reading “Gut Microbiome Could Potentially Make Some Medicines Toxic, Study Finds” »

The loose alliance, whose backers include Infosys Ltd. co-founders Nandan Nilekani and Kris Gopalakrishnan as well as prominent startups from Practo to Policybazaar, will be formally unveiled as soon as this week in an attempt to salvage a decrepit system by digitizing everything from patient data and records to creating online platforms for hospital care and doctor consultations. Called Swasth — meaning health in Hindi — its 100-plus members have pledged to build new services and coordinate efforts to improve emergency responses.

Some of India’s richest people form an alliance with tech entrepreneurs to fix the country’s broken healthcare system.