Lifeboat Foundation

Interesting read.

When Hippocrates first described cancer around 400 B.C., he referred to the disease’s telltale tumors as “karkinos” — the Greek word for crab. The “Father of Western Medicine” likely noted that cancer’s creeping projections mirrored certain crustaceans, and the tumors ‘ characteristic hardness resembled a crab’s armored shell.

Later, scientists added another attribute: Tumors are hypoxic. That is, they grow so large and dense that they exclude blood vessels, causing a lack of oxygen in their cores. But what role these characteristics play in the development of cancer has remained a mystery.

Continue reading “Stiff and Oxygen-Deprived Tumors Promote Spread of Cancer” »

Adding flouride to drinking water is a safe and effective measure for preventing tooth decay, National Health and Medical Research Council analysis finds.

Endosonographic imaging is more accurate than surgery for staging of lung cancer, but a new study suggests it has no effect on rates of survival.

Definitely a big deal.

I look forward to the day when everything lives and adapts as well as interacts in their environments. Buildings, machines, autos, planes, etc. Last month we read about the living buildings that DARPA is focused on that utilizes synthetic cells which enables buildings and other structures to self repair themselves much like human cells do.

Definitely glad to see more and more people jump on the Singularity path.

Continue reading “Tuning materials and devices to adapt to their environment” »

TheTribune: NEW DELHI: Russian researchers have developed a nanotechnology tool for early diagnosis of cancer and are planning to launch clinical trials of the product in 2018.

Luv this.

Researchers believe they can control the microscopic ‘fish’ to deliver drugs inside humans where they’re needed.

In early 2016 University Professor of Applied Physics Stephen Arnold earned a patent for his system for finding the size of one or more individual particles (such as nanoparticles) in real time using a microsphere’s whispering gallery modes.

Arnold and his team at Tandon’s MicroParticle PhotoPhysics Laboratory for BioPhotonics (MP3L) had generated excitement throughout the scientific community in 2012, when they created an ultra-sensitive biosensor capable of identifying the smallest single virus particles in solution.

Their technique was a major advance in a series of experiments to devise a diagnostic method sensitive enough to detect and a single virus particle in a doctor’s office or field clinic, without the need for special assay preparations or conditions. Normally, such assessment required the virus to be measured in the vacuum environment of an electron microscope, which added time, complexity and considerable cost.

Continue reading “Whispering gallery-mode biosensors are worth shouting about” »

A good summary article about the MitoSENS AMA on Reddit Futurology yesterday.

Aubrey de Grey, who should need little introduction here, is cofounder of the SENS Research Foundation, while Matthew O’Connor leads the foundation’s in-house research efforts. O’Connor’s focus is on the allotopic expression of mitochondrial genes, the complicated form of gene therapy needed to copy versions of these genes from the vulnerable mitochondrial genome into the much more secure nuclear genome, but altered in such a way that the resulting proteins can find their way back to the mitochondria where they are needed. Earlier today de Grey and O’Connor stopped by /r/futurology at Reddit to answer questions on this and other SENS rejuvenation research initiatives. One of the many benefits brought by this modern age of near zero cost communication is the way in which the barrier between researchers, supporters, and the public at large has faded to the point of non-existence. Any interested party can in a few minutes find out who is working in any specific areas of interest and reach out with questions or offers of support. Any researcher can find out where the interested parties congregate to talk about their research and join in. That was science fiction just a few decades ago. The world moves at a fast pace.

Once allotopic expression of the thirteen crucial mitochondrial genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation is realized, undergoing this gene therapy will ensure that the accumulation of mitochondrial DNA damage that occurs over the years no longer contributes to degenerative aging as it does today. It will be an actual, working narrowly focused rejuvenation therapy. As an incidental benefit, this technology will also provide cures for a range of inherited mitochondrial diseases. This work has been underway both at the SENS Research Foundation and in allied labs for some years now, and the biotech company Gensight has been founded on success in allotopic expression of the gene ND4. The SENS Research Foundation in-house team recently achieved success for the mitochondrial genes ATP6 and ATP8, and had a paper accepted by a noted journal, which all in all is a great step forward in a field that has proven to be quite challenging.

Continue reading “Aubrey de Grey and Matthew O’Connor of the SENS Research Foundation Answer Questions on Mitochondrial Research at /r/futurology” »

SRF Summer scholar cited in nature article about the high costs of drug development and how we can reduce them.

In a pioneering move, the compound JQ1 was released to the community for free. The impact that this has had on research and development is slowly coming into focus.