Lifeboat Foundation

A research team led by the University of Cologne has identified the transcription factor Ets21c as a vital regulator of the regenerative system within the adult intestine of the fruit fly Drosophila. The study highlights the existence of trade-off mechanisms between stress resilience and longevity.

The intestinal epithelium is involved in nutrient absorption and digestion, but also serves as a selective barrier that prevents the intrusion of pathogens and toxic substances. The intestine is renewed over an organism’s lifetime through the function of stem cells that are capable of differentiating to maintain the tissue integrity and function.

On the other hand, stem cell malfunctions have been linked to tissue degeneration or cancer development. The research is shedding new light on the molecular basis of the regenerative processes under both favorable and stressful conditions.

The saying “God doesn’t play dice” is meant to suggest that nothing happens by chance. On the other hand, cancer seems like the ultimate happenstance: Don’t we all have a 43-year-old, vegan, triathlete friend fighting cancer? Does this mean that cancer plays dice? According to the traditional model of how cancer develops, yes: Every time a cell divides, you roll a die, and the more years you roll, the greater your chance of rolling an unfortunate mutation that causes cancer. Some young people get very unlucky and some older people get very lucky, but overall, the longer you live, the more times you roll the die, the greater your risk of developing cancer. It makes perfect sense.

Only, a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the journal eLife points out a simple problem with this model: Many cancers require more than one activating mutation. In other words, not only one but multiple unlikely bad things have to happen to cause cancer. Think of this like rolling multiple dice, or perhaps like rolling an unlucky number on a single die, multiple times. Say you’re rolling a 100-sided die with “42” being a cancer-causing mutation. You would expect it to take longer to roll four 42s than it does to roll one 42, right?

But the current study shows that no matter the number of unlucky events needed to cause a specific kind of cancer, cancer risk rises equally with age. On average, it takes only one mutation to cause mesothelioma, eleven mutations to cause colorectal cancer, and four mutations to cause pancreatic cancer. But despite the dramatically different Vegas odds of “rolling” one, four and eleven “42s,” the incidence of these cancers goes up uniformly with age, accelerating from about age 60 to about age 85. In this case, it does not, in fact, take longer to roll eleven 42s than it takes to roll one 42.

Continue reading “New study points out simple problem with existing model of cancer” »

You’re probably familiar with Johnson & Johnson family products. I remember using it as a child and well into my teen years. But what I, and many people to this day didn’t know, was that their products contain cancer-causing ingredients.

Although Johnson & Johnson labels their bath products as being “baby safe,” they have recently faced lawsuits and public outrage over their baby products and the ingredients they use.

The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit environmental research organization, describes the dangers of the ingredients used in Johnson & Johnson products. These ingredients include quaternium-15 and 1,4-dioxane.

Continue reading “Johnson & Johnson Finally Admits: Our Baby Products Contain Cancer-Causing Ingredients” »

21st Century Medicine has developed an entire platform technology focused on the creation and commercialization of hypothermic preservation and cryopreservation techniques that enable protection, preservation, transportation, storage & future use of valuable living systems. These developments have taken science far beyond conventional preservation limits. 21CM scientists continue to prove long-term protection and preservation of complex living systems is not only possible, but commercially viable.

It means that a vital link has been created that we call “Bio Logistics”.

Biopharmaceutical companies get a larger window in which to test new drug candidates on viable premade and cryopreserved tissue slices that function like fresh.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. women will soon have another drug option designed to boost low sex drive: a shot they can give themselves in the thigh or abdomen that raises sexual interest for several hours.

The medication OK’d Friday by the Food and Drug Administration is only the second approved to increase sexual desire in a women, a market drugmakers have been trying to cultivate since the blockbuster success of Viagra for men in the late 1990s. The other drug is a daily pill.

The upside of the new drug “is that you only use it when you need it,” said Dr. Julia Johnson, a reproductive specialist at UMass Memorial Medical Center who was not involved in its development. “The downside is that it’s a shot — and some people are very squeamish.”

The scene resembles a typical blind speed-dating event: 13 women and 13 men, seated on either side of a bamboo screen in an upmarket Tokyo restaurant, are chatting in pairs on a strictly timed three-minute rotation.

But the doctor hovering on the fringes and the scientific documents held in the participant’s hands, however, offer a hint that this is no ordinary dating event: for everyone attending has undergone a DNA test in a bid to find their best romantic match.

Welcome to the world of DNA matchmaking. Forget hobbies, professions, ages or nose sizes: one critical new criteria for finding the perfect partner was recently added to Japan’s fast-paced dating world, with the launch of a new service that promises to find love based on genetic compatibility.

Continue reading “Japanese sign up for DNA matchmaking as country faces demographic crisis” »

Scientists reverse Alzheimer’s Disease in human cells by editing a single gene.

https://www.undoing-aging.org/videos/joachim-lingner-present…9zu0y1nVCg

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Human sensory and motor systems provide the natural means for the exchange of information between individuals, and, hence, the basis for human civilization. The recent development of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) has provided an important element for the creation of brain-to-brain communication systems, and precise brain stimulation techniques are now available for the realization of non-invasive computer-brain interfaces (CBI). These technologies, BCI and CBI, can be combined to realize the vision of non-invasive, computer-mediated brain-to-brain (B2B) communication between subjects (hyperinteraction). Here we demonstrate the conscious transmission of information between human brains through the intact scalp and without intervention of motor or peripheral sensory systems. Pseudo-random binary streams encoding words were transmitted between the minds of emitter and receiver subjects separated by great distances, representing the realization of the first human brain-to-brain interface. In a series of experiments, we established internet-mediated B2B communication by combining a BCI based on voluntary motor imagery-controlled electroencephalographic (EEG) changes with a CBI inducing the conscious perception of phosphenes (light flashes) through neuronavigated, robotized transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), with special care taken to block sensory (tactile, visual or auditory) cues. Our results provide a critical proof-of-principle demonstration for the development of conscious B2B communication technologies. More fully developed, related implementations will open new research venues in cognitive, social and clinical neuroscience and the scientific study of consciousness. We envision that hyperinteraction technologies will eventually have a profound impact on the social structure of our civilization and raise important ethical issues.

Citation: Grau C, Ginhoux R, Riera A, Nguyen TL, Chauvat H, Berg M, et al. (2014) Conscious Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans Using Non-Invasive Technologies. PLoS ONE 9: e105225. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.

Editor: Mikhail A. Lebedev, Duke University, United States of America.