Paterna Biosciences says it has determined the set of instructions needed to turn sperm-making stem cells into “normal, mature” sperm.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 6
Debate on human aging and lifespan
The issue of human lifespan has long been a matter of controversy among scientists. In spite of the recent claim by Dong et al that human lifespan is limited to 115 years, with the mounting improvements in biotechnology and scientific understanding of aging, we may be confident that aging will slow down over the course of the current century extending human longevity much longer than 115 years.
Mapping immune cell interactions in gut tissue reveals changes in ulcerative colitis
In a new study published in Science Immunology, researchers at King’s College London looked at a type of tissue important for the immune response called gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT), which is located within the lining of the gut. Unlike other tissue structures in the gut lining that act as a barrier between the trillions of bacteria in the gut and the rest of the body, GALT actively transports gut microbes into the body. By doing this, GALT activates immune responses that help maintain a stable relationship with beneficial gut bacteria.
Typically, when the body encounters microbes, it triggers inflammation, sending immune cells to the affected area to fight the pathogen. However, GALT behaves differently. Despite its close and consistent interaction with microbes, GALT does not become inflamed.
To understand how GALT achieves this, the team mapped the interactions and locations of immune cells in GALT. They also looked at how these interactions changed in ulcerative colitis—an inflammatory bowel disease in which parts of the large bowel become swollen, inflamed and ulcerated. According to Crohn’s & Colitis UK, at least 1 in every 233 people in the U.K. have ulcerative colitis. The condition can significantly affect quality of life. Previous research has linked GALT in the appendix to ulcerative colitis.
Many cancers originate from a single cancer cell and evolve through early bursts of chromosome changes
A comprehensive multi-cancer study by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has revealed that cancer cells within tumors are genetically diverse, yet all carry the same core genetic changes that can be traced back to a common ancestral cell, providing a single-cell view of how tumors adapt, survive and diversify. Understanding this helps explain why some cancer cells manage to survive treatment, paving the way for more tailored diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.
The study, published in Cancer Discovery, was led by Nicholas Navin, Ph.D., chair of Systems Biology. The research shows that cancer cells do not evolve slowly over time, but rather grow through sudden bursts of rapid genetic changes that include copy number alterations (CNAs)—gains or losses of entire sections of DNA. This creates a family tree of distinct new subpopulations that can influence tumor aggressiveness, metastasis and treatment response.
“Our findings provide the clearest views to date of how cancers originate and evolve at the single-cell level,” Navin said. “By revealing both the shared early genetic events and the bursts that drive ongoing diversity, we now have a roadmap for developing smarter clinical diagnostic and treatment strategies to improve patient outcomes.”
‘TRANSFORM human history’: Doctor issues BOLD stance on anti-aging shot
Board-certified family physician Dr. Gabrielle Lyon discusses groundbreaking anti-aging research during ‘America’s Newsroom,’ including a gene therapy that could reverse biological aging.
Dell CEO Michael Dell makes one of largest public university donations in US history, ‘gifts’ $750 million to the University of …
Dell CEO Michael Dell has donated $750 million to the University of Texas at Austin, marking one of the largest donations ever made to a public university in the United States. The gift will help fund a new healthcare and research campus, including what the university describes as the country’s first artificial intelligence-native hospital.
The Future of Neuroscience Is Growing and Reviving Human Brains
Further Reading.
Thumbnail image credit: Not alive, but not dead… FEATURED SCIENCE ARTICLE.
Brain background: Nexorg.
Brain organoid images: Elke Gabriel.
Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing.
https://www.science.org/content/artic…
Restoration of brain circulation and cellular functions hours.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30996…
Vascularizing organoids-on-chip for perfused and personalized models.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/artic…
Startup Testing Drugs on Freshly Extracted Human Brains That Are Kept On Life Support.
https://futurism.com/health-medicine/.…
Cerebral organoids transplantation repairs infarcted cortex and restores impaired function after stroke https://www.nature.com/articles/s4153…
World First: Patient Receives High-Risk Therapy to Make Cells Young Again
An eagerly awaited and controversial clinical trial to ‘wind back the clock’ on aging cells in the eye and restore them to a more youthful state has officially begun.
This week, the United States biotechnology company Life Biosciences, Inc. announced that it had dosed its first patient with an experimental therapy designed to reverse age-related vision loss.
The ambitious idea is to turn back aging by activating three genes in retinal ganglion cells, which connect the brain to the eyes.
Bacteria reveal ‘glue’ protein that fastens antibiotic-resistant outer membrane to cell wall
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame and collaborators have discovered a key process in how the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria attaches to the cell wall, advancing the understanding of how these bacteria frequently develop resistance to antibiotics.
The research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, was carried out in the laboratory of Shahriar Mobashery, Navari Professor of Life Sciences in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, with structural aspects of the study performed by Juan A. Hermoso of the Institute of Physical Chemistry “Blas Cabrera” in Madrid, Spain. The researchers discovered that the protein PA2854 performs the reaction that keeps the outside layers, or envelope, of gram-negative bacteria connected to each other.
Mobashery and collaborators studied the process in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), a ubiquitous antibiotic-resistant bacterium commonly affecting people with cystic fibrosis. P. aeruginosa, like other gram-negative bacteria including E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Salmonella, is shielded by a three-layer biological envelope that prevents many antibiotics from penetrating and damaging the bacteria. Gram-positive bacteria do not have an outer membrane and are generally more susceptible to antibiotics.