Lifeboat Foundation

The future of CRISPR involves clinical trials focused on treatment for blood diseases and cancers, cardiovascular disease, T1D, and HIV.

A GROUNDBREAKING cancer vaccine could stop tumours growing in patients with advanced disease, researchers say.

Designed to prime the body to recognise and fight cancer cells, the jab could stimulate the immune system to help treat the disease more effectively, early trial results show.

Researchers described the results as “an important first step” in developing a new treatment for people with advanced cancers.

Cleveland Clinic researchers have made a significant discovery about how the gut microbiome interacts with cells to cause cardiovascular disease. The study published in Nature Communications found that phenylacetylglutamine (PAG), produced by gut bacteria as a waste product, then absorbed and formed in the liver, interacts with previously undiscovered locations on beta-2 adrenergic receptors on heart cells once it enters the circulation.

PAG was shown to interact with beta-2 adrenergic receptors to influence how forcefully the heart muscle cells contract—a process that investigators believe contributes to heart failure. Researchers showed mutating parts of the beta-2 adrenergic receptor that were previously thought to be unrelated to signaling activity in preclinical models prevented PAG from depressing the function of the receptor.

This is the latest in a series of investigations into PAG, led by Stanley Hazen, MD, Ph.D., chair of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences in Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute and co-section head of Preventive Cardiology. Dr. Hazen’s lab previously demonstrated that elevated circulating levels of PAG in subjects are associated with heightened risk for developing heart failure, and lead to worse outcomes for patients with heart failure.

A new study has uncovered significant differences in how male and female mice process threats, even as they exhibit similar behavioural responses. The discovery suggests that including both male and female subjects in neuroscience research will lead to more accurate conclusions and ultimately better health outcomes. Understanding the influence of sex on brain function can help explain why males and females develop certain psychiatric disorders at different rates or with different symptoms, the researchers said. ‘Unless we thoughtfully and rigorously integrate sex into biomedical research, a huge amount of the population may be underserved by scientific knowledge,’ said McGill University Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Neurogenomics Rosemary Bagot, who led the study. ‘Our work shows that sex is an important variable to consider, even if initial observations don’t necessarily show clear sex differences,” said Bagot. “If males and females are using different brain circuits to solve similar problems, they may be differently vulnerable to stress and respond differently to treatments.’ How brain circuits process threats and cues The study focused on two related brain circuits and their roles in processing information about threats and the cues that predict them. The researchers trained mice to recognize a sound that signalled a threat and another sound that meant safety. By observing brain activity, the team saw how communication between different brain areas processed these signals. Then, they temporarily turned off each brain connection to see how it affected the mice’s reactions, helping them understand how the brain handles threats. ‘We found that even though male and female mice respond similarly to threats, the brain circuits underlying these responses are not the same,’ Bagot said. For female mice, a connection between two specific brain areas (the medial prefrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens) played a key role. The study found that in male mice, a different connection (between the ventral hippocampus and the nucleus accumbens) was more important for handling the same situation. It was previously assumed that similar behavior meant similar brain function. Now, the researchers are exploring how sex impacts brain circuits in processing threats, focusing on the role of sex hormones and different learning strategies. This research is supported by funding from CIHR. About the study Sex-biased neural encoding of threat discrimination in nucleus accumbens afferents drives suppression of reward behavior by Jessie Muir, Eshaan Iyer et al., was published in Nature Neuroscience.

“As complex living systems, we likely have trillions upon trillions of tiny nanoscopic holes in our cells that facilitate and regulate the crucial processes that keep us alive and make up who are,” says Marija Drndić, a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania who develops synthetic versions of the biological pores that “guide the exchange of ions and molecules throughout the body.”

The ability to control and monitor the flow of molecules through these pores has opened new avenues for research in the last two decades, according to Drndić, and the field of synthetic nanopores, where materials like graphene and silicon are drilled with tiny holes, has already led to significant advances in DNA sequencing.

In a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology (“Coupled nanopores for single-molecule detection”), Drndić and Dimitri Monos, her longtime collaborator at the Perelman School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), presented a new kind of nanopore technology with the development of a dual-layer nanopore system: a design that consists of two or more nanopores, stacked just nanometers apart, which allows for more precise detection and control of molecules like DNA as they pass through.

Noncanonical amino acids are efficiently incorporated into proteins by optimizing mRNA codon usage.

Given the right conditions, certain types of cells are able to self-assemble into new lifeforms after the organism they were once part of has died.

Google researchers have created an innovative AI model called Health Acoustic Representations (HeAR), designed to identify acoustic biomarkers for diseases like tuberculosis.

It can listen to human sounds and flag early signs of disease.

Continue reading “New AI model helps researchers detect disease based on coughs” »

Dr. Sam Parnia talks about reviving people adter they died. Very informative. Fast forward a little to listen to it.