Lifeboat Foundation

(https://isbscience.org/bio/leroy-hood/) is Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer and Professor, at the Institute of Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, as well as CEO of Phenome Health (https://phenomehealth.org/), a nonprofit organization dedicated to delivering value through health innovation focused on his P4 model of health (Predictive, Preventive, Personalized and Participatory) where a patient’s unique individuality is acknowledged, respected, and leveraged for the benefit of everyone.

Dr. Hood, who is a world-renowned scientist and recipient of the National Medal of Science in 2011, co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in 2000 and served as its first President from 2000–2017. In 2016, ISB affiliated with Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH) and Dr. Hood became PSJH’s Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer.

Continue reading “Dr. Leroy Hood, MD, Ph.D. — Co-Founder, Institute of Systems Biology (ISB); CEO, Phenome Health” »

The adoption of AI in clinical settings has increased exponentially over the past decade, but AI models still haven’t achieved the level of ubiquity that they could within the sector.

A few years ago, a group of Mayo Clinic researchers recognized this major problem. The health system was producing a huge amount of research on AI in clinical contexts, but it was still having a hard time actually deploying those AI models at scale.

Continue reading “Mayo Clinic-born Startup Scores $7.7M for Its Clinical AI Deployment Platform” »

A new study adds to an emerging, radically new picture of how bacterial cells continually repair faulty sections of their DNA.

Published online May 16 in the journal Cell, the report describes the molecular mechanism behind a DNA repair pathway that counters the mistaken inclusion of a certain type of molecular building block, ribonucleotides, into genetic codes. Such mistakes are frequent in code-copying process in bacteria and other organisms. Given that ribonucleotide misincorporation can result in detrimental DNA code changes (mutations) and DNA breaks, all organisms have evolved to have a DNA repair pathway called ribonucleotide excision repair (RER) that quickly fixes such errors.

Last year a team led by Evgeny Nudler, Ph.D., the Julie Wilson Anderson Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at NYU Langone Health, published two analyses of DNA repair in living E. coli cells. They found that most of the repair of certain types of DNA damage (bulky lesions), such as those caused by UV irradiation, can occur because damaged code sections have first been identified by a protein machine called RNA polymerase. RNA polymerase motors down the DNA chain, reading the code of DNA “letters” as it transcribes instructions into RNA molecules, which then direct protein building.

Dr. Steven Gazal, an assistant professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, is on a mission to answer a perplexing question: Why, despite millions of years of evolution, do humans still suffer from diseases?

As part of an international research team, Gazal has made a groundbreaking discovery. They’ve become the first to accurately pinpoint specific base pairs in the human genome that have remained unaltered throughout millions of years of mammalian evolution. These base pairs play a significant role in human disease. Their findings were published in a special Zoonomia edition of the journal Science.

Gazal and his team analyzed the genomes of 240 mammals, including humans, zooming in with unprecedented resolution to compare DNA.

Technology As A Force For Good In People’s Lives — Dr. Emre Ozcan, PhD, VP, Global Head of Digital Health & Walid Mehanna, Group Data Officer And Senior Vice President, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

EPISODE DISCLAIMER — At any time during this episode when anyone says Merck, in any context, it shall always be referring to Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Continue reading “Dr. Emre Ozcan & Walid Mehanna — Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany — Tech As A Force For Good In Health” »

Scientists with the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium have made groundbreaking progress in characterizing the fraction of human DNA that varies between individuals. They have assembled genomic sequences of 47 people from around the world into a so-called pangenome in which more than 99 percent of each sequence is rendered with high accuracy.

For two decades, scientists have relied on the human reference genome as a standard to compare against other genetic data. Thanks to this reference genome, it was possible to identify genes implicated in specific diseases and trace the evolution of human traits, among other things.

However, it has always been a flawed tool: 70% of its data came from a single man of predominantly African-European background whose DNA was sequenced during the Human Genome Project. Hence, it can reveal very little about individuals on this planet who are different from each other, creating an inherent bias in biomedical data believed to be responsible for some of the health disparities affecting patients today.

Improved, innovative strategies are needed for the prevention and promotion of recovery from mental illness as these disorders leading cause of disability worldwide. This article will review the evidence linking dietary pattern to brain-based illnesses and provide an overview of the mechanisms that underlie the association between brain health and the food we eat. Considerations for dietary intervention will be discussed including encouraging a shift towards a traditional or whole foods dietary pattern.

Robert, a 43-year-old married man who presents with irritability and a low mood for two months. He has a history of attention deficit disorder, first diagnosed two years ago, and is currently treated with Vyvanse 70 mg. While his focus and work function are improved, he reports low appetite, fatigue, and difficulty sleeping. He notes that he tends to be quite irritable during mealtimes to the extent that his wife has asked him to stay at work past dinnertime to “stay out of the way.” He feels guilty and, concerned about not connecting emotionally to his young children ages 1 and 3. Further history and medical workup reveal no substance use, no active medical issues, and blood work reveals no abnormalities.

The evidence is growing: food choice is strongly implicated in mental health risk. In cases like Robert’s, a food history is a vital piece of data, both in assessing low appetite as a possible medication side effect, or as a symptom of depression. Furthermore, a food history is imperative to understand whether targeted dietary recommendations could assist in his recovery.

Continue reading “Food, Mood, and Brain Health: Implications for the Modern Clinician” »

A team of engineers and materials scientists affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S., has developed a new way to depolymerize plastics using electrified spatiotemporal heating. In their paper, published in the journal Nature, the group describes the new process and its efficiency. Nature has also published a Research Briefing in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team.

Over the past several years, plastic pollution has become a major concern, both for the environment and for the health of plants and animals, including humans, and scientists are seeking ways to recycle it. Most of the techniques developed thus far involve using chemicals to depolymerize plastics. These efforts are still extremely inefficient, however, with yields between 10% and 25%. In this new effort, the team has found a way to use pulsed electricity to boost the yield to approximately 36%.

The approach involved designing a new kind of reactor with a porous carbon felt bilayer and a pulsed electric heater at the top. In their reactor, plastic bits are melted as they are fed in to the upper chamber and flow as a mass into a lower chamber, where the material is pushed through the felt filter. The plastic then begins to decompose as the temperature rises. As the molecules that make up the plastic become smaller, their volatility grows until they are expelled from the reactor as a gas, which allows more liquid to be drawn in. Using electricity to heat the plastic allows for oscillating the temperature, allowing simpler depolymerization reactions to take precedence over side reactions, which need additional heating to depolymerize.

In a major advance, scientists have assembled genomic sequences of 47 people from diverse backgrounds to create a pangenome, which offers a more accurate representation of human genetic diversity than the existing reference genome. This new pangenome will help researchers refine their understanding of the link between genes and diseases, and could ultimately help address health disparities.

For more than 20 years, scientists have relied on the human reference genome, a consensus genetic sequence, as a standard against which to compare other genetic data. Used in countless studies, the reference genome has made it possible to identify genes implicated in specific diseases and trace the evolution of human traits, among other things.

But it has always been a flawed tool. One of its biggest problems is that about 70 percent of its data came from a single man of predominantly African-European background whose DNA.