Lifeboat Foundation

After 10 years of development, the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine has finally unveiled a 3D printer that can craft simple tissues, such as cartilage, into complex shapes suitable for implantation.

The printer uses cartridges filled with biodegradable plastic and human cells bound in gel form, and it can grow muscle, cartilage, and even bone. When implanted into animals, these crafted tissues have been shown to survive and even thrive for an indefinite amount of time.

“This is the first [bioprinter] that can print tissue at the large scales relevant for human implantation,” lead scientist behind the project, Anthony Atala, says in the release. “Basically, once we’ve printed a structure, we can keep it alive for several weeks before we implant it. Now the next step is to test these [printed tissues] for safety so we can implant them in the future in patients.”

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Custom-made, living body parts have been 3D-printed in a significant advance for regenerative medicine, say scientists.

The sections of bone, muscle and cartilage all functioned normally when implanted into animals.

The breakthrough, published in Nature Biotechnology, raises the hope of using living tissues to repair the body.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=TAYHs-iZHWU

A bioprinter – a three dimensional printer that uses living cells in suspension as its ink, and injection nozzles that can follow a CT scan blueprint – brings the dream of transplant surgery a step nearer: a bespoke body part grown in a laboratory and installed by a robot surgeon.

Scientists and clinicians began exploring tissue culture for transplant surgery more than 20 years ago. But researchers in the US report in Nature Biotechnology that they have harnessed a sophisticated, custom-designed 3D printer to print living muscle, cartilage and bone to repair battlefield injury.

Continue reading “‘Bioprinter’ creates bespoke lab-grown body parts for transplant” »

Researchers say they’ve developed a 3-D bioprinter that can create artificial body parts with ready-made channels for getting nutrients and oxygen to the implanted cells. If the technology can be perfected, the device could solve one of the biggest obstacles to creating 3D-printed organs: how to nourish masses of manufactured tissue.

“It can fabricate stable, human-scale tissue of any shape,” Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, said in a news release. “With further development, this technology could potentially be used to print living tissue and organ structures for surgical implantation.”

Continue reading “3D bioprinter can add vessels to artificial body parts” »

WIKIPEDIA, AYACOP Boosting levels of ghrelin, a hormone involved in hunger, keeps aging-related declines at bay in mice, according to a study published yesterday (February 2) in Molecular Psychiatry.

The authors gave mice a traditional Japanese medicine called rikkunshito or an extract from rikkunshito to stimulate hormone production. In three different mouse lines—two with shortened lifespans and another with a normal lifespan—the treatment resulted in the animals living longer.

“These findings suggest that the elevated endogenous ghrelin signaling has an important role in preventing aging-related premature death,” Akio Inui of Kagoshima University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences and colleagues wrote in their report.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=l62jlwgL3v8

A group of scientists are calling on the WHO to classify aging as a disease, asserting that we need to create a better classification for what happens to our bodies as we get older.

A new controversy is brewing, as one group of scientists is recommending that aging be considered a disease.

Continue reading “Scientists Assert That the WHO Should Classify Aging as a Disease” »

As much as this article wants to promote that by 2020 that we will have terminator style robots acting as an in home nurse with patients (at least in the US) will be very hard to see. Most elderly as well as young children need more of human or personable interaction in their lives. I do highly suggest researchers (especially those that have studied children in orphanages where limited human interaction was available) to share your own insights of what happens to children who are without human contact at long periods as well as the elderly. I believe folks will rethink somethings and be more pragmatic in what these robots can and can do.

Published on Feb 3, 2016

Continue reading “Cloud-Brained Humanoid Robots Are Right around the Corner” »

Very huge step forward for brain sensory mapping.

Data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have provided eye-popping pictures of the way the brain is wired, and allowed neuroscientists and laypeople alike to view intricate anatomical and functional connections between regions of the brain. But what if a new tool could be applied to MRI and other data, to listen to the way the brain works and how it is forged with connections?

An emerging effort to “sonify” imaging data is taking root at UT Dallas’ Center for Vital Longevity, in the lab of Dr. Gagan Wig. The approach, now funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), allows data to be represented by sounds from which a trained listener might be able to discern patterns of brain connectivity not readily seen in available visualization strategies.

Continue reading “Collaborative Minds Bringing Sounds to Brain Data in Yearlong Project” »

Unity Biotechnology today announced that it is developing medicines to treat and eliminate age-related diseases and increase healthspan, or the amount of time an individual lives in good health.

BrewLife on behalf of Unity Biotechnology.

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