БЛОГ

Page 9081

Jan 30, 2019

Using 3D printer to develop treatment for spinal cord injury

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical

Spinal cord injuries (SCIs) affect approximately 300,000 Americans, with about 18,000 new cases occurring per year. One of these patients, Jake Javier, who we have written about many times over the past several years, received ten million stem cells as part of a CIRM-funded clinical trial and a video about his first year at Cal Poly depicts how these injuries can impact someone’s life.

Currently, there is nothing that completely reverses SCI damage and most treatment is aimed at rehabilitation and empowering patients to lead as normal a life as possible under the circumstances. Improved treatment options are necessary both to improve patients’ overall quality of life, and to reduce associated healthcare costs.

Scientists at UC San Diego’s School of Medicine and Institute of Engineering in Medicine have made critical progress in providing SCI patients with hope towards a more comprehensive and longer lasting treatment option.

Continue reading “Using 3D printer to develop treatment for spinal cord injury” »

Jan 30, 2019

Length of DNA strands can predict life expectancy

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Can the length of strands of DNA in patients with heart disease predict their life expectancy? Researchers from the Intermountain Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City, who studied the DNA of more than 3,500 patients with heart disease, say yes it can.

Read more

Jan 30, 2019

New hope for stem cell approach to treating diabetes

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Scientists working to develop more effective treatments for diabetes are turning to stem cells. Such cells can be transformed into cells that produce insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar.

But there’s a major challenge: the amount of produced by theses is difficult to control.

Now, by tweaking the recipe for coaxing into insulin-secreting , a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that the resulting cells are more responsive to fluctuating glucose levels in the blood.

Continue reading “New hope for stem cell approach to treating diabetes” »

Jan 30, 2019

Experimental drug could be new option for type 2 diabetes

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

An experimental drug may help people with type 2 diabetes curb their blood sugar without causing it to drop to dangerously low levels.

Researchers found that the compound—dubbed TTP399 for now—improved patients’ blood control when it was added to the standard medication metformin for six months.

And it did so without causing hypoglycemia—blood sugar drops that, if severe, can lead to convulsions or loss of consciousness.

Continue reading “Experimental drug could be new option for type 2 diabetes” »

Jan 30, 2019

Scientists create a renewable source of cancer-fighting T cells

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical

A study by UCLA researchers is the first to demonstrate a technique for coaxing pluripotent stem cells—which can give rise to every cell type in the body and which can be grown indefinitely in the lab—into becoming mature T cells capable of killing tumor cells.

The technique uses structures called artificial thymic organoids, which work by mimicking the environment of the thymus, the organ in which T develop from blood stem cells.

T cells are cells of the immune system that fight infections, but also have the potential to eliminate . The ability to create them from self-renewing pluripotent stem cells using the UCLA technique could lead to new approaches to cancer immunotherapy and could spur further research on T cell therapies for viral infections such as HIV, and autoimmune diseases. Among the technique’s most promising aspects is that it can be combined with gene editing approaches to create a virtually unlimited supply of T cells able to be used across large numbers of patients, without the need to use a patient’s own T cells.

Continue reading “Scientists create a renewable source of cancer-fighting T cells” »

Jan 30, 2019

New quantum structures in super-chilled helium may mirror early days of universe

Posted by in categories: cosmology, quantum physics

For the first time, researchers have documented the long-predicted occurrence of ‘walls bound by strings’ in superfluid helium-3. The existence of such an object, originally foreseen by cosmology theorists, may help explaining how the universe cooled down after the Big Bang. With the newfound ability to recreate these structures in the lab, earth-based scientists finally have a way to study some of the possible scenarios that might have taken place in the early universe more closely.

Read more

Jan 30, 2019

Hundreds of genes affecting tobacco and alcohol use discovered

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Tobacco and alcohol use, both genetically inheritable behaviors, influence risk for many complex diseases and disorders and are leading causes of mortality.

The University of Minnesota was part of a research collaboration that conducted the first study, recently published in Nature Genetics, to identify hundreds of genomic locations associated with addictive behaviors. Researchers found more than 500 genetic variants that affect the use of and addiction to tobacco and alcohol. Until now, only a few of such variants had been identified.

Researchers studied 1.2 million people and looked five characteristics including the age when a participant began smoking; the number of cigarettes per day the participant smoked; whether the participant has ever been a regular smoker; whether the participant ever quit smoking; and the number of alcoholic drinks the participant had per week.

Continue reading “Hundreds of genes affecting tobacco and alcohol use discovered” »

Jan 30, 2019

New Material Could Drive Wound Healing

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical

Imperial researchers have developed a new bioinspired material that interacts with surrounding tissues to promote healing.

Materials are widely used to help heal wounds: Collagen sponges help treat burns and pressure sores, and scaffold-like implants are used to repair broken bones. However, the process of tissue repair changes over time, so scientists are looking to biomaterials that interact with tissues as healing takes place.

“Creatures from sea sponges to humans use cell movement to activate healing. Our approach mimics this by using the different cell varieties in wounds to drive healing.” –Dr Ben Almquist, Department of Bioengineering.

Continue reading “New Material Could Drive Wound Healing” »

Jan 30, 2019

Kill the Cancer Stem Cell, Kill the Cancer: How One Biotech is Hitting Cancer at the Cause

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 10, 2019 / The Wealthy Biotech Trader (or” WBT”), an investment newsletter focused on showing everyday investors new opportunities in rapidly growing, little-known biotech, pharma, medical device stocks making news and subsequent market moves, would like to update investors on several breakthroughs in cancer therapies hitting the market.

Stock investors have soured on biotech companies over the past several months, as demonstrated by the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI), off 30% since June, and the NYSE Biotechnology Index (NYSE: NBI), which has dropped from 3500 in mid-2018 to just under 3000 at year-end, and a host of their component companies and others in addition. Still, there is innovation and competitive potential brewing in the market at publicly-traded companies that are flying below the radar. One of those is Propanc Biopharma, Inc. (OTCQB: PPCB), an Australian biotech company with strong management and technology that has the potential to help millions of cancer patients worldwide.

Propanc Biopharma, Inc. Company Overview

Continue reading “Kill the Cancer Stem Cell, Kill the Cancer: How One Biotech is Hitting Cancer at the Cause” »

Jan 30, 2019

Physicists Have Built a Machine That Actually Breaks Two Rules of Light

Posted by in categories: futurism, physics

When you beam intense pulses of light into a thin circle, strange things will happen, according to new research based on the optical equivalent of a whispering gallery.

Inside tiny loops of transparent fibre, waves of light can be forced to break step and change the orientation of their wiggle in odd ways, bending the rules and potentially giving future engineers new tools for emerging optical technology.

Researchers from the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have watched light break its usual symmetrical patterns inside devices called optical ring resonators.

Continue reading “Physicists Have Built a Machine That Actually Breaks Two Rules of Light” »