Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Gothenburg have generated a web-based software, Green Listed, which can facilitate the use of the CRISPR methodology. The software is published in the journal Bioinformatics and is freely available through greenlisted.cmm.ki.se where also information texts and films are available.

Cells are very small and builds up an organism. A human has about 100 times as many cells in its body as there are people on earth. Inside a vast majority of these cells are long chains of DNA. These DNA chains affects how different cells look and behave. CRISPR is a research method that can be used to rapidly study how different portions of the DNA directly affect cells. Using this method, researchers can gain insights to the cause of diseases and give suggestions for how they can be treated.

“We use the CRISPR methodology to study both immune cells and cancer cells. The goal is to develop new treatments for patients with diseases related to the immune system, such as arthritis, as well as cancer”, says Fredrik Wermeling at the Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM), Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet.

Struggling with your diet? Your microbiota could be to blame.

Your microbiota may not be on your side as you try improving your diet this New Year’s. In a study published December 29 in Cell Host & Microbe, researchers explore why mice that switch from an unrestricted American diet to a healthy, calorie-restricted, plant-based diet don’t have an immediate response to their new program. They found that certain human gut bacteria need to be lost for a diet plan to be successful.

“If we are to prescribe a diet to improve someone’s health, it’s important that we understand what microbes help control those beneficial effects,” says Jeffrey Gordon, Director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis and senior author of the paper. “And we’ve found a way to mine the gut microbial communities of different humans to identify the organisms that help promote the effects of a particular diet in ways that might be beneficial.”

Continue reading “Your microbiota’s previous dining experiences may make new diets less effective” »

For a few lucky patients, 2016 was the year when gene therapy turned from promises to cures. The technology, long contemplated as a way to erase disease by revising people’s DNA, made big advances and began turning into a real business offering some of the world’s most expensive and revolutionary medicines.

So what is gene therapy, anyway? The US Food and Drug Administration says it’s any treatment in which a replacement gene is added to a person’s body or a disease-causing one is inactivated. That’s usually done by adding­­­­­­ new instructions to cells via billions of viruses stuffed with correct DNA strands.

It sounds complicated, and it is. Gene therapy was first tested in a person in 1990, but scary side effects turned the gene-fix idea into a scientific backwater. And the field hasn’t conquered all its problems. We started the year with the tale of Glybera, heralded as the first gene treatment ever approved that sought to correct an inherited gene error. Yet the drug came with an eye-popping price tag of $1 million and, dogged by questions over how well it works, has turned into a medical and commercial flop.

Continue reading “Gene therapy is here, and it could radically change modern medicine” »

The very basics of living beings may solve a serious government-wide problem.

Researchers have discovered a technique that could block the effects of a powerful gene-editing tool to protect adjacent genes against accidental alteration. The breakthrough could be the beginning of a major step forward for genetic engineering.

Scientists at the University of California (UC) in San Francisco researchers have discovered how to switch off the effects of the CRISPR gene editing system. CRISPR has been a major advance for gene editing, but there are difficulties in limiting its effects on adjacent genes. So far this has militated against its use in research, most obviously, into the human genome.

There are robotic arms for amputees, robotic legs for the paralyzed. Duchenne is a disease that could be changed fundamentally by this technology.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/DuchenneExoskeleton/

The Sino-Israeli Robotics Institute (SIRI) was inaugurated in mid-December when a delegation of nine Israeli companies — led by Ariel University Prof. Zvi Shiller, chair of the Israeli Robotics Association, and Technion Prof. Moshe Shoham, founder of Mazor Robotics and a world leader in medical robotics — participated in the second Sino-Israeli Robotics Innovation Conference in Guangzhou, China.

Intended as “home base” for Israeli robotics companies entering the Chinese market, SIRI is located at the Guangzhou International Robotics Center (ROBOHUB), a government-supported, 4,800-square-meter robotics incubator and demonstration center including a large exhibition and demo area, innovation lab, training center, and corporate offices.

“This is an exciting time for the Israeli robotics industry,” Shiller said. “We are committed to establishing a true partnership with SIRI and ROBOHUB, and we look forward to broadening this strategic cooperation, which will serve as a fast track for transforming ideas into products and for moving products into the Chinese market.”

Continue reading “Israel, China Inaugurate Joint Robotics Institute” »

Cancer research is an area of medical science that, rightfully, gets considerable attention.

There are nearly 14.5 million Americans with a history of cancer and with more than 13 million estimated new cancer cases each year.

It’s no wonder even artificial intelligence (AI) has gotten into the field. Researchers from the University of Michigan are not getting left behind, with a groundbreaking method that has the potential to eliminate tumours.

Continue reading “Researchers Are Developing Nanodiscs That Can Wipe Out Tumours” »

My infomercial of the day — “just ad water and Ta-dah, you have a vaccine!”

http://thejerseytomatopress.com/stories/To-produce-biopharma…water,1851

Researchers at MIT and other institutions have created tiny freeze-dried pellets that include all of the molecular machinery needed to translate DNA into proteins, which could form the basis for on-demand production of drugs and vaccines. Image: Christine Daniloff/MIT. Antimicrobial peptide illustration by Ymahn/Wikimedia Commons.

Continue reading “To produce biopharmaceuticals on demand, just add water” »