Hope; or at least I am hoping.
A novel gene-editing technique with potential to revolutionize cancer treatment has scientists in a race to test it on humans.
As the scientific journal Nature announced last week: “Chinese scientists to pioneer first human CRISPR trial.”
Heart attack patients who were not expected to live are fit and healthy after scientists regenerated their hearts with stem cells in a ground-breaking trial which could help millions of people with heart failure.
The research is the first to show that scarring of heart muscle, associated with a heart attack can be reversed, a feat which doctors believed was impossible, and which could eventually end the need for transplants.
Scarring of the heart stops the organ pumping blood effectively and can lead to further attacks and sudden death.
Her computer, Karin Strauss says, contains her “digital attic”—a place where she stores that published math paper she wrote in high school, and computer science schoolwork from college.
She’d like to preserve the stuff “as long as I live, at least,” says Strauss, 37. But computers must be replaced every few years, and each time she must copy the information over, “which is a little bit of a headache.”
It would be much better, she says, if she could store it in DNA—the stuff our genes are made of.
A new blood treatment developed by researchers in Greece reportedly has the power to reverse menopause, enabling post-menopausal women to release eggs once again.
None of this has been peer-reviewed as yet, but if the results can be verified by others in the scientific community, the treatment might allow women to have offspring later in life.
It could also provide a treatment for those suffering from early menopause, a condition that affects roughly 1 percent of all women.
Continue reading “A team of scientists says they’ve found a way to reverse menopause” »
Will we live longer lives in the future? According to Ray Kurzweil, it’s only a matter of time until technology begins successfully tackling age-related disease—and life expectancy grows longer and longer. At some point, technology will annually add more than a year to our life expectancy—allowing us to indefinitely increase lifespans, and perhaps eventually live as long as we want.
“We will get to a point where our longevity, our remaining life expectancy is moving on away from us. The sands of time will run in rather than run out,” Kurzweil says.
Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil Outlines the Coming Biomedical Revolution [Video]” »
Um microrobô com controlo remoto que parece e se move como uma bactéria.
Ao contrário dos robôs convencionais, estes microroboô são suaves, flexíveis,. Elas são feitas de um hidrogel biocompatível e nanopartículas magnéticas e sem motor. Estas nanopartículas têm duas funções. Eles dão aos microrobôs sua forma durante o processo de fabricação, e torná-los mover-se e nadar quando um campo magnético é aplicado.
(Medical Xpress)—A team of researchers at Sichuan University’s West China Hospital has announced plans to begin a clinical trial where cells modified using the CRISPR gene editing technique will be used on human beings for the very first time. They plan to edit genes in such a way as to turn off a gene that encodes for a protein that has been shown by prior research to slow an immune response and by so doing treat patients with lung cancer.
The CRISPR gene editing technique has been in the news a lot of late as scientists creep ever closer to using it as a means to treat diseases or to change the very nature of biological beings. China has been a leader in promoting such research on human beings—they were the first to use the technique to on human embryos.
This new effort is seen as far less controversial—a team in the U.S. is planning a similar study as soon as they can get regulators to greenlight their project. The Chinese team plans to retrieve T cells from patients that have incurable lung cancer and then edit the genes in those cells. More specifically, they will be looking to disable a gene that encodes for a protein called PD-1—prior research has shown that it acts as a brake on an immune response to help prevent attacks on healthy cells. Once the cells have been edited and inspected very carefully to make sure there were no editing errors they will be allowed to multiply and then all of the cells will be injected back into the same patient’s bloodstream. It is hoped that the edited cells will cause the immune system to mount a more aggressive attack on tumor cells, killing them and curing the patient.
Continue reading “Chinese team to pioneer first human CRISPR trial” »
The UK’s first double hand transplant operation has taken place at Leeds General Infirmary and the patient says his new hands look “tremendous”.
Chris King, from Doncaster, lost both his hands, apart from the thumbs, in an accident involving a metal pressing machine at work three years ago.
The 57-year-old received two new hands from a donor and says he already has some movement in them.
