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.
For the first time, scientists have shown that mitochondria — the “powerhouses” of cells — are crucial for aging, after finding that removing mitochondria from human cells reduced levels of markers for cellular aging, triggering a process of rejuvenation.
More info: http://ow.ly/Y5CcB
This week, Kathy Niakan, a biologist working at the Francis Crick Institute in London received the green light from the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to use genome editing technique CRISPR/Cas9 on human embryos.
Niakan hopes to answer important questions about how healthy human embryos develop from a single cell to around 250 cells, in the first seven days after fertilization.
By removing certain genes during this early development phase using CRISPR/Cas9, Niakan and her team hope to understand what causes miscarriages and infertility, and in the future, possibly improve the effectiveness of in-vitro fertilization and provide better treatments for infertility.
Interesting. What do you think of this?
A mammal brain has been defrosted from cryogenic storage in an almost perfect state for the first time. This breakthrough, accomplished using a rabbit brain, brings us one – albeit tiny – step closer to the prospect of reanimating a human brain that has been cryogenically preserved.
After death, organs begin to decay, but we can delay this by cooling these tissues, just like freezing food. But in the same way that a frozen strawberry becomes soggy when defrosted, it is difficult to perfectly preserve mammals at cold temperatures. We, and strawberries, contain large amounts of water, which freezes into ice crystals that damage cells.
Continue reading “Mammal brain frozen and thawed out perfectly for first time” »
Not good — CancerIntercept Detect and Monitor test is not providing accurate information in some results. The cancerIntercept test whole concept was to detect a growing tumor in the body, before the patient may notice symptoms — acting like a cancer stethoscope for detecting and monitoring cancer.
Pathway Genomics claims its liquid biopsy can detect cancer before patient shows symptoms — but expert says that promise is “years away”.
Yesterday, I highlighted one key a reason why robots will not be able to completely eliminate roles like doctors, etc. and that is lack of empathy.
Also, another key barrier that will remain the lack of a diverse set of innovators & development engineers in the space. AI designed today is strictly designed with a subset of the population; therefore, the larger consumer space will continue to see limitations with their own AI experiences. No matter how much you try, you can never replace female thinking & interpretation with male thinking & interpretation and vice versa. Therefore, there will always be something missing in AI for a larger part of the population.
The Future of the Professions, a book by father and son duo Richard and Daniel Susskind predicts radical change about the automated future of professions.
A rabbit’s brain has been successfully returned from long-term cryogenic storage, marking the first time a whole mammalian brain has been recovered in near-perfect condition.
It marks a significant breakthrough in the field of cryonics and boosts the prospect of one day bringing frozen human brains back to life.
Researchers from 21st Century Medicine (21CM) used a new technique called Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation that filled the vascular system of the rabbit brain with chemicals that would allow it to be cooled to −211 degrees Fahrenheit (−135 degrees Celsius). When it was thawed, the cell membranes, synapses, and intracellular structures remained intact.
There’s still much that we don’t understand about obesity and its underlying causes, but scientists in Germany say they’ve discovered a genetic ‘switch’ that could effectively turn obesity on or off.
The new report is based on epigenetics research — that is, the way the genes in our bodies change based on chemical and environmental factors, rather than modifications in the fundamental DNA genetic code itself. We’re all born with a certain set of genes, but these can be turned on or off, or dialled up or down, though processes inside the body (it’s part of the reason why identical twins don’t always look identical).
It’s one of these epigenetic tags that the scientists have identified, and it works like a light switch rather than a dimmer. “Once the switch is triggered, it is a lifelong, epigenetically-driven decision that ends in a stable, either a lean or obese phenotype,” lead author Andrew Pospisilik from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics. “The effect is akin to a light switch — on or off, lean or obese. Typically, we usually consider epigenetic control of disease to act much more like a dimmer, shifting phenotypes like body weight up or down gradually.”
Although I hate to admit it; there is some truth to the US Intelligence concerns that Gene Editing. Such as biological weapons could be enhanced with gene editing. However, my verdict is still out on some of the other concerns that were highlighted.
Easy to use. Hard to control. The intelligence community now sees CRISPR as a threat to national safety.
Personalized medicine worth over $149 Billion in less than 4 years. I do hope some of folks who participated in the provider survey on precision medicine that was published last week showing only 49% of the providers surveyed supported precision treatment rethink their position.
