Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,787

This Molecule Found in Royal Jelly Is The Secret Ingredient to Speed Up Wound Healing

Honey bees really are tiny hardworking superheroes of the insect world — not only do they keep our agriculture going by pollinating many of our crops, but they also produce a myriad of beneficial substances, like honey and beeswax.

For thousands of years honey has been prized for its topical antiseptic properties. But now researchers have discovered that its lesser-known cousin, royal jelly, has special molecules that speed up wound healing.

Royal jelly is the superfood worker bees secrete and feed all their larvae, especially the queen bees. While queens are developing, they basically float in a pool of this stuff, and humans have figured out how to stimulate queen larva production to then harvest the royal jelly.

Researchers Enable Lab-Grade Medical Tests on Smartphones

In a major step towards creating a tricorder, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have invented a device that allows smartphones to perform the kinds of lab-grade medical diagnostic tests that previously had to be done on large and expensive instruments.

The device, called a spectral transmission-reflectance-intensity (TRI)-Analyzer, plugs into a smartphone and is able to run tests on a patient’s blood, urine, or saliva as reliably as clinic-based instruments that cost thousands of dollars. The researchers say their TRI Analyzer costs only $550.

“Our TRI Analyzer is like the Swiss Army knife of biosensing,” said Prof. Brian Cunningham, the Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering and director of the Micro + Nanotechnology Lab at Illinois.

Breakthrough device heals organs with a single touch

Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Ohio State’s College of Engineering have developed a new technology, Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT), that can generate any cell type of interest for treatment within the patient’s own body. This technology may be used to repair injured tissue or restore function of aging tissue, including organs, blood vessels and nerve cells.

Results of the study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“By using our novel nanochip technology, injured or compromised organs can be replaced. We have shown that skin is a fertile land where we can grow the elements of any organ that is declining,” said Dr. Chandan Sen, director of Ohio State’s Center for Regenerative Medicine & Cell Based Therapies, who co-led the study with L. James Lee, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering with Ohio State’s College of Engineering in collaboration with Ohio State’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.

The Government Must Review What Bioresearch Journals Publish

It’s getting too easy to create dangerous viruses. The upcoming national biodefense strategy should ensure that scientific journals don’t help terrorists learn how.

The news that researchers have recreated an extinct cousin to the smallpox virus using only commercially available technology and items purchased over the Internet renews concerns that bioterrorists could do the same if detailed information about the methods were published. Here’s the problem: scientific journals are geared toward publication, often without sufficient understanding of the public-security risks. We need a better system to ensure that information that could help bad actors stays unpublished.

It took David Evans’ team of scientists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, about six months and $100,000 to recreate the horsepox virus, a close relative of the smallpox virus that killed perhaps 300 million people in the 20th century before it was eradicated in 1980. In a summary of the research, the World Health Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research wrote that “recreation of such viral genomes did not require exceptional biochemical knowledge or skills, significant funds, or significant time.”

Scientists rejuvenate old hearts

In the study, 22-month-old rats — who were considered old — received stem cells from four-month-old rats.

Across the board, all of them experienced improved heart function, improved their exercise capacity by an average of 20 percent, and regrew hair faster than rats that didn’t receive the cells.

They also demonstrated longer heart cell telomeres.

Until now, scientists have tested the method to repair damage. But the Cedars-Sinai team in LA — who did the world’s first cardiac stem cell infusion in 2009 — have shown it can also reverse aging.

Congratulations to the AgeMeter campaign (https://www.lifespan.io/agemeter/) for blasting past the half way mark to 55%, and also congratulations to you all for helping fund this important biomarker system, supported by Drs. George Church, Aubrey de Grey, and David Sinclair

Let’s keep up the momentum and continue to show the world what power the crowd can have in standing up to age-related disease. # LifespanIO # CrowdfundTheCure.