Lifeboat Foundation

Xiang-Dong Fu, PhD, has never been more excited about something in his entire career. He has long studied the basic biology of RNA, a genetic cousin of DNA, and the proteins that bind it. But a single discovery has launched Fu into a completely new field: neuroscience.

For decades, Fu and his team at University of California San Diego School of Medicine studied a protein called PTB, which is well known for binding RNA and influencing which genes are turned “on” or “off” in a cell. To study the role of a protein like PTB, scientists often manipulate cells to reduce the amount of that protein, and then watch to see what happens.

But then he noticed something odd after a couple of weeks — there were very few fibroblasts left. Almost the whole dish was instead filled with neurons.

Continue reading “One-Time Treatment Generates New Neurons, Eliminates Parkinson’s Disease in Mice” »

Via Jacob Gunn Glanville

Here’s the Forbes article on our program. Press release and some media to follow. We will be publishing our manuscript within a week to bioarxiv.

Jacob Glanville is an admirer of the human immune system — but he thinks we can do better.

Continue reading “Netflix ‘Pandemic’ Star Just Showed His Covid-19 Antibody Drug Works In Hamsters. How Quickly Could It Treat Humans?” »

Humans are on the one hand capable of mass genocide, and on the other hand, great self-sacrifice. Why are we capable of such extremes? We talked about this with Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant.

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Masks and testing are necessary to combat asymptomatic spread in aerosols and droplets.

Respiratory infections occur through the transmission of virus-containing droplets (5 to 10 μm) and aerosols (≤5 μm) exhaled from infected individuals during breathing, speaking, coughing, and sneezing. Traditional respiratory disease control measures are designed to reduce transmission by droplets produced in the sneezes and coughs of infected individuals. However, a large proportion of the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) appears to be occurring through airborne transmission of aerosols produced by asymptomatic individuals during breathing and speaking (1–3). Aerosols can accumulate, remain infectious in indoor air for hours, and be easily inhaled deep into the lungs. For society to resume, measures designed to reduce aerosol transmission must be implemented, including universal masking and regular, widespread testing to identify and isolate infected asymptomatic individuals.

Humans produce respiratory droplets ranging from 0.1 to 1000 μm. A competition between droplet size, inertia, gravity, and evaporation determines how far emitted droplets and aerosols will travel in air (4, 5). Respiratory droplets will undergo gravitational settling faster than they evaporate, contaminating surfaces and leading to contact transmission. Smaller aerosols (≤5 μm) will evaporate faster than they can settle, are buoyant, and thus can be affected by air currents, which can transport them over longer distances. Thus, there are two major respiratory virus transmission pathways: contact (direct or indirect between people and with contaminated surfaces) and airborne inhalation.

“An international study involving Monash physicists has cornered a new approach to measure consciousness, potentially changing our understanding of complex neurological problems.

The study published today in Physical Review Research describes how tools from physics and complexity theory were used to determine the level of consciousness in fruit flies.

“This is a major problem in neuroscience, where it is crucial to differentiate between unresponsive vegetative patients and those suffering from a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally because of complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body,” said study author Dr. Kavan Modi, from the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy.”

Continue reading “Applying physics to understanding the mystery of consciousness” »

Memory is the natural extension of attention and learning. The act of memory facilitates the formation, activation, and retention of circuits that contribute to the brain’s optimal functioning. Dr. Restak explains how we are the sum total of the memory we retain. Without memory, we wouldn’t know who we are.

The hippocampus, a portion of the brain located in the temporal lobe of each cerebral cortex, is the entry portal for information to be remembered. If the hippocampus is damaged, we have difficulty forming new memories.

This was demonstrated by Patient H. M., whose real name was Henry Molaison. He started having seizures when he was 10 years old. By age 20, he was completely incapacitated.

Continue reading “Why the Hippocampus May Be the Most Important Region in Your Brain” »

An article about Jacob Gunn Glanville and team’s work.

As scientists race to create a vaccine, a parallel quest to engineer effective antibody treatments for the coronavirus is vital, too—and may provide relief sooner.

A novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first identified in December 2019 as the cause of a respiratory illness designated coronavirus disease 2019, or Covid-19.¹ Several therapeutic agents have been evaluated for the treatment of Covid-19, but none have yet been shown to be efficacious.^2,3 Remdesivir (GS-5734), an inhibitor of the viral RNA-dependent, RNA polymerase with inhibitory activity against SARS-CoV and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV),^4–7 was identified early as a promising therapeutic candidate for Covid-19 because of its ability to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in vitro.⁸ In addition, in nonhuman primate studies, remdesivir initiated 12 hours after inoculation with MERS-CoV^9,10 reduced lung virus levels and lung damage.

To evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of putative investigational therapeutic agents among hospitalized adults with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19, we designed an adaptive platform to rapidly conduct a series of phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials. Here, we describe the preliminary results of the first stage of the Adaptive Covid-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT-1), in which we evaluated treatment with remdesivir as compared with placebo.

A Duke University research team has found a small area of the brain in mice that can profoundly control the animals’ sense of pain.

Somewhat unexpectedly, this brain center turns pain off, not on. It’s also located in an area where few people would have thought to look for an anti-pain center, the amygdala, which is often considered the home of negative emotions and responses, like the fight or flight response and general anxiety.

“People do believe there is a central place to relieve pain, that’s why placebos work,” said senior author Fan Wang, the Morris N. Broad Distinguished Professor of neurobiology in the School of Medicine. “The question is where in the brain is the center that can turn off pain.”