Lifeboat Foundation

Here’s my latest Opinion piece just out for Newsweek…focusing on cyborg rights.

Over the past half-century, the microprocessor’s capacity has doubled approximately every 18–24 months, and some experts predict that by 2030, machine intelligence could surpass human capabilities. The question then arises: When machines reach human-level intelligence, should they be granted protection and rights? Will they desire and perhaps even demand such rights?

Beyond advancements in microprocessors, we’re witnessing breakthroughs in genetic editing, stem cells, and 3D bioprinting, all which also hold the potential to help create cyborg entities displaying consciousness and intelligence. Notably, Yale University’s experiments stimulating dead pig brains have ignited debates in the animal rights realm, raising questions about the ethical implications of reviving consciousness.

Continue reading “Creating Sapient Technology and Cyborg Rights Should Happen Soon” »

What happens when humans begin combining biology with technology, harnessing the power to recode life itself.

What does the future of biotechnology look like? How will humans program biology to create organ farm technology and bio-robots. And what happens when companies begin investing in advanced bio-printing, artificial wombs, and cybernetic prosthetic limbs.

Continue reading “GENETIC ENGINEERING & BIOTECHNOLOGY in the Future (2077 & Beyond)” »

A new project is using cutting-edge levitation techniques to make bioprinting heart models and other complex tissues a reality.

Dubbed PULSE, the project combines the recently developed techniques of acoustic levitation and magnetic levitation to manipulate individual components without actually touching them. It’s a process that the researchers involved hope will one day facilitate the bioprinting of organs and other human tissues in much greater detail and complexity than what is achievable with current techniques.

If perfected, the researchers also hope this type of bioprinting could even help on long-term space missions as more accurate organ models can create more accurate defenses against radiation and other stresses of space travel.

Reducing reliance of aninmal experimentation. 🐀

According to the team, this new unparalleled technology facilitates the precise manipulation of biological materials, enabling the creation of highly sophisticated and realistic organoids that closely mimic the complexity of the corresponding human organs.

The cutting-edge magnetic and acoustic levitation will bioprint heart models to improve protection against radiation both in space and on Earth.

Continue reading “Magnetic and acoustic levitation to protect bioprint heart models against radiation” »

What happens when humans begin combining biology with technology, harnessing the power to recode life itself.

What does the future of biotechnology look like? How will humans program biology to create organ farm technology and bio-robots. And what happens when companies begin investing in advanced bio-printing, artificial wombs, and cybernetic prosthetic limbs.

Continue reading “Timelapse of Future BIOTECHNOLOGY” »

CIPhotos/iStock.

Standard immunotherapy procedures also employ intravenous injections loaded with NK cells to treat cancer but several limitations with this approach prevent it from delivering satisfying results. For instance, many NK cells lose their viability during the therapy and often fail to target the tumors, according to the researchers.

In situ bioprinting, which involves 3D printing biocompatible structures and tissues directly within the body, has seen steady progress over the past few years. In a recent study, a team of researchers developed a handheld bioprinter that addresses key limitations of previous designs, i.e., the ability to print multiple materials and control the physicochemical properties of printed tissues. This device will pave the way for a wide variety of applications in regenerative medicine, drug development and testing, and custom orthotics and prosthetics.

The emergence of regenerative medicine has resulted in substantial improvements in the lives of patients worldwide through the replacement, repair, or regeneration of damaged tissues and organs. It is a promising solution to challenges such as the lack of organ donors or transplantation-associated risks. One of the major advancements in regenerative medicine is on-site (or “in situ”) bioprinting, an extension of 3D printing technology, which is used to directly synthesize tissues and organs within the human body. It shows great potential in facilitating the repair and regeneration of defective tissues and organs.

Although significant progress has been made in this field, currently used in situ bioprinting technologies are not devoid of limitations. For instance, certain devices are only compatible with specific types of bioink, while others can only create small patches of tissue at a time. Moreover, their designs are usually complex, making them unaffordable and restricting their applications.

Scientists from the NIHR Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Centre (a collaboration between GOSH and UCL), London, and University of Padova, Italy, have shown for the first time how 3D printing can be achieved inside “mini-organs” growing in hydrogels—controlling their shape, activity, and even forcing tissue to grow into “molds.”

This can help teams study cells and organs more accurately, create realistic models of organs and disease, and even better understand how cancer spreads through different tissues.

A particularly promising area of research at the Zayed Centre for Research (a partnership between Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), GOSH Charity and University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (UCL GOS ICH)) is organoid science—the creation of micro-versions of organs like the stomach, the intestines and the lungs.

Cultured meat is gaining momentum, with large production facilities under construction and the arduous approval process for the finished products inching forward. Most of the industry’s focus thus far has been on ground beef, chicken, pork, and steak. Save for one startup that was working on lab-grown salmon, fish have been largely left out of the fray.

But last month an Israeli company called Steakholder Foods announced it had 3D printed a ready-to-cook fish fillet using cells grown in a bioreactor. The company says the fish is the first of its kind in the world, and they’re aiming to commercialize the 3D bioprinter used to create it.

Steakholder Foods didn’t produce the fish cells it used to print the fillet. They partnered with Umami Meats, a Singapore-based company working on cultured seafood. Umami created the fish cells the same way companies like Believer Meats and Good Meat create lab-grown chicken or beef: they extract cells from a fish (in a process that doesn’t harm it) and mix those cells with a cocktail of nutrients to make them divide, multiply, and mature. They signal the cells to turn into muscle and fat, which they then harvest and form into a finished product.