Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,741

Stem Cell Clincial Trials Show Remarkable Results Against Age-related Frailty

The first results of two human clinical trials using stem cell therapy for age-related frailty have been published, and the results are very impressive indeed. The studies show that the approach used is effective in tackling multiple key age-related factors.

Aging research has made significant progress in the last few years, with senescent cell clearing therapies entering human trials this year, DNA repair in human trials, and a number of other exciting therapies nearing human testing. We are reaching the point where therapies that target aging processes are no longer a matter of speculation; they are now an undeniable matter of fact.

New pneumonia vaccine protects against over 70 strains of the disease

A new vaccine targeting dozens of new strains of pneumonia could potentially save “hundreds of thousands of lives” according to researchers. Early studies show the new vaccine effectively protects against a variety of bacteria that causes pneumococcal disease including pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis.

Since the introduction in the early 2000s of vaccines targeting the most deadly forms of pneumonia, the World Health Organization has estimated global deaths of children from the disease have been cut in half. Alongside better nutrition and access to antibiotics, a vaccine against the 23 most deadly pneumonia-causing bacteria has been held as responsible for the millions of lives saved.

Now a team of scientists from the University at Buffalo and New York University’s Langone Medical Center has developed a new vaccine that targets another 50 strains of a bacterium called Streptococcus pneumoniae, the primary bacteria responsible for pneumococcal disease.

I Am The Lifespan

Over the past few years, there has been a tradition of longevity researchers and activists around the world to organize events on or around October 1 — the UN International Day of Older Persons, or Longevity Day. In recent years this has been extended to include the entire month of November as a Longevity Month where activists organize various activities and events to raise awareness for aging research.

This year we have continued this tradition with the Longevity Month “I am the Lifespan” event, where people tell us their story and how they got interested in aging research and doing something about age-related diseases. and it has been a great success so far. Lots of people have sent in their stories and we have been publishing them on our Facebook page the last few weeks. We wanted to share some of these stories with you and a little about the people behind them.

The Societal Benefits of Rejuvenation Biotechnology

Recently, we have explored the benefits that rejuvenation biotechnologies promise to bring to ourselves and the people close to us. I would imagine that most people have no difficulty acknowledging these benefits, but even so, many people tend to focus on potential large-scale downsides of rejuvenation while neglecting entirely its benefits on society at large.

The following is a brief discussion of how, in my opinion, anti-aging biotechnologies would positively impact the whole of humanity—assuming they were widely employed, as they should be.

Suicide molecules kill any cancer cell

CHICAGO — Small RNA molecules originally developed as a tool to study gene function trigger a mechanism hidden in every cell that forces the cell to commit suicide, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study, the first to identify molecules to trigger a fail-safe mechanism that may protect us from cancer.

The mechanism — RNA suicide molecules — can potentially be developed into a novel form of cancer therapy, the study authors said.

Cancer cells treated with the RNA molecules never become resistant to them because they simultaneously eliminate multiple genes that cancer cells need for survival.

How Creating a Gene Circuit Could Help to Combat Cancer

A research team at MIT has used synthetic biology to create a gene circuit that triggers the immune system to attack cancer when it first detects the signs of the disease.

The circuit works by only activating the immune response when two specific cancer biomarkers are detected. The new study was published in the journal Cell this week and represents an exciting step forward for synthetic biology and cancer research.

Drug Companies Make Eyedrops Too Big — And You Pay for the Waste

ProPublica has been documenting the many ways health care dollars are being wasted. We’ve shown how hospitals throw out brand new supplies, nursing homes flush tons of unexpired medication and drug companies concoct costly combinations of cheap medication. Recently we described how arbitrary drug expiration dates cause us to toss safe and potent medicine.

Often, large swaths of the medical and pharmaceutical communities know about this waste — even about solutions to it — but do nothing. Those who end up paying the bill, in one way or another, are consumers.

The makers of cancer drugs also make vials with too much medication for many patients. The excess drugs are tossed in the trash — another reason health care costs are so high.

By Marshall Allen

Scientists reverse aging in human cell lines and give theory of aging a new lease of life

Can the process of aging be delayed or even reversed? Research led by specially appointed Professor Jun-Ichi Hayashi from the University of Tsukuba in Japan has shown that, in human cell lines at least, it can. They also found that the regulation of two genes involved with the production of glycine, the smallest and simplest amino acid, is partly responsible for some of the characteristics of aging.