Lifeboat Foundation

“The reason a glucose-responsive insulin is important is that the biggest barrier to the effective use of insulin, especially in Type 1 diabetes, is the fear of the consequences of blood sugar going too low,” says study author Michael A. Weiss.

For sufferers of diabetes, keeping blood glucose levels within a healthy range can be a difficult and labor-intensive balancing act that often requires regular insulin injections, but some scientists imagine a future where medicine does the heavy lifting for them. A team at Indiana University School of Medicine has taken a promising step towards this future, demonstrating a type of “synthetic hinge” that swings into action when blood glucose levels call for corrective action.

The hormone insulin plays a vital role in keeping glucose at healthy levels in the blood, pulling it out of the bloodstream and helping turn it into energy. In diabetes patients, insufficient amounts or insulin that results in a reduction in effectiveness means that blood glucose levels are left to rise to potentially dangerous levels, which can have serious consequences.

Continue reading “‘Synthetic hinge’ opens a door to smart, glucose-responsive insulin” »

Two conditional transgenic mouse lines based on CRISPRa and CRISPRi enable epigenome editing in vivo.

The idea is to offer the predictions for the structure of practically every protein with a known sequence of amino acids free of charge. “We believe that this is the most important contribution to date that artificial intelligence has contributed to scientific knowledge,” he said following the publication of DeepMind’s research in the medical journal Nature.

DeepMind, a company bought by Google, predicts with unprecedented precision the 3D structure of nearly all the proteins made by the human body.

PwnedPiper pneumatic tube system (PTS) security flaws threaten 80% of Hospitals in the U.S.

High blood concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids, which oily fish such as salmon are known to be rich in, can increase your life expectancy by nearly five years.

The company that makes SG was testing it mainly against other cancers, but Dr. Tagawa, who is also a professor of urology and a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine, and his colleagues showed in a 2015 pilot trial that it shrank tumors in three of six patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma that had not responded to platinum-based chemotherapy. That trial led to the enrollment of a group of 45 patients with treatment-refractory urothelial carcinoma (amongst many others with various advanced cancers) with encouraging results.

A new treatment for advanced urothelial cancer was effective with tolerable side effects in an international, multi-center phase 2 clinical trial led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.

The trial results prompted a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accelerated approval of the treatment on April 13, giving patients with this very aggressive type of cancer a new therapeutic option.

Continue reading “New Treatment Option for Advanced Urothelial Cancer Patients Shows Promise in a Phase 2 Clinical Trial” »

Last week, a young woman with sickle cell anemia became the first person in the United States to have her cells altered with CRISPR gene editing technology. Here’s what that means for the future treatment of genetic diseases.

Right now, protection against Covid-19 comes via an injection. But in future, those vaccines could come from inhalers or even pills.

In a white, airy laboratory in Medicon Village, one of southern Sweden’s largest science parks, chemist Ingemo Andersson holds up a thin, plastic inhaler, half the size of a matchbox.

Her team is hoping this tiny product could play a big role in the global fight against coronavirus allowing people to take powdered versions of future vaccines at home.

Continue reading “Could Covid vaccine be taken as a pill?” »

The news we like: “In five to 10 years time from now, we’ll have a new, special kind of drugs: longevity drugs. And unlike today’s medication, which always focused on one disease, this kind of drug will will give us an opportunity to influence aging as a whole and a very fatalistic way, working on healthspan, not only on lifespan… it’s very likely that this new drug will be developed with the help of artificial intelligence, which will compress drug development cycle by two or three times from what they are today.”

Ahead of the launch of his new book Growing Young, Sergey Young joins us for a video interview to discuss longevity horizons, personal health strategies and disruptive tech – and how we are moving towards radically extending our lifespan and healthspan.

Sergey Young, the longevity investor and founder of the Longevity Vision Fund is on a mission to extend healthy lifespans of at least one billion people. His new book, Growing Young, is released on 24th August and is already rising up the Amazon charts.

Continue reading “Sergey Young: breaking the barrier of maximum lifespan” »