Lifeboat Foundation

Baxter International Inc. (NYSE: BAX), a global leader in acute care, recognizes the findings of a prospective, multicenter, observational study on data from the OxirisNet Registry evaluating severely ill patients with COVID-19 in Italy treated with extracorporeal (outside the body) blood purification (EBP) using the company’s Oxiris filter set. From the study, recently published in Critical Care, the investigators reported that patients experienced a significant reduction in serum IL-6 (a pro-inflammatory cytokine) levels, improvement in indicators of organ dysfunction and reduction in expected intensive care unit (ICU) mortality rate as compared to a historical control. Due to the study design, the results do not provide evidence of a causal relationship between EBP treatment with Oxiris and these outcomes. The results do, however, support the feasibility of the use of Oxiris with severely ill COVID-19 patients and provide new insights for clinicians treating this vulnerable patient population.

Study investigators assessed serum IL-6 levels, indicators of organ dysfunction and intensive care unit (ICU) mortality rate in patients undergoing EBP with Oxiris.

A standard test that evaluates blood cells can help identify patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who are at an elevated risk for death, according to research published in JAMA Network Open.

“We were surprised to find that one standard test that quantifies the variation in size of red blood cells — called red cell distribution width, or RDW — was highly correlated with patient mortality, and the correlation persisted when controlling for other identified risk factors like patient age, some other lab tests, and some pre-existing illnesses,” Jonathan Carlson, MD, PhD, an instructor in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a press release.

In their cohort study, Carlson and colleagues retrospectively analyzed adult patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection who were admitted to one of four participating hospitals in the Boston area from March 4 through April 28. As part of standard critical care, all patients had their RDW, absolute lymphocyte count and dimerized plasmin fragment D levels collected daily.

The octopus essentially has many brains and can edit its own dna this is probably the closest invebrate as close to an alien species that we have on earth because their biology is so exotic.

One step closer to a light into matter molecular synthesizer: 3.

Molecular machine-track conjugate 1 (Figure 1) was designed to use iterative Wittig reactions to form carbon-carbon double bonds between a macrocycle and building blocks abstracted one at a time and in sequence from a track. The Wittig reaction 24, 25, 26 was chosen as it is robust and structurally tolerant, lending itself to exploitation in a range of contexts, including dynamic DNA-template synthesis.⁹ Our machine is based on a rotaxane architecture, in which the macrocycle has a reactive aldehyde attachment and the axle has the building-block sequence encoded as phosphonium salts during its synthesis. The 2, 2-diphenylpropane phosphonium units act both to restrict the position of the ring on the track and, upon deprotonation, as reactive ylide functionalities. Each ylide is large enough to block the passage of the macrocycle, trapping the ring within a compartment defined by the bulky stopper at the terminus of original threading and the next ylide along the track. Once a reactive building block can be reached by the macrocycle-appended aldehyde, it can be removed from the track through a Wittig reaction that adds it to the terminus of the growing chain. Each barrier also contains an aldehyde unit, so that once the building block is added to the end of the chain, it is able to react with the next barrier on the track that the macrocycle can access, enabling the alkene-connected oligomer to grow through successive Wittig reactions.

The specific size and constitution of the 2, 2-diphenylpropane motif of the building blocks proved important for successful machine operation. Early track designs in which the ylide and aldehyde were attached to the same aromatic ring or extended conjugated system proved insufficiently reactive (see Section S7 for a brief discussion of initial designs). Embedding the phosphorus atoms within the vector of the track allowed synthetically accessible triaryl phosphines to be the basis of the track design, expediting the synthesis (see Sections S2 and S3). The phenyl substituent at each phosphorus center (e.g., 4a–4D) also proved important: when a tolyl (4-methylphenyl) linking group was investigated, it proved difficult to develop macrocycles that could both thread during the rotaxane-forming reaction and, subsequently, pass over the phosphine oxide in the track formed from the Wittig reaction.

Continue reading “A Track-Based Molecular Synthesizer that Builds a Single-Sequence Oligomer through Iterative Carbon-Carbon Bond Formation” »

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most dangerous forms of tumors due to its aggressive growth, early metastases, and poor response to any known therapeutic treatments. Being a fourth major cause of cancer death nowadays and with foresight to become a second cause of cancer death after lung cancer by 2030, there is an urgent need in new therapeutic strategies that might improve the disease outcome.1 Recently, a growing interest in the anticancer activity of cannabinoids has led to numerous studies that cover more and more types of cancer.2, 3 Natural and synthetic cannabinoids have shown the capability to influence proliferation, migration, and apoptosis of cancer cells by both direct and indirect activation of cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2. In pancreatic cancer, the amount of CB1 and CB2 receptors expression in tumor cells was shown to be significantly higher than that in normal cells, opening a path for utilizing cannabinoids’ anticancer capabilities to kill cancer cells without affecting normal pancreatic tissue.

Journal dedicated to the clinical, translational and basic science of malignancies of the pancreas and peripancreatic region.

It seems the mass culling had some negative effects.

Nordic country culled 15 million mink after discovering mutated version of coronavirus.

Drone services company DroneUp has been approved for an industry-first FAA Waiver for flight over people and moving vehicles to support drone delivery of COVID-19 test kits anywhere in the U.S.

Scaling drone delivery throughout the country will require flight over people and moving vehicles, something that U.S. drone regulations currently prohibit without a waiver. Now, DroneUp, LLC announces that it has been approved “for the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) Section 107.39 Operation Over People Waiver allowing the unrestricted flight over non-participating persons and moving vehicles to support the drone delivery of COVID-19 test kits,” according to a press release.

“DroneUp’s 107.39 waiver is the first to allow drone delivery operations over people anywhere in the United States without predefined operating areas, locations, or routes. The waiver is also a first to allow unrestricted delivery overflight of moving vehicles.”

Rusted iron pipes can react with residual disinfectants in drinking water distribution systems to produce carcinogenic hexavalent chromium in drinking water, reports a study by engineers at UC Riverside.

Chromium is a metal that occurs naturally in the soil and groundwater. Trace amounts of trivalent chromium eventually appear in the drinking water and food supply and are thought to have neutral effects on health. Chromium is often added to iron to make it more resistant to corrosion.

Certain chemical reactions can change chromium atoms into a hexavalent form that creates cancer-causing genetic mutations in cells. This carcinogenic form of chromium was at the heart of a lawsuit in California’s Central Valley by Erin Brockovich, which became the subject of an Oscar-winning movie.

This sounds good. 😃