Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1578
Jun 9, 2020
The Last Days of the Blue-Blood Harvest
Posted by Brent Ellman in category: biotech/medical
Every year, more than 400,000 crabs are bled for the miraculous medical substance that flows through their bodies—now pharmaceutical companies are finally committing to an alternative that doesn’t harm animals.
Jun 9, 2020
Scientists engineer one protein to fight cancer and regenerate neurons
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience
Our lungs, bones, blood vessels and other major organs are made up of cells, and one way our bodies keep us healthy is by using protein messengers known as ligands that bind to receptors on the surfaces of cells to regulate our biological processes. When those messages get garbled, it can make us ill with a host of different diseases.
Jun 9, 2020
Repetitive negative thinking is associated with amyloid, tau, and cognitive decline
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience
The Cognitive Debt hypothesis proposes that repetitive negative thinking (RNT), a modifiable process common to many psychological risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may itself increase risk. We sought to empirically examine relationships between RNT and markers of AD, compared with anxiety and depression symptoms.
Jun 9, 2020
Putin orders creation of national genetic database as Russia prioritizes genetic research
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: biotech/medical, computing, education, genetics, government
The president also ordered a boost in the education of specialists in genetics and genome sequencing and the domestic production of necessary laboratory equipment, as well as tax cuts for biomedical research. Russia will also open world-class genome research centers which will, among their immediate goals, work on the development of treatments and vaccines for Covid-19.
The future database will be one of the tools that Russia hopes to use to assume a leading position in the biomedical industry. The government sees it as crucial for keeping the country competitive on the world stage going forward.
The Kurchatov Institute, which is best known for nuclear research, has been tasked with laying the foundation for the database, choosing the storage format and making tools for search and analysis. The institute has experience in the secure handling of large amounts of sensitive data and operates a number of data centers across Russia which are used for scientific collaboration projects.
Jun 9, 2020
An experimental peptide could block Covid-19
Posted by Omuterema Akhahenda in category: biotech/medical
The research described in this article has been published on a preprint server but has not yet been peer-reviewed by scientific or medical experts.
In hopes of developing a possible treatment for Covid-19, a team of MIT chemists has designed a drug candidate that they believe may block coronaviruses’ ability to enter human cells. The potential drug is a short protein fragment, or peptide, that mimics a protein found on the surface of human cells.
The researchers have shown that their new peptide can bind to the viral protein that coronaviruses use to enter human cells, potentially disarming it.
Continue reading “An experimental peptide could block Covid-19” »
Jun 8, 2020
Controversial Coronavirus Lab Origin Claims Dismissed By Experts
Posted by Brent Ellman in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical
“Properties that have never been found in nature”
New claims that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was engineered have been dismissed by scientific and intelligence experts.
The authors of a British-Norwegian vaccine study—accepted by the Quarterly Review of Biophysics—claim that the coronavirus’s spike protein contains sequences that appear to be artificially inserted.
Continue reading “Controversial Coronavirus Lab Origin Claims Dismissed By Experts” »
There is great promise in 2020 that we might be able to make our bodies young without having to explicitly repair molecular damage, but just by changing the signaling environment.
Do we need to add signals that say “young” or remove signals that say “old”?
Does infusion of biochemical signals from young blood plasma rejuvenate tissues of an old animal? Or are there dissolved signal proteins in old animals that must be removed?
Jun 8, 2020
SARS-CoV-2 Infection of Gut Organoids Bolsters Case for Intestinal Transmission
Posted by Omuterema Akhahenda in category: biotech/medical
SARS-CoV-2 can infect and replicate in cells that line the inside of the human intestines, suggests study using gut organoids.
Jun 8, 2020
How ‘microgravity’ changes the bodies of astronauts
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: biotech/medical
Being an astronaut looks like an exciting and glamorous career. But have you ever thought about the dangers that these people face by being exposed to extreme conditions, such as radiation and microgravity?
Living and working in microgravity can impact your whole body in different ways. On the other hand, the human body is capable of adapting its physiology to survive in diverse conditions.