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With rates rising around the world, public-health leaders must prioritize prevention, treatment, funding and data.

To engineer proteins with useful functions, researchers usually begin with a natural protein that has a desirable function, such as emitting fluorescent light, and put it through many rounds of random mutation that eventually generate an optimized version of the protein.

This process has yielded optimized versions of many important proteins, including green fluorescent protein (GFP). However, for other proteins, it has proven difficult to generate an optimized version. MIT researchers have now developed a computational approach that makes it easier to predict mutations that will lead to better proteins, based on a relatively small amount of data.

Using this model, the researchers generated proteins with mutations that were predicted to lead to improved versions of GFP and a protein from adeno-associated virus (AAV), which is used to deliver DNA for gene therapy. They hope it could also be used to develop additional tools for neuroscience research and medical applications.

The neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero announced in 2015 that he could soon be capable of performing the world’s first human head transplant procedure. This would mean that it would be possible to remove someone’s head, and graft it onto the neck and shoulders of another person. As of yet, this has only been performed on cadavers and not on living humans.

But suppose you want to keep the face that you’ve already got? Or have grown tired of the body you inhabit? Could it ever be possible to switch brains between bodies instead?

Continue reading “Ever Wanted a Brain Transplant? Here Are The Challenges We Face” »

The brain computer interface (BCI) device can be used by inexperienced patients to play games within just a few sessions.

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) are a group of disorders in which the development of the central nervous system (CNS) is disturbed, resulting in different neurological and neuropsychiatric features, such as impaired motor function, learning, language or non-verbal communication. Frequent comorbidities include epilepsy and movement disorders. Advances in DNA sequencing technologies revealed identifiable genetic causes in an increasingly large proportion of NDDs, highlighting the need of experimental approaches to investigate the defective genes and the molecular pathways implicated in abnormal brain development. However, targeted approaches to investigate specific molecular defects and their implications in human brain dysfunction are prevented by limited access to patient-derived brain tissues. In this context, advances of both stem cell technologies and genome editing strategies during the last decade led to the generation of three-dimensional (3D) in vitro-models of cerebral organoids, holding the potential to recapitulate precise stages of human brain development with the aim of personalized diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Recent progresses allowed to generate 3D-structures of both neuronal and non-neuronal cell types and develop either whole-brain or region-specific cerebral organoids in order to investigate in vitro key brain developmental processes, such as neuronal cell morphogenesis, migration and connectivity. In this review, we summarized emerging methodological approaches in the field of brain organoid technologies and their application to dissect disease mechanisms underlying an array of pediatric brain developmental disorders, with a particular focus on autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and epileptic encephalopathies.

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) encompass a range of frequently co-existing conditions that include intellectual disability (ID), developmental delay (DD), and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) (Heyne et al., 2018; Salpietro et al., 2019). ASDs represent a complex set of behaviorally defined phenotypes, characterized by impairments in social interaction, communication and restricted or stereotyped behaviors (Chen et al., 2018). Epilepsy and NDDs frequently occur together, and when refractory seizures are accompanied by cognitive slowing or regression, patients are considered to have an epileptic encephalopathy (EE) (Scheffer et al., 2017). Both ID and ASDs are clinically and etiologically heterogeneous and a unifying pathophysiology has not yet been identified for either the disorder as a whole or its core behavioral components (Myers et al., 2020). Family and twin studies suggest high (0.65–0.91) heritability (Chen et al.

Whereas traditional colonoscopy involves snaking a camera called a colonoscope through your colon and rectum, a CT colonography, or virtual colonoscopy, consists of X-rays and a computer creating 3D images of these organs.

If you’re between the ages of 45 and 85, you should have a colorectal cancer screening routine in place, per the American Cancer Society (ACS). But a colonoscopy —in which your doctor uses a special camera to look inside your colon and rectum in search of abnormal growths called polyps —isn’t the only option to take charge of your gastrointestinal health.

You can choose from noninvasive screening methods: computed tomography (CT) colonography and/or a stool-based test. Billionaire entrepreneur and Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban tells Fortune he enjoys the relatively low cost and simplicity of the former, also called virtual colonoscopy. In short, it’s an X-ray exam that doesn’t require sedation or anesthesia.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can damage the heart even without directly infecting the heart tissue, a study has found. The research, published in the journal Circulation, specifically looked at damage to the hearts of people with SARS-CoV-2-associated acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a serious lung condition that can be fatal. But researchers said the findings could have relevance to organs beyond the heart and also to viruses other than SARS-CoV-2.

Scientists have long known that COVID-19 increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, and Long COVID, and prior imaging research has shown that over 50% of people who get COVID-19 experience some inflammation or damage to the heart. What scientists did not know was whether the damage occurs because the virus infects the heart tissue itself, or because of systemic inflammation triggered by the body’s well-known immune response to the virus.

“This was a critical question and finding the answer opens up a whole new understanding of the link between this serious lung injury and the kind of inflammation that can lead to cardiovascular complications,” said Michelle Olive, Ph.D., associate director of the Basic and Early Translational Research Program at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of NIH. “The research also suggests that suppressing the inflammation through treatments might help minimize these complications.”

Researchers have created a gene-edited cow that produces human insulin in her milk in Brazil.

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Researchers have developed a new model predicting severe acute kidney injury in patients treated with cisplatin, incorporating factors like hypomagnesemia to improve patient care and outcomes.