Lifeboat Foundation

According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Services, nearly 50 million Americans are currently living with an autoimmune condition. It’s the third-largest category of diseases affecting the nation, according to the agency. Doctors and scientists have been using a number of promising CRISPR treatments to address some of these conditions; now, the results of a new study in China could offer a way to make these treatments even more widely available.

As Nature‘s Smriti Mallapaty explains, the study focused on three people whose treatments were created using donor cells as opposed to cells taken from the patients themselves. This is significant because the prospect of using donor cells allows for CRISPR treatments to be developed in larger quantities — something that could make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives around the world.

Mallapaty describes the three patients in the study as having “severe autoimmune conditions.” One of them, a man in his fifties with systemic sclerosis, said that he started feeling better within a few days, and was able to resume working two weeks after the treatment. This particular study isn’t the only one of its kind — Nature‘s reporting mentions that another trial was subsequently conducted with more patients, while another doctor is leading a similar study using donor cells to treat lupus.

Mouse study finds fathers on unhealthy diets can cause cardiovascular disease in their daughters. When they become fathers, men who have an unhealthy, high-cholesterol diet can cause increased risk of cardiovascular disease, or CVD, in their daughters, a University of California, Riverside-led mouse study has found.

The research, published in the journal JCI Insight, is the first to demonstrate this result seen only in female offspring.

CVD, the leading cause of death globally, is a group of disorders that affects the heart and blood vessels. Hypertension (high blood pressure) is a leading risk factor for CVD. In the United States, nearly 703,000 people died in 2022 from heart disease, the equivalent of one in every five deaths.

The genome inside each of our cells is modeled by tension and torsion—due in part to the activity of proteins that compact, loop, wrap and untwist DNA—but scientists know little about how those forces affect the transcription of genes.

A team of microchip engineers at Pragmatic Semiconductor, working with a pair of colleagues from Harvard University and another from Qamcom, has developed a bendable, programmable, non-silicon 32-bit RISC-V microprocessor. Their research is published in the journal Nature.

Over the past several years, hardware manufacturers have been developing bendable microprocessors for use in medical applications. A bendable device with bendable components would allow for the creation of 24-hour sensors that could be applied to any part of the body.

Continue reading “Engineers develop a bendable, programmable, non-silicon microprocessor that requires only 6 mW of power” »

A Princeton-led team of scientists has created the first detailed connectome of an adult fruit fly brain, a complex network with almost 140,000 neurons. This significant step in neuroscience was featured in Nature and involved contributions from various global institutions, highlighting both the complexity of the fly’s brain and the potential insights it offers into human neurological diseases.

Groundbreaking Brain Mapping: A Connectome for the Adult Fruit Fly

Researchers led by Princeton University have constructed the first detailed neuron-by-neuron and synapse-by-synapse roadmap through the brain of an adult fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), achieving a major milestone in brain research. This study is the flagship article in the October 2 special issue of Nature, which is devoted to the new fruit fly “connectome.”

Exclusive: Global trial finds treatment with amivantamab and lazertinib halts progression for average of 23.7 months.

Disabling a gene involved in metabolism rejuvenates cells’ ability to spin off new neurons.

Bioengineered breast reconstruction and augmentation — dr. luba perry, phd — CEO, reconstruct bio.

Dr. Luba Perry, Ph.D. is Co-Founder and CEO of ReConstruct Bio (https://wyss.harvard.edu/technology/r…), an innovative venture emerging from Harvard’s Wyss Institute (https://wyss.harvard.edu/team/advance…), aimed at redefining the fields of medical reconstruction and aesthetics with an initial application of their groundbreaking technology on breast reconstruction and augmentation. With a multidisciplinary team of experts, the ReConstruct Bio team has developed the BioImplant—a living, bioengineered tissue created from the patient’s own cells, to provide safer, more natural alternative to current standards, which are often associated with significant drawbacks and health concerns.

Continue reading “Dr. Luba Perry, Ph.D. — CEO, ReConstruct Bio — Bioengineered Breast Reconstruction And Augmentation” »

Particles that are larger than regular molecules or atoms yet remain invisible to the naked eye can form a variety of useful structures, including miniature propellers for microrobots, cellular probes, and steerable microwheels designed for targeted drug delivery.