Two Stanford researchers are using AI to compare healthy cells to unhealthy cells with mutations linked to Huntington’s disease.
“People on metformin have 30% lower rates of almost every kind of cancer. It delays cognitive decline. Even people with diabetes who are obese and have more disease to start with but are on metformin have lower mortality rates than people without diabetes who aren’t on the drug.”
What he says is born out in numerous studies. Overall, this safe, super-cheap, decades-old drug not only treats diabetes, but it also seems to delay and compress the years of chronic illness associated with the final stage of life and extend what geroscientists call the “healthspan.”
Metformin is just one of many medications, including other old ones and some brand new inventions, that academic researchers and biotech startups are exploring to slow, stop, or perhaps even reverse aging.
The more you know about mutations driving your cancer, the better your chances of finding the right treatments.
Even more, over 1 in 3 clinical trials require knowing your tumor profile.
Continue reading “Get an NGS test to get the right treatments” »
For the first time, a researcher at the University of Delaware College of Health Sciences in collaboration with a team at the National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health, has determined that the naturally occurring dietary supplement known as nicotinamide riboside (NR) can enter the brain.
The discovery was made by Christopher Martens, assistant professor of kinesiology and applied physiology and director of the Delaware Center for Cognitive Aging Research, and Dr. Dimitrios Kapogiannis, a senior investigator at the National Institute on Aging. The finding is significant because it supports the idea that NR, upon reaching the brain, can alter the metabolism of relevant biological pathways involved in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Their work was recently published in the journal Aging Cell.
Upon consumption, NR is readily converted into nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which is critical to cellular repair and the repair of damaged DNA.
Psyllium fiber protects against ulcerative colitis and suppresses inflammation by activating the bile acid nuclear receptor, a mechanism that was previously unrecognized, according to a new study by researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.
The findings published in the journal Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology (CMGH) reveal that psyllium, which is semi-soluble and derived from Plantago seeds, inhibits inflammation that can lead to colitis in mice by increasing serum bile acids, resulting in the activation of the farnesoid X receptor (FXR), a bile acid nuclear receptor.
Fiber-rich foods promote intestinal and metabolic health, but the extent of protection varies for each fiber type and the mechanisms that offer this protection are poorly defined. It has been unclear whether dietary fiber can benefit severe forms of intestinal inflammation, such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, which are collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and affect 3 million adults in the United States.
Hey folks, I’m excited to share a new essay with y’all on my proposed route towards nanoscale human brain connectomics. I suggest that synchrotron ‘expansion x-ray microscopy’ has the potential to enable anatomical imaging of the entire human brain with sub-100 nm voxel size and high contrast in around 1 year for a price of roughly $10M. I plan to continue improving this essay over time as I acquire more detailed information and perform more calculations.
For a brief history of this concept: I started exploring this idea during undergrad (working with a laboratory-scale x-ray microscope), but was cut short by the pandemic. Now, I’m working on a PhD in biomedical engineering centered on gene therapy and synthetic biology, but I have retained a strong interest in connectomics. I recently began communication with some excellent collaborators who might be able to help move this technology forward. Hoping for some exciting progress!
By Logan Thrasher Collins.
Continue reading “Feasibility of mapping the human brain with expansion x-ray microscopy” »
Step one for uploading your brain after the singularity… keep it cognitively functional until then.
It’s been estimated that one in three cases of dementia is preventable. You can’t do anything right now to stop or reverse the underlying mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease, but you can do something about hypertension and vascular disease risk factors.
In this video we run through a recent study which analyzed data in the UK Biobank to see if patients taking lithium as an anti-psychotic saw extended lifespan of those using a different type of medication and they found that they did.
📃Papers in this video.
Lithium treatment extends human lifespan: findings from the UK Biobank.
_https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9925675/_
Low-dose lithium uptake promotes longevity in humans and metazoans.
_https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21301855/_
Continue reading “Lithium Extends Human Lifespan In Two Studies” »
Sensing a hug from each other via the internet may be a possibility in the near future. A research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) recently developed a wireless, soft e-skin that can both detect and deliver the sense of touch, and form a touch network allowing one-to-multiuser interaction. It offers great potential for enhancing the immersion of distance touch communication.
“With the rapid development of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), our visual and auditory senses are not sufficient for us to create an immersive experience. Touch communication could be a revolution for us to interact throughout the metaverse,” said Dr. Yu Xinge, Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at CityU.
While there are numerous haptic interfaces in the market to simulate tactile sensation in the virtual world, they provide only touch sensing or haptic feedback. The uniqueness of the novel e-skin is that it can perform self-sensing and haptic reproducing functions on the same interface.
Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced the invention of a nanowire, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, which can be cheaply grown by common bacteria and can be tuned to “smell” a vast array of chemical tracers—including those given off by people afflicted with different medical conditions, such as asthma and kidney disease.
Thousands of these specially tuned wires, each sniffing out a different chemical, can be layered onto tiny, wearable sensors, allowing health-care providers an unprecedented tool for monitoring potential health complications. Since these wires are grown by bacteria, they are organic, biodegradable and far greener than any inorganic nanowire.
To make these breakthroughs, which were detailed in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectrics, senior authors Derek Lovley, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology at UMass Amherst, and Jun Yao, professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst, needed to look no farther than their own noses.
