Lifeboat Foundation

A new study by Burke Neurological Institute (BNI), Weill Cornell Medicine, finds that activation of MAP2K signaling by genetic engineering or non-invasive repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) promotes corticospinal tract (CST) axon sprouting and functional regeneration after spinal cord injury (SCI) in mice.

RTMS is a noninvasive technique that evokes an electrical field in brain tissue via electromagnetic induction. While an increasing body of evidence suggests that rTMS applied over motor cortex may be beneficial for functional recovery in SCI patients, the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie rTMS’ beneficial effects remains unclear.

A new study published in Science Translation Medicine showed that high-frequency rTMS (HF-rTMS) activated MAP2K signaling and enhanced axonal regeneration and functional recovery, suggesting that rTMS might be a valuable treatment option for SCI individuals.

Exercise and physical activity reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). It has been observed that an active individual is at a 30% to 40% lower risk of CVD. However, previous cross-sectional studies have failed to determine whether exercise has a significant impact on expediting coronary atherosclerosis and plaque morphology. A recent Circulation journal paper has focused on investigating the relationship between exercise volume and intensity and the progression of coronary atherosclerosis in middle-aged and older male athletes.

Study: Exercise Volume Versus Intensity and the Progression of Coronary Atherosclerosis in Middle-Aged and Older Athletes: Findings From the MARC-2 Study. Image Credit: sciencepics / Shutterstock.

People age at different rates due to a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, which can affect their biological age and their risk of developing diseases or experiencing early death. This is why two individuals who are both 50 years old may not have the same level of biological aging, despite having lived for the same number of years.

Lifestyle choices, such as diet and smoking, and illness all contribute to accelerating biological age beyond one’s chronological age. Researchers have discovered that grip strength, a measure of overall muscle strength, is linked to biological age in this way. In particular, the study, which was published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle, found that people with weaker grip strength had older biological ages.

Researchers at Michigan Medicine modeled the relationship between biological age and grip strength of 1,274 middle-aged and older adults using three “age acceleration clocks” based on DNA.

Doctors should be on the lookout for three types of fungi that, when inhaled, can lead to serious infections, researchers say.

This past year, global attention has been focused on geo-strategic issues, such as the devastating war in Ukraine, which has dislocated many and caused immense suffering. Attention has also been focused on the recovery from the COVID pandemic, which was the overriding concern over the past three years. And finally, the economic destruction wrought by rapidly ramped interest rates which have targeted all sectors of the economy, particularly technology. But despite all this negativity, the business of building the future continues. There has been progress across major axes of computing, from visualization to AI and new types of processors (quantum).

With immense progress in technology, what might we look forward to in 2023?

Though it is a cornerstone of virtually every process that occurs in living organisms, the proper folding and transport of biological proteins is a notoriously difficult and time-consuming process to experimentally study.

In a new paper published in eLife, researchers in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Computer Science have shown that AF2Complex may be able to lend a hand.

Building on the models of DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2, a machine learning tool able to predict the detailed three-dimensional structures of individual proteins, AF2Complex—short for AlphaFold 2 Complex—is a deep learning tool designed to predict the physical interactions of multiple proteins. With these predictions, AF2Complex is able to calculate which proteins are likely to interact with each other to form functional complexes in unprecedented detail.

This week our guest is business and technology reporter, Peter Ward. Earlier this year, Peter released his book The Price of Immortality: The Race to Live Forever, where he investigates the many movements and organizations that are seeking to extend human life, from the Church of Perpetual Life in Florida, to some of the biggest tech giants in Silicon Valley.

In this episode, we explore Peter’s findings, which takes us on a tour from cryonics to mind uploading, from supplements to gene editing, and much more. Along the way, we discuss the details of how one might actually achieve immortality, the details of senescent cells and telomeres, whether it’s better to live healthy than to live long, the scams and failures that seem to dominate the space, as well as the efforts that seem most promising.

Continue reading “The Failures and Opportunities of Immortality | Peter Ward, Feedback Loop, ep 75” »

Many cancer cells never leave their original tumors. Some cancer cells evolve the ability to migrate to other tissues, but once there cannot manage to form new tumors, and so remain dormant. The deadliest cancer cells are those that can not only migrate to, but also thrive and multiply in distant tissues.

These metastatic cancer cells are responsible for most of the deaths associated with cancer. Understanding what enables some cancer cells to metastasize—to spread and form new tumors—is an important goal for researchers, as it will help them develop therapies to prevent or reverse those deadly occurrences.

Past research from Whitehead Institute Member Robert Weinberg and others suggests that cancer cells are best able to form metastatic tumors when the cells are in a particular state called the quasi-mesenchymal (qM) state. New research from Weinberg and Arthur Lambert, once a postdoc in Weinberg’s lab and now an associate director of translational medicine at AstraZeneca, has identified two gene-regulating molecules as important for keeping cancer cells in the qM state.

Immunotherapy, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), has changed the landscape of cancer treatment in the last decade. Immunotherapies, treatments targeting a patient’s immune system instead of the cancer itself, work on cancers considered “hot,” indicating that the tumor contains immune cells and factors which favor an anti-tumor immune response. Cancers that respond to immune-based therapies are known as “immunogenic” since the treatment can stimulate the immune response.

On the other hand, “cold” cancers, characterized as “non-immunogenic,” fail to respond to immunotherapies. One cancer understood as refractory to immune-based regimens is pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), a highly aggressive pancreatic malignancy where less than 10% of patients survive five years past diagnosis. ICIs, including those targeting PD-L1 and CTLA-4 lack the efficacy to impact survival outcomes in PDAC patients significantly. Further, estimates project that by 2030, PDAC will rise to the second-highest cause of cancer-related deaths. Thus, there remains a significant need to develop novel and practical strategies to treat patients with this disease.