Lifeboat Foundation

MONDAY, Dec. 19, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Patients with a high-risk bladder cancer now have a new option to treat it.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a gene therapy called Adstiladrin, which is designed to work for patients who have what’s called high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) that hasn’t responded to the standard treatment, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), but hasn’t spread. BCG is a vaccine typically used for tuberculosis.

“This approval provides health care professionals with an innovative treatment option for patients with high-risk NMIBC that is unresponsive to BCG therapy,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release. “Today’s action addresses an area of critical need. The FDA remains committed to facilitating the development and approval of safe and effective cancer treatments.”

Dec. 14, 2021 — A new FDA-approved eyedrop medicine could replace reading glasses for millions of Americans who have age-related blurry vision.

The product, called Vuity, was approved by the FDA in October and went on the market last week. The new medicine begins working in about 15 minutes and provides sharper vision for 6 to 10 hours.

Vuity is the first FDA-approved eyedrop to treat the condition known as presbyopia, which tends to affect people ages 40 and older. The prescription drug uses the eye’s natural ability to reduce its pupil size.

A new chip re-creates the human vagina’s unique microbiome.

A gene therapy gel for a blistering skin disease developed at Stanford Medicine has worked wonders in a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial.

The gel, called B-VEC, was intended to treat dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, a skin disease that results in large open wounds that last for decades. The condition is extremely painful, and the medical treatment is mostly limited to palliative care.

University of Southern California and the Cleveland Clinic Florida Research and Innovation Center researchers have published new research on GRP78, a protein implicated in both COVID-19.

First identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China, COVID-19, or Coronavirus disease 2019, (which was originally called “2019 novel coronavirus” or 2019-nCoV) is an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It has spread globally, resulting in the 2019–22 coronavirus pandemic.

Scientists are getting closer to producing prosthetic limbs that can sense touch. A team of researchers from Stanford University and Seoul National University have created an artificial nerve system that can not only sense differences in pressure but also read individual Braille letters. More amazingly still, they managed to hook the artificial nerves up to the leg of a cockroach and make the limb twitch.

“We take skin for granted but it’s a complex sensing, signaling and decision-making system,” says Stanford’s Zhenan Bao, co-author of the paper published in Science and whose lab has been developing the system, in a statement. “This artificial sensory nerve system is a step toward making skin-like sensory neural networks for all sorts of applications.”

The nerve circuit that the team developed is made up of three main components.

Researchers from Spain and Denmark have discovered a technique for attacking cancer cells in the production of one of the origin-of-life molecules.

The molecule that gave rise to life, RNA

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule similar to DNA that is essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. Both are nucleic acids, but unlike DNA, RNA is single-stranded. An RNA strand has a backbone made of alternating sugar (ribose) and phosphate groups. Attached to each sugar is one of four bases—adenine (A), uracil (U), cytosine ©, or guanine (G). Different types of RNA exist in the cell: messenger RNA (mRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and transfer RNA (tRNA).

The innovation was inspired by the measles virus.

In a world-first, researchers at Tel Aviv University have conceived of a way to control the encapsulation and release of drug molecules by exposure to UV light, according to a press release by the institution published on Monday.

The scientists now hope that this new efficient encapsulation will allow for the high loading capacity of molecules leading to further development of delivery systems for the controlled release of biomolecules and drugs in the body by external stimuli using light.

New therapeutic has the potential to treat inflammatory bowel disease by targeting a molecule that keeps order in the intestines.

Salk Institute scientists have developed a new drug that acts like a master reset switch in the gut. Called FexD, the compound has previously been found to burn fat, lower cholesterol, and ward off colorectal cancer in mice. Now, the team reports that FexD can also prevent and reverse intestinal inflammation in mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease. The study was published on December 12, 2022, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The Salk-developed drug FexD provides a new way to restore balance to the digestive system and treat inflammatory diseases that are currently very difficult to manage,” says Salk Professor Ronald Evans, senior author of the study. Evans is also director of Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology.