Lifeboat Foundation

Several traditional medicines commonly used in South Asia, are effective in maintaining blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to a new study led by experts at the University of Nottingham.

Many South Asian countries, including India and Nepal, have been using the Ayurvedic natural medical system for thousands of years. Some of the herbs included in this traditional medical system are also used in other parts of the world including Iran, China, and Mexico – to name a few.

It features a multi-pronged and individualized approach to managing health conditions that can include lifestyle modification (including diet), Ayurvedic detoxifying and purifying therapies (e.g. Panchakarma), and Ayurvedic medicines (containing plant, animal, or mineral-origin ingredients – single or in combination).

Surveillance, Preparedness & Health Security In Critical Disease Emergencies — Dr. Rosamund Lewis, MD, Head, WHO Smallpox Secretariat, Technical Lead for Monkeypox.

Dr. Rosamund Lewis, MD, is Head, WHO Smallpox Secretariat, Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Unit, World Health Emergencies Programme, at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, leading on emergency preparedness and advising on health security for the agency in this very critical domain, including as technical lead for Monkeypox. She also holds an appointment as Adjunct Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa.

Continue reading “Dr Rosamund Lewis MD — Head, WHO Smallpox Secretariat — Surveillance, Preparedness & Health Security” »

Reimagining Nuclear Medicine — Dr. Stephen Moran, Ph.D., Global Program Head, Neuroendocrine Tumors & Other Radiosensitive Cancers, Advanced Accelerator Applications, Novartis

Dr. Stephen Moran, Ph.D., is Global Program Head, Neuroendocrine Tumors & Other Radiosensitive Cancers, for Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA — https://www.adacap.com/), a Novartis company and also a member of the Oncology Development Unit Leadership Team at Novartis.

Continue reading “Dr. Stephen Moran, PhD — Reimagining Nuclear Medicine — Advanced Accelerator Applications, Novartis” »

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have been able to produce antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in hen eggs. Antibodies harvested from eggs might be used to treat COVID-19 or as a preventative measure for people exposed to the disease. The work was published July 9 in the journal Viruses.

“The beauty of the system is that you can produce a lot of antibodies in birds,” said Rodrigo Gallardo, professor in poultry medicine, Department of Population Health and Reproduction at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “In addition to a low cost to produce these antibodies in hens, they can be updated very fast by using updated antigens to hyperimmunize hens, allowing protection against current variant strains.”

Birds produce a type of antibody called IgY, comparable to IgG in humans and other mammals. IgY does not cause allergy or set off immune reactions when injected into humans. IgY appears both in birds’ serum and in their eggs. As a hen lays about 300 eggs a year, you can get a lot of IgY, Gallardo said.

The entirety of the known universe is teeming with an infinite number of molecules. But what fraction of these molecules have potential drug-like traits that can be used to develop life-saving drug treatments? Millions? Billions? Trillions? The answer: novemdecillion, or 10⁶⁰. This gargantuan number prolongs the drug development process for fast-spreading diseases like COVID-19 because it is far beyond what existing drug design models can compute. To put it into perspective, the Milky Way has about 100 thousand million, or 10⁸, stars.

In a paper that will be presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), MIT researchers developed a geometric deep-learning model called EquiBind that is 1,200 times faster than one of the fastest existing computational molecular docking models, QuickVina2-W, in successfully binding drug-like molecules to proteins. EquiBind is based on its predecessor, EquiDock, which specializes in binding two proteins using a technique developed by the late Octavian-Eugen Ganea, a recent MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health (Jameel Clinic) postdoc, who also co-authored the EquiBind paper.

Before drug development can even take place, drug researchers must find promising drug-like molecules that can bind or “dock” properly onto certain protein targets in a process known as drug discovery. After successfully docking to the protein, the binding drug, also known as the ligand, can stop a protein from functioning. If this happens to an essential protein of a bacterium, it can kill the bacterium, conferring protection to the human body.

The potential of quantum computing can in no way be undermined today as it solves some of the most obstinate challenges from bringing down global warming to dramatically bringing down drug discovery time and much more. And with this, several companies are in a spree to bring up quantum computing capabilities.

Nvidia has announced a unified computing platform that will bring in an open environment across quantum processors and classical computers. The company said that the platform aims at speeding enhanced quantum research and development across Artificial Intelligence (AI), High Performance Computing (HPC), health, finance and other disciplines.

The company claims that Nvidia Quantum Optimized Device Architecture or QODA is a first-of-its-kind platform for hybrid quantum-classical computers and aims to make quantum computing more accessible by creating a comprehensive hybrid quantum-classical programming model.

Our ability to use mathematical modelling is accelerating breakthrough discoveries in health care and biotechnology.

View insights.

Often when Dr. Thomas Valley sees a new patient in the intensive care unit at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, he clamps a pulse oximeter on their finger – one of the many devices he uses to gauge their health and what course of care they might require, whether they are a child having seizures, a teenage car accident victim or an older person with Covid-19.

But recently, Valley, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan’s Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, realized first-hand that the small device may yield less accurate oxygen readings in patients with dark skin.

Continue reading “Scientists are searching for solutions after studies show pulse oximeters don’t work as well for people of color” »

Mike George’s proposal for an autonomous fleet of modular emergency vehicles that can be arranged to form an on-the-go hospital has been awarded third place in Dezeen’s Future Mobility Competition powered by Arrival.

Called National Health Network Modular Hospital System, George’s proposal features a network of modular autonomous vehicles that can be combined into purpose-built clusters to enable hospitals to grow, adapt and respond to emergencies as effectively and flexibly as required.

Each module has a chassis and mobile platform, which can be customised with various interior components to respond to different medical situations. Each interior is designed to foster patient accessibility and comfort, as well as safety.