Lifeboat Foundation

Doctors removed one-sixth of this child’s brain — and what was left did something incredible.

In order to remain healthy and functional, cells have a number of maintenance systems that help them to dispose of metabolic waste and unwanted proteins. Autophagy is perhaps the best-known example of how cells purge their waste, and another is the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS). Researchers are working on ways to boost the activity of the UPS to improve cellular health.

The ubiquitin-proteasome system

During normal cellular function, proteins being constructed in the cell can sometimes become misfolded and start to accumulate over time, which can cause the cell to become dysfunctional and encourage diseases such as Alzheimer’s to develop as the system gums up with bent and broken proteins.

Continue reading “Boosting Cellular Housekeeping with Exercise and Fasting” »

In a pioneering new clinical trial, researchers have succeeded in delivering a cell-restoring drug directly to the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s patients treated with a groundbreaking new therapy to regrow their brain cells have criticised a decision by regulators to stop trials as ‘sinful.’

In the biggest surgical trial ever for the disease, British patients had holes drilled into the heads and special ports implanted so that a naturally occurring protein could be infused directly into the brain over nine months.

Described as ‘Baby Bio’ for brain cells, the Glial Cell Line Derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) encourages the growth of cells that produce dopamine, a crucial hormone needed for movement, which vanishes in Parkinson’s patients.

Continue reading “‘Baby Bio’ for brain cells trial halted despite Parkinson’s patients seeing ‘miracle’ results” »

Do our minds have quantum structures that give rise to consciousness? Sir Roger Penrose, one of the world’s most famous scientists, believes this and can explain how it works.

As greenery round the childhood residence shrunk, risk of mental illness as an adolescent and adult went up. Kids who grew up in plots with the least vegetation had a 15 to 50% greater incidence of a range of psychiatric problems, including depression, eating disorders, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Two studies link parks and poshness to lower depression and cognitive decline, for reasons still unclear. Paul Biegler reports.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Queensland University of Technology of Australia, have developed a device that can isolate individual cancer cells from patient blood samples. The microfluidic device works by separating the various cell types found in blood by their size. The device may one day enable rapid, cheap liquid biopsies to help detect cancer and develop targeted treatment plans. The findings are reported in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering.

“This new microfluidics chip lets us separate cancer cells from whole blood or minimally-diluted blood,” said Ian Papautsky, the Richard and Loan Hill Professor of Bioengineering in the UIC College of Engineering and corresponding author on the paper. “While devices for detecting cancer cells circulating in the blood are becoming available, most are relatively expensive and are out of reach of many research labs or hospitals. Our device is cheap, and doesn’t require much specimen preparation or dilution, making it fast and easy to use.”

The ability to successfully isolate cancer cells is a crucial step in enabling liquid biopsy where cancer could be detected through a simple blood draw. This would eliminate the discomfort and cost of tissue biopsies which use needles or surgical procedures as part of cancer diagnosis. Liquid biopsy could also be useful in tracking the efficacy of chemotherapy over the course of time, and for detecting cancer in organs difficult to access through traditional biopsy techniques, including the brain and lungs.

Continue reading “New microfluidics device can detect cancer cells in blood” »

I wonder how diet mixed with CBD oil treatment can work on neurodegenerative diseases? A man has told of how he “got his mum back” after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, in part, by getting her to follow a diet high in berries and leafy green vegetables.

One man has ‘got his mum back’ from the ravages of Alzheimer’s, partly…

#ClinicalTrial The most common syndrome in patients with severe dementia is agitated behavior, which is often characterized by a combination of violent behavior (physical or verbal), restlessness, and inappropriate loudness. The treatment options for this syndrome are limited and lead to severe side effects. In vivo experiments on animals and clinical studies on adults show that cannabinoids could have a beneficial effect on behavioral disorders in general, and in dementia-related disorders in particular.

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