Lifeboat Foundation

Now maybe we can snack happily! I think this applies to regular food too? I can eat all the Chinese and Mexican and Italian food I want? Plus for people with genetic risks can’t this not help? I hope so.

Mice fed a high-sugar, high-fat diet for most of their lives managed to escape weight gain and protect their livers when they were treated with an experimental new drug.

The small-molecule drug was developed by a team led by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio). K nown by its chemical acronym CPACC, it works by limiting the entry of magnesium into the mitochondria, the parts of the cell in charge of generating energy and burning calories.

Continue reading “Scientists Develop Drug That Prevents Weight Gain in Junk-Food-Eating Mice” »

Welcome to this special issue, focusing on the potential of pluripotent stem cell (PSC)-based therapies and their paths toward clinical application. Since the establishment of human embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in 1998 and 2007, respectively, significant progress has been made in differentiating PSCs into a broad range of somatic cells. We are now closer than ever before to having highly functional PSC-derived somatic cells at purity for transplantation therapies to complement damaged or diseased organs and restore their physiologic functions. Like organ transplantation, PSC-based therapies have the potential to regenerate damaged organs that cannot otherwise be healed by using small-molecule or antibody-based drugs.

In this issue, Kobold et al. present an overview of the history and current status of clinical studies utilizing human PSCs. Since the early 2010s, many clinical studies employing human ES cells have been initiated. By 2018, the number of such studies using human iPS cells had skyrocketed. Many PSC-based therapies are currently being tested to treat various pathologic conditions, including different neoplasms and diseases of the eye, adnexa, and circulatory system. However, there are still many diseases that require further efforts to interrogate the true potential of PSC-based therapies. To advance the use of PSC-based therapy to treat a wider range of pathologic conditions in the future, we must continue with extensive basic and clinical research to establish both efficacy and safety for such new therapies.

Although clinical research on PSC-based therapy for liver diseases has not received as much attention, there is much hope for it to become a real alternative to living-donor liver transplantation. Cardinale et al. provided a comprehensive summary of the recent studies on cell-based therapy for liver diseases. In addition, artificial livers generated through bioengineering efforts are now considered to be a viable option. Aside from traditional cell or organ transplantation to restore impaired liver function, transplantation aimed at treating the microenvironment, such as inflammation, in the liver is also an effective therapeutic strategy. Concurrent research efforts in both basic and clinical studies will be crucial in making PSC-based therapy for liver diseases a reality.

“The definition of the human embryo is far from being engrained, it’s constantly evolving with scientific advances,” said Nicolas Rivron, a developmental biologist at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. In a perspective published Thursday in Cell, he and an international group of leading luminaries in the fast-moving field of synthetic embryology — or “stembryology,” as it’s sometimes called — argue that these latest scientific advances justify a new definition for the human embryo that’s rooted not in how it was made, but in what it can become.

“Because of this new path, we think it becomes more and more important to think about the embryo not in terms of how it was formed but about the potential it has to generate something,” Rivron told STAT.

He and his co-authors proposed that embryos be defined as “a group of human cells supported by elements fulfilling extra-embryonic and uterine functions that, combined, have the potential to form a fetus.”

DALLAS – As the world continues to adapt to the growing trend of Artificial Intelligence (AI), South Korean scientists have unveiled a humanoid robot capable of piloting an aircraft.

Named Pibot, the life-sized robot, measuring 160 cm tall and weighing in at 65 kg, is capable of gripping the controls, memorizing aircraft manuals, and even responding to emergency situations. It is fitted with multiple cameras capable of monitoring the aircraft’s systems and operational conditions.

Currently under development by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST), researchers utilized AI chatbots such as ChatGPT to create ways for PiBot to learn the pilot manuals for various aircraft. The robot can then be changed onto an alternative airframe by clicking the type. It can also memorize worldwide Jeppesen aeronautical navigation charts, an impossible task for its human equivalent.

The danger posed by conversational AI isn’t that it can say weird or dark things; it’s that it can manipulate you without your knowledge.

Only by expanding the domain of life into space can we fulfill the 17 SDGs on Earth in the long term. Therefore, the Space Renaissance International and the…

Likewise, this dataset had 4,510 cases, 212,242 controls, with 16,380,464 SNPs for psoriasis, and 2,802 cases, 212,242 controls, with 16,380,459 SNPs for psoriasis vulgaris.

The team analyzed the aggregated statistical data using an MR approach to explore the potential causal relationship between the gut microbiome and psoriasis. SNPs with a threshold P-value of 1 × 10⁻⁵ worked as genetic instrumental variables in these MR analyses.

While searching for answers about their son’s condition, Karlie and Evan Anderson made a startling discovery: despite living for 30 years without any symptoms, Evan tested positive for Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that nearly cost him his life. NBC’s Kaylee Hartung reports for TODAY.

A new research paper was published by Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as “Aging (Albany NY)” and “Aging-US” by Web of Science) in Volume 15, Issue 15, entitled, “Associations between klotho and telomere biology in high stress caregivers.”

Aging biomarkers may be related to each other through direct co-regulation and/or through being regulated by common processes associated with chronological aging or stress. Klotho is an aging regulator that acts as a circulating hormone with critical involvement in regulating insulin signaling, phosphate homeostasis, oxidative stress, and age-related inflammatory functioning.

In this new study, researchers Ryan L. Brown, Elissa E. Epel, Jue Lin, Dena B. Dubal, and Aric A. Prather from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, and the Department of Neurology and Weill Institute of Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco discuss the association between klotho levels and telomere length of specific sorted immune cells among a healthy sample of mothers caregiving for a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or a child without ASD — covarying age and body mass index — in order to understand if high stress associated with caregiving for a child with an ASD may be involved in any association between these aging biomarkers.