Light-Activated Hydrogel Thickens, Reshapes Thinning Cornea
Researchers at the University of Ottawa have developed a light-activated hydrogel treatment for corneal disease. Many of the people who suffer from corneal disease, which can include corneal thinning, are not suitable for a corneal transplant, and obtaining transplants is a challenge for those who are. This technology is intended to assist with thickening and reshaping the cornea, and it may pave the way for an alternative to transplants in the future.
The biomaterial is made using glycosaminoglycans, which are polymers that occur naturally in the body, and short peptides. Following injection into a surgically create...
Source: Medgadget - August 9, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Ophthalmology uOttawa Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 16th 2023
Conclusions
Implanted Hair Follicle Cells Produce Remodeling of Scar Tissue
Assessment of Somatic Mosaicism as a Biomarker of Aging
The Gut Microbiome of Centenarians
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/01/the-gut-microbiome-of-centenarians/
The state of the gut microbiome is arguably as influential on health as exercise. Various microbial species present in the gut produce beneficial metabolites, such as butyrate, or harmful metabolites, such as isoamylamine, or can provoke chronic inflammation in a variety of ways. An individual can have a better or worse microbiome, assessing these and other...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 15, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Commentary on More Drastic Scenarios of Partial Brain and Full Body Replacement
Is outright replacement of tissues a viable option for the treatment of aging? There are factions within the longevity-interested community who think that the paths to either (a) engineering replacement brain tissue for parts of the brain not involved in memory, or (b) transplantation of an old head onto a young body or brain into a young body, are short enough to be worth pursuing, where "short enough" means a few decades of work given sufficient funding. To my mind, major surgery of the sort implied by replacement of large sections of tissue or entire organs is something to be avoided in later life, given the risks and c...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 10, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, December 12th 2022
In conclusion, selective removal of senescent dermal fibroblasts can improve the skin aging phenotype, indicating that BPTES may be an effective novel therapeutic agent for skin aging.
Non-Dividing Neurons Do In Fact Become Senescent, Impairing Brain Function
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/12/non-dividing-neurons-do-in-fact-become-senescent-impairing-brain-function/
Cellular senescence is generally thought of as a characteristic of replicating cells; it is an end state reached when telomeres, reduced in length with each cell division, become too short. This is followed by programmed cell death...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 11, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Assessing Mitochondrial Transfer Into Senescent Cells In Vitro
Researchers here report on in vitro experiments to show that introducing functional mitochondria into a cell culture containing senescent cells reduces markers of senescence. It is an interesting question as to how this would work in living tissue, where the numbers of senescent cells are low, and mitochondria will be introduced into all cells. Since several companies are developing mitochondrial transfer as a therapy to treat the loss of mitochondrial function that is characteristic of age-related disease, we'll find out in the years ahead. Those groups are not specifically targeting cellular senescence, but can hardly av...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 8, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Bioengineered Cornea Restores Sight
Scientists at Linköping University in Sweden have developed a collagen-based corneal implant that can restore sight to blind patients with corneal disease. The breakthrough could pave the way for such patients to receive effective treatment for corneal disease without requiring a corneal transplant from a human donor. There is a shortage of donor corneas, so creating an off-the-shelf alternative could be very useful.
The bioengineered cornea was created using highly purified collagen derived from pig skin, a byproduct of the food industry. The researchers developed a method to double crosslink the purified collagen, u...
Source: Medgadget - August 18, 2022 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Ophthalmology keratoconus liu_universitet LiU_university Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 21st 2022
In conclusion, clinical trials targeting aging in humans have shown promising but limited results on biomarkers so far.
Mycobacterium Vaccae Immunization as an Anti-Inflammatory Strategy
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/02/mycobacterium-vaccae-immunization-as-an-anti-inflammatory-strategy/
In today's open access paper, researchers discuss immunization with Mycobacterium vaccae as an approach to reduce the inflammatory overactivity of the aged immune system. Researchers have made some initial inroads into studying the way in which this bacteria can alter the function of the immune system, and her...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 20, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
How We Wrested Control of Our Rx Drug Spending. Maybe You Can, too.
This week, we ' ve heard reporting that the big Congressional bill which was supposed to include a provision for Medicare, which is the taxpayer-funded senior insurance plan to actually negotiate prices on prescription drugs (just as most other countries, as well as the Veteran ' s Administration [VA] already do right now) was going to be omitted because of a handful of PhRMA-bankrolled lawmakers pushed to kill it. That said, it isn ' t over until its over. Although we don ' t know what she might or might not do, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi still has some tricks in her own playbook if it doesn ' t happen a...
Source: Scott's Web Log - November 1, 2021 Category: Endocrinology Tags: coupon-generating websites apps PBM prescriptions Source Type: blogs
Flowers, chocolates, organ donation — are you in?
Chocolates and flowers are great gifts for Valentine’s Day. But what if the gifts we give this year could be truly life-changing? A gift that could save someone’s life, or free them from dialysis?
You can do this. For people in need of organ, tissue, or blood donation, a donor can give them a gift that exceeds the value of anything that you can buy. That’s why February 14th is not only Valentine’s Day — it’s also National Donor Day, a time when health organizations nationwide sponsor blood drives and sign-ups for organ and tissue donation. Read on if you’ve ever wondered what can be donated, had reservations ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - February 11, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Health Heart Health Kidney and urinary tract Lung disease Source Type: blogs
CorNeat Synthetic Cornea Implanted in First Patient
Eye surgeons at the Rabin Medical Center in Israel have successfully implanted the first artificial cornea into a bilaterally blind human patient. Once the bandages were removed, the 78 year old man was able to read and to recognize family members.
This was all possible thanks to a device developed by CorNeat Vision, an Israeli firm, that consists of an optical component attached to a biocompatible material that resembles the human extracellular matrix. This material doesn’t biodegrade, but provides both the physical structure and biochemical signals to allow it to welcome fibroblasts and fuse with nearby native ...
Source: Medgadget - January 20, 2021 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Ophthalmology Source Type: blogs
MissionGO and MediGO Complete Successful Organ Deliveries in Unmanned Flights
MissionGO, a provider of unmanned aviation solutions, and Nevada Donor Network, an organ procurement organization (OPO) serving the state of Nevada, have recently completed two successful test flights in Las Vegas carrying a human organ and human tissue via an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). MediGO provided the technological services needed for collection and communication of critical data about OPO resources and organs across the transplant ecosystem.
The first flight transported research corneas in an urban environment—from Southern Hills Hospital and Medical Center to Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican, San Martín ...
Source: Medgadget - December 4, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Alice Ferng Tags: Cardiac Surgery Emergency Medicine Exclusive Pediatrics Thoracic Surgery Source Type: blogs
Octopus-Inspired Sucker for Tranplanting Cell Sheets
Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a ‘sucker’ to pick up and transfer thin cell or tissue sheets that are intended for therapeutic purposes, such as wound healing or tissue grafting. Inspired by octopus suckers, the device can gently manipulate the delicate sheets without causing damage, and uses heating and a temperature-responsive hydrogel to create suction between the sucker and the sheet.
“For the last few decades, cell or tissue sheets have been increasingly used to treat injured or diseased tissues. A crucial aspect of tissue transplantation surgery, such as corneal tissue transplan...
Source: Medgadget - October 19, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Cardiac Surgery Materials Plastic Surgery Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 6th 2020
Conclusion
A great deal of progress is being made in the matter of treating aging: in advocacy, in funding, in the research and development. It can never be enough, and it can never be fast enough, given the enormous cost in suffering and lost lives. The longevity industry is really only just getting started in the grand scheme of things: it looks vast to those of us who followed the slow, halting progress in aging research that was the state of things a decade or two ago. But it is still tiny compared to the rest of the medical industry, and it remains the case that there is a great deal of work yet to be done at all...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 5, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Look Back at 2019: Progress Towards the Treatment of Aging as a Medical Condition
Conclusion
A great deal of progress is being made in the matter of treating aging: in advocacy, in funding, in the research and development. It can never be enough, and it can never be fast enough, given the enormous cost in suffering and lost lives. The longevity industry is really only just getting started in the grand scheme of things: it looks vast to those of us who followed the slow, halting progress in aging research that was the state of things a decade or two ago. But it is still tiny compared to the rest of the medical industry, and it remains the case that there is a great deal of work yet to be done at all...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 31, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 16th 2019
In this study, researchers studied 438,952 participants in the UK Biobank, who had a total of 24,980 major coronary events - defined as the first occurrence of non-fatal heart attack, ischaemic stroke, or death due to coronary heart disease. They used an approach called Mendelian randomisation, which uses naturally occurring genetic differences to randomly divide the participants into groups, mimicking the effects of running a clinical trial.
People with genes associated with lower blood pressure, lower LDL cholesterol, and a combination of both were put into different groups, and compared against those without thes...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 15, 2019 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
