Trials of Xenotransplantation of Pig Organs into Humans Continue
Researchers have genetically engineered pigs to overcome the known barriers to transplantation of pig organs into humans, and have reached the stage of conducting transplants into terminally ill volunteers and brain dead individuals who donated their bodies to science. To learn by doing is really the only practical way by which the presently unknown problems are discovered. This trial of kidney transplantation ran for longer than prior efforts, and is a step on the path to producing a ready supply of non-human organs for transplantation, a technology that will compete with efforts to grow new organs on demands.
Su...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 24, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Next Pandemic May Be an AI one
By KIM BELLARD
Since the early days of the pandemic, conspiracy theorists have charged that COVID was a manufactured bioweapon, either deliberately leaked or the result of an inadvertent lab leak. There’s been no evidence to support these speculations, but, alas, that is not to say that such bioweapons aren’t truly an existential threat. And artificial intelligence (AI) may make the threat even worse.
Last week the Department of Defense issued its first ever Biodefense Posture Review. It “recognizes that expanding biological threats, enabled by advances in life sciences and biotechnology, are among the ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 23, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy AI Bioterrorism ChatGPT COVID Department of Defense Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
Ultrasound-Equipped Bra Monitors for Breast Cancer
Researchers at MIT have developed a wearable ultrasound system that is intended to allow women at high risk of breast cancer to perform an ultrasound scan on themselves at home, and may also let patients with early-stage malignancy or suspicious lesions to monitor how they are progressing. The technology can help patients to avoid having to attend a clinic, and may also help them to identify tumors that arise between routine breast checks at a clinic.
The system consists of a piezoelectric ultrasound scanning module that fits into a rig that can be affixed to a bra. The rig includes openings into which the ultrasoun...
Source: Medgadget - August 22, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Cardiology Diagnostics Radiology Source Type: blogs
Reviewing the Aging of the Adrenal Gland
The smaller organs of the body tend to receive less attention from scientists in the field of aging research. There is a lot of ground to cover and only so many research groups. Attention is first given to better studied tissues with proven, direct connections to better studied diseases and causes of mortality. This includes the larger organs such as heart, lungs, liver, and so forth. Chemical factories and cell factories such as the adrenal gland and thymus are clearly important in aging, but indirect effects spread across many different age-related conditions are, it seems, more difficult to study and more difficult to o...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 22, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Intellectual Property Journey Of Patients ’ Digital Health Data
If you have used or are using a digital health device or service to gain insights about your own health, you have a digital health data trail. Whether it’s your smartwatch or that genetic sequencing you took to know about your risks for certain ailments, your personal data has been logged digitally. The latter is often used by companies providing digital health services to fine-tune their products and generate intellectual property (IP).
As users of such services, it becomes ever important to understand (or at least try to) where that data ends up and consider who should own the resulting IP. We decided to follow the ...
Source: The Medical Futurist - August 22, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Pranavsingh Dhunnoo Tags: TMF health data IP of health data Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 21st 2023
This study aimed to investigate the association between frailty index and circulating CAP2 concentration in 467 community-dwelling older adults (median age: 79; range: 65-92 years). The selected robust regression model showed that circulating CAP2 concentration was not associated with chronological age, as well as sex and education. However, circulating CAP2 concentration was significantly and inversely associated with the frailty index: a 0.1-unit increase in frailty index leads to ~0.5-point mean decrease in CAP2 concentration. Furthermore, mean CAP2 concentration was significantly lower in frail participants (i.e., fr...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 21, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Ex-T Regulatory Cells Contribute to the Inflammation Driving Atherosclerosis
Researchers here report on their investigation of a problem T cell subpopulation in the context of atherosclerosis and the inflammation that is characteristic of that condition. These T cells appear to be maladapted forms of regulatory T cell, gone rogue and producing harmful inflammatory signaling in response to the environment of an atherosclerotic plaque. There is considerable interest in finding approaches to modulate immune activity to dampen the pace at which atherosclerotic plaques come into being and grow, though much of this centers on the role of the innate immune cells known as macrophages. Once inflammation get...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 18, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Hopes and Questions raised by Alzheimer ’s drug Leqembi (lecanemab)
The FDA has approved Leqembi, the first disease-modifying treatment for early-stage Alzheimer’s and a precursor condition, mild cognitive impairment. Medicare has said it will pay for the therapy. Medical centers across the country are scrambling to finalize policies and procedures for providing the medication to patients, possibly by summer’s end or early autumn.
It’s a fraught moment, with hope running high for families and other promising therapies such as donanemab on the horizon. Still, medical providers are cautious. “This is an important first step in developing treatments for complex neurodegenerative disea...
Source: SharpBrains - August 17, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Judith Graham at Kaiser Health News Tags: Brain/ Mental Health cognition early-stage Alzheimer’s Eisai FDA lecanemab Leqembi Medicare mild-cognitive-impairment Source Type: blogs
A Universal Epigenetic Aging Clock for All Mammalian Species
Epigenetic modifications to the nuclear genome, such as the addition of methyl groups to CpG sites, known as DNA methylation, adjust the structure of double-stranded DNA. That structure determines which gene sequences are accessible to transcription machinery, the first step in producing proteins. Thus epigenetics drives gene expression, and gene expression drives the behavior of cells. It is a feedback loop between environment, cell behavior, and epigenetics. The pattern of epigenetic modifications changes constantly in response to circumstances, but some changes are characteristic of aging. When discovered, this led to t...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 17, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Top 6 Companies Using AI In Drug Discovery And Development
What if coming up with a new drug could be measured in days rather than years? What if new medication would cost thousands instead of billions of dollars? Just look at how an AI pharma start-up developed a potential new drug in 46 days! Artificial intelligence technologies promise to speed up the process of drug discovery and development and make it more cost-effective. As the market is flourishing, and it takes time and effort to separate the wheat from the chaff, we collected the most promising AI pharma companies out there.
Drug design is a key area AI is revolutionizing. In one of our latest database projects, we de...
Source: The Medical Futurist - August 17, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: berci.mesko Tags: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Future of Pharma Genomics research clinical trials AI drug development medication drug discovery drug research cure Source Type: blogs
THCB 20th Birthday Classic: McKinsey wants to inspire lots of change; caveat emptor
by MATTHEW HOLT
So to celebrate 20 years, we’ll be publishing a few classics for the next week or so. This is one of my faves from the early days of THCB, back in 2006. It’s interesting to compare it with Jeff Goldsmith’s NEW piece from yesterday on vertical integration because at the time a pair of Harvard professors, Michael Porter and Elizabeth Teisberg were telling hospitals to change their operations in a way that seemed to me were going to destroy their business–cut down to one or two service lines they were best at and stop with the rest. McKinsey picked up on this and I went to town on wh...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 14, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care Elizabeth Teisberg Hospitals Matthew Holt Mckinsey Michael Porter Source Type: blogs
What Is Pharmacology?
Credit: iStock.
Pharmacology is the study of how molecules, such as medicines, interact with the body. Scientists who study pharmacology are called pharmacologists, and they explore the chemical properties, biological effects, and therapeutic uses of medicines and other molecules. Their work can be broken down into two main areas:
Pharmacokinetics is the study of how the body acts on a medicine, including its processes of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME).
Pharmacodynamics is the study of how a medicine acts in the body—both on its intended target and throughout all the organs and tissue...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - August 14, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Being a Scientist Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Common questions Genomics Medicines Miniseries Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 14th 2023
This study demonstrates just how vital the thymus is to maintaining adult health."
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Does Amyloid-β Aggregation Cause Broad Disruption of Proteostasis?
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/08/does-amyloid-%ce%b2-aggregation-cause-broad-disruption-of-proteostasis/
Researchers here speculate on the ability of insoluble amyloid-β aggregates to be broadly disruptive of the solubility of many other proteins, and thus disruptive to cell and tissue function. Is this important in aging? The evidence here shows the existence of the mechanism in a lower species, but that doesn't ...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 13, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Familial Longevity is Accompanied by Increased Healthspan
In this study we showed that members of long-lived families have a delayed onset of disease, multimorbidity, and medication use as compared to their partners, thereby extending their healthspan with up to a decade. These members also postponed multimorbidity since those who were already diagnosed with an age-related disease had a 54% lower risk of having a second age-related disease compared to their partners.
An increasing number of long-lived ancestors, as measured with the Longevity Relatives Count (LRC) score, not only associates with a lower mortality at any moment in life it also associates, in a similar way,...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 11, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
