Fight Aging! Newsletter, October 2nd 2023
In conclusion, we identified several candidate genes that may confer cancer resistance in cetaceans, providing a new avenue for further research into the mechanisms of lifespan extension.
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A Relationship Between the Gut Microbiome and Bone Density
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2023/09/a-relationship-between-the-gut-microbiome-and-bone-density/
Changes in the gut microbiome take place with advancing age, an increase in populations that provoke chronic inflammation, a reduction in the populations producing beneficial metabolites. Even only considering rising levels of in...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 1, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Droplet Battery Harnesses Ionic Gradients for Bioelectronic Implants
Researchers at Oxford University have developed a tiny battery that can power small implantable devices, such as drug delivery technologies. The new battery is inspired by the ionic gradients that electric eels use to generate electricity. It involves tiny droplets of a conductive hydrogel that are placed near each other. Each droplet has a different ionic concentration, meaning that ions will flow from high concentration droplets to low concentration droplets. When the researchers connect electrodes to this chain of droplets they can harness the energy generated by this ion gradient in the form of electricity. The researc...
Source: Medgadget - September 29, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Surgery Oxford Source Type: blogs
Biomimetic Scaffolds to Encourage Bone and Cartilage Regrowth
One of the areas of research that seems constantly on the verge of producing an impressive advance is the use of nanoscale scaffold materials to encourage regrowth of tissue, such as bone and cartilage. The space of possible combinations of techniques is vast, and there only so many researchers, and only so much funding. Advances such as the one noted here are published by research groups several times a year, and this has been the case for more than a decade now. This part of the field seems eternally in a state of progress and exploration, with promising leads, yet it remains the case that clinical options for regenerati...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 27, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Implantable Bioreactor for Kidney Cells
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco have developed an implantable bioreactor that may pave the way for artificial kidneys. Dialysis and kidney transplants both have significant disadvantages for patients with kidney failure, and so scientists are trying to develop a lab created kidney that would not require harsh immunosuppression or a donor kidney. This implantable bioreactor may be a step in the right direction, and it includes a type of cell found in the kidney which is protected from the immune system behind a silicon membrane. Blood can flow through the device, and so far the researchers have sho...
Source: Medgadget - September 26, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine Surgery Urology artificial kidney UCSF Source Type: blogs
Etched Nanopillars Kill Bacteria, Fungi on Titanium Implants
Researchers at RMIT in Australia have developed a drug-free approach to kill bacteria and fungi that can infect surfaces on medical implants. Such pathogens can cause serious and difficult-to-treat infections around medical implants, sometimes requiring the removal of the implant. In addition, many microbes are increasingly resistant to common antibiotics, highlighting the need for drug-free approaches. This new technique is inspired by the nanopillars present on dragonfly wings, which can skewer microbial cells, killing them. The researchers used a relatively simple plasma etching technique to create such nanopillars on t...
Source: Medgadget - September 20, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Medicine Public Health Candida RMIT Source Type: blogs
DNA is Better at Math than You Are
By KIM BELLARD
I was tempted to write about the work being done at Wharton that suggests that AI may already be better at being entrepreneurial than most of us, and of course I’m always interested to see how nanoparticles are starting to change health care (e.g., breast cancer or cancer more generally), but when I saw what researchers at China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University have done with DNA-based computers, well, I couldn’t pass that up.
If PCs helped change the image of computers from the big mainframes, and mobile phones further redefined what a computer is, then DNA computers may cause us to one day...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 20, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Tech DNA Future of Computing Kim Bellard Source Type: blogs
Battery Charged by Tears for Smart Contact Lenses
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a tiny, flexible battery that is intended for use in smart contact lenses. The device is as thin as the human cornea and can be charged by a saline solution, which is particularly useful in the eye, as it is full of salty tears. When the battery-equipped smart lens is not in use, such as at night, then it can be stored in a saline solution, helping to further recharge the battery. The device avoids materials that could cause damage to the eye, such as metal electrodes, and works through a glucose oxidase coating that generates current when it react...
Source: Medgadget - September 19, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Ophthalmology NTUsg Source Type: blogs
Chatting Apton Acquisition with PacBio CEO Christian Henry
PacBio CEO Christian Henry chatted with me recently by teleconference on a variety of topics, but the focus was the recent PacBio acquisition of Apton Biosystems for $85M in equity. As a regular reminder, my employer’s CEO reports in a sense to Henry, as he’s on the Board of Directors. A particularly interesting revelation by Henry is that PacBio had its eye on Apton in late 2021, essentially as soon as they completed theOmniome acquisition announced in July 2021 that formed the foundation for their now-released Onso short read instrument. PacBio believed then that the desktop instrument design from Omniome...
Source: Omics! Omics! - September 19, 2023 Category: Bioinformatics Authors: Keith Robison Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 18th 2023
Fight Aging! publishes news and commentary relevant to the goal of ending all age-related disease, to be achieved by bringing the mechanisms of aging under the control of modern medicine. This weekly newsletter is sent to thousands of interested subscribers. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the newsletter,
please visit:
https://www.fightaging.org/newsletter/
Longevity Industry Consulting Services
Reason, the founder of Fight Aging! and Repair Biotechnologies, offers strategic consulting services to investors, entrepreneurs, and others interested in the longevity industry and its complexities. To find out m...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 17, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Microneedle Skin Patch Measures Cancer Biomarkers
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute have developed a technique that lets clinicians to characterize and monitor melanoma. The system involves using a microneedle patch that can draw deep interstitial fluid into itself through a series of penetrating hyaluronic acid needles. The needles can later be dissolved to release the biomarkers into a test tube before analysis, using a highly sensitive technique called Simoa, to detect individual biomarker protein molecules. The Simoa method involves capturing these molecules using an antibody attached to a magnetic bead, which allows the researchers to use magnets to separate ...
Source: Medgadget - September 14, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Dermatology Diagnostics Medicine Oncology harvard wyssinstitute Source Type: blogs
Towards Targeted Telomerase Gene Therapy
Interestingly, telomerase upregulation to lengthen telomere length may turn out to be a decent match for the capabilities of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery of messenger RNA (mRNA) as an implementation of gene therapy. This produces one to two days of expression which, by the sound of things, is enough to give telomeres enough of a boost in length to be worth the exercise, can be repeated as needed, is familiar to regulators, and the LNP field is energetically working towards variant LNPs that can target specific tissues and cell types.
The question is whether or not lengthening of telomeres via telomerase gene th...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 13, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Enzyme Treatment Strips Mucins from Cancer Cells
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new type of cancer therapy. The technology targets mucins, sugar-coated proteins that help cancer cells to metastasize and avoid the immune system. In particular, mucins enable cancer cells to survive free-floating as they travel through the blood during metastasis and can also trick immune cells into assuming that the cancer cell is not a threat. The new treatment involves combining an enzyme called mucinase with a cancer-specific nanobody that can bind to the cell surface, allowing the mucinase to destroy any mucins present. In tests with mice with simulated breast and ...
Source: Medgadget - September 12, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
“The Greatest Scientist of All Time” says Scientific American. Who is it?
BY MIKE MAGEE
When it comes to our earthly survival as a human species, words are often under-powered and off-the-mark. Clearer concepts, definitions and terms are required for clarity. Here are five terms that are useful and worth remembering:
Planetary Boundaries
Earth Systems
Human Perturbations
Planetary Scale Destabilization
Holocene Epoch vs. Anthropogenic Epoch
These terms all tie back to a single source – a child of World War II, only seven when his home in Amsterdam was overrun by Nazis. His father was a waiter, his mother a cook in a local hospital. He’d later recall with a sh...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 11, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Non-Health Chemistry Mike Magee Ozone Paul Crutzen Scientific American Source Type: blogs
The next bumper sticker: political science
As usual, Ramaswamy ' s glib slogans aren ' t self-explanatory, but I think we can figure out what he ' s pretending to be thinking about with this one:There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.One would guess that this is a reference to the bullshit concept of the " Deep State. " What that actually means is of course the career civil service -- federal employees who don ' t get replaced wholesale every time the party in power changes, and who have legal protections to make sure that doesn ' t happen. Sometimes it also includes the military. (Sometimes it ' s the Deep State that ' s persecuting Ronald...
Source: Stayin' Alive - September 9, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Device for Rapid COVID-19 Breath Testing
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have developed a COVID-19 breathalyzer test. The technology requires someone to breathe into it just once or twice, and it can then provide an indication if the person is infected with SARS-CoV-2 in as little as one minute. The device could be very useful fo screening large numbers of people prior to access to an indoor event, for instance, or in community clinics to quickly determine if people are infected. Moreover, the technology could be adapted to detect other viruses, which may be useful for future outbreaks. The system involves blowing into a straw, which direc...
Source: Medgadget - September 7, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Diagnostics Medicine Public Health wustl WUSTLmed Source Type: blogs
