Lifeboat Foundation

Many major advances in medicine, especially in neurology, have been sparked by recent advances in electronic systems that can acquire, process, and interact with biological substrates. These bioelectronic systems, which are increasingly used to understand dynamic living organisms and to treat human disease, require devices that can record body signals, process them, detect patterns, and deliver electrical or chemical stimulation to address problems.

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.

A consortium of groups has come together with the painstaking task of charting the longevity industry, such as its companies, journalists, thought leaders, investors, and recent developments. The Longevity Industry in UK Landscape Overview 2018 report covers a great amount of ground and is well worth a read for people who are interested in this rapidly evolving scientific field.

This particular edition, which spans an impressive 1000+ pages, is focused on the United Kingdom; there will be additional reports covering Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong, and California, and there will also be a more general global industry report in its second edition.

Interest in longevity has been increasing for some years, and we are at last seeing a true industry starting to bloom as more and more companies, researchers, and investors step into the ring. Companies such as Unity Biotechnology taking senescent cell-clearing therapies to human trials, deep learning approaches being applied to aging by companies such as Insilco Medicine, and Ichor Therapeutics’ development of age-related macular degeneration therapies have served to ignite the fires of enthusiasm and have brought ever-increasing funding and interest into this field.

CAMBRIDGE, England—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Feb 27, 2019—Abcam, a global innovator in life science reagents and tools, is pleased to announce its move to new state-of-the-art global headquarters, Discovery Drive, on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC), UK, a leading hub of healthcare, science and medical research.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190227005291/en/

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” »

But that doesn’t mean you should start chugging bone broth.

Long story short, qubits need a better immune system before they can grow up.

A new material, engineered by Purdue University researchers into a thin strip, is one step closer to “immunizing” qubits against noise, such as heat and other parts of a computer, that interferes with how well they hold information. The work appears in Physical Review Letters.

The thin strip, called a “nanoribbon,” is a version of a material that conducts electrical current on its surface but not on the inside — called a “topological insulator” — with two superconductor electrical leads to form a device called a “Josephson junction.”

Hosted by Dr. Oliver Medvedik, we will be joined by study authors, Dr. Peter Joshi and Paul Timmers both from the University of Edinburgh, UK, who will guide us through this fascinating genomics study of human longevity.

The research paper can be found here.:
https://elifesciences.org/articles/39856

Researchers at UC San Francisco have taken science a step closer to creating stem cells that are effectively “invisible” to the immune system. This may ultimately lead to the production of “off-the-shelf” stem cell therapies that do not need to be patient matched.

The immune system is a double-edged sword

One of the big challenges in creating effective stem cell therapies is how the immune system responds to cells from other donors and sources. This complex, multilayered system is designed to defend our bodies from the constant onslaught of invading pathogens that we encounter in our daily lives.