Lifeboat Foundation

What if I told you that we could regenerate our teeth? Well, that may soon be a possibility thanks to new research showing that teeth can be encouraged to regrow. Rather than drilling holes into teeth and plugging them with artificial fillers, dentists in the near future may be able to rebuild your teeth with a new technique.

Stimulating stem cells

Professor Paul Sharpe, a scientist based at King’s College in London, and his team have found a way to do just this in mice. They published a study last year that described this new approach[1].

Major psychiatric disorders like autism, schizophrenia and bipolar appear to have more in common than we thought they did. A new study finds that they have important similarities at a molecular level.

And understanding the molecular basis of major disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and bipolar is hopeful, because it could help in developing better treatments for them.

These psychiatric disorders are diagnosed by how a patient behaves. There are no clear signs on a brain “that you can see with your eyes or most microscopic techniques,” says Dan Geschwind, a professor of neurogenetics at UCLA. His team’s findings were published in Science this week.

Continue reading “Major Psychiatric Disorders Have More In Common Than We Thought, Study Finds” »

If humans are destined for deep space, they need to understand the space environment changes health, including aging and antibiotic resistance.

A new NASA project could help. It aims to develop technology used to study “omics”—fields of microbiology that are important to human health. Omics includes research into genomes, microbiomes and proteomes.

The Omics in Space project is being led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The project was recently funded by NASA’s Translational Research Institute for Space Health four years of study. Over that time, NASA hopes to develop 3D printable designs for instruments on the International Space Station (ISS), that can handle liquids like blood samples without spilling in microgravity. These tools could enable astronauts to analyze biological samples without sending them back to Earth.

https://www.rd.com/health/wellness/signs-body-is-aging-faster-than-you/

Autism, schizophrenia, bipolar, depression and alcoholism have similar molecular signatures in the brain.

Nancy Clayton needed a mitral valve replacement. She came to NYU Langone, where surgeons were trialling a nonsurgical approach. Learn more.

A new study by researchers at Ohio University found that vitamin D3 – a vitamin that is naturally produced when skin is exposed to sunlight – could prevent and restore damage caused by several cardiovascular diseases, including diabetes, hypertension and atherosclerosis.

Credit: polaris50d/Shutterstock.com

Continue reading “Vitamin D3 could prevent and repair cardiovascular damage, finds study” »

Cancer fighting nanovaccines have shown significant promise, but clinical application has been hampered by complications in large-scale manufacturing, quality control, and safety. Biomedical engineers at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) developed a new technology that enables nanovaccines to bind to the albumin protein naturally present in the body. The albumin protein then delivers these nanocomplexes to the lymph nodes, resulting in potent immune activation against multiple tumor types in mouse cancer models. The use of natural albumin as a universal vaccine shuttle is a significant step towards the application of cancer nanovaccine immunotherapy in humans.

Nanovaccines that work to mount an immune response against a tumor basically consist of two components: the part that delivers the vaccine to the correct site, the lymph nodes, where immune system activation happens; and the part that activates the immune cells to expand and specifically target the tumor.

Continue reading “Engineers use natural protein as nanoshuttle for anti-cancer vaccines” »

We wanted to bring your attention to an open-access publication in which the researchers suggest that the age-related decline of the thymus is more important than DNA mutation as a cancer risk factor[1].

Repairing the damage

As we have discussed in this article, cancer is caused by DNA damage that creates mutations. Damage to our DNA happens all the time, and we have various repair systems in place for it.