Lifeboat Foundation

T he world’s first human head transplant has been carried out on a corpse in China in an 18-hour operation that showed it was possible to successfully reconnect the spine, nerves and blood vessels.

At a press conference in Vienna on Friday morning, Italian Professor Sergio Canavero, director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, announced that a team at Harbin Medical University had “realised the first human head transplant” and said an operation on a live human will take place “imminently”.

The operation was carried out by a team led by Dr Xiaoping Ren, who last year successfully grafted a head onto the body of a monkey.

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On Wednesday—for only the second time—the Food and Drug Administration approved a cutting-edge therapy that genetically modifies a patient’s blood cells in order to attack cancer. This time the therapy, known as CAR T-cell therapy, is designed to treat aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

In August, the FDA approved the first CAR T-cell therapy, for a drug called Kymriah designed for children and young adults whose leukemia doesn’t respond to standard treatments. The FDA’s approval of Yescarta, manufactured by Kite Pharma, comes just a few months after its first approval—an indication of just how quickly the field of immunotherapy is moving. Several other companies also have CAR-T therapies in the works.

There are many benefits to exercise and how it can reduce the impact of the aging process. We have previously talked about how even a moderate amount of gentle exercise, such as walking, dancing, and strength training, can improve health and reduce mortality.

New research suggests that even moderate levels of physical activity can reduce glaucoma, one of the leading causes of blindness in the United States, and which is most prevalent among the elderly.

The data presented by UCLA researchers at the 121st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology showed that the most physically active people involved in a recent study have a 73 percent reduced risk of developing glaucoma compared to the least active.

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Every so often when talking about aging and eradicating age-related diseases someone will say there are other more important things that must be solved before we earn the right to live healthy and longer lives.

When you discuss any major issue, sooner or later someone will say it: there are more urgent issues than whatever it is you’re advocating for. Sometimes it may be true; other times, and probably most of the time, it’s a logical fallacy known as appeal to worse problems (or “not as bad as”, or even “fallacy of relative privation”).

For example, say you’ve got two issues, A and B, that cannot possibly be both dealt with at the same time; if A is life-threatening and B isn’t, well, then I think it’d make sense to reply “there are more urgent issues” to whoever suggests B should be taken care of first. However, all too often, this answer is abused to play down the importance of a problem that doesn’t happen to be one’s personal favourite—and yes, I’ve seen this happen with rejuvenation therapies.

To mark the letter’s 25th anniversary, researchers have issued a bracing follow-up. In a communique published Monday in the journal BioScience, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries assess the world’s latest responses to various environmental threats. Once again, they find us sorely wanting.

In 1992, scientists warned humanity about a host of impending ecological disasters. A quarter-century later, most of them have gotten worse.

How far off is age reversal?

The simple answer is, I don’t know. Probably we’ll see the first dog trials in the next year or two. If that works, human trials are another two years away, and eight years before they’re done. Once you get a few going and succeeding it’s a positive feedback loop.

George Church Will Make Virus-Resistant Organisms, Transplant Pig Organs to Humans, and Reverse Aging An interview with one of the most prolific scientists on earth in his lab at Harvard Medical School Photography by Maciek Jasik.

Continue reading “George Church Will Make Virus-Proof Organisms, Transplant Pig Organs to Humans, and Reverse Aging” »

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A groundbreaking discovery reveals that wounds heal 60% faster if they occurred during the day instead of at night.

Two-thirds of the world’s population doesn’t have access to medical imaging. A company called Butterfly Network is trying to change that.

[p]Patients with junctional epidermolysis bullosa (JEB) carry mutations in genes that encode components of the basement membrane, which ensures the integrity between the epidermis and the dermis, such as laminin-332. These mutations cause blistering of the skin and chronic wounds. Following initial treatment of an adult patient with a limited affected region, Michele De Luca and colleagues reconstruct the full epidermis of a 7-year-old patient with autologous transgenic cells transduced with a virus vector carrying the non-mutated form of laminin-322.