Lifeboat Foundation

SENS has a fund match for its current campaign on lifespan.io, if you are concerned about cancer like me and you want to help directly fund a lab working on solutions please think about donating. smile

There is a month left to go in the SENS crowdfunding campaign that aims to accelerate development of an important component of a universal cancer therapy, a way to block the mechanisms of telomere lengthening that every type of cancer depends upon. The SENS Research Foundation and Lifespan.io volunteers are looking for donors to put up matching funds of a few thousand dollars or more, in order to take that news and that inducement to a number of conferences and other events over the next few weeks. More than 150 people have donated to the campaign to date, and we’d like to triple that number in the next 30 days.

To start things off, I’ll offer up $2,000 of my own funds: the next $2,000 in donations to this SENS cancer research initiative will be matched dollar for dollar. That is a start, and if you can join in to help out, please contact me to let me know. Can you help to make a difference here?

Continue reading “Matching Fund Donors Sought for SENS Universal Cancer Therapy Crowdfunding” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XzTXaUltXUA

In 2011, two visionary doctors from the Texas Heart Institute successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a ‘continuous flow’ device they developed.

Arthritis sufferers have been offered new hope after scientists grew a ‘living hip’ in the lab which not only replaces worn cartilage but stops painful joints returning.

Researchers in the US have used stem cells to grow cartilage in the exact shape of a hip joint while also genetically engineering the tissue to release anti-inflammatory molecules to fend off the return of arthritis.

The idea is to implant the perfectly shaped cartilage around the joint to extend its life before arthritis has caused too much damage to the bone.

Continue reading “‘Living hip’ grown in lab genetically engineered to stop arthritis” »

This artificial kidney could be implanted directly into the patient.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found a way to trick human embryonic stem cells to become pure populations of any of 12 cell types, including bone, heart muscle and cartilage within days.

Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified the sets of biological and chemical signals necessary to quickly and efficiently direct human embryonic stem cells. If successful, researchers could grow pure populations of any of 12 cell types, including bone, heart muscle and cartilage within days rather than the weeks or months previously required.

This is key toward clinically useful regenerative medicine – potentially allowing researchers to generate new beating heart cells to repair damage after a heart attack or to create cartilage or bone to reinvigorate creaky joints or heal from trauma.

Continue reading “Stanford Researchers ‘Trick’ Human Stem Cells To Regenerate Faster” »

Biowire.

Researchers led by microbiologist Derek Lovely say the wires, which rival the thinnest wires known to man, are produced from renewable, inexpensive feedstocks and avoid the harsh chemical processes typically used to produce nanoelectronic materials.

Lovley says, “New sources of electronic materials are needed to meet the increasing demand for making smaller, more powerful electronic devices in a sustainable way.” The ability to mass-produce such thin conductive wires with this sustainable technology has many potential applications in electronic devices, functioning not only as wires, but also transistors and capacitors. Proposed applications include biocompatible sensors, computing devices, and as components of solar panels.

Continue reading “‘Green’ electronic materials produced with synthetic biology” »

In the UK; US has HIPAA and I am glad.

Google has made headlines for its forays into healthcare but what is its ultimate goal?

Ever wanted your own home bioreactor; now you can have it.

Read about how one doctor was inspired to create an Arduino-powered bioreactor and ended up with an affordable, accurate device.

In the campy 1966 science fiction movie “Fantastic Voyage,” scientists miniaturize a submarine with themselves inside and travel through the body of a colleague to break up a potentially fatal blood clot. Right. Micro-humans aside, imagine the inflammation that metal sub would cause.

Ideally, injectable or implantable medical devices should not only be small and electrically functional, they should be soft, like the body tissues with which they interact. Scientists from two UChicago labs set out to see if they could design a material with all three of those properties.

The material they came up with, published online June 27, 2016, in Nature Materials, forms the basis of an ingenious light-activated injectable device that could eventually be used to stimulate nerve cells and manipulate the behavior of muscles and organs.