Lifeboat Foundation

Karin’s life took a dramatic turn when a farming accident claimed her right arm more than 20 years ago. Since then, she has endured excruciating phantom limb pain. “It felt like I constantly had my hand in a meat grinder, which created a high level of stress and I had to take high doses of various painkillers.”

In addition to her intractable pain, she found that conventional prostheses were uncomfortable and unreliable, and thus of little help in daily life. All this changed when she received groundbreaking bionic technology that allowed her to wear a much more functional prosthesis comfortably all day. The higher integration between the bionics and Karin’s residual limb also relieved her pain. “For me, this research has meant a lot, as it has given me a better life.”

Mechanical attachment and reliable control are two of the biggest challenges in artificial limb replacement. People with limb loss often reject even the sophisticated prostheses commercially available due to these reasons, after experiencing painful and uncomfortable attachment with limited and unreliable controllability.

Automation and sector-wide collaboration will be critical as developers try to move beyond the production challenges that slow growth of the cell and gene therapy sector. So says Julie G. Allickson, PhD, director of Mayo Clinic’s Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics who argues that, despite considerable investment in infrastructure, production is still the biggest challenge.

“Both industry and academia are challenged by the lack of manufacturing capacity for cell and gene therapies,” she says, citing plasmid production and viral vector production as examples. “Besides these issues, the scalability of production processes can be difficult, especially when coupled to individually expanded cells. When looking at the patient cells variability, quantity and quality of cells is critical to ensure consistency in the product delivered to the patient,” she says.

The strange science experiment that blew a worm’s head off… and blew our minds.

This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation.

Continue reading “The beauty of collective intelligence, explained by a developmental biologist” »

The Collective Intelligence of Cells During Morphogenesis: What Bioelectricity Outside the Brain Means for Understanding our Multiscale Nature with Michael Levin — Incredible Minds.

Recorded: April 29, 2023.

Continue reading “Incredible Minds: The Collective Intelligence of Cells During Morphogenesis with Dr. Michael Levin” »

Researchers map gene switches and brain cell types associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease is a disease that attacks the brain, causing a decline in mental ability that worsens over time. It is the most common form of dementia and accounts for 60 to 80 percent of dementia cases. There is no current cure for Alzheimer’s disease, but there are medications that can help ease the symptoms.

According to a study recently presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Milan, Italy, young people who have used e-cigarettes are more than twice as likely to report experiencing chronic stress.

The study was presented by Dr Teresa To, a senior scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada. She said: “Research is starting to show how vaping affects young people’s physical and mental health. For example, our previous research has shown that those who vape are more likely to suffer an asthma attack. In this study, we were particularly interested in the relationship between vaping, mental health, and quality of life among young people.”

Regenerative medicine researcher Kristy Red Horse’s discoveries may someday help damaged hearts heal better. Her stewardship of her Native American heritage may advance science in other ways too.

Dementia affects more than 55 million people around the world.

A number of factors can increase a person’s risk of developing dementia, including high blood pressure, poor sleep, and physical inactivity.

Meanwhile, keeping cognitively, physically, and socially active, and limiting alcohol consumption, can reduce the risk.

Continue reading “Alzheimer’s Is Linked to Stress And Depression, And We May Know Why” »

The most common screening test for prostate cancer — a measure of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, levels — so often suggests cancer where there is none that clinical guidelines no longer recommend the test for men over 70 and leave the decision up to younger patients.

Scientists at Stanford Medicine and their collaborators aim to make PSA screening more accurate — by calibrating PSA levels to each man’s genetics. Applying this type of personalization could significantly reduce overdiagnosis and better predict aggressive disease. Their research was published June 1 in Nature Medicine.

Continue reading “Personalized PSA levels could improve prostate cancer screening” »