Lifeboat Foundation

Cancer patients receiving anthracycline chemotherapy have more than twice the risk of developing heart failure compared to their peers without cancer.1The ground-breaking RESILIENCE project aims to prevent heart failure in patients who need anthracyclines to treat their cancer.

International experts and patients from the project gathered yesterday at the European Heart House, home of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), as a unique think tank to improve the healthcare and quality of life for patients with cancer.

It is estimated that four million Europeans are diagnosed with cancer every year.2 Anthracycline chemotherapy has a prominent role in treating many forms of cancer-for example, up to 70% of patients with lymphoma receive an anthracycline regimen. Currently, there is no therapy to prevent anthracycline cardiotoxicity.

The Wistar Institute’s David B. Weiner and collaborators have engineered novel monoclonal antibodies that engage natural killer (NK) cells through a unique surface receptor that activates the immune system to fight against cancer.

In their publication titled, “Siglec-7 glyco-immune binding MAbs or NK cell engager biologics induce potent anti-tumor immunity against ovarian cancers,” published in Science Advances, the team demonstrates the preclinical feasibility of utilizing these new cancer immunotherapeutic approaches against diverse ovarian cancer types, including treatment-resistant and refractory ovarian cancers—alone or in combination with checkpoint inhibitor treatment.

The research started as a collaboration between Wistar’s Drs. Weiner and Mohamed Abdel-Mohsen, who were exploring the development of new glyco-signaling biologic tools that may be important in the fight against cancer.

Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the U.S. and there have been more than 235,000 new cases of lung cancer in 2021. While this figure is significant, the rate of new lung and bronchus cancer cases is decreasing, in part because more people have stopped smoking. This trend, along with innovations in early detection and treatment, is also reducing the number of lung cancer deaths.

Dr. Robert Taylor Ripley, associate professor of surgery in the Division of General Thoracic Surgery, is an expert in mesothelioma and thoracic surgical oncology. In the following Q&A, he discusses common causes of lung cancer, risks and the latest treatments.

Q: What are the most common causes of lung cancer? A: Smoking cigarettes is the most common cause, but others include secondhand smoke and environmental inhalants. We see a fair number of patients with lung cancer who have never smoked. Exposure to diesel exhaust or other chemicals may also cause lung cancer in some non-smokers.

The large blue warning signs read “Video recording for fall detection and prevention” on the third-floor dementia care unit of the Trousdale, a private-pay senior living community in Silicon Valley where a studio starts from about $7,000 per month.

Continue reading “AI in Breast Radiology” »

An FDA advisory panel tended to embrace a new gene therapy treatment from Vertex and CRISPR for sickle cell anemia on Tuesday.

Nearly five years ago, DeepMind, one of Google’s more prolific AI-centered research labs, debuted AlphaFold, an AI system that can accurately predict the structures of many proteins inside the human body. Since then, DeepMind has improved on the system, releasing an updated and more capable version of AlphaFold — AlphaFold 2 — in 2020.

And the lab’s work continues.

Today, DeepMind revealed that the newest release of AlphaFold, the successor to AlphaFold 2, can generate predictions for nearly all molecules in the Protein Data Bank, the world’s largest open access database of biological molecules.

According to the Chinese Ministry of State Security, “certain countries” are likely working on incredibly potent ethnic bioweapons.

China has blown the whistle on the potential dangers of what it calls “genetic weapons” that could prove to be an incredibly potent weapon of mass destruction, the Global Times reports. On Monday, October 20, 2023, the Chinese Ministry of State Security released a statement on WeChat warning that a “certain” foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) had recruited Chinese “volunteers” to collect biodiversity distribution data under the guise of biological species research to steal China’s species data.

AnnaStills/iStock.

Continue reading “China warns a ‘certain country’ is making ethnic bioweapons” »

The robot guide dog possesses the ability to respond to tugs on a leash.

Researchers have created a robot guide dog to make life easier for the visually impaired with its ability to respond to tugs on a leash. The team of engineers at Binghamton University’s Computer Science Department in New York State has been developing a robotic seeing-eye dog to improve accessibility for those who are visually impaired. Last year, they performed a trick-or-treating exercise with its quadruped robotic dog.

Now, they have demonstrated a robot dog leading a person down a lab hallway, confidently and carefully reacting to directive instructions. Engineers were surprised that throughout the visually impaired… More.

Continue reading “Engineers create a robotic eye-seeing dog to aid the visually impaired” »

The Melanoma Treating Soap (MTS) was created using cancer-fighting chemicals, mainly Imidazoquinoline, integrated with a nanolipid-based particle transporter.

As child prodigies emerge in the world of innovation at younger ages than ever before, a 14-year-old student named Heman Bekele, residing in Fairfax, Virginia, developed a soap called MTS (Melanoma Treating Soap) to treat skin cancer.

Bekele’s efforts earned him the top prize in the 3M Young Scientist’s Challenge this year, a competition that motivates children to devise innovative solutions for common issues.