Lifeboat Foundation

The researchers used human stem cells to create a model of early brain development — organoids.

Super-resolution image of human stem cell-derived Microglia cells with labeled mitochondria (yellow), nucleus (magenta), and actin filaments (cyan). These Microglia cells help in the maturation of neurons in human brain organoid models. Photo credit: A*STAR’s SIgN

An international team of scientists has uncovered the vital role of microglia, the immune cells in the brain that acts as its dedicated defense team, in early human brain development.

Continue reading “New study reveals the critical role of microglia in human brain development” »

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s medicines regulator has authorized the world’s first gene therapy treatment for sickle cell disease, in a move that could offer relief to thousands of people with the crippling disease in the U.K. In a statement Thursday, the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency said it approved Casgevy, the first medicine licensed using the gene editing tool CRISPR, which won its makers a Nobel prize in 2020. The agency approved…

In a world first, regulators in the U.K. approved Crispr’s gene-editing treatment for two blood diseases on Thursday, and CRSP stock surged.

The devices demonstrated clinical-grade accuracy and introduced novel functionalities not seen in prior research or clinical care.

Northwestern University.

Furthering the scope of such examinations, a team of researchers at Northwestern University (NU) is now presenting novel wearable technology much more advanced than the intermittent measures made during periodic medical examinations.

Continue reading “Wearable device harnesses body sounds for continuous health monitoring” »

Cerebral small vessel disease is a significant cause of aging-related mental decline and accounts for almost half of all dementia cases globally.

Sudok1/iStock.

The research, published in the journal Stem Cell Reports, also suggests a possible drug target to prevent or treat the condition known as cerebral small vessel disease (SVD).

Continue reading “Cambridge team grows blood vessels to investigate brain diseases” »

Findings lay the groundwork for developing targeted therapies aimed at regulating epigenetic factors in cancer therapy.

“Whoever leads in AI will rule the world,” President Vladimir Putin declared at an address commencing the 2017 Russian school year. Six years later, despite intense focus from senior leadership and heavy investment from the federal budget and state-owned enterprises, Russia remains a laggard in this field, hobbled by international isolation and structural challenges.

Military, political, and business leaders in Moscow have long understood the importance of controlling the information space to secure their grasp on power. After the scare of social media powered “color revolutions” on Russia’s doorstep, Moscow doubled down on these efforts. But facing both headwinds intrinsic to the nature of generative AI and deep, self-inflicted wounds from the war in Ukraine, the window for Russia to take a lead is closing quickly.

Russia’s leaders were caught flat-footed by the rise of social media. The supposed dangers of emerging technology were brought to the fore by Chisinau’s so-called “ Twitter revolution,” when protests organized in part on American social networks prevented Moldova’s ardently pro-Russian Party of Communists from winning the election in 2009.

The one-time treatment helped relieve symptoms of disease and could free patients from the need for bone marrow transplants or regular blood transfusions, Beach said, adding that the drug hopefully offers a permanent fix for the condition.

The MHRA said it identified no significant safety concerns during the trials and will continue to closely monitor Casgevy’s safety after approval.

Vertex CEO and President Reshma Kewalramanit celebrated Casgevy’s approval as “a historic day in science and medicine” and Samarth Kulkarni, CEO and Chairman of Crispr Therapeutics, said it will hopefully mark “the first of many applications of this Nobel Prize winning technology to benefit eligible patients with serious diseases.” The two companies are hoping for similarly positive decisions from the MHRA’s counterparts in the Europe Union and the U.S., which are in the process of evaluating Casgevy, also known as exa-cel. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to make a decision in early December and has a deadline of December 8. The agency appears poised to follow the MHRA and approve the treatment, with its advisors confident of the drug’s efficacy and benefit but wary of theoretical unintended consequences of genetic modifications.

A set of novel attack methods has been demonstrated against Google Workspace and the Google Cloud Platform that could be potentially leveraged by threat actors to conduct ransomware, data exfiltration, and password recovery attacks.

“Starting from a single compromised machine, threat actors could progress in several ways: they could move to other cloned machines with GCPW installed, gain access to the cloud platform with custom permissions, or decrypt locally stored passwords to continue their attack beyond the Google ecosystem,” Martin Zugec, technical solutions director at Bitdefender, said in a new report.

A prerequisite for these attacks is that the bad actor has already gained access to a local machine through other means, prompting Google to mark the bug as not eligible for fixing “since it’s outside of our threat model and the behavior is in line with Chrome’s practices of storing local data.”