Lifeboat Foundation

Neural Link’s first-In-human clinical trials.

We are happy to announce that we’ve received approval from the reviewing independent institutional review board and our first hospital site to begin recruitment for our first-in-human clinical trial. The PRIME Study (short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface) – a groundbreaking investigational medical device trial for our fully-implantable, wireless brain-computer interface (BCI) – aims to evaluate the safety of our implant (N1) and surgical robot (R1) and assess the initial functionality of our BCI for enabling people with paralysis to control external devices with their thoughts.

During the study, the R1 Robot will be used to surgically place the N1 Implant’s ultra-fine and flexible threads in a region of the brain that controls movement intention. Once in place, the N1 Implant is cosmetically invisible and is intended to record and transmit brain signals wirelessly to an app that decodes movement intention. The initial goal of our BCI is to grant people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone.

A new review published in The Lancet Neurology by researchers at Mass General Brigham presents findings indicating that cardiovascular disease risk may be increased by traumatic brain injury (TBI). The review presented evidence of the long-term associations between TBI and cardiovascular disease noting that post-injury comorbidities, as well as neuroinflammation, and changes in the brain-gut connection may be culprits in the elevated risk compared to the general population.

“Despite decades of extensive traumatic brain-injury-focused research, surprisingly, there has been minimal progress in mitigating long-term outcomes and mortality following injuries. The cardiovascular effects of TBI may be a missing link in advancing our efforts to improve long-term quality of life and reducing mortality rates in TBI patients,” said first author Saef Izzy, MD, of the Stroke and Cerebrovascular Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We have the opportunity to identify and improve targeted screening for high-risk populations, build preventative care strategies and improve outcomes for survivors of TBI.”

While past research has exhibited there is a strong link between TBI and neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, decades of research has failed to understand the mechanisms that occur after a TBI that drive these diseases. Izzy and review co-authors now suggest that there may be non-neurological effects of TBI, including cardiovascular, cardiometabolic, and endocrine dysfunction that may act as intermediaries that contribute to neurological disorders that may appear decades later.

Scientists have identified two types of brain cell linked to a reduced risk of dementia in older people — even those who have brain abnormalities that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease1.

The finding could eventually lead to new ways to protect these cells before they die. The results were published in Cell on 28 September.

Plaques in the brain.

Continue reading “The brain cells linked to protection against dementia” »

Restoration of lost memories.

Prof Bryce Vissel, who leads the Clinical Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine Initiative (CNRM) at St Vincent’s Centre for Applied Medical Research, and his team, have identified a molecule in the brain that controls loss of nerve cell connections.

This molecule we are calling ‘the switch’ is decreased in the Alzheimer’s brain but no one really understands why, or what role it plays. When ‘encouraged’ or ‘forced’ to be expressed normally again, in our laboratory tests of a mouse model, this molecule can actually rescue its memory.

Continue reading “Alzheimer’s research breakthrough” »

The UK government says AI could be “a real game-changer” for healthcare.

A leading neurosurgeon in the UK has said that brain surgery using artificial intelligence (AI) is possible within two years, making it safer and more effective.

“You could, in a few years, have an AI system that has seen more operations than any human has ever or could ever see,” Dr. Hani Marcus told BBC. Dr. Marcus is a consultant neurosurgeon at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and an Honorary Associate Professor at the University College (UCL) London Queen Square Institute of Neurology.

In a Stanford Medicine study, scientists transplanted stem cells into mice and found reduction of brain abnormalities typical of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have developed a new compound called d16 that can reduce tumor growth and overcome therapeutic resistance in mutant p53-bearing cancers in the lab. The findings, published in the journal Cancer Research Communications, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, open opportunities for new combination therapies for these difficult-to-treat cancers.

“One of the most common alterations in many human cancers is mutations in p53, a gene that normally provides one of the most powerful shields against tumor growth,” said first author, Dr. Helena Folly-Kossi, a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Weei-Chin Lin’s lab at Baylor. “Mutations that alter the normal function of p53 can promote tumor growth, cancer progression and resistance to therapy, which are associated with poor prognosis. It is important to understand how p53 mutations help cancer grow to develop therapies to counteract their effects.”

Studying how to target p53 mutations that promote cancer growth has been difficult. “One of the challenges has been to develop drugs that act on mutant p53 directly. Some of these drugs are under development, but they appear to be toxic,” said Lin, professor of medicine-hematology and oncology and of molecular and cellular biology. He also is a member of Baylor’s Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center and the corresponding author of the work.

An extremely important landmark paper by Watson et al. from David Baker’s group. They developed RFdiffusion, a generative AI for protein engineering. With this tool, scientists can generate new protein designs. The software can generate novel monomers, multimers, and symmetric protein cages. It can generate proteins that bind to desired targets as well as enzymes that position active sites at a desired location on the structure. I would say that this technology has the potential to dramatically alter how biology and biotechnology is done. I’ve been waiting for something like this since middle school! So exciting to see protein engineering reaching this point!! #computationalbiology #proteinengineering #syntheticbiology #biotechnology #biochemistry #ai #generativeai

Fine-tuning the RoseTTAFold structure prediction network on protein structure denoising tasks yields a generative model for protein design that achieves outstanding performance on a wide range of protein structure and function design challenges.