Lifeboat Foundation

…Such moves are helping countries like the United Kingdom to develop the expertise needed to guide AI for the public good, says Bengio. But legislation will also be needed, he says, to safeguard against the development of future AI systems that are smart and hard to control.

We are on a trajectory to build systems that are extremely useful and potentially dangerous, he says. We already ask pharma to spend a huge chunk of their money to prove that their drugs aren’t toxic. We should do the same.

Doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03472-x

Continue reading “The world’s week on AI safety: powerful computing efforts launched to boost research” »

Researchers have uncovered that proteins use a common chemical label as a shield to protect them from degradation, which in turn affects motility and aging. Proteins are key to all processes in our cells and understanding their functions and regulation is of major importance.

“For many years, we have known that nearly all human proteins are modified by a specific chemical group, but its functional impact has remained undefined,” says professor Thomas Arnesen at the Department of Biomedicine, University of Bergen.

Scientists from the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Comprehensive Cancer Center have recently published in Cell Death and Disease, identifying a critical protein that causes cells to die. The protein is described as an epitope, which is a section of the protein that is recognized by the immune system to activate a response. This epitope was distinctly found on the CD95 receptor, known to trigger programmed cell death. The report demonstrates a new mechanism to trigger cell death and provide further insight into improved disease treatments.

CD95 receptors, also referred to a “Fas”, are cell death receptors which are present on cell membranes. Once Fas is activated, it generates a signaling cascade which elicits cell death. The mechanism by which cells self-destruct has been an important research topic. By understanding cell death, scientists can generate better therapies for different diseases, including cancer.

Currently, cancer is treated by surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy. Despite initial success, these treatments are unable to fully eradicate tumor cells. Immunotherapy is a new approach to target cancer. Immunotherapy refers to therapeutics modulating the immune system to elicit an effective immune response. This is a more indirect approach compared to lysing tumors with a chemical. One specific immunotherapy referred to as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a treatment in which T cells, or cytotoxic immune cells, are engineered to lyse tumor cells. Unfortunately, CAR T-cell therapy is limited due to the tumor’s ability to prevent T cell activation.

Two people born on the same day can age very differently.

Biological age diagnostics help pinpoint the rate a person ages regardless of the amount of time they have spent on earth. This could provide earlier detection of disease for personalised preventative strategies.

Our FREE comprehensive market intelligence report demonstrates how biological age diagnostics are radically transforming how we see and tackle aging.

After enduring intense treatments and a 10-hour surgery as a high school junior to treat a rare form of cancer, Callan currently has no evidence of disease and is a student of fine arts at the University of Texas. Read how his family is helping others diagnosed with this rare cancer.

In October 2021, Callan began experiencing a mysterious pain in his neck. A talented artist and a good student, Callan had been looking forward to his junior year of high school. After also developing a cough, he was diagnosed with walking pneumonia, but later imaging showed a large tumor in his chest.

Multiple doctors told Callan the tumor, diagnosed as synovial sarcoma, was inoperable. Synovial sarcoma is often deadly without surgery, but his family eventually found a team willing to operate. Callan currently has no evidence of disease.

Continue reading “Callan — Childhood Cancer Survivor” »

Bendamustine administration within 9 months of apheresis significantly reduced response rates and survival in patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma:

CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy provides durable responses and a potential cure in approximately one third of patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma (R/R LBCL). Although it is known that therapy with the lymphotoxic chemotherapy agent bendamustine, prior to autologous T-cell collection, can impair T-cell number and function, its impact on patient outcomes has not been systematically addressed.

Investigators have now conducted a retrospective, multicenter study of 439 patients with R/R LBCL who had received two or more previous lines of therapy and were infused with commercially available CD19-targeted CAR T cells (axicabtagene ciloleucel or tisagenlecleucel). Of these patients, 80 (18%) had received one or more cycles of bendamustine, including 42 who had been treated within 9 months of apheresis. At baseline, bendamustine-exposed patients, compared with bendamustine-naive patients, were older (66 vs. 61 years), had poorer performance status (1, 16% vs. 7%), were more heavily pretreated (2 previous lines of therapy, 71% vs. 28%), and were more likely to have transformed indolent B-cell lymphoma (45% vs. 15%).

At apheresis, bendamustine-exposed patients, compared with bendamustine-naive patients, had a significantly poorer overall response rate (ORR; 53% vs. 72%; P0.01), shorter progression-free survival (PFS; 3.1 vs. 6.2 months; P0.04), and shorter overall survival (OS; 10.3 vs. 23.5 months; P0.01). For those who received bendamustine within 9 months of apheresis, ORR was even lower (40%), and PFS and OS were shorter (1.3 and 4.6 months, respectively). Bendamustine-exposed patients also had lower absolute lymphocyte counts, lower CD4⁺ T-cell counts, and poorer CAR T-cell expansion, but had similar rates of cytokine release syndrome and immune-effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome.

Continue reading “Bendamustine Impairs Outcomes with CAR T-Cell Therapy” »

Washington [US], March 5 (ANI): A team of researchers from Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine made a discovery that may have significance for therapeutic gene editing strategies, cancer diagnostics and therapies and other advancements in biotechnology. Kathy Meek, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and collaborators at Cambridge University and the National Institutes of Health have uncovered a previously unknown aspect of how DNA double-stranded breaks are repaired.

A large protein kinase called DNA-PK starts the DNA repair process; in their new report, two distinct DNA-PK protein complexes are characterized, each of which has a specific role in DNA repair that cannot be assumed by the other.

“It still gives me chills,” says Meek. “I don’t think anyone would have predicted this.”

The study, led by Jimo Borjigin, associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology and neurology at Michigan, was very small, featuring only four patients. But the findings echo animal model studies, where the presence of gamma waves in dying brains has also been observed, including in a previous study in rats that Borjigin and colleagues ran a decade earlier.

“These data demonstrate that the surge of gamma power and connectivity observed in animal models of cardiac arrest can be observed in select patients during the process of dying,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published in PNAS.

What are gamma waves? Gamma waves are high-frequency brain waves researchers believe represent multiple areas of the brain working together in complex thoughts. Take, for example, combining the sight, sound, and smell of a car to get a full picture of the vehicle, Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville uninvolved with the study, told Science.

Continue reading “Complex brain activity detected in dying patients” »

Summary: A new speech prosthetic offers hope for those with speech-impairing neurological disorders.

By converting brain signals into speech using high-density sensors and machine learning, the technology represents a significant advancement over current slower communication aids.

Though still in early stages, the device has achieved a 40% accuracy in decoding spoken data during limited trials and is moving towards a cordless design.