Lifeboat Foundation

Learn how Crohn’s disease treatment and long-term outlook have improved over the past few decades.

Stimulating the brain with electricity has been used for 30 years to treat Parkinson’s disease. Now, researchers are testing whether it could help restore hand and arm motion.

After surgeons perform first womb transplant in UK, we look at other major advances through the years.

In a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, researchers evaluated fluorescence optical imaging (FOI) as a method to accurately and rapidly diagnose rheumatic diseases of the hands.

They used machine learning algorithms to identify the minimum number of FOI features to differentiate between osteoarthritis (OA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and connective tissue disease (CTD). Of the 20 features identified as associated with the conditions, results indicate that reduced sets of features between five and 15 in number were sufficient to diagnose each of the diseases under study accurately.

That early experience drove his professional interest in helping people communicate.

Now, Henderson’s an author on one of two papers published Wednesday showing substantial advances toward enabling speech in people injured by stroke, accident or disease.

Continue reading “Paralysis can rob people of their ability to speak. Now researchers hope to give it back” »

Human cells evolving in the laboratory undergo a series of predictable, sequential genetic changes that lead to pre-cancer. Blocking these changes may allow intervention before cancer occurs.

For prospective parents who are carriers of many inherited diseases, using in vitro fertilization along with genetic testing would significantly lower health care expenditures, according to researchers at Stanford Medicine.

Preimplantation genetic diagnostic testing during IVF, or PGD-IVF, is being used to screen for single-gene defect conditions such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and Tay-Sachs disease, along with nearly 400 others.

Continue reading “Screening during IVF for inherited diseases greatly reduces costs of care” »

New research from QIMR Berghofer has found that the hormone testosterone may play an important role in the development of endometrial cancer.

The discovery raises exciting new possibilities for screening, preventing and fighting this increasingly prevalent disease.

Continue reading “Common hormone could hold key to treating endometrial cancer” »

This story is part of a series on the current progression in Regenerative Medicine. In 1999, I defined regenerative medicine as the collection of interventions that restore to normal function tissues and organs that have been damaged by disease, injured by trauma, or worn by time. I include a full spectrum of chemical, gene, and protein-based medicines, cell-based therapies, and biomechanical interventions that achieve that goal.

As part of a trio of stories on advances in stem cell gene therapy, this piece discusses how to alter blood stem cells using mRNA technology. Previous installments describe how the same platform could reinvent how we prepare patients for bone marrow transplants and correct pathogenic DNA.

At present, the only way to cure genetic blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia and thalassemia is to reset the immune system with a stem cell transplantation. Only a fraction of patients elects this procedure, as the process is fraught with significant risks, including toxicity and transplant rejection. A preclinical study published in Science explores a solution that may be less toxic yet equally effective: mRNA technology. The cell culture and mouse model experiments offer a compelling avenue for future research to enhance or replace current stem cell transplantations altogether.