Lifeboat Foundation

Before the 7.6 billion people alive today, demographers estimate that about 100 billion people lived and died. This is the reality of the human condition. Memento mori, as medieval Christians reflected—Remember that you have to die.

What if it didn’t have to be this way? There are, in fact, organisms whose bodies steadily and reliably replace cells with healthier cells, and whose tissues and organs self-repair and maintain their vigor. They’re called children. And there are cells in adults that divide indefinitely. They’re called cancer. What if there were a way to genetically re-engineer and chemically reprogram our cells to divide indefinitely like they do in children, and to continue this process throughout adulthood without becoming cancerous? Could we become immortal?

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work,” Woody Allen once said, “I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” There are today well-funded groups of scientists who believe we can do just that. If these techno-dreamers succeed, would you want to live for 150 years? 300 years? Or even 500 years? I’m not talking about being brain-dead and bedridden on a morphine drip. I mean living a full, rich physical and mental life for centuries, possibly forever. Would you opt for immortality?

Researchers have amassed a family tree of 13 million people to trace the last 500 years of Western marriage and migration patterns. They also show that the genetic basis of longevity is lower than many have suggested.

According to China’s National Central Cancer Registry, Esophageal cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in China. Like many other types, cancer of the esophagus can be treated with chemotherapy. But, as is also true of other forms of cancer, chemotherapy isn’t always successful. In China, and around the world, there’s a great need for the development of new treatments.

Dr. Shixiu Wu, president of the Hangzhou Cancer Hospital, has tested a somewhat new treatment that takes a patient’s T-cells from the body, genetically edits them to target cancerous cells, then puts the altered cells back. If the process sounds at all familiar, it’s probably because using T-cells in this manner was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration back in August 2017.

Continue reading “Chinese Doctors Are Using Modified T-Cells to Treat Advanced Forms of Cancer” »

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cafeesotericaradio/2018/03/02/c…generation

Summary: Treatability of cancer was raised to over 80% by a new intelligent system that sifts through massive genetic datasets to pinpoint targets for cancer treatment, say these scientists. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Scientists in Singapore have discovered a significantly improved way to treat cancer by listening to many different computer programs rather than just one.

Their new computer program reaches a consensus on how to treat a specific tumor, and it is significantly more accurate than existing predictive methods. The system isolates the Achilles heel of each individual tumor, helping doctors to choose the best treatment.

Continue reading “Using big data analysis to significantly boost cancer treatment effectiveness” »

Critics of the militarization of marine life say the problem with a new DARPA program is moral, not practical.

Summary: Researchers who just finished a precision cancer treatment trial at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles just reported that three out of four adult and child cancer patients responded favorably to a new precision therapy which targets a gene mutation. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) reports that three-fourths of adults and children with a variety of advanced cancers in different sites of the body responded to a novel therapy called larotrectinib that targets a specific genetic mutation.

The researchers published the results of this phase 1/2 trial on February 22, 2018, in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Continue reading “Precision cancer treatment effective in treating tumors” »

https://born2invest.com/articles/social-entrepreneurship-solving-problems/

A who’s-who from the world of synthetic biological research have come together to launch Senti Biosciences with $53 million in funding from a slew of venture capital investors.

Led by Tim Lu, a longtime researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the founding fathers of synthetic biology, Senti’s aim is nothing less than developing therapies that are tailored to an individual’s unique biology — and their first target is cancer.

Here’s how Lu described a potential cancer treatment using Senti’s technology to me. “We take a cell derived from humans that we can insert our genetic circuits into… we insert the DNA and encoding and deliver those cells via an IV infusion. We have engineered the cells to locate where the tumors are… What we’ve been doing is engineering those cells to selectively trigger an immune response against the tumor.”

Continue reading “All-star team of synthetic biologists raise $53 million for cancer therapy startup Senti” »