Lifeboat Foundation

Female kidneys are known to be more resilient to disease and injury, but males need not despair. A new USC Stem Cell-led study published in Developmental Cell describes not only how sex hormones drive differences in male and female mouse kidneys, but also how lowering testosterone can “feminize” this organ and improve its resilience.

“By exploring how differences emerge in male and female kidneys during development, we can better understand how to address sex-related health disparities for patients with kidney diseases,” said Professor Andy McMahon, the study’s corresponding author, and the director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

First authors Lingyun “Ivy” Xiong and Jing Liu from the McMahon Lab and their collaborators identified more than 1,000 genes with different levels of activity in male and female mouse kidneys, in a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The differences were most evident in the section of the kidney’s filtering unit known as the proximal tubule, responsible for reabsorbing most of the nutrients such as glucose and amino acids back into the blood stream.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new type of material that could offer a sustainable and eco-friendly solution to clean pollutants from water.

Dubbed an “engineered living material,” it is a 3D-printed structure made of a seaweed-based polymer combined with bacteria that have been genetically engineered to produce an enzyme that transforms various organic pollutants into benign molecules. The bacteria were also engineered to self-destruct in the presence of a molecule called theophylline, which is often found in tea and chocolate. This offers a way to eliminate them after they have done their job.

Continue reading “3D-printed ‘living material’ could clean up contaminated water” »

The novel photosynthetic biocomposite material is a 3D-printed structure made of a seaweed-based polymer combined with genetically engineered cyanobacteria to produce an enzyme that transforms various organic pollutants into benign molecules.

T-cells that have been genetically edited to boost their anticancer activity have destroyed solid tumours in mice.

By Michael Le Page

A study of a genetic mouse model of schizophrenia supports two long-debated hypotheses, and unveils additional new clues about the biological roots of the disorder.

Mathematicians delight in the beauty of math that so many of us don’t see. But nature is a wonderful realm in which to observe beauty born out of mathematical relationships.

The natural world provides seemingly endless patterns underpinned by numbers – if we can recognize them.

Luckily for us, a motley team of researchers has just uncovered another striking connection between math and nature; between one of the purest forms of mathematics, number theory, and the mechanisms governing the evolution of life on molecular scales, genetics.

The Death of Death is an international bestseller by José Cordeiro and David Wood that claims that “death will be optional by 2045” – or even earlier, if more public and private funds are invested in rejuvenation technologies.

Longevity. Technology: Already available in more than 10 languages, the book provides insight into recent exponential advances in AI, tissue regeneration, stem cell treatment, organ printing, cryopreservation and genetic therapies that, say the authors, offer a realistic chance to solve the problem of the aging of the human body for the first time in human history. In fact, the book’s subtitle is The Scientific Possibility of Physical Immortality and its Moral Defense.

Given that until relatively recently, just mentioning the concept of ‘biological immortality’ was enough to raise eyebrows and with most of the opinion that it should be filed away under ‘science fiction’ or ‘charlatanism’. However, longevity science is advancing at an incredible pace and today there are people who no longer wonder if immortality is possible, but when it will be a reality. We sat down with José Luis Corderio PhD to find out more.

Like biomarker tests, germline testing can help doctors determine the best treatments for patients, but such testing may also help identify people whose family members should be offered testing for potential cancer-causing gene changes.

Guidelines recommend that germline testing be offered to all people with male breast cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, and metastatic prostate cancer. For other cancers with lower likelihood of harmful inherited mutations, recommendations for germline testing vary.

But new findings from a study that is examining the extent of testing for germline mutations among people diagnosed with cancer in California and Georgia between 2013 and 2019 found that germline testing rates are still low. Among the more than 1.3 million people in the study, only about 93,000, or 6.8%, underwent germline genetic testing through March 31, 2021, according to findings published July 3 in JAMA.

A new cancer therapy developed by Purdue University researchers attacks tumors by tricking cancer cells into absorbing a snippet of RNA that naturally blocks cell division. As reported in Oncogene, tumors treated with the new therapy did not increase in size over the course of a 21-day study, while untreated tumors tripled in size over the same time period. The paper is tiled “A first-in-class fully modified version of miR-34a with outstanding stability, activity, and anti-tumor efficacy.”

Cancer can begin almost anywhere in the human body. It is characterized by cells that divide uncontrollably and that may be able to ignore signals to die or stop dividing, and even evade the immune system. The therapy, tested in mouse models, combines a delivery system that targets cancer cells with a specially modified version of microRNA-34a, a molecule that acts “like the brakes on a car,” slowing or stopping cell division, said Andrea Kasinski, lead author and the William and Patty Miller Associate Professor of biological sciences at Purdue University.

In addition to slowing or reversing tumor growth, the targeted microRNA-34a strongly suppressed the activity of at least three genes—MET, CD44 and AXL—known to drive cancer and resistance to other cancer therapies, for at least 120 hours. The results indicate that the patent-pending therapy, the newest iteration in more than 15 years of work targeting microRNA to destroy cancer, could be effective on its own and in combination with existing drugs when used against cancers that have built drug resistance.