Lifeboat Foundation

Revolutionizing Musculoskeletal Health Through Microcapsule Drug Delivery — Dr. @George R. Dodge, Ph.D. — CEO & Co-Founder — Mechano-Therapeutics LLC

Dr. George R. Dodge, Ph.D. is CEO & Co-Founder of Mechano-Therapeutics LLC (https://mechano-therapeutics.com/), a biotechnology company spun out from his lab, and the labs of his partners Dr. Rob Mauck and Dr. Daeyeon Lee, at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in microcapsule development using proprietary microfluidics for drug encapsulation, with a mission to revolutionize musculoskeletal health using an innovative platform technology to enhance delivery of therapeutics for improving patient outcomes.

Continue reading “Dr George Dodge — CEO & Co-Founder — Mechano-Therapeutics — Revolutionizing Musculoskeletal Health” »

Many of the genetic mutations that directly cause a condition, such as those responsible for cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell disease, tend to change the amino acid sequence of the protein that they encode. But researchers have observed only a few million of these single-letter ‘missense mutations’. Of the more than 70 million such mutations that can occur in the human genome, only a sliver have been linked conclusively to disease, and most seem to have no ill effect on health.

So when researchers and doctors find a missense mutation that they’ve never seen before, it can be difficult to know what to make of it. To help interpret such ‘variants of unknown significance’, researchers have developed dozens of computational tools that can predict whether a variant is likely to cause disease. AlphaMissense incorporates existing approaches to the problem, which are increasingly being addressed with machine learning.

The types of cancer that occur in children often are different from those in adults. Childhood cancers usually are not linked to lifestyle or environmental risk factors, as is often the case in adults. Nonetheless, cancer is the second-leading cause of death in children 1 to 14 years old, according to the American Cancer Society. Nearly 10,000 children in the U.S. under the age of 15 will be diagnosed with cancer in 2023, and about 1,000 children are expected to die of the disease.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which makes this a good time to learn about three of the most common types of cancer in children: acute lymphocytic leukemia, neuroblastoma and pediatric brain tumors.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. It’s the most common type of cancer in children, and treatments result in a good chance for a cure. Acute lymphocytic leukemia also can occur in adults, though the chance of a cure is greatly reduced.

Pediatric specialists at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford are implementing innovative uses for immersive virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies to advance patient care and improve the patient experience.

Through the hospital’s CHARIOT program, Packard Children’s is one of the only hospitals in the world to have VR available on every unit to help engage and distract patients undergoing a range of hospital procedures. Within the Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center, three unique VR projects are influencing medical education for congenital heart defects, preparing patients for procedures and aiding surgeons in the operating room. And for patients and providers looking to learn more about some of the therapies offered within our Fetal and Pregnancy Health Program, a new VR simulation helps them understand the treatments at a much closer level.

Many ophthalmologists’ offices around the country are home to a machine that enables doctors to take advantage of optical coherence tomography (OCT), a method of imaging the retina and other tissues in the eye. These OCT machines give doctors insight into the three-dimensional structures of their patients’ eyes, help them diagnose diseases and can even help save their patients’ sight.

The genesis of OCT machines began in the lab of Dr. James Fujimoto, who was inspired by advances in high-speed photography and lasers to start developing potential methods that would enable doctors to get better images of what was happening inside of people’s bodies. The goal, he told Forbes, was to develop… More.

In 1991, the trio published their first paper describing the technique they invented. “In less than a year, we were able to develop this new imaging technology, which in retrospect was pretty unusual,” Huang told Forbes.

Continue reading “Retinal Imaging And Machine Learning Honored In The 2023 Lasker Awards” »

As befits the child of a scientist, Martin Picard’s young son, 3, is already learning about biology with an age-appropriate textbook, “Cell Biology for Babies.” Picard winces a little whenever the book calls mitochondria the “powerhouses of the cell” but figures he has plenty of time as his son grows older to explain why the tiny organelles are much more than simple energy sources.

Picard is a leading proponent of mitochondrial psychobiology (a phrase he coined), an emerging field that examines how psychological states like stress influence mitochondrial functions, which in turn influence mental and physical health.

Continue reading “Exploring the mind-mitochondria connection” »

A virtual cell modeling system, powered by AI, will lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of diseases, argue the cofounders of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

As the smallest living units, cells are key to understanding disease—and yet so much about them remains unknown. We do not know, for example, how billions of biomolecules—like DNA, proteins, and lipids—come together to act as one cell. Nor do we know how our many types of cells interact within our bodies. We have limited understanding of how cells, tissues, and organs become diseased and what it takes for them to be healthy.

AI can help us answer these questions and apply that knowledge to improve health and well-being worldwide—if… More.

CHOP researchers established the feasibility of an artificial womb called the “Biobag” to nurture a premature lamb in 2017.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will hold a meeting of independent advisors on September 19–20. The meeting’s agenda is to discuss the viability of clinical trials using artificial womb technology to improve the survival and health of extremely preterm newborns.

Continue reading “Artificial womb human trials may soon inch closer to reality” »

Children whose mothers had a higher exposure to certain phthalates during pregnancy tend to show smaller total gray matter in their brains at age 10. This is one of the main conclusions of a study led by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), and published in Molecular Psychiatry.

The study also found that maternal exposure to plasticizers during pregnancy is associated with lower child IQ at age 14, which confirmed the results of two previous study on the topic. Moreover, the research team observed that this relationship between exposure to certain phthalates and lower child IQ is partially influenced by total gray matter volumes. In other words: exposure to plasticizers before birth could lead to smaller total gray matter in childhood, which in turn could be related to a lower IQ.

Finally, the results showed an association between gestational exposure to plasticizers and smaller white matter volumes in girls.