Lifeboat Foundation

Bioquark, Inc., (http://www.bioquark.com) a company focused on the development of novel biologics for complex regeneration and disease reversion, and Revita Life Sciences, (http://revitalife.co.in) a biotechnology company focused on translational therapeutic applications of autologous stem cells, have announced that they have received IRB approval for a study focusing on a novel combinatorial approach to clinical intervention in the state of brain death in humans.

This first trial, within the portfolio of Bioquark’s Reanima Project (http://www.reanima.tech) is entitled “Non-randomized, Open-labeled, Interventional, Single Group, Proof of Concept Study With Multi-modality Approach in Cases of Brain Death Due to Traumatic Brain Injury Having Diffuse Axonal Injury” (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02742857?term=bioquark&rank=1), will enroll an initial 20 subjects, and be conducted at Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand India.

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Taking their cue from salamander regeneration, a team led by the University of New South Wales says that a stem cell therapy capable of regenerating any human tissue damaged by injury, disease, or aging could be available within a few years, thanks to an innovative new technique.

While stem cells have worked wonders in medicinal research, showing signs of curing everything from spinal cord injuries to blindness, they’ve always had their shortcomings. But one study is promising a new “game changing” technique for stem cells.

Taking their cue from salamander regeneration, new research led by the University of New South Wales says that a stem cell therapy capable of regenerating any human tissue damaged by injury, disease, or aging could be available within a few years, through an innovative new technique.

Awesome; could be a new track for reverse aging.

DARPA taking on the designer viruses and resistant fighting viruses that we hate. Who knows; they may finally find the fountain of youth in the process.

Vaccines are great, but they’re no match for most viruses in play at any given time. This is due largely in part to the ever-changing nature of viruses and the expense and difficulty in developing new vaccines to target them. DARPA wants that reality to change, citing the numerous concerning viruses, past and present, that affect humanity. Under the “INTERCEPT” program, DARPA seeks “shape-shifting” vaccines that adapt to kill off viruses as they evolve.

One of the biggest virus scares at the moment is the zika virus, but ebola was just recently a big issue and other viruses, including influenza and dengue, are a continuous problem. Once someone is infected, the virus is able to “mutate and morph as they reproduce inside their hosts,” says DARPA, making any vaccines quickly obsolete. If the agency’s new INTERfering and Co-Evolving Prevention and Therapy (INTERCEPT) program proves successful, though, things will change in a big way.

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The growth of human and computer intelligence has triggered a barrage of dire predictions about the rise of super intelligence and the singularity. But some retain their skepticism, including Dr. Michael Shermer, a science historian and founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine.

The reason so many rational people put forward hypotheses that are more hype than high tech, Shermer says, is that being smart and educated doesn’t protect anyone from believing in “weird things.” In fact, sometimes smart and educated people are better at rationalizing beliefs that they hold for not-so-rational reasons. The smarter and more educated you are, the better able you are to find evidence to support what you want to be true, suggests Shermer.

“This explains why Nobel Prize winners speak about areas they know nothing about with great confidence and are sure that they’re right. Just because they have this great confidence of being able to do that (is) a reminder that they’re more like lawyers than scientists in trying to marshal a case for their client,” Shermer said. “(Lawyers) just put together the evidence, as much as you can, in support of your client and get rid of the negative evidence. In science you’re not allowed to do that, you’re supposed to look at all the evidence, including the counter evidence to your theory.”

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Nanomedicine has been something that many in tech expected to be a critical part of the healthcare landscape for over a decade. I am glad to see how quickly the technology is being adopted as part of bio-medical research and treatments for various diseases, etc.

NEW YORK, April 7, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Nano-based science paving the precision medicine era.

The continued development of new treatments associated with the demographic trends and public health considerations is remarkable. Nanotechnology has been identified as one most relevant key enabling technologies of the last ten years, significantly impacting on many different biomedical developments in a broad spectrum of applications therapeutics, diagnostics, theranostics, medical imaging, regenerative medicine, life sciences research and biosciences, among many others. In fact, nanomedicine is present in all therapeutic areas, exhibiting a perceptible and extensive impact in the treatment and diagnosis of some most concerned diseases.

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In the pages of comic books and on the silver screen, superheroes like Wolverine and Deadpool have a “healing factor” that allows their bodies to regenerate and recover from injuries or illness at an amazing rate – but certainly nothing like that is possible in real life, right?

Amazingly, a team of scientists led by John Pimanda, a hematologist and associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, published a study in Monday’s edition of the journal PNAS reporting that they had successfully reprogrammed bone and fat cells into induced multipotent stem cells (iMS) – the first step to making such a repair system a reality.

As they explained in a statement, stem cell therapies using iMS cells could theoretically repair a fractured bone or fix injured spinal discs, using a technique similar to how salamanders are able to regenerate lost limbs. These treatments could radically alter the field of regenerative medicine, and perhaps most surprisingly, the authors believe they could be available in just a few years. The technique, which has been successfully tested in mice, “is a significant advance on many of the current unproven stem cell therapies, which have shown little or no objective evidence they contribute directly to new tissue formation,” Pimanda said.

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A common drug could hold the key to long life, in flies at least, according to research.

At low doses, lithium prolonged the life of fruit flies in lab experiments.

Scientists say the finding is “encouraging” and could eventually lead to new drugs to help people live longer and healthier lives.

Stem cells, human trials, regenerative medicine, yay!

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