Lifeboat Foundation

Polio was a devastating disease before the development of the polio vaccine. But now, this once-feared virus might help treat another deadly illness — brain cancer.

In a new study, some patients who had an aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma and who received a genetically modified poliovirus lived much longer than typical for these patients.

The study found that about 21 percent of the brain cancer patients who received the poliovirus therapy were alive three years later. In contrast, among a group of previously treated patients who had the same cancer but received standard therapies (such as chemotherapy), just 4 percent were alive after three years.

Continue reading “Once-Dreaded Poliovirus Could Treat Brain Cancer” »

Does anyone have an opinion on this latest finding?

In the largest-ever study of its kind, researchers combined genomic data from nearly 900,000 patients and healthy individuals to identify commonalities among 10 mental illnesses.

Dreeming big.

Dreem Announces $35 Million Financing from lead investors Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Bpifrance (press release):

“Dreem, a neurotechnology company, today announced the closing of a new round of funding, raising $35 million USD to rapidly accelerate product development, invest in strategic research and development, and advance the future of sleep technology. Last year, Dreem introduced a comprehensive solution to address a suite of sleep problems and enhance the quality of rest during the night. The Dreem headband monitors brain activity to track sleep accurately and uses auditory stimulation as a medium to help people fall asleep faster, get deeper sleep, and wake up refreshed.

Continue reading “Sleep-focused neurotech firm Dreem raises $35M from Johnson&Johnson Innovation and Bpifrance” »

Recommended Books ➤

📖 Life 3.0 — http://azon.ly/ij9u
📖 The Master Algorithm — http://azon.ly/excm
📖 Superintelligence — http://azon.ly/v8uf

Continue reading “Ubiquitous Computing (The Future of Computing)” »

So what’s the catch?

For one, iPSCs can take months to make and the process is expensive. Furthermore, reverting cells back to a stem cell state wipes out their history, which is sometimes useful for studying disease progression.

In essence, iPSCs are the middlemen between one cell type and another. What if we could simply take out the middleman altogether?

Continue reading “Transdifferentiation Can Create An Endless Supply of Brain Cells—And Fast” »

A remarkable new study has successfully used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technique to edit a specific gene in mice engineered to have fragile X syndrome (FXS), a single-gene disorder often related to autism. The single gene edit in the live mice resulted in significant improvements in repetitive and obsessive behaviors, making this the first time gene editing has been used to effectively target behavioral symptoms related to autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

FXS is a genetic disorder associated with intellectual disability, seizures and exaggerated repetitive behavior. Previous studies have shown that the repetitive behaviors associated with FXS are related to a specific excitatory receptor in the brain that, when dysregulated, causes exaggerated signaling between cells.

The CRISPR technique homes in on the gene that controls that excitatory receptor, the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5), and essentially disables it, dampening the excessive signaling the corresponds with repetitive behaviors. In mice treated with the new system, obsessive digging behavior was reduced by 30 percent and repetitive leaping actions dropped by 70 percent.

For the first time ever researchers have had a breakthrough in creating a cocktail of drugs that caused new neurons to grow in the brains of mice.

In my last article I gave a detailed account on the debate of neurogenesis. While some neuroscientists claim that neurogenesis takes place within the adult mammalian human brain other researchers contest that idea claiming that new neurons stop developing at a very young age. Whichever side of the debate you are on one thing remains certain, that there are neurological diseases that leave negative impacts on cognitive function. This has left researchers looking for various ways to treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other brain damage.

Continue reading “Experimental Drug Injection Causes the Brain to Grow New Neurons” »

We have a ‘thirst for knowledge’ but sometime ‘ignorance is bliss’, so how do we choose between these two mind states at any given time?

UCL psychologists have discovered our brains use the same algorithm and neural architecture to evaluate the opportunity to gain information, as it does to evaluate rewards like food or money.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also finds that people will spend money to both obtain advance knowledge of a good upcoming event and to remain ignorant of an upcoming bad event.

Studies of massive genetic databases may lead to new therapies for mental disorders.