Lifeboat Foundation

Canada’s federal government believes that ‘regenerative medicine is the future,’ and they’re ready to put money behind this statement.

Stem cells are remarkable. They have the ability to grow into a plethora of different kinds of cells. As the National Institute of Health notes, they are capable of “dividing essentially without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive.” And it is precisely this ability to grow and develop into different cell types that makes stem cells so useful in the fight again a host of diseases and ailments.

Now, Canada’s newly appointed Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has just announced that the federal government is set to put in $20 million towards the development of the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine. The move is set to support the establishment of a stem-cell therapy development facility in Toronto.

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Making meds from the bacteria living inside your gut. Interesting concept; however, it does remind me of some of the Sigourney Weaver movies.

Relatively new discoveries about of the role of the microbiome in human health have sparked a race to develop new therapies based on microbes.

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Modest progress at the WHO international consultation on aging.

Our parent organization the ILA has been busy and here is an article about the latest news from the World Health Organization meeting in Geneva to discuss aging research. There are some positive changes being made and well done to everyone who helped out on this project.

http://majormouse.org/?q=node/164

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I am reading this right now. I feel like I need to go back and study it when i am finished. It is not only a basic information source but provides some nice history on the R&D of life extension. There are a number of people we can name as the big names in longer life R&D, Fossel is one of them.

The Telomerase Revolution: The Enzyme That Holds the Key to Human Aging and Will Soon Lead to Longer, Healthier Lives [Michael Fossel] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. One of Wall Street Journal’s Best Books for Science Lovers in 2015Science is on the cusp of a revolutionary breakthrough. We now understand more about aging—and how to prevent and reverse it—than ever before. In recent years.

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If true, this might mean there’s a “low hanging fruit” solution to ocean gyre garbage — a targeted effort to improve garbage collection in a small number of cities in developing nations, might dramatically reduce it. Hint, hint, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation! Side benefit would be greatly improving the lives of people in those cities, with some obvious health benefits along the way.

Economic growth in these countries is outpacing infrastructure, and their trash is collecting in the sea.

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Wow!!! Chewing gum wearable technology, Cyborg Chips, Ingestible sensors to let doctors know if you’re taking your meds, etc. 2016 is going to be interesting

The phrase “Brave New World” has become one of the most often used clichés in medical technology in recent years. Google the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian, and anticipatory, novel with the word medicine and 2,940,000 results appear.

But could there be better shorthand to describe some of the recent developments in medical, health and bio-tech? Consider these possibilities coming to fruition, or close to, in 2016:

Continue reading “7 Mind-Blowing Digital Health Tools That Could Disrupt Health Care in 2016” »

Researchers in Germany have successfully grown the innermost layer of human fallopian tubes in the lab — the first step towards creating a functional model that will allow scientists to study how reproductive diseases such as cancer start, as well as provide important insight into the enigmatic organs.

The fallopian tubes play a crucial role in the female reproductive system by connecting the ovaries to the uterus, but recent research has suggested that if fallopian tube cells become infected, they can migrate, and could be a key trigger for ovarian cancer — one of the most deadly types of female reproductive cancer.

Despite the importance of these organs, we have a lot to learn about how they function, particularly on the inside — an area that (as you can imagine) is particularly challenging for scientists to study while their patients are alive.

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This is an interesting conjecture.

We may be able to keep our gut in check after all. That’s the tantalizing finding from a new study published today that reveals a way that mice—and potentially humans—can control the makeup and behavior of their gut microbiome. Such a prospect upends the popular notion that the complex ecosystem of germs residing in our guts essentially acts as our puppet master, altering brain biochemistry even as it tends to our immune system, wards off infection and helps us break down our supersized burger and fries.

In a series of elaborate experiments researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital discovered that mouse poop is chock full of tiny, noncoding RNAs called microRNAs from their gastrointestinal (GI) tracts and that these biomolecules appear to shape and regulate the microbiome. “We’ve known about how microbes can influence your health for a few years now and in a way we’ve always suspected it’s a two-way process, but never really pinned it down that well,” says Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, not involved with the new study. “This [new work] explains quite nicely the two-way interaction between microbes and us, and it shows the relationship going the other way—which is fascinating,” says Spector, author of The Diet Myth: Why the Secret to Health and Weight Loss Is Already in Your Gut.

Continue reading “Does our Microbiome Control Us or Do We Control It?” »

I could see the value of AI in helping with a whole host of addictions, compulsive disorders, etc. AI at the core is often looking at patterns and predicting outcomes, or the next steps to make, or predicting what you or I will want to do or react to something, etc. So, leveraging AI as a tool to help in finding or innovating new solutions for things like OCD or addictions does truly make sense.

New York-based AiCure, which holds 12 patents for artificially intelligent software platforms that aim to improve patient outcomes by targeting medication adherence, announced the closing of a $12.25 million funding round Monday.

The company’s software was built with help from $7 million in competitive grants from four National Institutes of Health organizations, awarded in order to spur tech developments that would have a significant impact on drug research and therapy. The National Institute of Drug Abuse awarded AiCure $1 million in 2014 to help launch a major study into the efficacy of using the company’s platform to monitor and intervene with patients receiving medication as maintenance therapy for addiction.

Adherence to such therapies is associated with improved recovery, but often patients take improper doses or sell the drugs to others. To address this, AiCure’s platform connects patients with artificial intelligence software via their devices that determines whether a medication is being taken as prescribed. The platform has shown to be feasible for use across various patient populations, including elderly patients and study participants in schizophrenia and HIV prevention trials, according to a news release.

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