Technology & Society
From Wired UK: “America put a man on the Moon in less than a decade. I said a full decade to provide some wiggle room,” Stuart K Williams told Wired.co.uk. Williams is heading up the hugely ambitious project as executive
Health-savvy consumers will love the fact that soon they’ll be able to go into a Walgreens to get their blood tested using only a finger prick instead of a needle in the arm. Kudos to Theranos for making it happen.
Another great bioengineering study. This one showing the possibility of repairing organs simply by injecting them with engineered endothelial cells. Here’s the press release: Damaged or diseased organs may someday be healed with an injection of blood vessel cells, eliminating
Will a person’s own brain cells be used to repair their brain one day? Maybe. Here’s an article that discusses the potential first steps — taking brain cells from a living person and growing more of them. From the Third
A genome is a genome is a genome? Not always. Turns out that many people can have more than one genome in their body at once. Now that sequencing has become cheaper to do, all sorts of interesting data like
An Australian woman received a transplant of her own healthy ovarian tissue after her ovaries were removed due to cancer. It was transplanted into her abdomen where it grew eggs that led to a successful pregnancy following traditional IVF. Amazing
This advance by Austria’s Dr. Knoblich has big implications for studying brain disease. If researchers can study human brain cells in the lab instead of using animal models, the door will open to better, more effective, therapies. From the WSJ:
The Japanese government has approved a trial of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that will be morphed into retinal cells to attempt to cure age-related blindness. Fingers crossed that it goes well. Here’s the story.
Here’s a great story in Discovery magazine about how the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation engaged in venture philanthropy and found a near cure for some patients. Worth reading.
From the LA Times: Italian researchers have used a defanged version of HIV to replace faulty genes — and eliminate devastating symptoms — in children suffering two rare and fatal genetic diseases. Improved gene therapy techniques prevented the onset of
That’s the hope of Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford University. According to Science Magazine: A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found.
This is an incredibly sad piece of news, since things originally seemed to be going so well. It is important to note, however, that Hannah did not die due to her new windpipe failing — the new organ worked well.
Cross-Posted from Singularityweblog.com: Just last month, regenerative medicine scored another solid victory by saving a toddler’s life. Yet, disappointingly, the news came and went without much follow-on thought. Hannah Warren, a Korean-Canadian girl who is now two years old, was
Here’s a nice summary of the research from the WSJ: Dr. de Peppo and his colleagues used a method known as reprogramming to transform human skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells, which can become all other cells in the body.
“A 2-year-old girl born without a windpipe now has a new one grown from her own stem cells, the youngest patient in the world to benefit from the experimental treatment.” Read more here from AP. And here’s a quote from
This MIT Tech Review article outlines work on a ‘memory prosthesis,’ which could help restore brain function for those with Alzheimer’s, stroke, or other types of brain injury.
“On this day (25 April) in 1953 Nature published three papers describing the structure of DNA: one from James Watson and Francis Crick of Cambridge University that proposed the now famous double helix, and two accompanying papers from Rosalind Franklin
A similar treatment for humans has been curtailed by the FDA. If you’re a dog, this is fantastic news.
“A research team from Mass. discovered a way to take organs that have already died, wash them clean of their past life, and use the building blocks left behind to grow new, vital organs. Today, the team announced that they
From the WSJ: Surgeons at a hospital in Japan recently faced a dilemma before transplanting a parent’s liver into a child: How exactly to trim the organ to fit the space in the child’s smaller cavity while preserving its functions.