Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

The biotech battle between China and the US has begun as we predicated when we announced the first CRISPR deployment in humans last month. The US has upped the ante and is taking a step further in the race for the biotech crown. All great news for us as the more competition the faster progress will move so let’s hope there is a fierce battle for biotech coming.

In 2015, a little girl called Layla was treated with gene-edited immune cells that eliminated all signs of the leukemia that was killing her. Layla’s treatment was a one-off, but by the end of 2017, the technique could have saved dozens of lives.

It took many years to develop the gene-editing tool that saved Layla, but thanks to a revolutionary method known as CRISPR, this can now be done in just weeks.

In fact, CRISPR works so well that the first human trial involving the method has already begun. In China, it is being used to disable a gene called PD-1 in immune cells taken from individuals with cancer. The edited cells are then injected back into each person’s body.

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Google Tech Talk with the SENS Research Foundation!

Commentary about our recent Google Tech Talk about the MitoSENS project from FightAging!

“As the clock ticks on this year’s SENS rejuvenation research fundraiser — less than two weeks to go now, and plenty left in the matching fund for new donations — it is good to be reminded of the progress that the SENS Research Foundation has accomplished with the charitable funding of recent years. With that in mind, today I’ll point you to a recent Google Tech Talk that provides a layperson’s introduction to one of the projects that our community has funded, fixing the problem of mitochondrial damage in aging. The point of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) research programs is to accelerate progress towards specific forms of therapy that can bring aging under medical control.”

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Aging as a disease or Uber-disease is gaining traction and pressure is mounting on the WHO to include it as it fits their definition of a disease state.

Failing to classify aging as a disease is slowing progress and costing lives. We need to change the paradigm.

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Tissue engineering and Stem cells are a large part of the rejuvenation biotechnology toolkit. Here we have yet more progress and this time the pacemaker cells are replicated for possible use in biological pacemaker therapies.

“Scientists from the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine, University Health Network, have developed the first functional pacemaker cells from human stem cells, paving the way for alternate, biological pacemaker therapy.”

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Lysosomes originally thought to be the dust bins of the body have recently been found to have some constructive roles too.

A new role has been discovered for a well-known piece of cellular machinery, which could revolutionise the way we understand how tissue is constructed and remodelled within the body.

Lysosomes are small, enzyme-filled sacks found within cells, which break down old cell components and unwanted molecules.

Their potent mixture of destructive enzymes also makes them important in protecting cells against pathogens such as viruses by degrading cell intruders.

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(FoxNews.com) — Food producer Del Monte has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to start selling a genetically engineered pineapple with pink flesh.

The new species Ananas comosus has been given the more consumer-friendly name of the “Rosé” and, according to The Packer, Del Monte has quietly been working on the fruit’s development since 2005.

So what makes the usually golden-colored fruit pink? The patened pineapple DNA is injected with a healthy dose of lycopene, the bright red pigment found in tomatoes and watermelons.

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A 14-year-old girl who said before dying of cancer that she wanted a chance to live longer has been allowed by the high court to have her body cryogenically frozen in the hope that she can be brought back to life at a later time.

The court ruled that the teenager’s mother, who supported the girl’s wish to be cryogenically preserved, should be the only person allowed to make decisions about the disposal of her body. Her estranged father had initially opposed her wishes.

During the last months of her life, the teenager, who had a rare form of cancer, used the internet to investigate cryonics. Known only as JS, she sent a letter to the court: “I have been asked to explain why I want this unusual thing done. I’m only 14 years old and I don’t want to die, but I know I am going to. I think being cryo‐preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years’ time.

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So much for “Junk” DNA being a load of old rubbish!

UC San Francisco researchers have taken a major step toward understanding the function of the tens of thousands of human genes that do not code for proteins, a phenomenon considered one of the key remaining mysteries of the human genome. New findings, which focused on the roles of these genes in human cancer cells, suggest a possible new strategy for targeting the disease.

In recent years, researchers have recognized that non-coding regions of the genome—long dismissed as “junk DNA”—are actually key players in cell biology, development, and disease. However, the vast majority of these regions have not yet been extensively studied.

Now UCSF scientists have developed an approach to studying the function of genes that produce RNA transcripts but no protein – called long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs)—at an unprecedented scale. In a proof of principle experiment, the researchers set out to look for common lncRNAs required for the growth of many different types of cancer cells. To their surprise, they found that each cancer cell line they tested relied upon a different set of IncRNAs for growth and survival, suggesting that these molecules might be promising targets for precision cancer therapies.

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Stem cell bandages are in development in the UK.

A ‘living bandage’ made from stem cells, which could revolutionise the treatment and prognosis of a common sporting knee injury, has been trialled in humans for the first time by scientists at the Universities of Liverpool and Bristol.

Meniscal tears are suffered by over one million people a year in the US and Europe alone and are particularly common in contact sports like football and rugby. 90 per cent or more of tears occur in the white zone of meniscus which lacks a blood supply, making them difficult to repair. Many professional sports players opt to have the torn tissue removed altogether, risking osteoarthritis in later life.

The cell bandage has been developed by Bristol University spin-out company Azellon, and is designed to enable the meniscal tear to repair itself by encouraging cell growth in the affected tissue.

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Further progress with cancer this time using genome sequencing.

In their search for new ways to treat cancer, many scientists are using a high-tech process called genome sequencing to hunt for genetic mutations that encourage tumor cells to thrive. To aid in this search, some researchers have developed new bioinformatics methods that each claim to help pinpoint the cancer-friendly mutants.

But a stubborn question remains: Among the numerous new tactics that aim to spotlight the so-called cancer driver genes, which produce the most accurate results?

To help solve this puzzle, a team of Johns Hopkins computational scientists and cancer experts have devised their own bioinformatics software to evaluate how well the current strategies identify cancer-promoting mutations and distinguish them from benign mutations in cancer cells.

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