One of the first people in the UK to have a double hand transplant has said her progress has been “phenomenal”, as she continues to pick up new skills two years on.

Cor Hutton, from Lochwinnoch in Renfrewshire, was the first patient in Scotland and the third in the UK to successfully have the procedure, having had her hands and feet amputated in 2013 after suffering acute pneumonia and sepsis which nearly killed her.

On the second anniversary of coming round from the 12-hour operation on January 9 2019, Ms Hutton paid tribute to the donor and the medical team as she said she is “very lucky”.

Circa 2017

‘A full head swap between brain dead organ donors is the next stage… We stand on the brink of a revolution, not only in medicine but in human life’

The men are reportedly doing well one year on, but there is no way to confirm that the unpublished treatment using ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells works. The two men are reportedly doing well one year on, but there is no way to confirm that the unpublished treatment using ‘reprogrammed’ stem cells works.

Scientists have developed a new way to detect four-stranded DNA and observe how it behaves in living cells.

Very interesting.

Patients with severe COVID-19 disease have significantly shorter telomeres, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) in collaboration with the COVID-IFEMA Field Hospital, published in the journal Aging. The study, led by Maria A. Blasco and whose first authors are Raúl Sánchez and Ana Guío-Carrión, postulates that telomere shortening as a consequence of the viral infection impedes tissue regeneration and that this is why a significant number of patients suffer prolonged sequelae.

Blasco was already developing a therapy to regenerate lung tissue in pulmonary fibrosis patients; she now believes that this treatment — which should still take at least a year and a half to become available — could also help those who have lung lesions remaining after overcoming COVID-19.

Telomeres and tissue regeneration

The Telomeres and Telomerase Group, led by Blasco at the CNIO, has been researching the role of telomeres in tissue regeneration for decades. Telomeres are structures that protect the chromosomes within each cell of the organism. It is known that telomere length is an indicator of ageing: each time a cell divides, its telomeres shorten until they can no longer perform their protective function and the cell, which now becomes damaged, stops dividing. Throughout life, cells are constantly dividing to regenerate tissues, and when they stop doing so because the telomeres are too short, the body ages.

An active ingredient in honeybee venom rapidly kills aggressive and hard-to-treat forms of breast cancer cells.