Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: neuroscience

Circulation and cellular activity were restored in a pig’s brain four hours after its death, a finding that challenges long-held assumptions about the timing and irreversible nature of the cessation of some brain functions after death, Yale scientists report April 18 in the journal Nature.

The of a postmortem pig obtained from a meatpacking plant was isolated and circulated with a specially designed chemical solution. Many basic cellular functions, once thought to cease seconds or minutes after oxygen and blood flow cease, were observed, the scientists report.

“The intact brain of a large mammal retains a previously underappreciated capacity for restoration of circulation and certain molecular and cellular activities multiple hours after circulatory arrest,” said senior author Nenad Sestan, professor of neuroscience, comparative medicine, genetics, and psychiatry.

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The first thing our doctor noticed the day after his patient received the ACIST stem cells was her saying hello to him in a heartwarming fashion — completely different from the day before treatment when she was quiet and withdrawn. Post-op day one was a new beginning for this beloved mother and her daughter, fighting moms Alzheimers disease together.

When I brought the car to start driving her home, my mother got in and instead of being confused and trying to put the safety belt into the door as was typical, she put it in the buckle! excitedly explained her daughter during a call while driving home that same day.

Her mother had enrolled in MD Stem Cells new Alzheimers Autism Cognitive Impairment Stem Cell Treatment Study or ACISThis is the first open-label, non-randomized study designed for patients with dementias, including Alzheimers, treating them with their own bone marrow stem cells called BMSC. All enrolled patients receive active BMSC treatment- there is no placebo arm — making it different from most drug studies.


Up to 50% of women skip potentially life-saving mammograms often because the procedure can cause extreme discomfort and pain. Now researchers have developed a painless, light-based, non-radioactive, 15-second procedure that could revolutionize breast cancer screening and save lives.

Although early detection of breast cancer can significantly increase survival, the radioactive X-ray that requires painful squeezing of the breast to get a good picture is an event that women do not look forward to. Now Caltech researcher Lihong Wang, Ph.D., Bren Professor of Medical and Electrical Engineering, and his colleagues are using their expertise in imaging tissues with light and sound to address this problem. Their development of a revolutionary breast scanning system known as photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) is reported in the June issue of Nature Communications.2

“The technique developed by Wang and his colleagues combines light and sound to peer noninvasively into tissues without the radioactivity of an X-ray,” explained Behrouz Shabestari, Ph.D., director of the Program in Optical Imaging at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which funded the study. “PACT is also superior to MRI, which is expensive and sometimes requires the injection of contrast agents, commonly gadolinium. Gadolinium cannot be used in individuals with kidney disease and has recently been shown to accumulate in the bones and brain with unknown long-term effects.”

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ETH spin-off Archilyse promises nothing less than the “world’s most comprehensive architecture analysis” on its website. The young entrepreneurs are attracting a lot of interest in the real estate sector.

Is a four-room apartment family-friendly or more suitable for a couple? How can office space be optimally divided so that its users feel comfortable? Archilyse helps to answer these kinds of questions. Based on address information, floor plans and 3D models, the ETH spin-off’s platform delivers various simulations and analyses of a property and makes them available to project developers, architects and real estate companies via an interface.

“A young family, for example, might be interested in the soundproofing between the children’s rooms and the , whether you can see the play area from the living room and whether the children’s rooms are bright enough to not impair the children’s cognitive abilities,” explains Archilyse founder Matthias Standfest.

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US scientists have partially revived pig brains four hours after the animals were slaughtered.

The findings could fuel debate about the barrier between life and death, and provide a new way of researching diseases like Alzheimer’s.

The study showed the death of brain cells could be halted and that some connections in the brain were restored.

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