Category: Medicine

Impact Lab > Medicine
Biotech, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine

CRISPR gene editing creates cocaine-proof mice, aims to crack addiction puzzle

Gene editing has already given us malaria-resistant mosquitoes and heat-resistant cows. Now, researchers from the University of Chicago may have topped both of those feats with their latest creation: Cocaine-resistant mice. Using the CRISPR-based gene-editing platform to modify the DNA of skin cells, researchers Xiaoyang Wu and Ming Xu have been able not only to create mice that are less likely to seek out cocaine than their counterparts, but are also immune to cocaine overdoses that killed mice without the same CRISPR-edited cells.

The process builds on previous work involving a modified enzyme called butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE), which is capable of naturally breaking down cocaine very rapidly. Unfortunately, its short half-life makes it ineffective in a clinical scenario, since it disappears before it has any long-term impact on the body’s response to cocaine. BCHE cannot be administered orally, which makes it ill-suited for use as a potential treatment.

Continue reading… “CRISPR gene editing creates cocaine-proof mice, aims to crack addiction puzzle”

AI, Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, Medicine

AI-Human “hive mind ” diagnoses pneumonia

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First, it correctly predicted the top four finishers at the Kentucky Derby. Then, it was better at picking Academy Award winners than professional movie critics—three years in a row. The cherry on top was when it prophesied that the Chicago Cubs would end a 108-year dry spell by winning the 2016 World Series—four months before the Cubs were even in the playoffs. (They did.)

Now, this AI-powered predictive technology is turning its attention to an area where it could do some real good—diagnosing medical conditions.

In a study presented on Monday at the SIIM Conference on Machine Intelligence in Medical Imaging in San Francisco, Stanford University doctors showed that eight radiologists interacting through Unanimous AI’s “swarm intelligence” technology were better at diagnosing pneumonia from chest X-rays than individual doctors or a machine-learning program alone.

Continue reading… “AI-Human “hive mind ” diagnoses pneumonia”

Alzheimer's Disease, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Senolytic therapies seem to stop Alzheimer’s disease ‘in its tracks’

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Scientists at the University of Texas have implicated a type of cellular stress for the first time as a player in Alzheimer’s disease. And their discovery could lead to treatments for more than 20 human brain diseases including Alzheimer’s and traumatic brain injury. One author of the study went as far as to say the treatment that researchers used on mice to rid them of the stressed cells actually stopped Alzheimer’s disease “in its tracks.”

Researchers at the The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, now called UT Health San Antonio® established a link between tau tangles and the stressed or senescent cells they found in Alzheimer’s-diseased tissue. Senescence is the process by which cells irreversibly stop dividing or growing without actually dying. Already proven to be involved in cancer and aging, tau protein accumulation is known to exist in 20 human brain diseases. “Tau protein accumulation is the most common pathology among degenerative brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), traumatic brain injury (TBI) and over twenty others,” the research paper notes.

Continue reading… “Senolytic therapies seem to stop Alzheimer’s disease ‘in its tracks’”

Analysis, Crazy Stuff, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Scientists gave MDMA to octopuses- and what happened was profound

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When humans take the drug MDMA, versions of which are known as molly or ecstasy, they commonly feel very happy, extraverted, and particularly interested in physical touch. A group of scientists recently wondered whether this drug might have a similar effect on other species—specifically, octopuses, which are seemingly as different from humans as an animal can be. The results of their experiment, in which seven octopuses took MDMA, were “unbelievable.”

Continue reading… “Scientists gave MDMA to octopuses- and what happened was profound”

Healthcare, Latest Trend, Medicine

Urgent-care facilities are surging in popularity nationwide

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They are popping up in many neighborhoods, replacing former bank branches or closed supermarkets, and they’re bringing a new script to medical care.

Urgent-care facilities are a hybrid between the local doctor’s practice and the hospital emergency room.

Urgent care is now an $18 billion industry, with some 8,125 centers around the country, making it a small but growing part of the overall $3.4 trillion medical spending in the US in 2017.

The industry has a projected annual growth rate of 6 percent, or about 400 to 500 new facilities a year, according to the trade group Urgent Care Association.

Continue reading… “Urgent-care facilities are surging in popularity nationwide”

Biotech, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine

A potential boom is coming in anti-aging drugs

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As the average age in developed economies rises in the coming years and decades, one of the next big economic disruptions may be in anti-aging medicines, according to a report by Citi.

Why it matters: Already, the anti-aging market is about $200 billion, and the new boom could be in drugs that slow, reverse or prevent age-related disease, Citi says. On the other hand, if people are aging more slowly, and diseases are slowed or prevented, then other drugs, treatments and surgeries, which earn billions of dollars, may not be necessary.

Continue reading… “A potential boom is coming in anti-aging drugs”

Biotech, Breakthrough Thinking, DNA, Medicine, Nanotechnology

Genetically engineered bacteria paint microscopic masterpieces

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Scientists have used genetically engineered bacteria to recreate a masterpiece at a microscopic scale. By engineering E. coli bacteria to respond to light, they’ve guided the bacteria like tiny drones toward patterns that depict Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It’s not artistic recognition they’re after. Rather, the researchers want to show that these engineered organisms may someday be used as “microbricks” and living propellors.

Continue reading… “Genetically engineered bacteria paint microscopic masterpieces”

3D Printer, Analysis, Biotech, cutting edge, Healthcare, Medicine

CDC uses HP bioprinters to speed up testing for new antibiotics

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The pilot will help test effectiveness against superbugs.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is turning to some bleeding edge tech in its bid to stamp out drug-resistant ‘superbug’ bacteria. It’s buying a slew of HP bioprinters (the D300e you see above) as part of a pilot program that could speed up the testing of more effective antibiotics. The machines will give regional labs in New York, Minnesota, Tennessee and Wisconsin their first shot at printing drug samples used for developing and running antimicrobial susceptibility tests. Hospitals won’t have to wait for testing or else risk mistakes like overusing drugs.

The testing will start at CDC’s regional labs in the first quarter of HP’s fiscal 2019 (between November and January). Its initial focus is on widely resistant bacteria. And HP won’t be done once th e bioprinters are in the Center’s hands. HP will help the CDC study the success of the pilot, tweak it if needed, and explore the possibility of wider-scale printer uses if the test proves successful. This may become an instrumental part of fighting superbugs if all goes smoothly.

Via Engadget 

Biotech, DNA, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

The future of medicine may land within five to 10 years, CRISPR inventor says

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A pioneer of the Crispr gene-editing technology that’s taken Wall Street by storm says the field is probably five to 10 years away from having an approved therapy for patients.

Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who runs the Doudna Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, says major questions remain about the safety and effectiveness of experimental therapies that aim to disrupt or repair defective genes. But she’s optimistic about their prospects.

Continue reading… “The future of medicine may land within five to 10 years, CRISPR inventor says”

Analysis, Healthcare, Inventions, Medicine

These mind-blowing images of the human body were made by a new kind of scanner

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Phil and Anthony Butler aren’t just father and son. The physics professor and bioengineering professor (respectively) are also business partners. And this week, their company, MARS Bioimaging, unveiled a first-of-its-kind x-ray scanner 10 years in the making.

First, a quick recap of how x-ray imaging works. When x-rays travel through your body, they’re absorbed by denser materials (bones) and pass right through softer ones (muscles and other tissues). The x-rays that pass through unimpeded hit a film on the opposite side of your body. These show up as areas of solid black. The places where the x-rays couldn’t pass through appear solid white.

Continue reading… “These mind-blowing images of the human body were made by a new kind of scanner”

Biotech, Cancer, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Scientists just found a novel, cheap way to use CRISPR gene editing to fight cancer

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Immunotherapy Holds Big Promise for Beating Cancer

CRISPR is by all accounts a fascinating technology. Its headline feature is that it can literally be used to slice, dice, and otherwise manipulate the body’s genetic code—functions that could carry staggering implications for treating everything from inherited disorders to cancer to HIV/AIDS one day.

Now, new (though extremely early) research suggests that CRISPR could be used to vastly improve upon a new form of cancer-fighting methods that turn the body’s own immune T cells into specially targeted killers that attack cancerous tissue.

Continue reading… “Scientists just found a novel, cheap way to use CRISPR gene editing to fight cancer”

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