Search Results for: alzheimer

Fast Tracking For Fun and Profit

January 16, 2020 by Bill McCormick

Last week, on The Big Wakeup Call, Ryan and I discussed a new Alzheimer’s drug that was zooming towards public use. And I mean ZOOOOOOOMING! From a preliminary, and vague, research paper released in November of 2019, to opening trials on humans in February of 2020 kind of zooming. That kind of time line is essentially unheard of in the world of medicines. I’ve written, on several occasions, about the trials and tribulations facing new treatments for Alzheimer’s. The FDA’s own rules would seem to preclude any such speed, but here we are. The company, called Green Valley, is based in Shanghai and reports to the Chinese government. In 2007 they released a “cancer cure” that was so ineffective it led to millions of dollars in lawsuits and complaints.

Quick update:The FDA’s last posting of Fast Tracked drugs and treatments was in September of last year. Updates are supposed to post every January and July. [Read more…] about Fast Tracking For Fun and Profit

Nursing Back to Health

July 10, 2019 by Bill McCormick

The path to medical cures is not a linear one. A couple of years ago scientists appeared to be on the verge of regrowing human limbs. That research has stalled. They haven’t quit trying, they just haven’t had replicable success. A few years ago helping paralytics walk was limited to cumbersome, and expensive, exo-suits. Now clinical trials are ongoing using stem cells and physical therapy. I could go on, but you get the basic idea. What seems promising one day suddenly isn’t, and what seemed like science fiction is suddenly real. But that’s how science works. You learn from failure and repeat success. As one scientist I know likes to say “I’ve never failed at a single thing, but I’ve learned more than anybody should.” She’s part of a team attempting to cure diabetes. The external pancreas, which does allow a person to live without insulin or food issues, works, but it’s not a true cure. What they want is a shot, or series of medicines or treatments, that heal the body, not just work around a part of it. [Read more…] about Nursing Back to Health

The Future is Now

January 3, 2019 by Bill McCormick

I like to dive into the wonderful world of weird science from time to time. Often I find stuff that will be possible in a few years, decades, or eventually. But, sometimes, I find myself gobsmacked by what’s happening now. What’s available now. What could save your life, extend it, or just make it more palatable. The American Certification Agency for Healthcare Professionals took a look at what’s out there now and its efficacy.
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The Holiday Movie Special

December 17, 2018 by Bill McCormick

Back in 2012 I wrote a fun little blog about Holiday films everyone needed to see. Most people will point you to the classics like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, a fun story which reminds children that they’re all useless and will be shunned until they provide a service to their overlords, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which seems like a pedophile’s wet dream today but was actually very sweet when it was first released (and is still a personal fave of mine since I’m not a pervert – well, not that kind of pervert), Frosty the Snowman, a fun story that reminds kids how much fun it can be to hop a freight train with a stranger, and, of course, A Christmas Story, the first holiday special to ever feature bad lingerie and guns. Certainly there are others, from It’s a Wonderful Life to Die Hard there are plenty of movies for the older viewers who need chronic depression and death with their holiday.

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A Timorous New World

February 1, 2018 by Bill McCormick

Badgers can already kill people. Why not make them bigger, stronger, and give them weapons?

I was all set to write a fun post about superheroes, the people who love them, and the hope they engender. Even when their story arcs go off the rails, and bad things happen, they come back to realizing they exist for the common good. But, as fate would have it, I’d tucked away a link from, internationally renowned scientist and author, David Brin. For those of you who don’t know him I’ll summarize his decades of work by saying he’s an optimist. He believes humanity will always end up showing its better self. Nowhere is this more evident than in his UPLIFT series. It is a universe where humans use technology to bring pre-sentient creatures, such as apes and dolphins, into full sentience and make them productive members of society. For the record, I’m a huge fan and my copies of each book in the series are dog eared as hell.
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We’re Getting Better

September 21, 2017 by Bill McCormick

While the Internet keeps puking up stuff that is supposed to make you healthy but will, in reality, get you killed, or, at least, not make you any better, there have been some stunning advances in the real world. Granted, they use that magic science stuff and not something cool someone once said their Aunt Sadie swore might work. If you believed and sent $100 to someone somewhere. These remedies, and I use that term incorrectly here, are only slightly less effective than praying for rainbows or sending good vibes via Twitter. Steve Jobs chased a holistic rainbow and died because of it.

Alice G. Walton, over at Forbes, sums it up.

According to Steve Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson, the Apple mastermind eventually came to regret the decision he had made years earlier to reject potentially life-saving surgery in favor of alternative treatments like acupuncture, dietary supplements and juices. Though he ultimately embraced the surgery and sought out cutting-edge experimental methods, they were not enough to save him.

Jobs’ cancer had been discovered by chance during a CT scan in 2003 to look for kidney stones, during which doctors saw a “shadow” on his pancreas. Isaacson told CBS’ 60 Minutes last night that while the news was not good, the upside was that the form of pancreatic cancer from which Jobs suffered (a neuroendocrine islet tumor) was one of the 5% or so that are slow growing and most likely to be cured.

Kids, those doctor people aren’t perfect, no human is, but when faced with something like this you should get a second diagnosis, not skip to Mexico and drink magic juices. Just FYI, the cure rate for what he had, in the stage it was caught, runs around 95%. In other words, had he lived the world would probably have been spared a $1,000 i-Phone that finally is capable of mimicking an Android.

I have previously written about how science is closer to an actual cure for Alzheimer’s, worked out a method so the paralyzed can walk, and heal wounds with an easy to apply polymer that requires no special treatment. You can read about all of those by clicking the link.

And now, since you’ve been kind enough to read this far, I’m going to share some new cures that are headed to a doctor near you.

Let’s start with cancer. Lydia Ramsey, on loan to Science Alert from Business Insider, says that science has discovered a way for patients to, literally, heal themselves with a little help from a medical professional.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just approved a cutting-edge cancer therapy.

On Wednesday, the FDA approved Novartis’s Kymriah, also known as tisagenlecleucel, a treatment for pediatric acute lymphoblastic lymphoblastic leukemia.

“I think this is most exciting thing I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Dr. Tim Cripe, an oncologist who was part of the FDA advisory committee panel that voted in favour of approving the drug in July.

The highly personalised treatment is called CAR T-cell therapy. It’s a type of cancer immunotherapy — or a therapy that harnesses the body’s immune system to take on cancer cells.

“We’re entering a new frontier in medical innovation with the ability to reprogram a patient’s own cells to attack a deadly cancer,” FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.

“New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold out the potential to transform medicine and create an inflection point in our ability to treat and even cure many intractable illnesses. At the FDA, we’re committed to helping expedite the development and review of groundbreaking treatments that have the potential to be life-saving.”

Short for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, CAR-T treatment takes a person’s own cells, removes them from the body, re-engineers them, and then puts the cells back in the body where they can attack cancer cells.

Novartis’ therapy is one of two cutting-edge treatments for blood cancers are poised to get approved by the end of the year.

The FDA is also expected to make a decision about another CAR-T treatment from Kite Pharma, which just got acquired by Gilead Sciences. That’s for Kite’s CAR-T treatment for aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (more general than DLBCL).

In data Kite released in February, the company found that out of the 101 patients, 36 percent had a complete response to the treatment after six months.

It’s a type of cancer that Novartis wants to get approval for in the future.

In June, Novartis released data from its Phase 2 trial of CTL019 in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL for short), an aggressive form of lymphoma that’s one of the two types Kite’s data looks at. The trial found that of the 51 patients with DLBCL, 23 had either a complete response (meaning cancer had disappeared completely) or a partial response (meaning their tumour displayed signs that it was shrinking).

Back in June of 2015 I wrote about how scientists were using stem cells to speed the healing of damaged bone tissue. For example, the kind of damage people suffer when they go through chemo, have muscular dystrophy, have been in a severe accident, and so on. That treatment, which works and is getting more advanced, basically grinds up the bones of random dead people, extracts the varied stem cells, and slams the resulting genetic slurree into a patient via a needle.

Scientists have long known that stem cells are key to human life and healing. Now they are figuring out how to make that knowledge work for you. And those you love.

Right now the treatments listed above for cancer cure run about $300,000 a pop. Everyone is well aware that’s not feasible for the average patient. But, if it can be mass produced, the treatment – not your stem cells, that will bring down the price. They are also looking to the government for subsidies. I’ll keep you posted on that.

One side note, while this is prohibitively expensive, the costs for current drugs can run around $10,000 a month, and some therapies can run upwards of $30,000 per month, not including the additional expenses for the care of the patient. Wiser minds than mine might see the new treatment as cost effective when everything is factored in.

Another thing stem cell treatment has been lauded for is its ability to repair permanently damaged cells. Well, in theory at least. Now, its a fact.

I’ll let Meg Aldrich, over at USC News, tell the story since she does a better job at it than I could.

On March 6, just shy of his 21st birthday, Kristopher (Kris) Boesen of Bakersfield suffered a traumatic injury to his cervical spine when his car fishtailed on a wet road, hit a tree and slammed into a telephone pole.

His parents were warned there was a good chance their son would be permanently paralyzed from the neck down. However, they also learned that he could possibly qualify for a clinical study that might help.

Enter Keck Medical Center of USC, which announced that a team of doctors became the first in California to inject its patient with an experimental treatment made from stem cells as part of a multi-center clinical trial.

Charles Liu, director of the USC Neurorestoration Center, led the surgical team, working in collaboration with the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center and Keck Medicine of USC, that injected an experimental dose of 10 million AST-OPC1 cells directly into Boesen’s cervical spinal cord in early April.

“Typically, spinal cord injury patients undergo surgery that stabilizes the spine but generally does very little to restore motor or sensory function,” Liu explained. “With this study, we are testing a procedure that may improve neurological function, which could mean the difference between being permanently paralyzed and being able to use one’s arms and hands. Restoring that level of function could significantly improve the daily lives of patients with severe spinal injuries.”

Two weeks after surgery, Boesen began to show signs of improvement. Three months later, he’s able to feed himself, use his cellphone, write his name, operate a motorized wheelchair and hug his friends and family. Improved sensation and movement in both arms and hands also makes it easier for him to care for himself, and to envision a life lived more independently.

“As of 90 days post-treatment, Kris has gained significant improvement in his motor function, up to two spinal cord levels,” Liu said. “In Kris’ case, two spinal cord levels mean the difference between using your hands to brush your teeth, operate a computer or do other things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, so having this level of functional independence cannot be overstated.”

Doctors are careful not to predict Boesen’s future progress.

“All I’ve wanted from the beginning was a fighting chance,” said Boesen, who has a passion for repairing and driving sports cars and was studying to become a life insurance broker at the time of the accident. “But if there’s a chance for me to walk again, then heck yeah! I want to do anything possible to do that.”

There is a lot more to that article and I hope you’ll take the time to click the link and read it all. In the meantime, if you, or someone you know, is interested in partaking in the treatment, here is the info:

To qualify for the clinical trial, enrollees must be between the age of 18 and 69, and their condition must be stable enough to receive an injection of AST-OPC1 between the 14th and 30th days following injury.

Keck Medical Center is one of six sites in the United States that is authorized to enroll subjects and administer the clinical trial dosage.

Just click the Keck Medical Center link to get in touch with them. They will help you find the treatment center closest to you.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Bust Out the Popcorn

January 20, 2017 by Bill McCormick

No longer is the cinema a place to go chill with your buds for a couple of hours, yell at the blind bikini model not to open the basement door, and then go have a couple of beers. It has become a destination, an event. Each movie bigger, louder, more brash than its predecessors. Plots get short changed, actors become extras, and life muddles on. But then TV jumped in. All of the stuff on Netflix & HBO showed that people cared about using a brain cell or two as well as enjoying action. So movies are tilting back. while having mixed results with critics, films such as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice have found legions of fans due to its dark themes and its ability to avoid the common tropes. This movie, and its predecessor, Man of Steel, showed some real world ramifications of the existence of superheroes. People die. Captain America: Civil War built its entire plot around that premise. While nowhere near as dark as its DC counterparts it still got people talking. Quick side conversation after any Marvel movie; why do they have churches when gods, literally, walk among the populace? Yeah, bring that one up at Sunday school. It’ll be fun.

So what do you have to look to for your intellectual, and prurient, gratification? Quite a bit actually.

Let’s take them in order.

LOGAN – March 3, 2017

Set in the future of 2024, Logan and Professor Charles Xavier must cope with the loss of the X-Men when a corporation lead by Nathaniel Essex is destroying the world leaving it to destruction, with Logan’s healing abilities slowly fading away and Xavier’s Alzheimer’s forcing him to forget. Logan must defeat Nathaniel Essex with the help of a young girl named Laura Kinney, a female clone of Wolverine.

That’s the official take. What this really is is a cinematic take on OLD MAN LOGAN, a highly respected, some say revered, comic book that featured Wolverine from the X-Men as an old man losing his powers. This in a world where mutants are all pretty much dead and gone thanks to government entities, and scared humans, hunting them down. This is about as dark as Marvel is going to get. As it stands this has an R rating, mostly for violence, profanity, and more violence. This will not be a film for the kiddies. It is, however, a fitting farewell to an iconic character and the actor who brought him to life for over a decade.

KONG: SKULL ISLAND – March 10, 2017

Kong: Skull Island reimagines the origin of the mythic Kong in a compelling, original adventure from director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. In the film, a diverse team of explorers is brought together to venture deep into an uncharted island in the Pacific — as beautiful as it is treacherous — unaware that they’re crossing into the domain of the mythic Kong.

This is a move that no one asked for but many may be happy to discover. Word from those in the know is that it’s smarter, funnier, and darker than people may expect. Also, to a one, I’m told Kong is exactly what you want Kong to be. So that will be a nice change of pace.

POWER RANGERS – March 24, 2017

SABAN’S POWER RANGERS follows five ordinary teens who must become something extraordinary when they learn that their small town of Angel Grove — and the world — is on the verge of being obliterated by an alien threat. Chosen by destiny, our heroes quickly discover they are the only ones who can save the planet. But to do so, they will have to overcome their real-life issues and before it’s too late, band together as the Power Rangers.

Okay, good news for adults, there is enough plot, and side jokes that kids will miss, that you should enjoy this. Better news is that there’s plenty of action and emo angst to justify aiming this at teens. That said, you can take the kids who are Power Ranger fans and they should enjoy it too. It humanizes the kids from Angel Grove while still keeping one foot in the wacky world that allows all this to work.

GHOST IN THE SHELL – March 31, 2017

A cyborg policewoman attempts to bring down a nefarious computer hacker.

Yep. That’s it. That’s the entire plot released by the studio. This being slightly less than the what the original 1995 cartoon presented with it being a take on “what is the essence of a soul?”, “what defines a human anyway?”, “what is better for humanity?”, and, of course, “what is the nature of sexuality?” The original movie left people talking for years. Many are still squabbling over meanings and nuance. Something tells me this version will not have the same effect on movie goers.

One thing we do know about it is that the nude scenes have been replaced with innuendo or silly unitards. That may be enough for rural American audiences but I’m not sure about anyone else. As a friend of mine opined, “It’s like the Lego version of Citizen Kane.”

Well, let’s not set the bar too high.

Oh, did I mention that many people are completely freaked out by the fact that a story about Japanese culture and how it deals with the future features Scarlett Johansson as the Japanese lead. Yeah, so there’s that. On the plus side, it looks pretty.

Next up, Jim Carrey as Malcolm X.

Please God let me be joking.

Anyway, that gets you through March. If you have any money left after that I’ll catch you up on some more.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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And Thou Shalt be Healed

January 6, 2017 by Bill McCormick

While one half of our world spins wildly down the rabbit hole of ignorance, disavowing anything they can’t understand, the other half seems hell bent on saving their sorry asses anyway. It’s an interesting dichotomy. While I could waste all the remaining internet writing about the former I thought I’d save some space, and what’s left of my sanity, by writing about the latter. The reasons for this decision are multitudinal but they come down to one basic concept; unlike anything offered by those who wish to live in the dark, these scientists I’ll be writing about actually offer something useful to humanity. And there are some philosophical issues we’re going to need to touch on at the end so consider yourself warned. Moreover some of this is going to seem like the rawest science fiction, the kind of stuff that makes it to a napkin at 3:00 AM in a bar but goes no further. I assure you this is not the case. Everything you’re about to read is real and headed to a medical professional near you.

One problem that has been coming into sharper focus, ironically, lately is the study of Alzheimer’s. I say ironically since the opposite is true for its sufferers. Once diagnosed their lives are forfeit. While there are treatments to alleviate the pain, and methods to help families cope, there is no cure. I’ve written before about several promising treatments that were being experimented with, but none had enough of a success rate to be called a cure. Each showed value, and promise, but that was all. Charmaine Caparas, over at the Futurist, tells us about a group of scientists who decided to test all the possible cures at one time on each patient.

And, guess what? That nutty idea worked.

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles found a new treatment that could potentially reverse memory loss and cognitive impairment among patients with early Alzheimer’s disease.

In a small clinical trial, 10 individuals underwent a treatment called “metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration,” or MEND. The treatment is based on 36 different factors, including changes in diet, exercise, and sleeping habits. It also includes the integration of certain drugs, vitamins, and brain stimulation therapy to a patient’s regular routine.

The 10 patients in the trial were subjected to these specific lifestyle changes and treatments over the course of five to 24 months.

Remarkably, results showed that the brain improvements were sustained, and some patients’ conditions improved so much they could return to work and even regain their ability to speak different languages. In some of the patients undergoing the treatment, an increase in brain matter volume was observed after just a few months.

One patient even went so far as to take, and pass, his driver’s license test and become a fully functional member of society. They are currently redoing the study with sixty subjects and working with other scientists to ensure transparency in their results. The basic idea is simplicity itself, they tailor the treatment to each patient based on questions asked of the patient and their caregivers. Some might need more of treatment A while others might need treatment L. Whatever they need, that’s what they get.

Another thing that has long stymied researchers is getting a body to heal more effectively. While especially true in Alzheimer’s patients, who can easily injure themselves unintentionally, it applies to anyone who’s ever been in an accident. Even more so for those injured in remote places, like space. Sarah Scoles, over at WIRED, writes like I do (she’s a naughty girl) and says there may be a way to heal wounds from the most unlikely source.

Airplane wings.

WHAT GENERATES VOLTAGE when you warm it up, push on it, or blow on it?

Get your mind out of the gutter. The correct answer is polyvinylidene fluoride, a material NASA researchers have refined for use in morphing aircraft that shapeshift in response to their environment. But wait! There’s more: It can also kickstart the human body’s healing process.

Because of its potential to heal the world and make it a better place, the polymer’s inventors, Mia Siochi and Lisa Scott Carnell, have now turned it over to the public through NASA’s Technology Transfer Program. Through that process, companies license NASA technology for cheap and turn it into products to sell to non-astronauts. But transforming space stuff into Earth stuff isn’t always smooth. Turned-over technology can get lost inside the catalog, stall out in the bowels of a company, or become part of a product the original inventors wouldn’t approve of.

Polyvinylidene fluoride certainly has the potential to do what its inventors hope it will: heal humans. It’s a so-called electroactive substance that gins up an electric field when stimulated. The researchers developed a process to align and weave its fibers—which in previous productions were strewn randomly—into a kind of high-tech gauze.

Although that work began with aerospace in mind, Siochi and Carnell quickly saw its medical applications, including how it could help wounded astronauts—a medical gap NASA has noted in its technology roadmap. They knew the body’s natural electrical properties already help it heal: Damaged skin layers generate a voltage across themselves (TIL, anyway), which creates an electric field that healing cells called keratinocytes move toward, like geese that align their flight with Earth’s poles.

And they saw that when they warmed the polymer to body temperature, its electric field activated. Adult stem cells responded to that electric field. What if, Carnell thought, they put the gauze directly on a person’s body and let their natural warmth activate its electricity?

Doctors have long voltaged the body to jolt cell migration and coax healing along. But normally, a patient has to go into the hospital and plug in to a device. Siochi and Carnell’s gauze could do the same duty as an unassuming, apply-at-home first-aid pad, pressed like the cushion of a Band-Aid to the skin.

NASA liked the idea, and how it could help astronauts and the rest of us. And that’s when the Technology Transfer office took notice. Let’s take this to the commercial space, they said.

NASA’s program allowing patents to be used by the public has been around for a long time and has helped fund the agency and make your world a better place. Everything from ballpoint pens to Tang to LEDs have come from there. In fact everything from Super Soakers to insulin pumps have come from NASA. The odds are staggeringly in favor of you having, at least, one item in your home that comes from this research.

Okay, so now your brain works ad your skin is healed. Good for you. What if your legs don’t work? What if you’re crippled and can’t truly enjoy your newfound health? Lora Kolodny, over at Tech Crunch, says not to worry, science has that sussed too.

The Boston-based company that was first to provide robotic legs to paralyzed veterans in the U.S., Rewalk Robotics Ltd., has a new product in development that you won’t see this week at CES. The device is a “soft exoskeleton,” designed to help people who have lower limb disability but who have not severed their spinal cord or otherwise become paraplegic.

According to Rewalk CEO Larry Jasinski, “Many people who have had a stroke can stand up but cannot lift their feet well or cannot put their legs down or propel the leg on their own to walk. If you could help them move their legs, but not have to put a big structure around them, it would be a very attractive option.”

The new product will help Rewalk broaden its market, addressing patients recovering from a stroke, or dealing with everything from the effects of old age to diseases that impair their mobility like MS and Parkinson’s disease. The soft exoskeleton could be utilized by these patients, either long-term or as part of a rehab process.

Today, Rewalk’s soft exoskeleton prototype looks more like something a rock climber might wear than Transformer parts. Its main elements are: a belt and fanny pack with motors and a computer within, cables that extend down the legs, knee braces to keep them in place and sensor-laden footplates that can fit into a sneaker or other soft shoe.

The waist belt weighs about eight pounds and the cables, braces and footplates add about two more pounds to the total weight, at this point. Rewalk acquired the initial technology design from the Wyss Institute at Harvard, which had begun developing a “biologically inspired smart suit,” the Medexo, with funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) back in 2014. DARPA has long had an interest in technology that can be applied to help soldiers or medics walk farther, or for longer, and carry more weight in the field.

Jasinski tells TechCrunch that one reason for the tech transfer deal was that Harvard researchers had a great design, but needed to marry it with expertise around motors, gears and software to make it work in the real world. Rewalk had done all that with its earlier systems, and had also figured out how to work with the FDA and the VA to get its devices approved for veteran benefits reimbursements.

Here’s how the new technology helps a patient to walk on their own, Jasinski explained: “Think about a bicycle. You have cables that transfer force down a line to close a brake down on the bike’s tires. This uses the same principal but is obviously more complex. One cable runs along the outside part on the front of your leg and another on the back. The motor and gear are on your waist attached to the cables. A lightweight brace worn on your calf keeps the cables in place. The computer and our software will tell the motor to turn just enough to lift the cable, pull it and get you ground clearance, then propel your foot forward. Sensors in a footplate in your shoe send data to the computer to let it know everything about your position and when you are walking.”

Here’s the cool part. The exoskeleton is as thin as a wet suit and can be worn under your clothes. Also, as noted above, while the basic tech is old, this reworking of it is revolutionary. No more canes, no more walkers, no more assistants, just you, your legs, and whoever you feel like jogging with. And, yes, you can jog with this thing. All they need to do now is figure out how to mass produce it at a price point everyone can live with. For insurance companies this thing is a wet dream come true. A one time payment versus decades of therapy. don’t think for a second there aren’t a lot of people cheering this on who you might not of thought of as having your best interests at heart.

All right, let’s take all this tech to its logical conclusion. The nice folks over at Futurism have put together a video presentation about something that seems like it escaped from a bad sci-fi movie.

Becoming Cyborg: Scientists Figured Out How to Put Electronics Inside Our Bodies

Electronics and fluids don’t mix—this is largely the reason why, despite advances in the field, we have yet to really tap into the possibilities of using technology to heal and even improve our bodies. Now, a team of MIT researchers seem to have found a way to make sure that our immune system doesn’t reject foreign objects—using hydrogel. Watch this video to see how this new material create a bridge between technology and biology.

Tired of getting lost? Have a GPS implanted. Need access to research at a moment’s notice? Just plug yourself into some wi-fi. Okay, those are slightly whimsical, and all doable now, but the tech will also work with prosthetic eyes, pacemakers, and many other things which can make your life better and help you live a longer, and more active life.

Which brings us to philosophy.

Most scientists believe humans can easily attain a life span of around one hundred and twenty years. The primary barriers which currently prevent that are being removed every day. The question becomes, what do we do with everyone? Do we keep forcing them to retire at sixty-five? Seriously. What will we do with these people. These are not going to be old people living in nursing homes blowing out candles on local TV when they hit a hundred years old. They will be active, alert, and willing to contribute. And they will be demanding a viable role in the world they, and you, live in.

I’ll leave that to another blog.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Thyself Be Healed

April 1, 2016 by

We live in interesting times, to quote an ancient Chinese curse. We have access to most of the world’s contemporary knowledge yet we spend our time sharing pictures of cats and food. When I say “we” I’m talking about you and me, not the people I’m writing about today. You see, though it may sometimes seem as though everything’s going to hell in a hand basket, that’s not really true. While we get battered with constant news of idiots and bigotry, there are many who are thinking way outside the box to make our world a better place. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. The two articles we’re going to share today feature people who never even heard of the damn box in the first place. So, today, instead of focusing on those who wish to drag us back to those wacky Middle Ages, I thought it might be fun to talk about those who can heal the unhealable.

Let’s start with a given. Ever since Dr. Edward Jenner discovered a cure for smallpox by ogling milk maids scientists have known that human bodies could be taught to prevent disease. The simple explanation is that they inject a small amount into a person, that person fights it off, and then, should they become exposed to a more damaging dose of the disease, they don’t catch it. That’s how vaccines work.

John Palferman, over at Nova Next, says a couple of scientists took this concept to a whole new level and may have found the cure for Alzheimer’s.

In 2004, the British chemist Chris Dobson speculated that there might be a universal elixir out there that could combat not just alpha-synuclein for Parkinson’s but the amyloids caused by many protein-misfolding diseases at once. Remarkably, in that same year an Israeli scientist named Beka Solomon discovered an unlikely candidate for this elixir, a naturally occurring microorganism called a phage.

Solomon, a professor at Tel Aviv University, made a serendipitous discovery one day when she was testing a new class of agents against Alzheimer’s disease. If it pans out, it might mark the beginning of the end of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and many other neurodegenerative diseases. It’s a remarkable story, and the main character isn’t Solomon or any other scientist but a humble virus that scientists refer to as M13.

Among the many varieties of viruses, there is a kind that only infects bacteria. Known as bacteriophages, or just phages, these microbes are ancient (over three billion years old) and ubiquitous: they’re found everywhere from the ocean floor to human stomachs. The phage M13’s goal is to infect just one type of bacteria, Escherichia coli, or E. coli, which can be found in copious amounts in the intestines of mammals. Like other microorganisms, phages such as M13 have only one purpose: to pass on their genes. In order to do this, they have developed weapons to enable them to invade, take over, and even kill their bacterial hosts. Before the advent of antibiotics, in fact, doctors occasionally used phages to fight otherwise incurable bacterial infections.

To understand Solomon’s interest in M13 requires a little background about her research. Solomon is a leading Alzheimer’s researcher, renowned for pioneering so-called immunotherapy treatments for the disease. Immunotherapy employs specially made antibodies, rather than small molecule drugs, to target the disease’s plaques and tangles. As high school students learn in biology class, antibodies are Y-shaped proteins that are part of the body’s natural defense against infection. These proteins are designed to latch onto invaders and hold them so that they can be destroyed by the immune system. But since the 1970s, molecular biologists have been able to genetically engineer human-made antibodies, fashioned to attack undesirable interlopers like cancer cells. In the 1990s, Solomon set out to prove that such engineered antibodies could be effective in attacking amyloid-beta plaques in Alzheimer’s as well.

In 2004, she was running an experiment on a group of mice that had been genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s disease plaques in their brains. She wanted to see if human-made antibodies delivered through the animals’ nasal passages would penetrate the blood-brain barrier and dissolve the amyloid-beta plaques in their brains. Seeking a way to get more antibodies into the brain, she decided to attach them to M13 phages in the hope that the two acting in concert would better penetrate the blood-brain barrier, dissolve more of the plaques, and improve the symptoms in the mice—as measured by their ability to run mazes and perform similar tasks.

At the time, Solomon had no clear idea how a simple phage could dissolve Alzheimer’s plaques.

Solomon divided the rodents into three groups. She gave the antibody to one group. The second group got the phage-antibody combination, which she hoped would have an enhanced effect in dissolving the plaques. And as a scientific control, the third group received the plain phage M13.

Because M13 cannot infect any organism except E. coli, she expected that the control group of mice would get absolutely no benefit from the phage. But, surprisingly, the phage by itself proved highly effective at dissolving amyloid-beta plaques and in laboratory tests improved the cognition and sense of smell of the mice. She repeated the experiment again and again, and the same thing happened. “The mice showed very nice recovery of their cognitive function,” Solomon says. And when Solomon and her team examined the brains of the mice, the plaques had been largely dissolved. She ran the experiment for a year and found that the phage-treated mice had 80% fewer plaques than untreated ones. Solomon had no clear idea how a simple phage could dissolve Alzheimer’s plaques, but given even a remote chance that she had stumbled across something important, she decided to patent M13’s therapeutic properties for the University of Tel Aviv. According to her son Jonathan, she even “joked about launching a new company around the phage called NeuroPhage. But she wasn’t really serious about it.”

Joking or not, fast forward to now and they have such a company, have received millions in seed money, and are ramping up for human trials. Scientists have known for a while that it’s the plaque in the brain that causes the the true damage and not the disease itself. In other words, rid the body of the symptoms and let it get on with life, just like treating Malaria with Quinine. It doesn’t cure Malaria, it just makes you healthy. Researchers in Australia have been developing a technique using ultra-sound waves to break up the plaque in the brain and restore functions. As it stands now, a combination of these therapies could provide a cure.

Another thing scientists have long known is that discovering a disease early greatly enhances a person’s chances of surviving it. A lot of progress has been made in that regard, but David Nield, over at Science Alert, says that one group of scientists have taken this to a whole, new, level.

Spotting the spread of diseases such as cancer in their early stages can make a huge difference to the likelihood of being able to beat them into submission, and scientists in Singapore have developed a new biosensor that could provide on-the-spot diagnoses to do just that.

The new sensor picks up on biomarkers known as microRNAs (a class of RNAs or ribonucleic acids) that help translate genetic DNA information into protein. MicroRNAs can act as signposts to various diseases, and because they’re well-preserved in fluids such as urine and blood, they’re an ideal way of quickly testing for signs of trouble in the body.

What the researchers from Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) have done is develop a silicon photonic biosensor that uses beams of light to detect tiny changes in the composition of a urine sample.

It essentially looks at the level of binding between a DNA probe and target microRNA to figure out the level of microRNA in the sample. This can then provide clues to the presence of some types of cancer, cardiac disease, and other serious health issues.

The research team says its lightweight sensor is highly sensitive, works without any other equipment, and can provide results in as little as 15 minutes. It’s not ready for widespread use yet, but if it proves effective enough to be released to the public, that kind of quick assessment can make all the difference.

“Existing methods to detect microRNAs are time consuming and require cumbersome machines, which limit their usefulness in clinical settings,” said one of the team, Mi Kyoung Park. “This inspired us to develop a simple and efficient point-of-care device for detecting microRNAs.”

Park and her colleagues have used the newly developed system to detect two types of microRNAs in urine samples from three patients with late-stage bladder cancer.

When compared with samples from two healthy subjects, the microRNA levels differed significantly. Although only small-scale testing has been carried out so far, the team thinks the device has plenty of potential as a future diagnostic tool. They’ll now need to test it on a much larger sample of people to confirm its accuracy.

“The system can be expanded to detect a number of microRNAs of different species and should be useful for a variety of point-of-care clinical applications,” says Park.

Just imagine this, you go to the doctor, give up a urine sample, read a magazine, and know exactly what is or is not wrong with you. No more days of sitting and fretting. More importantly, the cures available to you, at this early stage, are usually noninvasive and don’t cause you to alter your lifestyle.

Well, you’ll have to quit smoking and so on, but you should do that anyway. Or so I’m told.

Both of these teams will, obviously, get very rich. But, here’s the fun part, the cost to consumer of each product is low. There is no need to jack up the prices so, pretty much, everyone will have access to them.

I just thought you’d like some good news for a change.

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It’s All In The Mind

February 25, 2016 by Bill McCormick

The human mind is an interesting thing. It completely controls what we can learn about it. Think about that, while ignoring the irony of those three words, and try and imagine any other situation like that. While others may try and influence you no one can truly control your thoughts without your permission. Oh, I’ll grant, there are ways to influence someone’s decision making process. To be more accurate, there are seven. If you’re looking to become a cult leader or something, feel free to click that link. But, even then, simply recognizing the techniques nullifies them. If you’re bored, however, just watch any televangelist. They use them all the time. Nevertheless, the one thing we all have, at one level or another, is control of our own dreams and memories.
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