The field of medicine is constantly changing –
and at an ever-accelerating rate. To remain up-to-date with
the latest information, we highly recommend that you subscribe to our
free daily or weekly e-newsletter at KurzweilAI.net.
Co author Terry Grossman, M.D. publishes a free e-newsletter that contains updates of the latest developments in longevity medicine and well as topics of general medical interest. You can subscribe at www.fmiclinic.com
By analyzing just 150 spots on the genome, Boston University researchers can predict who will live to extreme old age with almost 80 percent accuracy.
Preliminary analysis showed that centenarians had just as many genetic variants linked to diseases as did people in the control group, which suggests that what makes people live long lives is not lack of genetic disposition to disease but longevity-promoting genes.
Most centenarians possess a subset of 150 variants, they found, and their genetic profiles cluster into 19 different genetic signatures. The longest survivors, who live a median age of 108, have the highest number of longevity variants.
Scientists at Tel Aviv University in collaboration with researchers at Harvard University have succeeded in tracking the progression of cell reprogramming (the process of coaxing adult cells to revert to an embryonic stem cell-like state, allowing scientists to later re-differentiate these cells into specific types with the potential to treat medical disorders).
They used flourescent markers to develop their live imaging approach. During the reprogramming process, the team was able to visually track whole lineages of a cell population from their single-cell point of origin.
Uniquely labeled inducible fibroblast populations during a reprogramming process (AFTAU)
Cell lineage proved to be crucial for predicting how the cells would behave and whether or not they could be reprogrammed successfully, says Dr. Iftach Nachman of TAU's Department of Biochemistry. "By combining quantitative analysis of the data, we were able to see that these 'decisions' are made very early on. We analyzed the cells over time, and we were able to detect subtle changes that occur as early as the first or second day in a long, two-week process."
While embryonic stem cells culled from live embryos can be manipulated to become new "replacement" tissues such as nerve or heart cells, these reprogrammed stem cells from adults represent a safer and ethically more responsible approach, some scientists believe.
The next step for Dr. Nachman and his team is research into specific cell-type characteristics before adult cells even enter the reprogramming process. They will try to discover the molecular markers that differentiate between cells that successfully reprogram and those that do not. Several projects in their lab are now attempting to track different cell types and how they change under live imaging.
Kansas State University researchers are exploring the use of iron-iron oxide nanoparticle-induced hyperthermia to overheat or bore holes through cancerous tissue to kill it.
An organic coating attracts the cancer cells to the nanoparticles. An external alternating magnetic field then causes the particles to produce friction heat, which is transferred to the cancer cells' surrounding proteins, lipids and water, creating little hotspots. With enough hotspots the tumor cells are heated to death, preserving the healthy tissue.
If the hotspots are not concentrated, the heat destroys the cell's proteins or lipid structures, dissolving the cell membrane. This creates a hole in the tumor and essentially stresses it to death.
Dye enclosed in each nanoparticle's encapsulating sphere is then severed by enzymes and used to mark cancerous masses within the body.
National Institute of Standards and Technology scientists have moved a step closer to developing a rapid diagnostic blood test that can scan for thousands of disease markers and other chemical indicators of health.
The team reports it has learned how to decode the electrical signals generated by a nanopore -- a "gate" less than 2 nanometers wide in an artificial cell membrane.
Yale University researchers have built a functioning lung by growing cells on the skeleton of a donor lung.
The engineered organ was transplanted in a live rat, where it exchanged carbon dioxide with oxygen in the blood--just as a normal lung would--for two hours. The study is the first proof that old lung scaffolds can be used as a scaffold on which new lung tissue can grow.
A rat lung, grown from the scaffold of an old lung seeded with healthy cells, is mechanically ventilated in a bioreactor. (Thomas Petersen and Laura Niklason, Yale University)
University of Texas Medical Branch researchers have seeded mouse embryonic stem cells in rats into acellular* rat lungs to create lung-shaped scaffolds of structural proteins on which the mouse stem cells thrived and differentiated into new cells.
The results give the researchers hope that the concept could be scaled up to produce replacement tissues for humans — or used to create models to test therapies and diagnostic techniques for a variety of lung diseases.
The researchers have already begun work on large-scale experiments, "decellularizing" pig lungs with an eye toward using them to produce larger samples of lung tissue that could lead to applications in humans.
They're also taking on the challenge of vascularization — stimulating the growth of blood vessels that will enable the engineered tissues to survive outside the special bioreactors that the researchers now use to keep them alive
* Organs whose original cells had been destroyed by repeated cycles of freezing and thawing and exposure to detergent.
A device that mimics a living, breathing human lung on a microchip has been developed by researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston.
The device, about the size of a rubber eraser, acts much like a lung in a human body and is made using human lung and blood vessel cells.
The lung on a chip, shown here, was crafted by combining microfabrication techniques from the computer industry with modern tissue engineering techniques, human cells and a plain old vacuum pump. (Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering)
The lung-on-a-chip microdevice takes a new approach to tissue engineering by placing two layers of living tissues—the lining of the lung's air sacs and the blood vessels that surround them—across a porous, flexible boundary. Air is delivered to the lung lining cells, a rich culture medium flows in the capillary channel to mimic blood and cyclic mechanical stretching mimics breathing. The device was created using a novel microfabrication strategy that uses clear rubbery materials.
Because the lung device is translucent, it provides a window into the inner-workings of the human lung without having to invade a living body. It has the potential to be a valuable tool for testing the effects of environmental toxins, absorption of aerosolized therapeutics and the safety and efficacy of new drugs. Such a tool may help accelerate pharmaceutical development by reducing the reliance on current models, in which testing a single substance can cost more than $2 million.
Using a consumer digital camera with a small bundle of fiber-optic cables attached, Rice University biomedical engineers and researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have created an inexpensive device that is powerful enough to let doctors easily distinguish cancerous cells from healthy cells simply by viewing the LCD monitor on the back of the camera.
When imaging tissues, Richards-Kortum's team applied a common fluorescent dye that caused cell nuclei in the samples to glow brightly when lighted with the tip of the fiber-optic bundle. Three tissue types were tested: cancer cell cultures that were grown in a lab, tissue samples from newly resected tumors, and healthy tissue viewed in the mouths of patients.
"Consumer-grade cameras can serve as powerful platforms for diagnostic imaging," said Rice's Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the study's lead author. "Based on portability, performance and cost, you could make a case for using them both to lower health care costs in developed countries and to provide services that simply aren't available in resource-poor countries."
Richards-Kortum said software could be written that would allow medical professionals who are not pathologists to use the device to distinguish healthy from nonhealthy cells. The device could then be used for routine cancer screening and to help oncologists track how well patients were responding to treatment.
Yale University engineers have for the first time created 3D models of whole intact mouse organs.
Combining an imaging technique called multiphoton microscopy (using light to excite naturally fluorescent cells within the tissue) with "optical clearing" (using a solution that renders tissue transparent), the researchers were able to scan mouse organs and create high-resolution images of the brain, small intestine, large intestine, kidney, lung and testicles.
» Play video Collagen fibers (in green) outline the bronchiole pathways against a background of elastin tissue (in red) in this high-resolution image of a mouse lung. (Michael Leven/Yale)
They then created 3D models of the complete organs—a feat that, until now, was only possible by slicing the organs into thin sections for staining, destroying them in the process.
The new technique could be used to create 3D models of biopsies, said Michael Levene, associate professor at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science and the team leader. This could be especially useful in tissues where the direction of a cancerous growth may make it difficult to know how to slice tissue sample, he noted.
In addition, the technology could eventually be used to trace fluorescent proteins in the mouse brain and see where different genes are expressed, or to trace where drugs travel in the body using fluorescent tagging, for example.
Harvard researchers have created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand.
The nanodevice structure is based on the principle of tensegrity: its strength and stability results from the way it distributes and balances the counteracting forces of tension and compression.
This new technology could lead to nanoscale medical devices and drug delivery systems, such as virus mimics that introduce drugs directly into diseased cells.
Or it could one day be used to reprogram human stem cells to regenerate different kinds of injured organs and tissue.
A diagrammatic image of a tensegrity built with DNA struts (shown as colored ladders folded into rods) and DNA cable strands (shown as colored single lines). Light gray arrows show contractile forces exerted by the cable strands, while dark gray arrows show compressive forces along the struts. (Tim Liedl)
An electron micrograph of an actual nanoscale tensegrity built using the new DNA-based, self-assembling nanofabrication capabilities. (Tim Liedl)
Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey expects many people alive today to live to 1000 years of age and to avoid age-related health problems even at that age. In this excerpt from his just-published, much-awaited book, Ending Aging, he explains how.
In a recent paper reporting on the National Cancer Institute study of multivitamin use and the risk of prostate cancer, the NCI authors cited several possible bias factors. An analysis by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman shows why the study’s biases should be considered before drawing conclusions.
The human brain faces a challenging future. To cope with accelerating nanotech- and biotech-based developments in an increasingly complex world, compete with emerging superintelligence, and maintain its performance and sustainability as people live longer, the fragile human brain will need major enhancements: a backup system, eliminating degenerative processes, direct mind-linkup to ubiquitous computing networks, error-correction for memory, and a global Net connection with remote neural access.
Radical nanotech-based human enhancements such as bionic implants and "respirocyte" artificial red blood cells will become technologically viable in the near future, raising profound ethical issues and forcing us to rethink what it means to be human. Recent pro-enhancement arguments will need to be critically examined and strengthened if they are to be convincing.
Scientists are now talking about people staying young and not aging. Ray Kurzweil is taking it a step further: "In addition to radical life extension, we’ll also have radical life expansion. The nanobots will be able to go inside the brain and extend our mental functioning by interacting with our biological neurons."
The ability to build complex diamondoid medical nanorobots to molecular precision, and then to build them cheaply enough in sufficiently large numbers to be useful therapeutically, will revolutionize the practice of medicine and surgery.
A cure for aging may be found in the next fifty years. The trick now is to live long enough to be there when it happens. In his two new books, Ray Kurzweil has painted a clear picture of the future and provided a blueprint for how to get there.
There are very few diseases or conditions--including infectious diseases--aside from physical brain damage, that cannot be cured using nanomedicine, says nanomedicine pioneer Robert A. Freitas Jr. He believes nanomedicine's greatest power will emerge in a decade or two as we learn to design and construct complete artificial nanorobots using diamondoid nanometer-scale parts and subsystems.
"What is your dangerous idea?" Over one hundred big thinkers answered this question, as part of The Edge's Annual Question for 2006. Ray Kurzweil's dangerous idea? We can achieve immortality in our lifetime.
Technology based on intentional, open-source biology is on its way, whether we like it or not. Distributed biological manufacturing is the future of the global economy and will occur as inexpensive, quality DNA sequencing and synthesis equipment becomes available to anyone. In 2050, garage biology hacking will be well under way. Fear of potential hazards should be met with increased research and education, rather than closing the door on the profound positive impacts that distributed biological technology will have on human health, human impacts on the environment, and increasing standards of living around the world.
(NIST)
