April 30, 2024
(Wired) – China’s brain-computer interface technology is catching up to the US. But it envisions a very different use case: cognitive enhancement. At a tech forum in Beijing last week, a Chinese company unveiled a “homegrown” brain-computer interface that allowed … Read More
April 25, 2024
(The Telegraph via MSN) – But while stem cells have long been regarded as one of the great hopes of regenerative medicine, with long-standing applications in leukaemia and ongoing clinical trials in a whole host of diseases from age-related macular … Read More
April 25, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – A month ago, Richard Slayman became the first living person to receive a kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig. Now, a team of researchers from NYU Langone Health reports that Lisa Pisano, a 54-year-old woman from … Read More
April 24, 2024
(Associated Press) – Doctors have transplanted a pig kidney into a New Jersey woman who was near death, part of a dramatic pair of surgeries that also stabilized her failing heart. Lisa Pisano’s combination of heart and kidney failure left … Read More
April 23, 2024
(Washington Post via MSN) – Science, a start-up company in Alameda, Calif., has designed a visual prosthesis called the Science Eye which could restore vision, albeit in a limited form, in people with retinitis pigmentosa. Hodak, its CEO, co-founded the … Read More
April 19, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – Most of the companies working in this space have the same goal: capturing enough information from the brain to decipher the user’s intention. The idea is to aid communication for people who can’t easily move or … Read More
April 16, 2024
(New York Times) – A Chinese company targeted by members of Congress over potential ties to the Chinese government makes blockbuster drugs for the American market that have been hailed as advances in the treatment of cancers, obesity and debilitating … Read More
April 15, 2024
(The Conversation) – A cornerstone of neurorights is the idea that all people have a fundamental right to determine what state their brain is in and who is allowed to access that information, the way that people ordinarily have a … Read More
April 15, 2024
(Wired) – Bussard is one of a small number of blind individuals around the world who have risked brain surgery to get a visual prosthesis. In Spain, researchers at Miguel Hernández University have implanted four people with a similar system. … Read More
April 12, 2024
(NPR) – A surgical team scurries around a pregnant female pig lying unconscious on an operating table. They’re about to take part in an experiment that could help provide a new option to help premature babies survive. “The ultimate goal … Read More
April 10, 2024
(Nature) – Bioengineered immune cells have been shown to attack and even cure cancer, but they tend to get exhausted if the fight goes on for a long time. Now, two separate research teams have found a way to rejuvenate … Read More
April 10, 2024
(Wired) – God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have a regular baby or have an Orchid baby. A regular baby might grow up and get cancer. Or … Read More
April 8, 2024
(Quartz) – Brooklyn-based brain chip startup Synchron launched a registry Monday to recruit patients and healthcare providers ahead of a planned large-scale clinical trial. The company, a rival to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, produces a brain implant, known as brain-computer interface … Read More
April 8, 2024
(STAT News) – The world’s first recipient of a kidney transplant from a genetically modified pig experienced a rejection episode before recovering and leaving the hospital last week, a Massachusetts General Hospital doctor told STAT. But in his first few … Read More
April 5, 2024
(Axios) – The success of the world’s first pig kidney transplant could stoke large-scale clinical trials on implanting animal tissues in humans to help ease the organ shortage crisis. Why it matters: Demand for donated organs is vast as transplants … Read More
April 4, 2024
(New York Times) – The first patient to receive a kidney transplanted from a genetically modified pig has fared so well that he was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, just two weeks after the groundbreaking surgery. The transplant and … Read More
April 3, 2024
(Vox) – This is unquestionably good news for Slayman, and while routine pig kidney transplants are still a few years off, it’s obviously good for people with kidney failure to have more options. We shouldn’t let the news distract us, … Read More
April 3, 2024
(Wired) – For the first time, scientists are attempting to grow a new, miniature liver inside of a person. It sounds like science fiction; in fact, the idea was the plot of a Grey’s Anatomy episode that aired in 2018. … Read More
April 3, 2024
(New York Times) – A troubled heart pump that has now been linked to 49 deaths and dozens of injuries worldwide will be allowed to remain in use, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to issue an alert about … Read More
April 2, 2024
(IEEE Spectrum) – Now, a team from the University of Utah says they’ve developed a better solution: an all-in-one hybrid energy-generation unit specifically designed for eye-based tech. In a paper published in the journal Small on 13 March, the researchers … Read More
April 1, 2024
(Wired) – Effective altruism pitches itself as a hyperrational method of using any resource for the maximum good of the world. Here in Silicon Valley, EA has become a secular religion of the elites. Effective altruists filled the board of … Read More
March 27, 2024
(Reuters) – A U.S. lawmaker involved in health policy has asked the Food and Drug Administration why it did not inspect Elon Musk’s Neuralink before allowing the brain implant company to test its device in humans. Reuters reported last month … Read More
March 26, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Jeffrey Keefer lay on an operating table in the oldest hospital in America surrounded by a surgical team, a group of engineers and a gaggle of spectators hoping to witness the early stages of a healthcare … Read More
March 21, 2024
(New York Times) – Surgeons in Boston have transplanted a kidney from a genetically engineered pig into an ailing 62-year-old man, the first procedure of its kind. If successful, the breakthrough offers hope to hundreds of thousands of Americans whose … Read More
March 21, 2024
(Nature) – A small Indian biotechnology company is producing a home-grown version of a cutting-edge cancer treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that was pioneered in the United States. CAR-T therapies are used mainly to treat blood … Read More
