March 21, 2024
(Wired) – On Wednesday, Neuralink introduced the first human subject to receive the company’s brain implant, a 29-year-old man who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down for eight years after a diving accident. In a brief livestream on the … Read More
March 19, 2024
(Axios) – One of the fastest-growing trends in health and wellness circles was once seen solely as the domain of diabetics: watching your blood sugar. Why it matters: The weight-loss drug boom and online health influencers’ attention on regulating blood … Read More
March 18, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – For too long, modern medicine has focused on treating disease rather than preventing it, they say. They believe that it’s time to move from reactive healthcare to proactive healthcare. And to do so in a credible … Read More
March 15, 2024
(Axios) – Food and Drug Administration advisers Friday will weigh the risk of premature patient deaths from adverse events when they consider expanding the use of two CAR-T therapies for multiple myeloma. Why it matters: CAR-T treatments have shown promise … Read More
March 14, 2024
(ABC News) – A new strategy to fight an extremely aggressive type of brain tumor showed promise in a pair of experiments with a handful of patients. Scientists took patients’ own immune cells and turned them into “living drugs” able … Read More
March 11, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – It sounds like science fiction, but Odunsi is among dozens of people participating in studies on a controversial new forefront of the gene-editing revolution. Regulators last year approved the world’s first medicine using Crispr, the Nobel … Read More
March 7, 2024
(The Atlantic) – The disease once guaranteed an early death—but a new treatment has given many patients a chance to live decades longer than expected. What do they do now? After a year on Trikafta, Jenny told Teresa something that … Read More
March 5, 2024
(Nature) – Cells taken from the fluid around growing fetuses have been used to make organoids, 3D bundles of cells that mimic tissue. These organoids could help researchers to understand diseases that develop in the fetus during pregnancy. The researchers … Read More
March 1, 2024
(Associated Press) – Two scientists at a high-security infectious disease laboratory in Canada lost their jobs after reviews found they failed to protect sensitive material and information and did not acknowledge links with China, newly released records show. The scientists, … Read More
February 29, 2024
(NPR) – At the end of the drive, I meet David Ayares, who runs Revivicor Inc., a biotech company based in Blacksburg, Virginia. Ayares has invited me to be the first journalist to tour the company’s research farm, which is … Read More
February 29, 2024
(Reuters) – U.S. Food and Drug Administration inspectors found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Elon Musk’s Neuralink, less than a month after the startup said it was cleared to test its brain implants in … Read More
February 27, 2024
(Aeon) – Good Chemistry takes viewers behind the scenes and beyond the headlines of the CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough. Centred on the work of the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and the US biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who together became the first all-female … Read More
February 23, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – The Alabama legal ruling is clearly animated by religion—there are lots of Bible quotes and references to “murder” when discussing abortion. But what hasn’t gotten as much notice is the court’s specific argument that an embryo … Read More
February 22, 2024
(Vox) – If you take it for granted that nobody can listen in on your innermost thoughts, I regret to inform you that your brain may not be private much longer. You may have heard that Elon Musk’s company Neuralink … Read More
February 21, 2024
(Nature) – The CRISPR–Cas9 gene-editing system excels at altering and disrupting genes. But the changes it makes are permanent, which can be a big problem if the system goes awry. Now, a CRISPR-based system that targets a cell’s short-lived messenger … Read More
February 21, 2024
(Axios) – While CAR-T has been successful in some blood cancers, it’s not yet been approved for solid tumors, which make up about 90% of cancer types. The new therapy class — tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, or TIL — uses immune cells from … Read More
February 21, 2024
(Undark) – The swabbers were sampling what’s called environmental DNA, or eDNA, representing the assortment of cells that all humans, animals, and microorganisms naturally shed as they go about their everyday lives, leaving genetic fingerprints. The scientists gradually quantified and … Read More
February 21, 2024
(Nature) – Although the main impetus behind the work is to help restore functions to people with paralysis, the technology also gives researchers a unique way to explore how the human brain is organized, and with greater resolution than most … Read More
February 20, 2024
(Reuters) – The first human patient implanted with a brain-chip from Neuralink appears to have fully recovered and is able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts, the startup’s founder Elon Musk said late on Monday. “Progress is good, … Read More
February 16, 2024
(The Conversation) – Putting a computer inside someone’s brain used to feel like the edge of science fiction. Today, it’s a reality. Academic and commercial groups are testing “brain-computer interface” devices to enable people with disabilities to function more independently. … Read More
February 14, 2024
(Wired) – For years, a type of bacteria called Enterococcus faecium lurked in Lynn Cole’s bloodstream. Often found in hospitals, E. faecium is usually a gut-dwelling bacteria but can creep into other areas of the body. Her doctors tried various … Read More
February 9, 2024
(Wired) – In the 19th century, French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot noticed that Parkinson’s symptoms seemed to be markedly better after patients had been on long carriage or train rides, and subsequent research has revealed that rhythmic auditory, visual, or physical … Read More
February 7, 2024
(Nature) – The trial is not registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, an online repository curated by the US National Institutes of Health. Many universities require that researchers register a trial and its protocol in a public repository of this type before study … Read More
February 6, 2024
(STAT News) – America’s outdated approach to medical device oversight starts with limited testing prior to FDA authorization for the vast majority of marketed devices and ends with patchwork monitoring of patient safety. The tale of Philips Respironics — which … Read More
February 2, 2024
(Wired) – One biotech startup, rBIO of Houston, is aiming to make insulin more affordable by producing a copycat version of the drug—known as a biosimilar. It’s not the only company developing biosimilar insulin, but it says it has invented … Read More
