Making memories stronger and more precise during aging

Making memories stronger and more precise during aging

When it comes to the billions of neurons in your brain, what you see at birth is what get — except in the hippocampus. Buried deep underneath the folds of the cerebral cortex, neural stem cells in thehippocampus continue to generate new neurons, inciting a struggle between new and old as the new attempts to gain a foothold in the memory-forming center of the brain.

In a study published online today in Neuron, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers atMassachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in collaboration with an international team of scientists found they could bias the competition in favor of the newly generated neurons.

Read More

Michael Sefton to receive Lifetime Achievement Award

Michael Sefton to receive Lifetime Achievement Award

University of Toronto biomedical engineering University Professor Michael Sefton (IBBME, ChemE) has been named this year’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS). The award, issued by the organization’s Americas chapter, recognizes his immense contributions to the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Read More

Functional human tissue-engineered liver generated from stem, progenitor cells

Functional human tissue-engineered liver generated from stem, progenitor cells

A research team led by investigators at The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles has generated functional human and mouse tissue-engineered liver from adult stem and progenitor cells. Tissue-engineered Liver (TELi) was found to contain normal structural components such as hepatocytes, bile ducts and blood vessels. The study has been published online in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

Read More

Methuselah Fellowship Award Winner Tackles Macular Degeneration 

Methuselah Fellowship Award Winner Tackles Macular Degeneration 

Typically, a fellowship and participation in a research study to cure a major disease would occur years after completing undergrad, possibly even after earning a PhD. But Jennifer DeRosa is not a typical student.

Read More

Vascular Tissue Challenge Introduction Webinar

Vascular Tissue Challenge Introduction Webinar

The Vascular Tissue Challenge is a $500,000 prize purse for the creation ofthick, human vascularized organ tissue in an in-vitro environment that maintains metabolic functionality similar to in vivo native cells throughout a 30-day trial period. The Methuselah Foundation's New Organ Alliance and NASA's Centennial Challenges Program have partnered to create this challenge with the goal of advancing research on human physiology, fundamental space biology, and medicine taking place both on the Earth and the ISS National Laboratory.

Read More

Episode 007 - Control Alt Delete Cancer

Episode 007 - Control Alt Delete Cancer

Hello and welcome to Episode 7!  On this episode, we'll talk with Dr. Haroldo Silva and David Halvorsen of the SENS Research Foundation.  They've launched a new crowdfunding campaign designed to attack and stop cancer using a new approach.  You'll hear what that approach is, why they think it has a good chance of success, and you can help in the fight.

Read More

NASA’s Vascular Tissue Challenge to help in study of deep space environmental effects

NASA’s Vascular Tissue Challenge to help in study of deep space environmental effects

Those working in the field of bioengineering should be ready for a challenge worth $500,000. NASA, along with the nonprofit Methuselah Foundation's New Organ Alliance, has introduced the new prize competition, named as the Vascular Tissue Challenge. The first three teams that will succeed in creating thick, metabolically-functional human vascularized organ tissue in a controlled laboratory environment will be offered the prize money.

Read More

BREAKING: Methuselah Partnering with NASA

BREAKING: Methuselah Partnering with NASA

NASA, in partnership with the nonprofit Methuselah Foundation’s New Organ Alliance, is seeking ways to advance the field of bioengineering through a new prize competition.

The Vascular Tissue Challenge offers a $500,000 prize to be divided among the first three teams that successfully create thick, metabolically-functional human vascularized organ tissue in a controlled laboratory environment.

Read More

New protein injection reverses Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice in just one week Human trials are not far off.

New protein injection reverses Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice in just one week Human trials are not far off.

Researchers have discovered that an injection of a protein called IL-33 can reverse Alzheimer's-like symptoms and cognitive decline in mice, restoring their memory and cognitive function to the same levels as healthy mice in the space of one week.

Mice bred to develop a progressive Alzheimer's-like disease as they aged (called APP/PS1 mice) were given daily injections of the protein, and it appeared to not only clear out the toxic amyloid plaques that are thought to trigger Alzheimer’s in humans, it also prevented more from forming.‌‌

Read More

Scientists grow skin that replicates function of tissue for first time

Scientists grow skin that replicates function of tissue for first time

A genetic marker placed in the bioengineered skin cells tell scientists where the transplanted tissue is located. If the treatment makes it into humans, the glowing protein wouldn't be included. © Takashi Tsuji, RIKEN

Bioengineered skin complete with functioning hair follicles, glands and nerves has been grown using a new technique that could transform burns treatment and end cosmetics testing on animals.

Read More

‘Groundbreaking’ Stem Cell Treatment Could Regrow Limbs, Repair Bones

‘Groundbreaking’ Stem Cell Treatment Could Regrow Limbs, Repair Bones

In the pages of comic books and on the silver screen, superheroes like Wolverine and Deadpool have a “healing factor” that allows their bodies to regenerate and recover from injuries or illness at an amazing rate – but certainly nothing like that is possible in real life, right?

Amazingly, a team of scientists led by John Pimanda, a hematologist and associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, published a study in Monday’s edition of the journal PNASreporting that they had successfully reprogrammed bone and fat cells into induced multipotent stem cells (iMS) – the first step to making such a repair system a reality.

Read More

NASA Announces Plans for New Medical Frontier Challenge

NASA Announces Plans for New Medical Frontier Challenge

NASA is carrying forward its mission to reach out to new frontiers with the announcement today of plans for a "Vascular Tissue Challenge", a $500,000 prize to be given to the team who can first develop vascular thick tissue that will lay the basis for treatments ranging everywhere from new tissue for burn victims to 3-D organ printing, and providing new organs for all who might need them, when they need them.

Read More

Conquering one of the World’s Biggest Age-Related Killers By Guest Writers J. Lewis and S. Giwa

Conquering one of the World’s Biggest Age-Related Killers By Guest Writers J. Lewis and S. Giwa

The Organ Preservation Alliance, supported by the Methuselah Foundation and incubated at SU Labs at NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, targets a neglected area of research and medicine underlying one of the world’s largest and mostwell-hidden killers: limitations in organ and tissue storage. Organ and tissue banking can have far reaching effects on treatments for major age-related diseases including Diabetes, Cancer and Heart Disease, while also accelerating the pace of medical research and serving as an enabler of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and use of humanized xeno-organs. Technologies to cryopreserve and bank human organs and other tissues for use on-demand can prevent or delay millions of deaths each year worldwide – and make millions more patients, both old and young, healthier.

Read More

Episode 006 - Could Cryopreservation for Human Organs Save 700,000 - 900,000 Lives a Year?

Episode 006 - Could Cryopreservation for Human Organs Save 700,000 - 900,000 Lives a Year?

Join us on this episode of the Methuselah 300 Podcast as we interview Dr. Sebastian Eriksson Giwa;  co-founder and chairman of the Organ Preservation Alliance and co-founder and CEO of Sylvatica Biotech.  Dr. Giwa will discuss how Cryopreservation could transform and revolutionize transplantationCurrently at least 1 in 5 people on the organ waiting list die due to the inability of keeping organs viable for transport, resulting in 700,000 deaths a year by some estimates.  Dr Giwa and his team want to change that...

Read More

Could a New Approach to Alzheimer's Move Us Closer to a Cure?

Could a New Approach to Alzheimer's Move Us Closer to a Cure?

Leucadia Therapeutics LLC, a biotechnology company focused on treating and preventing Alzheimer’s disease, and Methuselah Foundation, a public charity incentivizing innovation in regenerative medicine, today announced a joint partnership to develop a novel therapeutic strategy to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly, affecting over 5 million people in the USA. Affected individuals have difficulty creating new memories, and problems with language, mood and reasoning.  As the disease progresses, patients become withdrawn and bodily functions decline, leading to death within 3-9 years of diagnosis. No current drugs or treatments slow or halt the relentless progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Read More

Episode 005 with Dr John Geibel; Yale University

Episode 005 with Dr John Geibel; Yale University

On this week's podcast, join us as we talk with Dr John Geibel, Director of Surgical Research and Professor of Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University.  Discover how his team is working hard to develop the first iterations of 3-D printable organs, a goal that will revolutionize the medical organ industry and save thousands upon thousands of lives.

Read More

Methuselah 300 Podcast Episode 004: Is a Synthetic Liver on the Horizon? With Dr Bryon Petersen

Methuselah 300 Podcast Episode 004: Is a Synthetic Liver on the Horizon? With Dr Bryon Petersen

Join us on this week's podcast as we interview Dr. Bryon Petersen, who is researching and developing a new device that could bridge the gap for those awaiting a new liver so that those in need can have a quality of life impossible for them now.  You'll here about where he is in the stage of development, and what timeline he is working toward.

Read More

Episode 003 Interview with Founder Dave Gobel Part #2

Episode 003 Interview with Founder Dave Gobel Part #2

In this Episode of the Methuselah 300 Podcast, we’ll continue our interview with founder Dave Gobel as he explains more of the specific areas of regenerative medicine the foundation is working toward, some new partnerships and backers including NASA, and how he believes future life will be impacted in the near and mid term by exciting progress currently being made in medical research.

Read More