Another promising cancer treatment

Our Natural Killer (NK) cells already do a good job at looking for wrong cells. They work much like T cells in the immune system. A currently approved therapy is known as CAR-T, which modifies NK outside the body. These cells learn to recognize a common cancer marker and destroy those cells. So far this […]

Another good start for gene therapy

A combination of gene therapy and optogenetic vision restoration is showing some promise, partially restoring vision in one eye of a man suffering from retinitis pigmentosa. The improvement only worked when he was wearing special goggles that sent light pulses to his eyes. This is an exciting time for medical research. All sorts of new […]

New Way to do Diagnostic Tests

Some bright people have come up with a microneedle patch that will be able to test the fluid between cells for the presence or absence of different antibodies or other biomarkers. It can replace a traditional blood draw and the needles are too short to hit the sensory nerves, making it a practically pain-free experience […]

Stem Cells to the Rescue

In monkeys, for now. Healthy pigmented epithelium cells from a donor eye have been implanted under the macula of a blind monkey. And they took over the function of the non-working cells! This is a promising line of study to help with repairing retinal disease. https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2021/01/14/Study-Retinal-stem-cells-from-cadavers-may-help-restore-vision-in-blind/6921610635179/

Hope for food allergies

It would be great if this works out. Especially since so many different conditions seem to be tied to our own immune system going wonky on us. Anything to help people with peanut allergies has to be a good thing. http://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-a-patch-that-could-stop-severe-peanut-allergies?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

I’m skeptical, but….

A lot of the nutritional research has been a bit…iffy in the past. But if this is true, it could be a fairly simple fix for a few health conditions. That would be nice. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-02-fasting-mimicking-diet-reverse-diabetes.html

One is never enough.

Since huskies are happier in a pack – go figure – we got a second dog. Lillie is a half husky, quarter German Shepard, quarter malamute. She is a very sweet dog, but has a way of demanding attention.  She has made Charger very happy, though, and lets the teen manhandle her with very little […]

This could be really good news.

I’m so grateful to all the smart people out there in the universe. Who would have thought that targeting an acidic environment could lead to a potentially non-addictive pain killer? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-opioid-pain-areas-negative-side.html

The past comes calling….

This is fascinating. Kind of hard to believe how much of what we thought we knew about human history is not quite right. Keep the info coming! http://www.sciencealert.com/neanderthal-dna-determines-our-health-and-appearance-way-more-than-we-thought

This would be wonderful

I’ve seen several false starts for a malaria vaccine, but here’s keeping our fingers crossed that this pans out. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/new-malaria-vaccine-is-fully-effective-in-very-small-clinical-trial/