Cardiac stem cells derived from young hearts helped reverse the signs of aging when directly injected into the old hearts of elderly rats, astudypublished Monday in the European Heart Journal demonstrated.

The old rats appeared newly invigorated after receiving their injections. As hoped, the cardiac stem cells improved heart function yet also provided additional benefits. The rats fur, shaved for surgery, grew back more quickly than expected, and their chromosomal telomeres, which commonly shrink with age, lengthened.

The old rats receiving the cardiac stem cells also had increased stamina overall, exercising more than before the infusion.

Its extremely exciting, said Dr. Eduardo Marbn, primary investigator on the research and director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. Witnessing the systemic rejuvenating effects, he said, its kind of like an unexpected fountain of youth.

Weve been studying new forms of cell therapy for the heart for some 12 years now, Marbn said.

Some of this research has focused on cardiosphere-derived cells.

Theyre progenitor cells from the heart itself, Marbn said. Progenitor cells are generated from stem cells and share some, but not all, of the same properties. For instance, they can differentiate into more than one kind of cell like stem cells, but unlike stem cells, progenitor cells cannot divide and reproduce indefinitely.

From hisown previous research, Marbn discovered that cardiosphere-derived cells promote the healing of the heart after a condition known as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, which affects more than 50% of all heart failure patients.

Since heart failure with preserved ejection fraction is similar to aging, Marbn decided to experiment on old rats, ones that suffered from a type of heart problem thats very typical of what we find in older human beings: The hearts stiff, and it doesnt relax right, and it causes fluid to back up some, Marbn explained.

He and his team injected cardiosphere-derived cells from newborn rats into the hearts of 22-month-old rats thats elderly for a rat. Similar old rats received a placebo injection of saline solution. Then, Marbn and his team compared both groups to young rats that were 4 months old. After a month, they compared the rats again.

Even though the cells were injected into the heart, their effects were noticeable throughout the body, Marbn said

The animals could exercise further than they could before by about 20%, and one of the most striking things, especially for me (because Im kind of losing my hair) the animals regrew their fur a lot better after theyd gotten cells compared with the placebo rats, Marbn said.

The rats that received cardiosphere-derived cells also experienced improved heart function and showed longer heart cell telomeres.

The working hypothesis is that the cells secrete exosomes, tiny vesicles that contain a lot of nucleic acids, things like RNA, that can change patterns of the way the tissue responds to injury and the way genes are expressed in the tissue, Marbn said.

It is the exosomes that act on the heart and make it better as well as mediating long-distance effects on exercise capacity and hair regrowth, he explained.

Looking to the future, Marbn said hes begun to explore delivering the cardiac stem cells intravenously in a simple infusion instead of injecting them directly into the heart, which would be a complex procedure for a human patient and seeing whether the same beneficial effects occur.

Dr. Gary Gerstenblith, a professor of medicine in the cardiology division of Johns Hopkins Medicine, said the new study is very comprehensive.

Striking benefits are demonstrated not only from a cardiac perspective but across multiple organ systems, said Gerstenblith, who did not contribute to the new research. The results suggest that stem cell therapies should be studied as an additional therapeutic option in the treatment of cardiac and other diseases common in the elderly.

Todd Herron, director of the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Centers Cardiovascular Regeneration Core Laboratory, said Marbn, with his previous work with cardiac stem cells, has led the field in this area.

The novelty of this bit of work is, they started to look at more precise molecular mechanisms to explain the phenomenon theyve seen in the past, said Herron, who played no role in the new research.

One strength of the approach here is that the researchers have taken cells from the organ that they want to rejuvenate, so that makes it likely that the cells stay there in that tissue, Herron said.

He believes that more extensive study, beginning with larger animals and including long-term followup, is needed before this technique could be used in humans.

We need to make sure theres no harm being done, Herron said, adding that extending the lifetime and improving quality of life amounts to a tradeoff between the potential risk and the potential good that can be done.

Capicor, the company that grows these special cells, is focused solely on therapies for muscular dystrophy and heart failure with ongoing clinical trials involving human patients, Marbn said.

Capicor hasnt announced any plans to do studies in aging, but the possibility exists.

After all, the cells have been proven completely safe in over 100 human patients, so it would be possible to fast-track them into the clinic, Marbn explained: I cant tell you that there are any plans to do that, but it could easily be done from a safety viewpoint.

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On Monday, a group of scientists at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, CA, discovered througha world-first experimenta form to rejuvenate elder rats old hearts by injecting cardiac stem cells from much younger rats with healthier hearts. They hope this process might eventually become useful to humans.

The first time an experiment like this was carried out was in 2009 by the same Los Angeles-based team. Now, they also proved the possibility of reversing aging in old hearts.

Heart failure is a typical cause of death in humans. Around 48 percent of women and 46 percent of men die a year from heart attacks and other heart-related diseases. They are the first reason of death worldwide, and a leading cause of death in the United States, killing over 375,000 Americans a year. Nearly half of all African-American population suffers from heart diseases.

Researchers took stem cells from the hearts of 4-month-old rats, shaped them into cardiosphere-derived cells and injected them into the hearts of other rats of 22 monthsold, an age that makes them be considered as old. They carried out a similar process to another group of rats but injected saline instead. Scientists later compared both groups.

After receiving the stem cells injection, researchers noted a significant change in the way old rats continued to live. They turned much more active and improved their functionalities. Not just their heart rates got better and faster, but also the way they ran and breathed. Their hair started to grow faster, their chromosomal telomeres which commonly shrink with age lengthened, plus other benefits. The rodents began to progressively improve their capacity of exercise along with their stamina overall.

The animals could exercise further than they could before by about 20%, and one of the most striking things, especially for me (because Im kind of losing my hair) the animals regrew their fur a lot better after theyd gotten cells compared with the placebo rats, said Dr Eduardo Marbn, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and lead author, who is also extremely excited for having witnessed the unexpected fountain of youth.

In 2009, his team successfully repaired the damaged heart of a man who had suffered a heart attack, using his own heart tissue.

Stem cells are a really basic type of cells that can be molded and converted into other much-specialized cells through a process called differentiation, which is basicallyshaping them into any kind of body cell.They form in embryos like embryonic stem cells -, which help in the growth process of babies, along with the millions of other different cell types they need before their birth.

One of many cells scientists generated from stem cells is called progenitor cell, which shares some of the same properties. But unlike the original cells, progenitor cells are not able to divide and reproduce indefinitely. Dr. Marbn also said they discovered cardiosphere-derived cells, which tend to promote the healing of a condition that affects more than 50 percent of patients suffering from heart failure.

Our previous lab studies and human clinical trials have shown promise in treating heart failure using cardiac stem cell infusions, said Dr Marbn. Now we find that these specialized stem cells could turn out to reverse problems associated with aging of the heart.

According to Dr. Marbn, stem cells secrete exosomes, tiny vesicles which contain a lot of nucleic acids, things like RNA, that can change patterns of the way the tissue responds to injuries, and the way genes are expressed in the tissue. They are placed into the heart, and act to transform it into a better organ, helping it at the same time to improve exercise capacity and hair regrowth, he explained.

Now, Dr. Marbn is exploring a much easier way to deliver the stem cells intravenously, instead of injecting them directly into the heart. Thus avoiding surgeries, which tend to be more complicated and expensive for the patient.

Striking benefits are demonstrated not only from a cardiac perspective but across multiple organ systems, said Dr. Gary Gerstenblith, a professor of medicine in the cardiology division of Johns Hopkins Medicine, who did not contribute to the new research. The results suggest that stem cell therapies should be studied as an additional therapeutic option in the treatment of cardiac and other diseases common in the elderly.

Now, scientistsneed to make more extensive studies before using the technique in humans.

Source: CNN

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Pfizer committed to building a $100 million gene therapies plant in North Carolinaand in exchange, North Carolina committed to providing the drugmaker with a quarter-million dollars' worth of help.

Pfizer will expand an 11,000-square-foot plant in Sanford, North Carolina that it acquiredlast year when it bought gene therapies biotech Bamboo Therapeutics in a deal valued at up to $688 million.Bamboo bought the facilitylast year from the University of North Carolina about the time that Pfizer made is initial investment in the company.

The drugmaker considered building a facility in Massachusetts where it has other research and manufacturing operations but decided on North Carolinawhere it will receive a $250,000 performance grant from the state for the project and its 40 jobs.

RELATED:Pfizer looks at building major gene therapy manufacturing facility in North Carolina

Pfizer is proud to further expand our presence in North Carolina, particularly as we build our leadership in gene therapy, Lynn Bottone, site leader at Pfizer Sanford said in a statement. We look forward to the next phase of this expansion as we build a clinical and commercial manufacturing facility.

A Pfizer spokeswoman said in an email Tuesday that it was too early in the process to provide any details about the size of the expansion or when it might be producing materials.

Bamboo has already produced phase I and II materials in the facility using what Pfizer said was superior suspension, cell-based production platform that increases scalability, efficiency and purity.

Bamboo is working on gene therapies for certain rare diseases related to neuromuscular conditions and the central nervous system. With gene therapies, genetic material is introduced into a patients body to replacemutations that cause diseaseand the expectation is that treatments may cure the condition.

RELATED: Pfizer doubles down on gene therapy pipeline with $70M Sangamo buy-in

Pfizer is among a number of companies exploring the new area and added to its portfolio this spring when it struck a licensing deal with Richmond, California-based Sangamo Therapeutics, which is working on gene therapies for treating hemophilia A. Under the deal, Sangamo got $70 million upfront and could gain $475 million in biobucks and sales royalties on any medications from the collaboration that gain approval.

Others are building manufacturing facilities as well. California-based BioMarin, recently completed the renovation of a 25,000-square-foot building in Novato, Novato, California, for manufacturing the gene therapies for hemophilia A which its has in clinical trials, the Marin Independent Journal reported Monday.

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[Note to researchers: mRNA-protein level disparities found in metastatic ovarian cancer in more than 60% of measurements across 4,436 genes; evidence of micro RNA regulation]

Headlines, of late, have touted the successes of targeted gene-based cancer therapies, such as immunotherapies, but, unfortunately, alsotheir failures.

Broad inadequacies in a widespread biological concept that affects cancer research could be significantly deflecting the aim of such targeted drugs,according to a new study. A team exploring genetic mechanisms in cancer at the Georgia Institute of Technology has found evidence that a prevailing concept about how cells produce protein molecules, particularly when applied to cancer, could be erroneous as much as two-thirds of the time.

Prior studies by other researchers have also critiqued this concept about the pathway leading from genetic code to proteins, but this new study,led by cancer researcher John McDonald, has employed rare analytical technology to explore it in unparalleled detail. The study also turned up novel evidence for regulating mechanisms that could account for the prevailing concepts apparent shortcomings.

The concept stems from common knowledge about the assembly line inside cells that produces protein molecules. It starts with code in DNA, which is transcribed to messenger RNA, then translated into protein molecules, the cells building blocks.

That model seems to have left the impression that cellular protein production works analogously to an old-style factory production line: That the amount of a messenger RNA encoded by DNA on the front end translates directly into the amount of a corresponding protein produced on the back end. That idea is at the core of how gene-based cancer drug developers choose their targets.

To put that assumed congruence between RNA production and protein production to the test, the researchers examined -- in ovarian cancer cells donated by a patient -- 4,436 genes, their subsequently transcribed messenger RNA, and the resulting proteins. The assumption, that proverbial factory orders passed down the DNA-RNA line determine in a straightforward manner the amount of a protein being produced, proved incorrect 62 percent of the time.

The messenger RNA-protein connection is important because proteins are usually the targets ofgene-based cancer therapies, McDonald said. And drug developers typically measure messenger RNA levels thinking they will tell them what the proteins levels are. But the significant variations in ratios of messenger RNA to protein that the researchers found make the common method of targeting proteins via RNA seem much less than optimal.

McDonald,Mengnan Zhangand Ronghu Wu published their resultson August 15, 2017 in the journalScientific Reports. The work was funded by the Ovarian Cancer Institute, The Deborah Nash Endowment, Atlantas Northside Hospital and the National Science Foundation. The spectrophotometric technology needed to closely identify a high number of proteins is rare and costly but isavailable in Wus lab at Georgia Tech.

Whereas many studies look at normal tissue versus cancerous tissue, this new study focused on cancer progression, ormetastasis, which is what usually makes cancer deadly. The researchers looked at primary tumor tissue and also metastatic tissue.

The idea that any change in RNA level in cancerous development flows all the way up to the protein level could be leading to drug targeting errors, saidMcDonald, who heads Georgia Techs Integrated Cancer Research Center. Drug developers often look for oddly high messenger RNA levels in a cancer then go after what they believe must be the resulting oddly high levels of a corresponding protein.

Taking messenger RNA as a protein level indicator could actually work some of the time. In the McDonald teams latest experiment, in 38 percent of the cases, the rise of RNA levels in cancerous cells did indeed reflect a comparable rise of protein levels. But in the rest of cases, they did not.

So, there are going to be many instances where if youre predicting what to give therapeutically to a patient based on RNA, your prescription could easily be incorrect, McDonald said. Drug developers could be aiming at targets that arent there and also not shooting for targets that are there.

The analogy of a factory producing building materials can help illustrate what goes wrong in a cancerous cell, and also help describe the studys new insights into protein production. To complete the metaphor: The materials produced are used in the construction of the factorys own building, that is, the cells own structures.

In cancer cells, a mutation makes protein production go awry usually not by deforming proteins but by overproducing them. A lot of mutations in cancer are mutations in production levels. The proteins are being overexpressed, said McDonald, who is also aprofessor in Georgia Techs School of Biological Sciences.

A bad factory order can lead to the production of too much of a good material and then force it into the structures of the cell, distorting it. The question is: Where in the production line do bad factory orders appear?

According to the new study, the answer is less straightforward than previously thought.

The orders dont all appear on the front end of the assembly line with DNA over-transcribing messenger RNA. Additionally, some mutations that do over-transcribe messenger RNA on the front end are tamped down or canceled by regulating mechanisms further down the line, and may never end up boosting protein levels on the back end.

Regulating mechanisms also appear to be making other messenger RNA, transcribed in normal amounts, unexpectedly crank out inordinate levels of proteins.

At the heart of those regulating systems, another RNA called micro RNA may be micromanaging how much, or little, of a protein is actually produced in the end.

We have evidence that micro RNAs may be responsible for the non-correlation between the proteins and the RNA, and thats completely novel, McDonald said. Its an emerging area of research.

Micro RNA, ormiRNA, is an extremely short strand of RNA.

McDonald would like to see tissues from more cancer patients undergo similar testing. Right now, with just one patient, the data is limited, but I also really think it shows that the phenomenon is real, McDonald said.

Many past studies have looked at one particular protein and a particular gene, or a particular handful. We looked at more than 4,000, McDonald said. What that brings up is that the phenomenon is probably not isolated but instead genome-wide.

The studys authors would also like to see rarely accessible, advanced protein detecting technology become more widely available to biomolecular researchers, especially in the field of cancer drug development. Targeted gene therapy is a good idea, but you need the full knowledge of whether its affecting the protein level, McDonald said.

He pointed out that no one is at fault for the possible incompleteness of commonly held concepts about protein production.

As science progresses, it naturally illuminates new details, and formerly useful ideas need updating. With the existence of new technologies, it may be time to flesh out this particular concept for the sake of cancer research progress.

Also READ: Punching Cancer With RNA Knuckles with John McDonald

The research was supported by grants from the Ovarian Cancer Institute, The Deborah Nash Endowment Fund, Northside Hospital (Atlanta), and the National Science Foundation (CHE-452 1454501). Cancer tissues from ovary and omental sites were collected from a cancer patient at Northside Hospital with informed consent under Georgia Institute of Technology Institutional Review Board protocols (H14337). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of those agencies.

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. A virus that infects a species of malaria-transmitting mosquito could help scientists gain a better understanding of mosquito biology and eventually could lead to methods for stopping or slowing the spread of the disease, according to a researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Jason Rasgon, professor of entomology, has received a grant of $1.9 million from the National Institutes of Health to study the virus, called AgDNV. The goal of the five-year project is to develop a toolset that would enable researchers to genetically modify mosquitoes more easily, with an eye toward examining the influence of specific genes on mosquito phenotypes and developing malaria-control strategies.

"This project involves Anopheles gambiae, the main mosquito vector of malaria in Africa," Rasgon said. "Routine genetic manipulation of this species has proven challenging, so the development of novel tools for genetic modification is critical for both applied strategies for malaria control and for basic research into this mosquito's genetics and host-pathogen interactions."

To prove the feasibility of this concept, the research team will insert specific genes into a densonucleosis virus known as a "densovirus" which will infect the mosquito's tissues and express those genes.

"This virus is distantly related to the virus used in human gene therapy," Rasgon said. "So it's almost like gene therapy in the mosquito."

He explained that the densovirus is a tiny virus it contains only three genes and about 4,100 nucleotides and its entire genome can be synthesized artificially and placed into a plasmid, which is a circular piece of DNA.

"Once in that form, we easily can manipulate it and transfect it into insect cells in a dish, where it will make live, infectious virus that will have whatever genetic modifications we've put into it," said Rasgon.

Researchers then can infect mosquitoes either by putting the virus into water with mosquito larvae or by injecting it into adult mosquitoes. The virus then will infect them, and whatever gene was inserted will be expressed.

An Anopheles gambiae mosquito infected with AgDNV (virus) expressing green fluorescent protein.

Rasgon said this system would have great value as a laboratory tool: "If you want to test a gene by turning it on or off, you wouldn't need to develop a transgenic mosquito. You just could pop it into the virus, and it will express that gene in the mosquito for you."

It also could become a biocontrol agent, he said. "You could insert genes that would make the mosquito unable to transmit the malaria parasite or that would kill the mosquito or shorten its lifespan."

This specific virus occurs naturally and would be very safe as a control agent, Rasgon noted. The virus is not a human pathogen and is host-specific, meaning it infects only Anopheles gambiae and not other mosquitoes or nontarget organisms such as vertebrates.

In addition, once infected by the modified virus, adult female mosquitoes can transmit it to larvae by inoculating it into the water when laying eggs. Rasgon's lab also has found that male adult mosquitoes can transmit the virus to females during mating.

Rasgon maintains that this line of research illustrates the unpredictability and serendipity of science he discovered the existence of the virus by accident about 10 years ago.

"We were looking for a particular bacterium in a mosquito cell line using PCR [polymerase chain reaction], and we got a weird band where there shouldn't have been one," he said. "We wanted to know what it was so we sequenced it, and it turned out to be this virus.

"We've been unsuccessfully seeking funding to study it further for 10 years. So receiving this grant also is a testament to the value of persistence in science," he said.

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Researchers have found a way to break down aggregated RNA molecules that cause diseases such as certain inherited forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

As the technique has the potential to treat several diseases which currently lack treatment options, the research team from theUniversity of California, San Diego (UCSD) made sure to engineer the new system so that it could be delivered to specific tissues with non-infectious viruses.

The method builds on a well-known gene-editing system, called CRISPRCas9, but was adapted to target RNA instead of DNA. The new method is called RNA-targeting Cas9, or simply, RCas9.

This is exciting because were not only targeting the root cause of diseases for which there are no current therapies to delay progression, but weve re-engineered the CRISPR-Cas9 system in a way thats feasible to deliver it to specific tissues via a viral vector, the studys senior author, Gene Yeo, said in a press release. He is aprofessor of cellular and molecular medicine at UCSD School of Medicine.

The study, Elimination of Toxic Microsatellite Repeat Expansion RNA by RNA-Targeting Cas9, published in the journal Cell, described how the team rebuilt the Cas9 system to find and chop up disease-causing RNA molecules.

In gene editing, the CRISPRCas 9 system uses an RNA probe that matches a specific stretch of DNA. Once bound to the right gene, the Cas9 enzyme cuts the DNA, which then can be inactivated or edited. The new system targets RNA, and chops it upinstead of editing it.

RNA, whichis largely composed of similar building blocks as DNA, has numerous roles in a cell. For instance, it is used to take a copy of a gene to provide instructions for the cells protein-making machinery.

At times, however, RNA molecules start accumulating what researchers call microsatellite repeat expansions. These are stretches of repeat RNA letters that disrupt the normal activity of the RNA. When found in messenger RNAs, they prevent necessary proteins from being made.

Anabnormal sequence also makes the RNA accumulate in cells, disrupting other cell operations. This can be seen in ALS that runs in families, andin diseases such as myotonic dystrophy and Huntingtons.

In ALS, such repeats are found in the C9orf72 gene, and cause about a third of familial ALS cases, or those that run in families,according to the ALS Association.

Testing the new tool in lab-grown cells derived from ALS patients with such mutations, the team showed that RCas9 could eliminate at least 95 percent of accumulated RNA, seen as dense clusters, or foci, in the cells.

They also discovered that using RCas9 freed proteins that normally bind to RNA in cells. When abnormal RNA starts accumulating in a cell, these proteins get tied up interacting with the aggregates, instead of binding to their natural targets. Researchers said that treated patient-derived cells eventually resembled healthy cells.

For the system to be useful as a human therapy, it needs to fit into a virus the most common way to deliver gene therapy. Normal Cas9 is too large to fit into thevirus typically used. The team solved the issue by removing parts of the Cas9 enzyme required for cutting DNA, making the enzyme small enough to fit.

Yet, many more questions need to be answered before the method can be tried in patients.

The main thing we dont know yet is whether or not the viral vectors that deliver RCas9 to cells would elicit an immune response, Yeo said. Before this could be tested in humans, we would need to test it in animal models, determine potential toxicities and evaluate long-term exposure.

The group has launched a company, Locana, that will work onpreclinical-trial development of the method with the aim of bringing it to patients.

We are really excited about this work because we not only defined a new potential therapeutic mechanism for CRISPR-Cas9, we demonstrated how it could be used to treat an entire class of conditions for which there are no successful treatment options, said David Nelles, PhD, one of two lead studyauthors.

There are more than 20 genetic diseases caused by microsatellite expansions in different places in the genome. Our ability to program the RCas9 system to target different repeats, combined with low risk of off-target effects, is its major strength, added Ranjan Batra, PhD, the studys other lead author.

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PASADENA, Calif., Aug. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Episona Inc., an epigenetics data company focused on improving outcomes in reproductive health, announced today that it has appointed Bob King, formerly of Good Start Genetics and a veteran in the field of reproductive health, as vice president, sales. Mr. King will oversee the commercial expansion of Episona's Seed test for evaluating male factor infertility and embryo quality.

"Bob's expertise and track record launching new products in the field of genetics and reproductive health will prove invaluable to Episona in this time of rapid growth for the company," said Episona CEO Alan Horsager. "We are thrilled to have Bob join our team and look forward to his contributions as we expand the commercial footprint of Seed."

Mr. King has nearly 20 years of experience in the reproductive health space. Most recently, he served as director of business development and strategic accounts at Good Start Genetics, where he secured large volumes of revenue for the company's flagship carrier screening product, GeneVu, and directed the launch of the pre-genetic screening test, EmbryVu. Mr. King was also a member of the founding commercial team at Natera, serving as area sales director. He also spent eight years at EMD Serono. Mr. King earned a Bachelor of Science degree in marketing from East Carolina University.

"Episona's Seed test for evaluating male factor infertility and embryo quality is a significant innovation in the field of men's reproductive health," Mr. King said. "I am excited to be joining the Episona team to help bring Seed to more patients and physicians looking for additional information to help guide their fertility treatment decisions and to have healthy babies sooner."

Seed is currently available in approximately two dozen fertility clinics in 12 states andCanada. A physician-ordered test for use at home or in a fertility clinic, Seed evaluates the patient's risk of male factor infertility and poor embryo development. Male factor risk can help identify the severity of a patient's case, helping both the physician and patient understand whether to pursue less invasive procedures such as intrauterine insemination (IUI) or move directly to in vitro fertilization (IVF). By analyzing sperm's role in embryo development, Seed results can help identify problems that might occur with IVF and provide some answers if an IVF cycle fails or, in the case of seeking a donor, whether a male or female donor would be preferred.

Seed's novel approach is based on the science ofepigenetics, which examines external or environmental factors such as aging, smoking, obesity, environmental exposure or even exercise that can cause changes to the layer on top of the DNA known as the epigenome. These modifications to the DNA alter how genes are expressed, or read, which in turn can impact how genes function.

About Episona Inc.

Episona is an epigenetics data company focused on improving reproductive health outcomes. The company's first commercial product, Seed, evaluates epigenetic changes on DNA to predict the risk of male factor fertility and embryo quality.Epigenetics is the study of the environmental and external modifications to DNA that alter gene expression without changing the DNA sequence. Episona intends to develop additional epigenetic-based tests for other conditions and diseases in which epigenetics may play a role, such neurodevelopmental disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and alcoholism. The company was founded in 2013 and is based in Pasadena, CA.

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Meeganwas found unconscious in her flat in June (Picture: Facebook)

A bodybuilder died after her body rejected her strict protein diet.

Meegan Hefford had been consuming a number of protein shakes and egg whites in a bid to improve her fitness.

The 25-year-old was unaware that she suffered from Urea Cycle Disorder which meant her body could notproperly dispose of ammonia, a waste product of proteindigestion.

She was found unconscious in her flat in June after an estate agent let himself in to conduct an inspection.

Despite being rushed to hospital, the young mum died just hours later.

Her causes of death were listed as the intake of bodybuilding supplements as well as the condition.

Meegan, from Mandurah in Western Australia, left behind herseven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son.

Speaking to Perth Now, her family said they are now calling for more restrictions on the diet industry, stating the bodybuilder did not know she had the genetic condition.

They claim more warnings need to be put in place regarding the potential dangers of consuming a high protein diet.

Ms White said that before her death, Meegan started complaining that she felt tired and weird.

The condition affects one in every 8,000 people and is children usually show symptoms in the first 24 hours of life.

According to Genetics Home Reference, the disorder means that the nitrogen accumulates in the form of ammonia, a highly toxic substance, resulting in hyperammonemia.

Ammonia then reaches the brain through the blood.

It can cause irreversible brain damage, a coma and death.

She said: I couldnt believe what the doctors were telling me, she was dying.

I said, You have to give her more time, because she didnt look sick, she looked beautiful.

Losing Meegan, its so awful and I still cant believe shes gone but I have to focus on the positives that at least I had 25 years with her and she jammed so much into her life, its almost like she knew her time would be short.

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Image: Center for Reproductive Health at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center

At Brigitte Adams' last job in tech, an office lactation room was turned into a prayer room. "There were no pregnant women at the company, ever," she said. "I was surrounded by men in engineering departments. You didn't see other women."

In the summer of 2011, Adams had just left a multinational corporation to become a consultant. She was 39 years old and not yet married, and began thinking about making plans for a future family. "It was sort of a typical scenario of a single career woman who really wanted kids," she said. Being a tech-minded person, she turned to a procedure that was at the time still labeled experimental: Egg freezing. Also known as oocyte cryopreservation, egg freezing is a process in which a woman's eggs are extracted, frozen, and stored for future use, as a way to preserve their reproductive potential.

It's been nearly three years since news broke that Apple and Facebook were offering egg freezing as part of their employee benefits packages, and a number of other tech companies have since followed suit. As more and more women in tech opt to undergo the procedure to improve their chances of pregnancy down the road, the question remains: Will egg freezing keep women from leaving the tech industry?

"For every woman I've talked to, and for myself, it's giving us more options," Adams, now 44, said. "As a woman, our span of finding the job, finding the mate, and getting a nest egg is just so compressed now that unless things work out perfectly and you meet the guy, for so many women, we're finding ourselves in our late 30s just sort of looking around saying, 'Why isn't this happening for me?'

"I think Apple and Facebook just brought to light that there are so many women dropping out of the workforce because they can't juggle it all."

It's no secret that there are a dearth of women in tech. In 2015, while women held 57% of all professional occupations, they only held 25% of all computing occupations, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, which collected several studies on the subject. Those numbers are even lower for women of color: Latinas hold only 1% of computing jobs, and black women hold 3%.

While 80% of women in science, engineering, and technology report "loving their work," 56% leave their organization at the mid-level point in their career, according to the Center for Talent Innovation.

One study found that about 50% of women in STEM fieldsprimarily computing and engineeringleft their jobs after 12 years for other roles or time out of the workforce, compared to only 20% of women in other professions. Women in STEM also were more likely to leave their jobs in the first few years of their career than women in non-STEM jobs.

Women exit these lucrative jobs for a number of reasons, including workplace environment, lack of growth opportunities, and, to a lesser degree, raising children. Only 20% of women who left large private sector companies did so to take time out of the workforceand evidence suggests that many of these women would not have left had there been more on- or off-ramping options, or more support for competing life priorities, according to the Center for Talent Innovation.

"From a tech perspective, any little thing that can help keep women in the workforce and feeling a sense that they have options is a great thing," Adams said. "It's just one more thing to almost get us up to that equal playing field. If sperm degenerated faster, I think we'd be having a different conversation."

Just 3% of all US companies covered egg freezing in 2016, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. In comparison, about 26% of enterprises offered in vitro fertilization coverage. But tech companies are at the forefront: Along with Apple and Facebook, Google, Uber, Intel, Spotify, and Salesforce now offer egg freezing and other fertility benefits.

A number of these companies faced backlash for offering egg freezing as a benefit, as critics feared that the true reason for the provision was to keep young women working at their desks longer.

"I don't think it's the cynical thing, that they want to keep their people working and delaying having children," said Dr. Carolyn Givens, medical co-director of the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco. "I think they're trying to compete for employees, and this is just another benefit that can set them apart from their competitors."

Adams cringes at the depiction of women who choose to freeze their eggs as business-driven manipulators of Mother Nature. "There's a misconception that we're all career mad," Adams said. "When you really look at it, there are so many women in this position that don't want to be in this position, but they're doing it as a safeguard."

In 2012, Adams founded the website Eggsurance, which offers egg freezing information, facts, and community, to better inform women about the process.

"It's hard to do it all," Adams said. "I would have loved to have been in a relationship. I would have loved to have had kids earlier. It didn't happen for me. What egg freezing did was give me some time to figure some things out."

Pacific Fertility Center's cryo storage area.

Image: Pacific Fertility Center

Egg freezing is expensive: An average cycle, which includes hormone stimulation, egg retrieval, and lab processing, costs around $16,000. There are additional costs to store the eggs for later use. And many women choose to undergo two or three cycles to retrieve more eggs for better odds for a later pregnancy.

According to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), almost 5,000 women in the US froze their eggs in 2013up from just 500 in 2009. By 2018, fertility marketer EggBanxx estimates that some 76,000 women will elect to freeze their eggs. The majority of women who electively freeze their eggs are in their 30s, live in cities, and are white, the doctors interviewed for this story said.

FertilityIQ, a website aimed at assessing fertility doctors and clinics, estimates that 10,000 women completed between 25,000 and 30,000 egg freezing cycles in 2016, and that the volume is growing 30% year-on-year in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

For many years, the only people freezing their eggs were cancer patients about to undergo chemotherapy that would destroy any chances of fertility, according to Dr. Alan Penzias, chair of the Practice Committee of the American Society For Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), and director of the Fellowship Program in Reproductive Endocrinology and infertility at Harvard Medical School.

These patients were the primary driver for the ASRM to remove the "experimental" label from egg freezing in 2012, along with growing data showing healthy babies being born from these frozen eggs.

However, the ASRM stated that its decision to drop the experimental label does not mean that it encourages the procedure for women without fertility issues.

Still, Dr. Marcelle Cedars, director of the Center for Reproductive Health at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, said she has seen increasing numbers of women across all industries electing to freeze their eggs, and that the age is skewing younger, with more women in their late twenties and early thirties coming in. Women in their mid-to-late thirties are increasingly undergoing the procedure as well, she said. Cedars estimates that the center's volume rose from less than 100 patients to around 250 over the past few years.

"The advantage of doing it sooner is that the eggs are more likely to be healthy, and you need less eggs to get a viable pregnancy," Cedars said. "The potential downside is that for most of the young women, it's a very good chance that they'll never use those eggs."

The process generally works like this: A woman goes to a fertility doctor for an evaluation. The doctor determines their ovarian reserve, or the number of follicles they have available each month, and counsels the woman on the number and health of her eggs.

If the woman elects to move forward, she goes through 10 to 12 days of self-administered hormone injections. At the end of that time frame, the eggs are ready for retrieval. The woman is given a mild anesthetic, and the doctor extracts the eggs via a vaginal ultrasound probe. The retrieval only takes about 10 minutes.

Typically, women only need to take one day off of work for the procedure. For about two to three weeks after, they are not allowed to exercise, but can generally go back to normal life. If they want to do a second cycle, they can start the process again as early as one month later, and a third cycle the month after that, if they so choose.

"For women who are young and healthy, it's sometimes more difficult because it is something totally new for themthey're used to being healthy, they're not used to seeing doctors, and they're not used to having restrictions on their activities," Cedars said.

SEE: Egg freezing, so hot right now (CNET)

Though many tech giants now offer egg freezing benefits that are ostensibly meant to attract and retain female employees, most of them are very quiet about it, said Jake Anderson-Bialis, cofounder of FertilityIQ.

"Nobody wanted there to be a whole lot of publicity about this," Anderson-Bialis said, especially after the negative reaction that Apple and Facebook's news provoked from many in the media.

"At Facebook, Google, Apple, and now Uber, you see female employees freezing their eggs at a pretty quick clip now," Anderson-Bialis said. One reason companies may hesitate to announce these benefits is because they are expensive. Some also offer fertility benefits only to certain employees, such as heterosexual couples but not gay couples, or couples but not single women, and don't want to invite scrutiny, Anderson-Bialis said.

The tech industry far exceeds others when it comes to generous fertility benefits packages, according to research from FertilityIQ. Tech companies offered benefits nearly 35% higher than their peers across other industrieseven relatively smaller businesses like Spotify, Gusto, and Wayfair.

When companies offer any sort of fertility benefit, including egg freezing, employees have higher levels of gratitude and loyalty to the company, according to research from FertilityIQ. "When we looked at fertility benefits in general, a majority of patients who enjoyed fully covered fertility treatments said they were more loyal to the company, and stayed in their job longer than they otherwise would have if this benefit had not been in place," Anderson-Bialis said. "I think that's a major driving factor for the companies to make the decision that they doto satisfy the employee."

It is still too early to do a cost-benefit analysis on the egg-freezing perks announced by Apple and Facebook in 2014, according to a paper published in the DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law earlier this year. But a 2015 survey from Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey found that 68% of US adults aged 25 to 40 said they were willing to change jobs to ensure they had infertility coverage. That number jumped to 90% of those who had experienced fertility issues.

Jean (whose name has been changed), a 38-year-old who works at Google, was unaware the company offered egg freezing until Dr. Givens, who she knew socially, brought it up to her. "I'm not married, never had kids, and had never really considered freezing my eggs until I was chatting with Dr. Givens," Jean said. "That got me thinking, 'Well, if it's a benefit...' since the most prohibitive part of it is cost. And so I started looking into it to see if it was something I wanted to do.

"At this point, I don't even know if I want to have kids. I haven't made that decision yet," Jean said. "But when the time comes, I may not have that option naturally, so I wanted to do this so that it can still be an option for me."

Jean underwent three cycles in 2016, and Google covered the vast majority of the procedure, she said. "It's an amazing benefit," Jean added. "It definitely beat a lot of the more fluffy benefitsteam outings and things like that will only do so much. But this type of benefit is one that makes you believe the company truly values their employees."

Google declined to comment for this story.

"It gives me freedom," Jean said. "I don't even know if I'll end up using them. But I like that it relieves the stress that a lot of women go through getting to a certain age, and removes that timing from a consideration of who I date or my career choices. I don't have to consider that aspect anymore."

Image: Center for Reproductive Health at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center

Since egg freezing is a relatively new procedure, there is little research on its safety and success.

The chance that any individual frozen egg will lead to a birth is about 2% to 12%, according to the ASRM. This low number tends to surprise patients, Cedars said.

Pregnancy rates are highly dependent on how old the woman is when the eggs are retrieved, and how many eggs were retrieved. While there is no comprehensive data on live birth rates from elective egg freezing, SART found that of the 414 egg thaw cycles in 2013, 99 babies were born, representing about 24%. However, some of these eggs may have been frozen using an older method, which has a lower success rate.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that there is a specific number of eggs you can freeze that will guarantee you have a baby, Penzias said. "Certainly having more eggs frozen gives you a better chance than having fewer, but biology is subject to vagaries we are always trying to figure out," he said. "We would never want somebody to walk away believing that no matter how many eggs are frozen, it guarantees having a child."

Adams only underwent one cycle of extraction. She was paying for the procedure out of pocket, and said that her doctor did not counsel her to complete a second or third cycle. From the 11 eggs she froze, only one viable embryo was created upon thawing.

"That was the hardest news I ever got," Adams said. "At 44, there's no way of going in and retrieving more eggs. You have to remember that this is not a guarantee, it's a possibility. When I went into it, I was very aware of that, and was willing to take the gamble. Now that I'm in the midst of it, it's very hard. I've seen so many women get pregnant with their frozen eggsit was sort of an expectation."

In a March blog post on Eggsurance, Adams shared some heart-wrenching news.

"I was told on Saturday that I was pregnant. I was told on Tuesday the embryo had died," she wrote. "I have no more eggs to try. I have no more eggs to retrieve. I have no energy to try again. I am mourning the loss of a baby and the loss of ever having a biological child."

Stories like this make it important for women to be educated and prepared for the realities of egg freezing, Cedars said. Because doctors only focused on patients with cancer or fertility problems for so long, the increase in elective egg freezing spurred in part by tech company benefits requires a new way of thinking. "This is a group that comes in thinking they're doing something proactive for themselves, and I think we have realized that we need to counsel them a bit differently because they are a healthy patient population doing an elective procedure," she said.

Even with the lifting of the experimental label, "there has not been additional evidence produced, or studies done on the safety and efficacy of egg freezing," said Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society. "We have a lot of anecdotal evidence that there are problems, and we don't have the kind of studies you would expect for a procedure that so many women are undergoing."

Tech companies who want to retain female employers should instead look to their workplace policies, Darnovsky said. For example, offering parental leave, creating a culture that does not penalize women for taking time off to care for a newborn, and providing a work/life balance that allows time to grow relationships with potential partners and families would all support women and families, Darnovsky said.

"All those types of things would be far better insurance for women who want to have families than a technique that, for that purpose, remains experimental, is risky for women, and may be risky for the children who might ultimately be born," Darnovsky said.

In 2016, Intel expanded its fertility benefits to include egg freezing and storage of egg, embryo, sperm, and cord blood, according to Danielle Brown, Intel's vice president of human resources and chief diversity and inclusion officer. That year, the company also quadrupled its fertility benefits coverage, increasing it from $10,000 to $40,000 for medical services, and $20,000 for prescription expenses. The benefits were announced formally to employees and the public.

"We made these changes to help our employees reach all of their goals, not just work goals, by reducing the significant financial burden of fertility treatment," Brown said. "Offering egg freezing is another way for us to give employees choices and flexibility in deciding when to start a family while pursuing their careers."

She also noted that the company offers many programs for working parents, including eight weeks paid bonding leave, doubled reimbursement for emergency backup child care, and near-site child care centers.

In August 2016, human resources startup Gusto became the first company in California to offer full fertility benefits to all employees, including LGBT workers and their same-sex partners. The company eliminated the need for a medical diagnosis of infertility for its employees to get fertility treatments covered, said Katie Evans-Reber, a member of the People team at Gusto. About 10 employees have used the benefits so far, she said.

"It helps with retention, and helps us demonstrate the care that we have for mothers and families in general," Evans-Reber said. "I think when Facebook and any other business giant did it, there was some sort of backlash, and it was perceived in the Valley as wanting to keep folks at their desk longer and put off having a family. We don't view it like that at all. We want you to have a family, so we're just as encouraging to our parents and new parents in particular."

Image: Extend Fertility

Dr. Givens of the Pacific Fertility Center said her practice has seen a 50% increase in the number of egg freezing cycles in the past year, with about 300 completed procedures. She is also seeing more interest from younger women.

The increase is largely due to buzz and word of mouth, Givens said, particularly in cities like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, where there are a lot of thirtysomething professional women who are still single. "When half of your friends are freezing their eggs, you're going to feel like, 'Maybe I should be doing this,'" Givens said. "And then when the companies start covering it, then it almost becomes a no-brainer."

"News of employers offering it in their benefits has opened doors for conversation on the topic that really hasn't happened before," said Ilaina Edison, CEO of Extend Fertility in New York City, a clinic that offers egg freezing exclusively. "It's moving from something that used to be taboo to something that's much more openly discussed amongst groups of women."

Meg, a 29-year-old tech company cofounder in New York City, had been thinking about freezing her eggs for years. When she felt ready to explore the procedure more seriously, she posted on Facebook, "Where should I get my eggs frozen in NYC?"

"One of the beautiful things about technology, especially social networks, is that we have more conversations about everything," Meg said. "For me it was similar to asking 'What Italian restaurant should I go to in my neighborhood?'"

Meg began the injections, slipping away to take them in the bathroom after giving a keynote talk at a conference, and doing the same even while out on a date. The hormones made her body feel uncomfortable, she said, but she didn't feel that her life had to change much while undergoing it. She paid for the procedure out of pocket.

Jamie, 37, works at a small tech company in San Francisco. She froze her eggs in February, after a coworker went through the process. "We're about the same age, and we've gone through the battles of trying to find love here in the Bay Area, and just not getting there as quickly as we wanted," Jamie said. "I started really thinking about it and recognizing that I'm 37, I'm still singlehow much do I want a family, and what steps should I take so that I don't ever have regrets?"

She went to a doctor in November 2016 for an initial screening. Her January work schedule was busy, so she decided to go through the process in February 2017. "The procedure itself was easy," she said. "I took a day off work for it, and the next day I was in the office at 7:00 am."

Jamie said she didn't anticipate how emotional the experience would be. The hormones made work feel more overwhelming than usual. "I was so attached to [the eggs] developing and being the best they can be because these could be my potential children," Jamie said. "You want it to be successful."

She paid for the procedure out of pocket, with help from a government 340B program, which covered a majority of the prescription costs.

Jamie recently took on more travel for work. "I feel more comfortable saying yes to that travel because I'm like, 'OK, you gave yourself a couple more years to be able to find that person,'" she said. "If I didn't do this, I probably would be pushing back on some of this travel to get out there and date. I'd still be under pressure."

A number of Jamie's friends in their late 30s working in tech are considering freezing their eggs, she said. "There is this pressure on you, because we're all moving into bigger roles from where we started out," she said. "We're seeing ourselves progress to VP or director-level positions, where we can't take the brakes off too much, but we also want to be able to achieve some of those life goals too, and try to find a balance."

Read the original:
How egg-freezing is keeping more women in the tech industry: The inside story - TechRepublic

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Written by Harish Damodaran | Published:August 16, 2017 1:06 am A farmer in a village near Anand, Gujarat, feeding his young calf. Express photo by Bhupendra Rana

In these times of gaurakshak activism, there can be nothing worse for dairy farmers than their cows or buffaloes delivering male calves. Fortunately, technology is now available to address the problem to an extent in the form of sexed semen having 90%-plus sperms carrying the X-chromosome, and capable of producing only female offspring.

A bulls sperm has 30 chromosomes, including one which is either an X- or a Y-chromosome whose genes code for sex. The egg of a cow, too, contains 30 chromosomes, one of which is, however, always an X-chromosome (just as the human sperm and egg have 23 chromosomes each, one of them either an X- or a Y-chromosome in the case of the former, and one only an X-chromosome for the latter).When a sperm and egg unite, and the former carries the X-chromosome, the resultant offspring is female (XX). When a Y-chromosome-bearing sperm fertilises an egg, the result is a male calf (XY).

Sexed semen technology is about preselecting the sex of offspring by sorting or separating the X-sperms from Y-sperms. The aim is to deliver freedom from male calves, by ensuring that cows are inseminated by semen containing only X-chromosome-bearing sperms. The sorting process basically involves exploiting the differences in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) content between X-chromosome-bearing and Y-chromosome-bearing sperms. The former contains slightly more DNA, with the difference ranging from 3.6% to 4.2%, depending upon the breed of the cattle or buffalo.

In 2004, a Texas-based company, Sexing Technologies (ST), commercialised sexed semen production using a procedure to stain the sperm cells with a fluorescent dye that binds to their DNA. The dyed cells are made to pass through a laser beam from a machine (flow cytometer) that can sort the sperms based on the amount of fluorescent light they give off. As the X-chromosome-bearing sperms contain more DNA, these cells absorb more dye and emit more light. That, then, allows for separation of the X- and Y- sperm fractions in the semen.

STs sperm-sorting technology is claimed to be 93% accurate. Thus, if a cow is inseminated using such sexed semen, there is a 93% chance that the calf produced will be female. With ordinary semen used in artificial insemination (AI), that probability is 50-50.

Sexed semens usefulness is obvious, particularly in a country where even male calves cannot be sent freely to the slaughterhouse. That freedom has been further curtailed in a regime of empowered gaurakshaks on the prowl. If a cow after insemination and 9-10 months of pregnancy produces a male calf, the loser is the farmer who will have to rear an animal thats not going to yield him either milk or an income. Worse, he cant be sure that the same cow 13-14 months down the line assuming 3-4 months of post partum rest and 9-10 months pregnancy will deliver a female calf.

But the issue here is cost, which, for AI using conventional semen frozen in 0.25-ml vials (straws), is just over Rs 50 per insemination dose. The comparable cost of sexed semen to the farmer is now anywhere between Rs 1,200 and Rs 2,600 per straw.

Semen cost goes up if it is from a bull with higher genetic merit (evaluated in terms of milk yields, number of productive lactations, fat and protein content, etc.) that can also be transmitted to the progeny, notes Daljeet Singh, president of the Progressive Dairy Farmers Association (PDFA) of Punjab, which annually imports 15,000-20,000 frozen sexed semen doses on behalf of its members. The semen is sourced from bovine genetics firms such as World World Sires, Genex and ABS Global of US, and Semex of Canada.

The high cost is due to two main reasons.

The first is the virtual monopoly over knowhow. Sexed semen even that supplied by global animal genetics majors is produced from raw ejaculate, largely using STs proprietary sperm-sorting technology. The parallel one could cite is the near-stranglehold enjoyed by Monsanto vis--vis Bt cotton.

Secondly, the sexed semen currently being used by farmers like those affiliated to PDFA is entirely imported, and based on 100% Holstein Friesian (HF) or Jersey bulls. Semen imports are, moreover, subject to cumbersome procedures entailing approvals from the Directorate General of Foreign Trade and animal husbandry departments, both at the Centre and state levels.

There have been some recent encouraging developments, though, on both counts. In April, ABS Global was granted an injunction by a US court against ST, after the latter was found to have wilfully maintained monopoly power in the market for sexed bovine semen processing. It paved the way for ABS to commercially launch its own Genus Sexed Semen technology, which the Wisconsin-headquartered firm plans to introduce worldwide, including in India.

Indian farmers at present have access only to imported sexed semen from HF and Jersey bulls abroad. From September 1, we will offer them sexed semen also from local HF-Sahiwal and HF-Gir crossbreds; 100% indigenous Sahiwal, Gir and Red Sindhi bulls; and pure Murrah buffaloes. Since the semen is being processed domestically, the cost would be half that of the imported sexed material, says Arvind Gautam, managing director of ABS India, which has a stud farm facility at Bhilwadi in Sangli (Maharashtra), housing over 100 bulls with annual semen production capacity of 70 lakh straws.

R G Chandramogan, chairman of Chennai-based Hatsun Agro Product Ltd Indias biggest private sector dairy that undertakes 5.5 lakh-odd AIs a year believes the domestic market is large enough for sexed semen to be made available at well below Rs 500 per straw.

In 2015-16, about 670 lakh AIs were carried out in India, covering an estimated 30% of its breedable cows and buffaloes. No country will give you this kind of volumes for sexed semen, even if fewer AIs are required to produce the same number of female calves, points out Chandramogan.

But pricing is only one part. The conception rate chances of the animal getting pregnant from sexed semen is 10-20% lower compared to conventional semen. The reason for it is lower sperm count (machine sorting speeds and efficiency arent high enough) and possibility of damage to the cells during the sorting process (from staining with dye, exposure to laser light beam, etc.).

As a result, sexed semen is more effective in inseminating young heifers and cows that have calved only once. The older animals may require more AIs relative to insemination done using normal semen. That raises costs further, even if there a greater likelihood of a female calf getting delivered.

But for all its drawbacks, this is a technology still evolving and destined for improvement. ABS claims its new product is gentler on the sperm cells, with lower processing pressures. There is no doubting sexed semens utility to the Indian dairy farmer today with or without the gaurakshak.

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How technology can deliver freedom from the male calf - The Indian Express

Recommendation and review posted by simmons

Newswise The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center began helping New Mexicans with blood disorders a little more than one year ago. Since then, more than 30 New Mexicans have received treatment. Program Director Matthew Fero, MD, FACP, started the program after moving to New Mexico from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Wash.

The UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center program is the states only bone marrow transplant program. It includes a nurse manager, nurse coordinator, a social worker, a pharmacist, infusion nurses, and an inpatient team. Bone marrow transplantation needs a multidisciplinary team because of the complexity in coordinating care, says Fero. The teams Nurse Manager, Maria Limanovich, says the team follows each person from the beginning of bone marrow transplant treatment through completion. According to Fero, the program is growing and is in the process of hiring two more doctors and an advanced practice provider.

The UNM Bone Marrow Transplant program offers treatment choices for people with lymphoma and myeloma and will expand to help people with other blood disorders. Almost 1,000 New Mexicans receive a blood cancer diagnosis each year, according to American Cancer Society estimates.

Fero and his team currently perform autologous transplants. Autologous bone marrow transplantation is the process of taking bone marrow stem cells out of a patient and then infusing them back in after the patient receives high dose therapy, says Fero. This allows us to use treatments that would otherwise harm the bone marrow.

Bone marrow, the soft reddish material that fills the inside of our bones, produces millions of new blood cells each second. These millions of cells come from a tiny number of bone marrow stem cells. These stem cells are special because they can mature into all of the different types of cells in the blood. These are the cells doctors collect for a transplant.

Because bone marrow is a liquid organ, Fero says, it can pass through an IV [intravenous] line. Doctors rarely need to take stem cells directly out of the bone, Fero explains. They use drugs to coax bone marrow stem cells into the bloodstream. From there, the blood travels through an IV line into an apheresis machine that sorts the stem cells out and returns the rest of the blood. The experience is like donating blood at a blood bank.

Once stem cells are safely stored out of the bloodstream, doctors use high-dose chemotherapy to eradicate the remaining cancer. When chemotherapy is out of their system, the patients stem cells are reinfused. The reinfusion process is similar to a blood transfusion. Once reinfused, stem cells find their way back to bone marrow where they begin to grow and make new blood cells.

Autologous bone marrow transplants are standard treatments for lymphoma and myeloma. This treatment works very well against aggressive lymphomas. In this case the goal is to cure the disease, says Fero. Autologous bone marrow transplants extend the lives of people with myeloma and gives them a better quality of life, too. Fero says, Were offering another option for their treatment.

Matthew Fero, MD, FACP, is a Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, at the UNM School of Medicine. He serves as Director of the Bone Marrow Stem Cell Program at the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Fero received his medical degree from the University of California, Irvine, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. He completed a medical fellowship in Medical Oncology at University of Washington and a research fellowship at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He is a member of the American Society of Hematology and the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation, and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. His research focuses on the molecular bases of cancer and translating new technologies into improved cancer diagnostics and novel therapies.

The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center is the Official Cancer Center of New Mexico and the only National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center in a 500-mile radius. Its 125 board-certified oncology specialty physicians include cancer surgeons in every specialty (abdominal, thoracic, bone and soft tissue, neurosurgery, genitourinary, gynecology, and head and neck cancers), adult and pediatric hematologists/medical oncologists, gynecologic oncologists, and radiation oncologists. They, along with more than 500 other cancer healthcare professionals (nurses, pharmacists, nutritionists, navigators, psychologists and social workers), provided cancer care for nearly 60 percent of the adults and children in New Mexico affected by cancer. They treated 11,249 patients in 84,875 ambulatory clinic visits in addition to in-patient hospitalizations at UNM Hospital. These patients came from every county in the State. More than 12 percent of these patients participated in cancer clinical trials testing new cancer treatments and 35 percent of patients participated in other clinical research studies, including tests of novel cancer prevention strategies and cancer genome sequencing. The 130 cancer research scientists affiliated with the UNMCCC were awarded almost $60 million in federal and private grants and contracts for cancer research projects and published 301 high quality publications. Promoting economic development, they filed more than 30 new patents in FY16, and since 2010, have launched 11 new biotechnology start-up companies. Scientists associated with the UNMCCC Cancer Control & Disparities have conducted more than 60 statewide community-based cancer education, prevention, screening, and behavioral intervention studies involving more than 10,000 New Mexicans. Finally, the physicians, scientists and staff have provided education and training experiences to more than 230 high school, undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral fellowship students in cancer research and cancer health care delivery. Learn more at http://www.cancer.unm.edu.

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Stem Cell Transplant Program Celebrates First Year - Newswise (press release)

Recommendation and review posted by sam

Anika Therapeutics, Inc. ANIK , a global medical technology company, specializing on integrated orthopedics medicines , has made a development with its proprietary hyaluronic acid (HA) technology. The company recently published favorable data on evaluating the usefulness of HYALOFAST, a non-woven biodegradable HA-based scaffold for treatment of cartilage lesions of the knee joint.

The study was based on 40 patients with full thickness cartilage lesions of the knee joint. 20 among them were aged above 45 and the remaining, below the figure. Per the company, all patients were implanted with HYALOFAST, soaked in bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC), containing mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and prospectively evaluated for four years.

Data from the trial demonstrated that treatment outcomes were equally effective for both the age groups. This is more encouraging for the fact that it is difficult to treat patients above 45 years of age with traditional surgical approaches such as microfracture. Based on the findings, the company claimed that irrespective of a patient's age, HYALOFAST in combination with autologous adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), can be successfully used as a treatment option for cartilage lesions.

With this breakthrough, we expect the market adoption of HYALOFAST to increase significantly, boosting Anika Therapeutics' sales performance. Notably, HYALOFAST is commercially available in more than 15 countries worldwide and has been used in more than 11,000 patients so far. Also, this trial result should advance the company's procedure of regulatory submission of HYALOFAST in the US. Under 'FastTRACK' Phase III trial, it is currently enrolling patients across the U.S. and Europe.

Demand for therapeutics-based treatment in the field of integrated orthopedics medicines and traumatic conditions, is growing in leaps and bounds these days. Per a recent report by Market Research Engine in this regard, global Orthopedic Devices Market will witness a CAGR of 5% from 2016 to 2022 and is projected to reach $47.50 billion by 2022.

Some of the big names in the orthopedic device market with promising growth potential are Stryker Corporation SYK , Smith & Nephew plc SNN and Orthofix International N.V. OFIX .

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Anika (ANIK) Grows in Orthopedic Medicines on Positive Data - Nasdaq

Recommendation and review posted by sam

Aug 14, 2017 (Marketwired via COMTEX) -- TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - August 14, 2017) - Gran Colombia Gold Corp. (GCM) announced today the release of its unaudited interim consolidated financial statements and accompanying management's discussion and analysis (MD&A) for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017. All financial figures contained herein are expressed in U.S. dollars ("USD") unless otherwise noted.

Lombardo Paredes Arenas, Chief Executive Officer of Gran Colombia, commenting on the Company's results for the first half of 2017, said, "As we reach the midpoint of 2017, we are pleased to report that our operating and financial results have been tracking to our guidance for the year. Our exploration effort in 2016 has paid off with a four-year extension of the expected mine life at our Segovia Operations to 2026 and we are now 40% of the way through our 2017 drilling program. We believe that our investment and social programs in Segovia over the last seven years have positively impacted the local community, respecting the role that responsible mining plays in the local culture and economy. The recent civil disruption is not an issue caused by Gran Colombia. It is the response by illegal miners to the Colombian government's recent regulations aimed at illegal mining in the country, including restrictions on the use of mercury. While we hope that the Colombian government will soon be able to restore order in the community so that our people and their families can safely go about their daily lives and we can return to normal operations, we are continuing our negotiations to formalize illegal mining within our title."

Second Quarter and First Half 2017 Highlights

Gran Colombia has updated the life-of-mine ("LOM") plan for its Segovia Operations to incorporate the Mineral Resource estimate announced on April 19, 2017, extending the expected mine life at Segovia by four years to 2026. Measured and Indicated Resources at the Segovia Operations increased to 2.9 million tonnes at a grade of 12.0 g/t totalling 1.1 million ounces of gold, up 174% compared to the Mineral Resource estimate as of December 31, 2016. Gran Colombia also added 0.4 million ounces of gold to the Inferred category at Segovia bringing total Inferred Mineral Resources to 3.1 million tonnes at an average grade of 9.9 g/t representing 1.0 million ounces of gold. Gran Colombia is continuing its exploration campaign at Segovia in 2017 with approximately 40% of the planned 20,000 meters drilling program completed in the first half of the year. The mine life extension, coupled with an increase in the expected long-term gold price to $1,250 per ounce, resulted in a $35.5 million after-tax reversal of impairment related to the Segovia Operations in the second quarter of 2017.

On May 31, 2017, Gran Colombia extended the maturity date for $47.0 million of its Senior Secured Convertible Debentures due 2020 (the "2020 Debentures") to 2024.

Gran Colombia's adjusted EBITDA of $21.3 million in the second quarter of 2017 represented a 16% increase over the second quarter last year. This brings the trailing 12-months' adjusted EBITDA to $71.0 million, up 8% from the end of 2016. See the Company's MD&A for the computation of this non-IFRS measure.

Gran Colombia generated $3.2 million of Excess Cash Flow (see the Company's MD&A for the computation) in the second quarter of 2017, bringing the total for the first half of 2017 to $5.5 million, as expected.

Gran Colombia has continued to execute its strategy to aggressively reduce its Senior Debentures with its Excess Cash Flow, repurchasing and cancelling $1.7 million of 2020 Debentures under its Normal Course Issuer Bid ("NCIB") in the second quarter of 2017. Subsequent to June 30, 2017, the Company repurchased and cancelled an additional $0.7 million of 2020 Debentures and completed a $3.0 million partial redemption at par of the 2020 Debentures on July 31, 2017. Collectively, these actions reduced the potential dilution from conversion of the 2020 Debentures by approximately 2.8 million shares, equivalent to approximately 3% of total shares on a fully diluted basis (excluding stock options and warrants), and saves future interest costs of about $0.8 million. Gran Colombia intends to continue using the sinking fund balance to repurchase 2020 Debentures in the open market under the NCIB, when available, or to make further partial redemptions.

Gold production in the second quarter of 2017 totalled 46,075 ounces, up 21% from the second quarter last year led by continuing strong performance at its Segovia Operations. For the first half of 2017, gold production increased by 22% over the first half last year to a total of 85,083 ounces. The trailing 12-months' total gold production as of the end of June 2017 stands at 165,073 ounces, up 10% over 2016's annual gold production and above the Company's production guidance for the 2017 calendar year of a total of 150,000 to 160,000 ounces. Gold production in July 2017 totalled 14,980 ounces. However, production in the first half of August 2017 has been adversely impacted by a civil disruption in Segovia and Remedios convened by illegal miners commencing in late July, preventing many of the Company's personnel from safely reporting to work. The Company has implemented its contingency plans during this civil disruption, including ensuring sufficient cash is set aside to meet the interest payments on the Senior Debentures at the end of August. Certain capital projects have been suspended until the civil disruption subsides and Gran Colombia is currently able to conduct some mining, processing and maintenance activities until order is restored by the Colombian government. Negotiations between Gran Colombia and representatives of the Cogote and San Nicolas mines operating in the Company's mining title at Segovia are continuing at this time.

Revenue has been positively impacted in 2017 by the increased level of gold production compared with last year, up 17% in the second quarter of 2017 to $56.0 million and up 23% in the first half of 2017 to $101.7 million.

Gran Colombia's total cash costs and all-in sustaining costs ("AISC") were also positively impacted in the second quarter of 2017 by the increased level of production, averaging $676 per ounce and $884 per ounce, respectively, bringing the averages for the first half of 2017 to $709 per ounce and $910 per ounce, respectively. The Company continues to expect that its total cash cost and AISC averages for the full year should remain below $720 and $900 per ounce sold according to its guidance for 2017, provided there is no prolonged adverse impact on production from the civil disruption. See the Company's MD&A for the computation of these non-IFRS measures.

Net income for the second quarter of 2017 was $36.2 million, or $1.77 per share, compared with $0.1 million, or $0.01 per share, in the second quarter last year. For the first half of 2017, net income was $35.4 million, or $1.77 per share, compared with $10.9 million, or $1.40 per share, in the first half last year. Net income for the second quarter and first half of 2017 includes a $35.5 million after-tax reversal ($1.73 per share) of impairment related to the Segovia Operations. Net income in the first half of 2016 included a $14.5 million after-tax gain on financial instruments.

Adjusted net income for the second quarter of 2017 was $4.1 million, or $0.20 per share, compared with $3.9 million, or $0.42 per share, in the second quarter last year. For the first half of 2017, adjusted net income increased to $7.2 million, or $0.36 per share, compared with $4.1 million, or $0.53 per share, in the first half last year. See the reconciliation in the Company's MD&A for the computation of this non-IFRS measure. The increase in adjusted EBITDA combined with reductions in finance costs and wealth tax, net of an increase in adjusted income taxes, in 2017 were the primary drivers behind the improvement in adjusted net income in the first half of 2017.

Financial and Operating Summary

A summary of the financial and operating results for the second quarter and first half of 2017 and 2016 follows:

Segovia Operations

In light of the updated Mineral Resource estimate for the Segovia Operations announced in April 2017, the Company collaborated with SRK Consulting (USA) Inc. ("SRK") to update its internal LOM plan for Segovia. The updated LOM plan foresees a total of 4.1 million tonnes of material with an average head grade of 8.8 g/t being processed over an extended mine life through the end of 2026, four years longer than the previous LOM plans. Over this mine life, the updated LOM plan expects a total of 1.0 million ounces of gold to be produced at an average LOM total cash cost of $697 per ounce and an AISC (excluding corporate G&A) of $896 per ounce. At an expected long-term gold price of $1,250 per ounce, total LOM undiscounted after-tax free cash flow from mining operations amounts to $210 million. SRK is completing a NI 43-101 independent report that includes an updated Preliminary Economic Assessment for the Segovia Operations based on this updated LOM plan that is expected to be filed on the Company's website and SEDAR profile within the next 45 days.

In the second quarter of 2017, tonnes processed at the Segovia Operations averaged 842 tpd, a 9% increase over the second quarter last year. In addition, head grades in the Company-operated mining areas improved to an average of 11.3 g/t in the second quarter of 2017, up from an average of 4.4 g/t in the second quarter last year, as a result of mining higher grade stopes in the Providencia mine this year. This brought the overall head grade for the Segovia Operations to an average of 15.9 g/t in the second quarter of 2017 compared with 13.8 g/t in the second quarter last year. Segovia's gold production of 40,228 ounces in the second quarter of 2017 brought the total for the first half of 2017 to 72,996 ounces, up 26% over the same period last year. The trailing 12 months' total gold production as of the end of June 2017 at Segovia was 141,374 ounces, up 12% over 2016's annual gold production and above the Company's production guidance range for the 2017 calendar year at Segovia of 126,000 to 134,000 ounces. Gold production in July 2017 was 12,651 ounces. However, production in the first half of August 2017 has been adversely impacted by the civil disruption and the impact of the civil disruption on 2017's full year production guidance cannot be assessed at this time.

Segovia's total cash costs were $620 per ounce in the second quarter of 2017, down from $690 in the first quarter of 2017 reflecting the favorable impact on fixed costs on a per ounce basis of the 23% increase in quarterly gold production at the Segovia Operations. Segovia's second quarter 2017 total cash cost of $620 per ounce was slightly better than the $627 per ounce total cash cost reported for the second quarter of last year as the benefit of this year's production increase was partially offset by the year-over-year appreciation of the Colombian peso ("COP") against the U.S. dollar.

The Company's AISC for the first half of 2017 included $12.6 million of sustaining capital expenditures, equivalent to $150 per ounce sold and $76 per ounce higher than the first half of 2016 due to the increased level of exploration, development and capital investment in the Segovia Operations this year. Sustaining capital expenditures in the first half of 2017 of $11.9 million at the Segovia Operations, equivalent to $142 per ounce sold, included (i) $4.8 million for exploration and mine development, (ii) $3.6 million for the mines including completion of a ventilation shaft at the Providencia mine, commencement of ventilation improvements at the El Silencio mine, installation of mine refuge stations, mine equipment and other infrastructure upgrades, (iii) $1.8 million for further upgrades of equipment in the Maria Dama plant and initiation of the project to expand the tailings storage facility, and (iv) $1.1 million to commence installation of a water treatment plant at the Maria Dama plant site to reduce the environmental discharge fees being incurred by the Company.

Marmato Operations

At the Marmato Operations, gold production continued to be steady with 5,847 ounces produced in the second quarter of 2017, bringing the total for the first half of 2017 to 12,087 ounces, up 2% over the same period last year. This brings Marmato's trailing 12 months' gold production at the end of June 2017 to 23,699 ounces, up 1% over its 2016 annual production. July's production amounted to 2,329 ounces and the Company continues to expect Marmato's annual gold production for 2017 will range between 24,000 and 26,000 ounces.

Total cash costs at the Marmato Operations were also steady in the second quarter of 2017 at $1,062 per ounce, but were $129 per ounce over its total cash cost in the second quarter last year as a result of the year-over-year COP appreciation and the impact on total cash costs on a per ounce basis of the impact on gold production of the lower head grades in the second quarter of 2017 compared with the second quarter last year.

Outlook

The Company produced a total of 100,063 ounces of gold production through the end of July 2017, keeping it on track to produce a total of 150,000 to 160,000 ounces of gold for the full year compared with the 149,708 ounces produced in 2016. However, the recent civil disruption in Segovia and Remedios has adversely impacted mining and plant operations at Segovia in the first half of August. Although the Company is able to conduct some operations at Segovia at this time, there can be no assurance regarding the duration of the current disruption or the extent of the impact that it will continue to have on production and cash flow during the balance of 2017.

The Company's total cash cost and AISC averaged $709 and $910 per ounce sold, respectively, in the first half of 2017. These results were in line with the Company's expectations and the Company continues to expect, provided there is no prolonged adverse impact on production through the balance of the year, that its total cash cost and AISC averages for the full year 2017 will remain below $720 and $900 per ounce sold, respectively.

The Company has deposited a total of $5.5 million representing its Excess Cash Flow for the first half of 2017 into the sinking funds for the Senior Debentures. In 2017, provided gold prices remain at least at the current levels and there is no prolonged adverse impact on operations from the civil disruption in Segovia, the Company expects to generate Excess Cash Flow for the full year in the order of $16 million and, to the extent possible, will use the cash in the sinking fund to make open market repurchases of the 2020 Debentures for cancellation. The Company also completed a $3.0 million partial redemption at par of the 2020 Debentures on July 31, 2017 and will continue to consider, as appropriate, additional partial redemptions going forward as a means to reduce its 2020 Debentures ahead of maturity.

Webcast

As a reminder, the Company will host a conference call and webcast on Tuesday, August 15, 2017 at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss the results.

Webcast and call-in details are as follows:

Live Event link: http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/urfvuni7 International: 1 (514) 841-2157 North America Toll Free: 1 (866) 215-5508 Colombia Toll Free: 01 800 9 156 924 Conference ID: 45399427

A replay of the webcast will be available at http://www.grancolombiagold.com from Tuesday, August 15, 2017 until Thursday, September 14, 2017.

About Gran Colombia Gold Corp.

Gran Colombia is a Canadian-based gold and silver exploration, development and production company with its primary focus in Colombia. Gran Colombia is currently the largest underground gold and silver producer in Colombia with several underground mines in operation at its Segovia and Marmato Operations. Gran Colombia is continuing its expansion and modernization activities at its high-grade Segovia Operations.

Additional information on Gran Colombia can be found on its website at http://www.grancolombiagold.com and by reviewing its profile on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information", which may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to anticipated business plans or strategies. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Gran Colombia to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements are described under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Information Form dated as of March 30, 2017, which is available for view on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this press release and Gran Colombia disclaims, other than as required by law, any obligation to update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, results, future events, circumstances, or if management's estimates or opinions should change, or otherwise. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

For Further Information, Please Contact: Mike Davies Chief Financial Officer (416) 360-4653 investorrelations@grancolombiagold.com

2017 Nasdaq, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Gran Colombia Gold Reports Second Quarter 2017 Results; Announces Mine Life Extension at Its Segovia Operations - MarketWatch

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Another scam to draw research funds. This didnt even succeed in America, and now a small company in Shandong thinks it can make it happen. This is so amusing.

It is terrifying to imagine that when you wake up, all the people who used to be around you dont exist anymore.

These were some of the reactions on social media platform Weibo(in Chinese) to news reported(in Chinese) by Science and Technology Dailythat a 49-year-old woman who died from lung cancer was frozen in a tank of liquid nitrogen at a research institute in Shandong. This was Chinas first attempt at cryopreservation, an attempt to have a second chance at life in the future if the technology is ever invented to revive a corpse.

Zhan Wenlian was pronounced clinically dead on May 8 when her heart stopped beating. Zhans body was immediately transferred to a medical laboratory of Yinfeng Biological Group, a for-profit research institute based in Shandong where it was placed on a special operating bed that lowered her body temperature to around 18 degrees Celsius. Then the bodys fluids, including water and blood, were gradually replaced by cryoprotective agents that act as an antifreeze to protect the body from crystallization at extremely low temperatures. After six hours of injections, Zhan was stored in a cooling box filled with liquid nitrogen that will keep her body temperature below minus 196 degrees Celsius. The whole process took about 55 hours.

The procedure was overseen by Dr. Aaron Drake, a medical expert from Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that in 2015 carried out the cryopreservation of the brain of Chinese writer Du Hong , who paid 750,000 yuan ($112,465) for the chance at a second life. According to an employee from Yinfeng, the companys service is in no way inferior to Western counterparts in terms of facilities and technology. I dont know how to put this, but lets just say what Americans and Russians did were not sophisticated enough, the employee confidently said. The cost of Zhans procedure, normally around 50,000 yuan ($7,500) per year, was reportedly mostly covered by the company. In addition, Zhan wasclassified as a body donorto the institute, rather than a client, since China lacks official regulations to govern the nascent cryopreservation industry.

Jiayun Feng

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Freeze your body and cheat death in China China's latest society and culture news - SupChina

Recommendation and review posted by simmons

BWX Technologies, Inc., said Monday that that its subsidiary BWXT Canada Ltd. (BWXT) has been awarded a $48CA million amendment to its existing steam generator purchase agreement from Bruce Power. The amendment reflects the addition of steam drums to Bruce Powers steam generator agreement with BWXT Canada previously announced July 2016.

The steam drums and associated steam separation internals will be designed and fabricated in BWXTs Cambridge, Ontario facility as part of eight steam generators that will be supplied to Bruce Powers Bruce B Unit 6 reactor. The supply of steam generators is part of Bruce Powers Life-Extension Program that will extend the life of six of its reactors, the company announced.

The addition of steam drums integrally manufactured with the steam generators will add to the efficiency of our Steam Generator Replacements that are part of our life extension outage in Unit 6 in 2020 and will be crucial in helping us to safely and reliably operate the site through to 2064, said Mike Rencheck, Bruce Powers president and chief executive officer.

Executives from Bruce Power and BWXT, along with the Member of Provincial Parliament for Cambridge, Ontario and Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry, Kathryn McGarry, plan to tour the Bruce Power site on Tuesday, August 15.

Bruce Power supplies 30 percent of Ontarios electricity at 30 percent less than the average cost to generate residential power. Extending the operational life of the Bruce Power units to 2064 will create and sustain 22,000 direct and indirect jobs every year, create $4 billion in annual Ontario economic benefit, and will ensure low-cost, clean and reliable energy for Ontario families and businesses.

Continued here:
BWXT Canada To Fabricate Steam Drums For Unit 6 At Bruce Power - Nuclear Street - Nuclear Power Plant News, Jobs, and Careers (press release) (blog)

Recommendation and review posted by simmons

The use of stem cells in the treatment of heart failure cases is currently being investigated. Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer in the United States accounting forone third ofall deaths.Heart disease kills more people than cancer, HIV, diabetesor trauma. Many advances in medical and surgical treatment of heart disease have contributed to a growing number of patients in their 70s and 80s with congestive heart failure. An estimated 1% of the Western world has congestive heart failure, including over 5 million Americans with an additional 550,000 new cases each year. Patients with advanced heart failure who require hospitalization, have a 50% mortality within the first fiveyears.

The patients with significant coronary artery disease can sometimes undergo coronary artery bypass surgery or percutaneous coronary intervention to open up blocked arteries. In addition, current medical treatment of patients with congestive heart failure include proven beneficial medicine such as beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, angiotensinIIreceptor blockers, angiotensin IIreceptor blocker Neprilysin inhibitors and diuretics. When appropriate, resynchronization of the right and left ventricles can be accomplished with special types of pacemaker. However, even after following all of these guideline proven therapies, some patients still run out of options and continue to have severe and debilitating congestive heart failure. Heart transplant is a last resort for end stage heart disease.There is a very low number of donor hearts and transplant programs have very restricted eligibility criteria leaving a large number patients with very few options.

An example of a normal LV-gram.

An example of a normal echocardiogram.

There are reasons to believe that regenerative therapy could really help patients with congestive heart failure. Multi-potent cardiac stem cells exist in the heart and participate in the normal turnover of heart muscle cells and small blood vessels.A heart attack kills heart muscle which is made of millions of heart cells. The question is: Would regenerative therapy be able to replace those heart cells or cardiac myocytes?

Thousands of patients have been enrolled in clinical trials to address this question. Regenerative or stem cell therapy has been shown to be safe. Modest benefits have been demonstrated but the mechanism has not been completely elucidated. So far, there is no evidence that cells regenerate from the transplanted stem cells. Animal studies have shown that only 1% of the stem cells injected into the heart tissue are detectable after 1 month. The clinical benefits observed appeared to be due to arelease of growth factors which triggers endogenous repair of the heart cells and inhibits cell death and fibrosis resulting in increased performance of the heart muscle.

An example of an abnormal LV-gram.

An example of an abnormal echocardiogram.

Adult stem cells derived from the bone marrow of healthyyoung donors have been used in clinical trials of heart failure. In the Dream-HF clinical trial, we are using immuno-selected mesenchymalstem cells from healthy adult allogeneic donors. The cells are obtained from their bone marrow, expandedin a manufacturing facility and arecryopreserved until use. These cells are shipped to clinical sites and used for the study.

Allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells have been evaluated in multiple nonclinical and clinical studies, several of which were initiated by Mesoblast, the phase 3 study sponsor. Therapeutic indications under evaluation included heart failure, myocardial infarction, rheumatoid arthritis and graft versus host disease. Currently, results from clinical studies suggest that allogeneic stem cells are generally well tolerated. Moreover,in a phase 2 study ofpatients with heart failure, mesenchymal precursor cell therapy was associated withimprovement inreduction in heart failure hospitalization events and improvementsin functional exercise capacity.

Stem cells from healthy normal volunteers are administered as a 1 time dose of 150 million cells. Myocardial locations are defined within the left ventricle byLeft Ventriculogram (LV-gram)imaging and electromechanical mapping as viable for cell delivery. The cells are administered via a trans-endocardial injection at 15-20 sites inside the heart cavity using a Myostar injection catheter and a NOGA cardiac mapping system. Dr Mendelsohn is the interventional cardiologist performing the injections at BBH Princeton hospital. Only he knows which patients received the stem cells, and he doesnt follow them. The other heart failure specialists follow the patients in the research clinic.

The patients that are injected with stem cells are compared to a group of patient who undergo a Sham or placebo treatment. The treatment arm is not known to the patient or to the heart failure specialist such as myself. This is the only way to find out whether the treatment with stem cells really works. All the patients will be followed by their study team and will be monitored for the clinical effects of stem-cell treatment in patients with congestive heart failure.

No matter how many cases of congestive heart failure we treat, I am still captivated by each and every persons story. One such patient, is a young lady that was treated for heart failure and had a defibrillator placed in 2009. She sought our help and was inquiring about stem cell treatment for her heart. She was only in her early 40s and was desperate to try something new. She was on maximal medical therapy and did not qualify at that time because she was stable. In 2015 however, a clinical deterioration lead to several cardiac procedures including ablation of ventricular arrhythmias and an upgrade of her pacemaker/defibrillator. I thought we were going to lose her. At some point, she was going into incessant ventriculartachycardias and required several prolonged hospitalizations. We referred her to a transplant center and she was evaluated by the transplant team. At the same time, she enrolled in our stem cell research Dream-HF program at the end of 2015.Because she is still part of the research study, I am not sure whether she received stem cells or not. She is amongst one of the many patients that are participating ina stem cell research program that is evaluating cutting edge technology in heart failure. The Dream-HF study is still enrolling patients with chronic systolic heart failure of either ischemic or nonischemic etiology.

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Stem Cells in the Treatment of Heart Failure MyHeart

Recommendation and review posted by simmons

The old rats appeared newly invigorated after receiving their injections. As hoped, the cardiac stem cells improved heart function yet also provided additional benefits. The rats' fur fur, shaved for surgery, grew back more quickly than expected, and their chromosomal telomeres, which commonly shrink with age, lengthened.

The old rats receiving the cardiac stem cells also had increased stamina overall, exercising more than before the infusion.

"It's extremely exciting," said Dr. Eduardo Marbn, primary investigator on the research and director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. Witnessing "the systemic rejuvenating effects," he said, "it's kind of like an unexpected fountain of youth."

"We've been studying new forms of cell therapy for the heart for some 12 years now," Marbn said.

Some of this research has focused on cardiosphere-derived cells.

"They're progenitor cells from the heart itself," Marbn said. Progenitor cells are generated from stem cells and share some, but not all, of the same properties. For instance, they can differentiate into more than one kind of cell like stem cells, but unlike stem cells, progenitor cells cannot divide and reproduce indefinitely.

Since heart failure with preserved ejection fraction is similar to aging, Marbn decided to experiment on old rats, ones that suffered from a type of heart problem "that's very typical of what we find in older human beings: The heart's stiff, and it doesn't relax right, and it causes fluid to back up some," Marbn explained.

He and his team injected cardiosphere-derived cells from newborn rats into the hearts of 22-month-old rats -- that's elderly for a rat. Similar old rats received a placebo injection of saline solution. Then, Marbn and his team compared both groups to young rats that were 4 months old. After a month, they compared the rats again.

Even though the cells were injected into the heart, their effects were noticeable throughout the body, Marbn said

"The animals could exercise further than they could before by about 20%, and one of the most striking things, especially for me (because I'm kind of losing my hair) the animals ... regrew their fur a lot better after they'd gotten cells" compared with the placebo rats, Marbn said.

The rats that received cardiosphere-derived cells also experienced improved heart function and showed longer heart cell telomeres.

Why did it work?

The working hypothesis is that the cells secrete exosomes, tiny vesicles that "contain a lot of nucleic acids, things like RNA, that can change patterns of the way the tissue responds to injury and the way genes are expressed in the tissue," Marbn said.

It is the exosomes that act on the heart and make it better as well as mediating long-distance effects on exercise capacity and hair regrowth, he explained.

Looking to the future, Marbn said he's begun to explore delivering the cardiac stem cells intravenously in a simple infusion -- instead of injecting them directly into the heart, which would be a complex procedure for a human patient -- and seeing whether the same beneficial effects occur.

Dr. Gary Gerstenblith, a professor of medicine in the cardiology division of Johns Hopkins Medicine, said the new study is "very comprehensive."

"Striking benefits are demonstrated not only from a cardiac perspective but across multiple organ systems," said Gerstenblith, who did not contribute to the new research. "The results suggest that stem cell therapies should be studied as an additional therapeutic option in the treatment of cardiac and other diseases common in the elderly."

Todd Herron, director of the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center's Cardiovascular Regeneration Core Laboratory, said Marbn, with his previous work with cardiac stem cells, has "led the field in this area."

"The novelty of this bit of work is, they started to look at more precise molecular mechanisms to explain the phenomenon they've seen in the past," said Herron, who played no role in the new research.

One strength of the approach here is that the researchers have taken cells "from the organ that they want to rejuvenate, so that makes it likely that the cells stay there in that tissue," Herron said.

He believes that more extensive study, beginning with larger animals and including long-term followup, is needed before this technique could be used in humans.

"We need to make sure there's no harm being done," Herron said, adding that extending the lifetime and improving quality of life amounts to "a tradeoff between the potential risk and the potential good that can be done."

Capicor hasn't announced any plans to do studies in aging, but the possibility exists.

After all, the cells have been proven "completely safe" in "over 100 human patients," so it would be possible to fast-track them into the clinic, Marbn explained: "I can't tell you that there are any plans to do that, but it could easily be done from a safety viewpoint."

Read the rest here:
'Unexpected fountain of youth' found in cardiac stem cells, says researcher - CNN

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone By Thomas Winslow Hazlett Yale University Press 401 pages 978-0-300-21050-7 $35

Fred (Alfred E) Kahn kept fretting about the size of his fake nose. It was the 1973 Cornell Savoyards production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe, and he was playing the Lord Chancellor -- the little man who prances around and sings the 'Nightmare Song'. A few years later, he championed airline industry deregulation as part of the Carter administration.

In The Political Spectrum, Thomas Winslow Hazlett -- a professor at Clemson University and a frequent contributor to the libertarian magazine Reason -- reminds us that the job Kahn really wanted was chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). If he'd gotten that job rather than one on the Civil Aeronautics Board, Hazlett says, we'd have cheaper and better wireless service -- but airfares on the "government-protected cartel of carriers" would be really expensive. One could retort: Dr David Dao. However.

This particular 'what-if' is a vignette in Hazlett's history of wireless spectrum regulation, which covers American telecommunications regulation from the Radio Act of 1912 to the present. Hazlett's basic argument is that government-regulated spectrum rights are slowly allocated (over six to 13 years) and endemically and wastefully underused.

The focus is mainly on the US, although Hazlett regards the story as having broader applicability. As he told an audience at the Adam Smith Institute in June: "Every country has its own story, but they tend to have patterns." One of these, and the one that perhaps annoys Hazlett the most, is 'technical reasons' -- the excuse that's always given for not changing how things are done.

Deregulation, Hazlett argues, gave us FM radio, HBO, wi-fi, and the iPhone. Regulation was meant to provide TV services in the public interest -- news, education, and so on. Instead, it gave us a TV landscape that FCC chair Newton N Minow, in a famous 1961 speech to broadcasters in Las Vegas, called a "vast wasteland". Anyone in Britain might say: 'But the BBC!' Hazlett mentions it three times: once as a censor, once as a public utility studied by the economist Ronald Coase, and once (as BBC America) as one of the diverse news and information sources enabled by deregulating cable and ending the "artificial scarcity" of TV channels.

If the book has a hero, it may be Coase. In 1960, he proposed an idea, now known as the Coase theorem, that regulating the airwaves to avoid interference was unnecessary, because as long as property rights in the frequencies were well-defined, the broadcaster to whom the rights were most valuable would pay competitors not to interfere. The market, in other words, would find the most efficient frequency allocation for itself.

Coase, then 50, was much derided for this idea at the time, but lived long enough to receive the Nobel Prize in economics in 1991 and enjoy two decades of vindication before he died in 2013 at the age of 102.

Obviously this is a book that anyone involved with spectrum policy would want as a reference. What's unexpected is that, whether or not you agree with Hazlett's conclusions, it's also reasonably entertaining to read -- no small feat with a subject as esoteric as this.

Risk, film review: Access all Assange areas, to incoherent effectOver six years of filming, Laura Poitras follows the elusive and distant Wikileaks founder from a friend's Norfolk estate to his Ecuadorian Embassy bolt-hole.

Move Fast and Break Things, book review: Where did the internet go wrong?Jonathan Taplin's book examines how a handful of Silicon Valley libertarians came to dominate the internet via giant companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

To Be a Machine, book review: Disrupting life itselfMark O'Connell explores the drive to transcend biology using technology, examining ideas like the Singularity, mind uploading, cryonics, whole-brain emulation and cyborgs.

Thinking Machines, book review: AI, past, present and futureAdvances in recent decades have seen artificial intelligence develop apace, and AI now pervades our lives. Yet, as this book explains, true machine intelligence is still a work in progress.

Read more here:
The Political Spectrum, book review: How wireless deregulation gave us the iPhone - ZDNet

Recommendation and review posted by simmons

Your diet can influence your appearance. You knew that. But did you know that what you eat can also affect your body odor and your attractiveness to the opposite sex? Lilli Carr for NPR hide caption

Your diet can influence your appearance. You knew that. But did you know that what you eat can also affect your body odor and your attractiveness to the opposite sex?

What we eat can influence more than our waistlines. It turns out, our diets also help determine what we smell like.

A recent study found that women preferred the body odor of men who ate a lot of fruits and vegetables, whereas men who ate a lot of refined carbohydrates (think bread, pasta) gave off a smell that was less appealing.

Skeptical? At first, I was, too. I thought this line of inquiry must have been dreamed up by the produce industry. (Makes a good marketing campaign, right?)

But it's legit. "We've known for a while that odor is an important component of attractiveness, especially for women," says Ian Stephen of Macquarie University in Australia. He studies evolution, genetics and psychology and is an author of the study.

From an evolutionary perspective, scientists say our sweat can help signal our health status and could possibly play a role in helping to attract a mate.

How did scientists evaluate the link between diet and the attractiveness of body odor?

They began by recruiting a bunch of healthy, young men. They assessed the men's skin using an instrument called a spectrophotometer. When people eat a lot of colorful veggies, their skin takes on the hue of carotenoids, the plant pigments that are responsible for bright red, yellow and orange foods.

"The carotenoids get deposited in our skin," explains Stephen. The spectrophotometer "flashes a light onto your skin and measures the color reflected back," says Stephen. The results are "a good indicator of how much fruits and vegetables we're eating," he says.

Stephen and his colleagues also had the men in the study complete food frequency questionnaires so they could determine the men's overall patterns of eating. Then the men were given clean T-shirts and asked to do some exercise.

Afterward, women in the study were asked to sniff the sweat. (Note: The methodology was much more scientific and precise than my breezy explanation, but you get the picture.) "We asked the women to rate how much they liked it, how floral, how fruity," and a bunch of other descriptors, explains Stephen.

It's a small study, but the results were pretty consistent. "Women basically found that men who ate more vegetables smelled nicer," Stephen told us.

Men who ate a lot of meat did not produce a sweat that was any more or less attractive to women. But meat did tend to make men's odor more intense.

"This is not the first study to show that diet influences body odor," says George Preti, an adjunct professor in the dermatology department at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

A study published in 2006 found that women preferred the odor of men who ate a non-meat diet, "characterized by increased intakes of eggs, cheese, soy, fruit and vegetables."

But Preti points out that the relationship between diet and body odor is indirect.

Some people think if they eat a garlic or onion or a piece of meat they will smell like that food. "But that's not what happens," Preti says. Your breath might smell like the food you eat, but not your sweat.

Body odor is created when the bacteria on our skin metabolize the compounds that come out of our sweat glands.

"The sweat doesn't come out smelly," Preti explains. "It must be metabolized by the bacteria that live on the surface of the skin."

Now, of course, at a time when good hygiene and deodorant use are commonplace, is the smell of our sweat a big concern?

I put that question to the happy hour crowd at a bar down the street from the NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

"I'm pretty OK with my smell," Stefan Ruffini told me. That evening he was ordering a burger on a bun and a side of fries, along with a beer. When I told him about the findings of the study, he laughed it off.

"I've got a girlfriend, so I don't worry about these things," he said.

The study did not assess diet and odor attractiveness among same-sex couples.

"As a lesbian, I haven't smelled a man in several years," Stacy Carroll, who was also at happy hour, told me. "I eat a lot of produce, I have a girlfriend, so it's working out."

Carroll says people who eat a lot of fruits and vegetables are more likely to be interested in their health "feeling good, looking fit" than their smell.

Visit link:
Men, Listen Up: Women Like The Smell Of Guys Who Eat A Certain Diet - NPR

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Nurture versus nature is a question often bandied about. Is it the environment in which the child is raised, or is it the genetics provided by the biological parents, that most influences what kind of person a child will grow to be?

We have known for a long time that if a parent is depressed, their children are at higher risk for having anxiety, depression, and disruptive behavior. Indeed, the offspring of depressed parents have up to a three-times higher risk of these problems when compared to the children of parents who are not depressed. So, is it because of the environment; or is it genetics?

Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association brings us closer to an answer. It is important to note that the study consisted primarily of mothers with depression, as they are far more likely to report symptoms and come in for treatment than fathers with depression. However, researchers believe that their discovery applies to whichever parent has depression, regardless of whether they are male or female. The results were fascinating: effective treatment of the mother lead to resolution of psychiatric problems in the child.

Study author Myrna Weissman, professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University, said while depression may be a genetic disorder, [this study showed that] a parents illness has a very strong environmental

effect on her child. In other words, when mamas not happy, nobodys happy. Weissman also pointed out if you have a depressed mother, you ought to do everything you can to get her better, because theres a double effect that will impact their children.

I think the message from this research is very powerful, and should be taken to heart by any mother or father. If you as a parent are having psychological trouble, get help and your child will be better for it. If you wont do it for yourself, do it for your kids."

(Holm is a physician specializing in internal medicine at the Avera Health clinic in Brookings.)

View post:
When mama's not happy, nobody's happy - The Capital Journal

Recommendation and review posted by Bethany Smith

Dear Doctor: I read you can use your own stem cells to rejuvenate worn-out knees. Does this really work?

Dear Reader: Worn out is a good way to term what happens to the knee joint with prolonged use. Lets look at how this happens, starting with cartilage.

The lower portion of the knee joint (at the tibia) contains shock absorbers called menisci made of cartilage. You have one on the inner portion and another on the outer portion of each knee. The upper portion of the knee joint (at the femur) is lined with cartilage as well. All of this cartilage helps protect the bones at the joint but it doesnt heal or regenerate well due to limited blood supply. When severe, worn cartilage leads to arthritis of the knee. In knee X-rays of people older than 60, 37 percent have shown evidence of arthritis of the knees.

The intriguing thing about stem cells is they have the ability to become any type of cell the body needs. The cells used for stem cell injections in the knees are called mesenchymal stem cells, and they can differentiate into bone, fat or cartilage cells. These stem cells can come from the fat cells of your body, from your bone marrow or from the inner lining of your knee joint; theyre then replicated in the laboratory and injected into the knee joint.

In a 2014 study, 55 patients who had surgery for meniscal tears of the knees were separated into three groups, with two of the groups receiving stem cell injections. Researchers found, after six weeks, pain had decreased substantially in the two groups that received stem cell injections and the decrease was even greater at one and two years after the injection.

In a 2017 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers analyzed six studies that used stem cells for osteoarthritis of the knees. In five of the studies, stem cells were given after surgery to the knee; in the other study, stem cells from a donor were administered without surgery. All the studies showed reduced pain and improved knee function. Further, in three of the four trials, MRIs corroborated the cartilage improvements. However, the authors noted, five of the six studies were of such poor methodology that an overall conclusion about the stem cells effectiveness could not be made.

In all these studies, the most common side effect was knee swelling and stiffness, which improved over time.

There may be benefit to stem cell injections for cartilage loss of the knees, but more data is needed, especially in those who arent having surgery of the knee. Id also like to see more data on this type of therapy as a preventive measure for younger patients before their knees are worn out.

Send questions to askthedoctors@mednet.ucla.edu, or write: Ask the Doctors, c/o Media Relations, UCLA Health, 924 Westwood Blvd., Suite 350, Los Angeles, CA, 90095.

View post:
Stem cell therapy may yield positive results for worn-out knees - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

Recommendation and review posted by simmons

DETROIT Near the open doorway in the Comerica Park visitors clubhouse is a sign warning the curious to stay out of the kitchen. No media, it reads, making its point in all caps. So, its with some irony that a few feet away, Bartolo Coln agrees to a brief one-on-one with a reporter, his first since joining the Minnesota Twins.

Coln has fulfilled his media requirements when he starts, speaking with reporters through Twins interpreter Carlos Font about his performances, but thats where he prefers to leave it. Hes easy to find in the clubhouse, and will say hello and shake your hand, but he also makes it clear that its not going any further which would be fine if he hadnt become an essential part of the Twins playoff chase.

When the Twins signed Coln to a minor league deal on July 7, the primary response was laughter. This is the help the American League Centrals surprise team is getting for the stretch run, a 44-year-old with a 2-8 record and 8.14 earned-run average who had just been given his outright release by the Atlanta Braves?

Well, no ones laughing now.

I think it probably raised a few eyebrows when we brought him in, but hes been valuable, manager Paul Molitor said.

What appears to be happening is another in a string of career resurrections for the right-hander who broke in with the Cleveland Indians in 1997, won a Cy Young Award in 2005 and signed his first free-agent minor league deal with Boston in 2008. Hes no longer throwing hard, but his control remains as sharp as his competitive nature.

The older I get, the more I want to play, he said.

Over his past three starts, Coln is 2-0 with a 2.82 ERA with three walks and 11 strikeouts in 22.1 innings pitched. In his last start, he became the oldest AL pitcher to throw a complete game since Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan did it for Texas in 1992. On Tuesday, hell make the most important start of the season so far in the opener of a three-game series against the first-place Cleveland Indians at Target Field.

That explains the persistence that has kept alive a career that has seemed dead more than once. It was a whopping nine years ago that Coln first signed a minor league deal with a spring training invite, a cheap gambit by the Boston Red Sox. In four seasons from 2006-09, he went 14-21 with a 5.18 ERA with three clubs while battling elbow and shoulder problems. He missed all of 2010.

I thought I was going to be done, he said.

Coln credits 2010 stem-cell treatment fat and bone marrow was re-injected into his elbow and shoulder for saving his arm. Major League Baseball studied the treatment to see if it fell under its performance-enhancing drug policy, but it has since become a popular, if not quite trumpeted, treatment for pitchers hoping to avoid reconstructive surgery.

It has helped me to keep my arm young and keep me going, Coln said.

Coln, however, did fall afoul of MLB when he tested positive for testosterone in August 2012. He was 39, and many suspected he had finally hit the end of the road. Yet, he returned the next season with Oakland and went 18-6 with a 2.65 ERA and an AL-best three shutouts.

Last season, he went 15-8 with a 3.34 ERA with the Mets, parlaying the season into a one-year, $12.5 million deal with Atlanta. The Braves are still on the hook for most of that contract, meaning the Twins are getting Coln at a bargain, prorated league minimum roughly $220,000.

He chose the Twins over the Mets after receiving a call from friend and former teammate in Anaheim, Ervin Santana.

The Mets and the Twins were the teams requesting my services, and I was weighing my options, Coln said. Ervin Santana called me and asked me to come and told me how good the organization was, how good the team was. After I started looking at it, and seeing how young their pitching was and how many young kids we had on the team, and I thought its not only an opportunity for me to pitch, but an opportunity to teach other young players how to pitch and how to be big-leaguers.

Its a bonus for the Twins, who have been pleased by the way Coln has quickly bonded with his new teammates.

Ive got a couple guys on my pitching staff that Im praying to God they watch how he attacks the zone and what he does, pitching coach Neil Allen said. He doesnt try to do more, he doesnt try to do less; he stays with who he is, and thats to be consistently in the zone and let the hitter get himself out.

He doesnt try to change a darn thing. He knows who he is. So, Im praying that a lot of the young guys see what he does.

When pressed, Coln reveals little about what keeps him going. Is he addicted to the competition?

I think its more that baseballs all Ive done, its all I know how to do, and knowing that I still like doing it is what keeps me going, he said. I still have fun with it.

Before his mother, Adriana, passed away from breast cancer in 2014, Coln promised her he would keep playing for several more years if he could. But he doesnt seem done yet, not after throwing a complete game. Not with a playoff spot to chase.

Were not making any major rash decisions right now, he said. I made a promise to my mom that I was going to pitch until next year, until Im 45. I want to accomplish that. So, who knows?

If I find the opportunity, and someone gives me a chance, then depending on how things end this year absolutely.

See the rest here:
Twins' Bartolo Coln: 'The older I get, the more I want to play.' - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press

Recommendation and review posted by sam

ACTH

Adrenocorticotropic hormone. This hormone is produced by the pituitary gland and flows through the blood to the adrenal glands to tell them to produce more cortisol.

A benign tumor or growth. A pituitary adenoma is not cancerous.

Glands situated just above each of the kidneys and which produce various essential hormones including cortisol and aldosterone.

Surgical removal of the adrenal glands.

Anti-diuretic hormone or vasopressin. This hormone is produced by the pituitary and causes the kidneys to conserve body fluids.

An agonist is a molecule that triggers the same effects and actions as a naturally occurring molecule or hormone. It stimulates or activates cellular responses just like the natural hormone. For example, a dopamine agonist causes the same effect on cells as dopamine itself by binding to the same receptor on the surface of cells. This causes the cell to respond in the same way as it would in the presence of the real hormone.

The pituitary hormone that controls water balance.

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A drug of a type called dopamine agonists, which can be used to reduce prolactin production in people with prolactinomas. Its brand name is Parlodel and it is produced by Novartis.

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A drug of a type called dopamine agonists, which can be used to reduce prolactin production for people with prolactinomas. Its brand name is Dostinex and it is produced by Pfizer.

One of the hormones produced by the adrenal glands. It is particularly important in times of stress and illness.

A problem that occurred during fetal development (in the womb) that may grow at any time in life; not a cancer or brain tumor; often causes loss of pituitary function and may cause diabetes insipidus.

Corticotropin-releasing hormone normally made by the hypothalamus to stimulate ACTH production. In synthetic form, used to test for pituitary-dependent Cushing's disease.

Cushing's syndrome when caused by a tumour of the pituitary gland.

Caused by overproduction of cortisol for any reason.

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5-dehydroepiandrosterone is an steroid naturally produced by adrenal glands and synthesized in the brain. It is a prohormone, considered to be a precursor for the sex steroids.

A form of diabetes that results from water imbalance and is characterized by in frequent urination and excessive thirst.

A neurotransmitter mad in the brain which regulates prolactin secretion. The medicines used to treat prolactinomas are effective because they are designed to increase the action of dopamine.

Dopamine agonists such as bromocriptine (brand name Parlodel) and cabergoline (brand name Dostinex) inhibit GH release from the tumor. They work by stimulating natural receptorsof the hormone dopamine on the surface of the tumor. This sends messages into the tumor cells to stop producing GH.

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Production of ACTH from a site other than the pituitary gland.

Relating to hormone.

The body-wide system of hormone-producing glands, and the hormones they make, which control many aspects of life, including growth and reproduction.

A doctor who specializes in treating hormone illnesses.

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A medication that controls salt and water balance.

In every million people, three cases of acromegaly are diagnosed each year.

Follicle-stimulating hormone. This is one of the two pituitary hormones (with LH) that is released from the testes in men and the ovaries in women.

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A condition where a milky discharge is produced from the breasts in a woman who is not pregnant or lactating. Galactorrhea can also occur in men, but is rare.

Gigantism is a serious disorder where a person has grown very large and tall due to excess secretion of growth hormone from the pituitary gland during childhood. Heights of people suffering from this disorder can reach eight feet . For more information on this condition please visit: http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=4914

As the name suggests, growth hormone (GH) stimulates physical growth in children. It is a hormone that is produced by the pituitary gland and has widespread effects on the body. After you have stopped growing at 17 or 18, the skeleton changes and is no longer able to increase in height. However, growth hormone still plays important roles in adulthood, such as maintaining muscle tone and regulating metabolism, energy levels and psychological wellbeing.

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A chemical substance produced by the endocrine glands of the body, which works by sending messages through the bloodstream.

Hormone therapy is the term used for any pharmaceutical/drug therapy given to an individual to provide particular hormones that are missing or present at an abnormally low level. If the pituitary gland is not functioning, specific hormonal therapy will be prescribed to replace those hormones that the gland would normally produce.

The drug name of cortisol when it is made into a tablet or injection.

A medical condition in which a patient has elevated blood levels of prolactin, most often due to a pituitary tumor (a prolactinoma). Normal prolactin levels are less than 25 ng/ml in women and less than 17 ng/ml in men. In addition to a pituitary tumor, some medications, hypothyroidism, and kidney disease can lead to elevated serum levels of prolactin.

Hypopituitarism is a disorder in which the pituitary gland does not produce the normal amounts of some or all of its hormones. Hypopituitarism can affect several systems and cause growth failure in children, low thyroid hormone production (necessary for metabolism), low cortisol (steroid) production, and loss of reproductive function (loss of menstrual cycles in women, low testosterone in men and problems with fertility in both men and women). This is an uncommon condition and all missing hormones can be replaced.

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IGF-1 is a very important hormone involved in growth and development, and it is made by many tissues in the body. IGF stands for insulin-like growth factor but you will probably hear the hormone referred to as I-G-F-one.

Insulin is a hormone secreted by a group of islet cells within the pancreas, which is an organ located near the stomach. Most cells in the body have insulin receptors that bind to circulating insulin, which triggers the cell to absorb glucose (sugar). Without insulin, cells are starved because they cannot access the calories contained in the glucose.

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Luteinizing hormone. This hormone is produced by the pituitary and sends messages to the reproductive organs (called gonads) the ovaries in women and testes in men. In children, LH contributes to sexual development. In women, it works together with FSH to control ovulation and is thus essential for a normal menstrual cycle and for fertility. In men FSH stimulates the testes to produce sperm.

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A prolactinoma that is 10 mm or larger.

A prolactinoma that is smaller than 10 mm (or about 1/2 inch).

Magnetic resonance imaging - a type of scan that produces a clear image and which is used to determine the size and location of the tumour.

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Pituitary hormone that causes contraction of the uterus during labor.

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Pegvisomant is a growth hormone antagonist. It does not lower the level of GH released from the tumor but it stops the hormone from acting on its targets in various parts of the body. This then prevents the effects of too much GH, such as overproduction of IGF-I. To do this pegvisomant binds to the natural receptors for growth hormone and gets in the way of the hormone being able to bind and send messages into cells. Imagine forcing the wrong key into a lock; the correct key cannot then fit in, and the lock cannot be opened.

A drug that is used to reduce prolactin production in people with prolactinomas. Its brand name is Permax and it is produced by Eli Lilly.

The pituitary gland is an important gland and it is often referred to as the 'master gland', because it controls several of the other hormone-producing glands. It is usually about the size of a pea and is situated in a bony hollow beneath the base of the brain and just behind the bridge of your nose. The gland consists of two parts (often called lobes) each of which has different functions. The pituitary gland is also sometimes called the hypophysis.

Prolactin. This hormone is produced by the pituitary and is usually best known as the milk hormone, because its main purpose is to stimulate the breasts to produce milk after childbirth. However, men and women produce prolactin all the time. Its purpose in men is unclear.

A hormone produced by the pituitary gland that stimulates the production of breast milk during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

An abnormal growth, or tumor, on the pituitary gland. The tumor is almost always noncancerous (benign) and causes the pituitary to produce too much prolactin which leads to hyperprolactinemia.

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A dopamine agonist approved for use in Europe, Canada, and Australia. The drug is not approved by the FDA for treatment of hyperprolactinemia in the US.

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Finely targeted radiation therapy using MRI to pinpoint the tumour.

Radiation treatment, usually used after surgery, which prevents regrowth of the tumour. Radiotherapy has a long-acting effect and may cause reduction of some of the other pituitary hormones over time, thus requiring them to be replaced.

A receptor is a specialized protein on the surface or interior of a cell that interacts only with very specific molecules in the surrounding environment. Receptors enable molecules or drugs outside cells to communicate a signal to the interior, causing a response within that cell.

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These mimic a natural hormone, called somatostatin, and latch onto the hormones natural receptors on the surface of the tumor. When this lock and key connection is made specific signals are sent into the tumor cells to make them stop producing GH.

Stimulation testing is conducted when your health care provider suspects you are not producing the appropriate amount of a hormone. The test varies depending on which hormone is being evaluated, but the test typically involves a pretest phase during which you may be required to fast or eat a very specific diet, and then a blood sample is collected.

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The thyroid is a gland that lies over the windpipe and just below the larynx. It produces hormones which are essential to numerous body processes.

Thyroid-stimulating hormone. A hormone produced by the pituitary, which sends a message to the thyroid gland to increase or decrease its production of the hormone, thyroxine.

A method of operating on the pituitary gland by making an incision in front of the upper teeth and behind the upper lip, or alternatively inside the nose. This allows the surgeon access to the pituitary via the sphenoid sinus and minimizes trauma to the patient.

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2003 Pituitary Society. All Rights Reserved. E&OE.

Originally posted here:
The Pituitary Society | Glossary of Terms Related to ...

Recommendation and review posted by sam

Imagine the moment, youve just been told youre expecting twins. You are trying not to think about The Shining.

You are wondering why you, specifically, have somehow ended up doubly pregnant. Allow Techly to shed some light on the subject.

Now while that clip from the late 80s buddy comedy Twins isnt the most scientific thing youll see today, its always fun to see Arnie acting in the rare scenes when he isnt mowing down foot soldiers and it does raise a significant point. There is a large difference between identical (or monozygotic) twins and fraternal (dizygotic) twins, here demonstrated ably by DeVito and Schwarzenegger.

In the case of identical twins, as the medical term monozygotic may suggest, they occur when one zygote (essentially a fertilized egg) splits into two halves during early development, meaning both embryos have identical genetic information. Fraternal twins, on the other hand, develop from two separate zygotes and are therefore made up of differing, while similar, genetic information.

So, is there a genetic reason for the occurrence of twins? Could there be some genetic predisposition to carrying twins? Well according to this post on The Stanford Tech forum its kind of yes and no territory. To be more specific, the post states identical twins do not run in families and a history of fraternal twins only helps if it comes in on the mothers side. Furthermore, it says that a female fraternal twin is 2.5 times more likely to give birth to a further set of twins and that goes up to 3-4 times when the woman already has already given birth to a set of fraternal twins.

According to the Sciencemag site scientists from eight countries found two genes that increase a womans chance of having twins. A team of researchers in Amsterdam, where the Nederlands Twin Register which currently contains 75,000 cases, started in 1987 collated data from databases in the Nederlands, USA and good ol Australia.

The researchers, working on a sample of over 2000 births, examined the genetic information of the mothers to see if there was a common link between the mothers of fraternal twins. They eventually narrowed it down to two SNPs (essentially single stretches of DNA that signpost genetic differences between people) and subsequently reported in the American Journal of Human Genetics that having a copy of each of them will increase that persons chances of giving birth to fraternal twins by a huge 29%. The first SNP relates to the production of the follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), which, if the levels remain quite high while the ovaries mature, can lead to the production of more than one egg. The other SNP is a little more mysterious, SMAD3 has been noted to change how ovaries respond to FSH, at least in mice but in terms of its role in human fertilization, research is ongoing.

So there you have it, of course, a full genetic analysis is not necessarily available to everyone, so whether or not you are genetically predisposed to have your own DeVito/Schwarzenegger caper may have to remain a surprise for now. Having said that, youre family history can, of course, be a handy indicator when considering your own genetic make-up, so Auntie Jane should be able to give you some idea!

Originally posted here:
Techly Explains: Are twins genetic? - Techly

Recommendation and review posted by simmons