An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The oldest patient yet has been cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant for leukaemia, researchers reported on Wednesday. While the transplant was planned to treat the now-66-year-old's leukaemia, the doctors also sought a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, a mechanism that first worked to cure the "Berlin patient," Timothy Ray Brown, in 2007.

The latest patient, the fourth to be cured in this way, is known as the "City of Hope" patient after the U.S. facility in Duarte, California, where he was treated, because he does not want to be identified. As well as being the oldest, the patient has also had HIV the longest, having been diagnosed in 1988 with what he described as a "death sentence" that killed many of his friends. He has been on antiretroviral therapy (ART) to control his condition for more than 30 years. [...] Scientists think the process works because the donor individual's stem cells have a specific, rare genetic mutation which means they lack the receptors used by HIV to infect cells. "Scientists think the process works because the donor individual's stem cells have a specific, rare genetic mutation which means they lack the receptors used by HIV to infect cells," adds Reuters.

"After the transplant three and a half years ago, which followed chemotherapy, the City of Hope patient stopped taking ART in March 2021. He has now been in remission from both HIV and leukaemia for more than a year, the team said."

Researchers in Spain also presented a case of a 59-year-old woman who is considered to be in a state of viral remission. "She has now maintained a fully suppressed viral load for over 15 years," reports NBC News. "Unlike the handful of people either cured or possibly cured by stem cell transplants, however, she still harbors virus that is capable of producing viable new copies of itself. Her body has actually controlled the virus more efficiently with the passing years, according to Dr. Juan Ambrosioni, an HIV physician in the Barcelona clinic."

Reuters reports: The rapidly spreading monkeypox outbreak represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organization's highest level of alert, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Saturday.

The WHO label — a "public health emergency of international concern" — is designed to trigger a coordinated international response and could unlock funding to collaborate on sharing vaccines and treatments. Members of an expert committee that met on Thursday to discuss the potential recommendation were split on the decision, with nine members against and six in favour of the declaration, prompting Tedros himself to break the deadlock, he told reporters. "Although I am declaring a public health emergency of international concern, for the moment this is an outbreak that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners," Tedros told a media briefing in Geneva.

A 37-year-old junior professor in Tennessee "identified apparently altered or duplicated images in dozens of journal articles," reports Science magazine.

But that was just the beginning for Matthew Schrag, whose sleuthing then "drew him into a different episode of possible misconduct, leading to findings that threaten one of the most cited Alzheimer's studies of this century and numerous related experiments." The first author of that influential study, published in Nature in 2006, was an ascending neuroscientist: Sylvain Lesné of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His work underpins a key element of the dominant yet controversial amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's, which holds that A clumps, known as plaques, in brain tissue are a primary cause of the devastating illness, which afflicts tens of millions globally. In what looked like a smoking gun for the theory and a lead to possible therapies, Lesné and his colleagues discovered an A subtype and seemed to prove it caused dementia in rats.

If Schrag's doubts are correct, Lesné's findings were an elaborate mirage....

A 6-month investigation by Science provided strong support for Schrag's suspicions and raised questions about Lesné's research. A leading independent image analyst and several top Alzheimer's researchers — including George Perry of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and John Forsayeth of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) — reviewed most of Schrag's findings at Science's request. They concurred with his overall conclusions, which cast doubt on hundreds of images, including more than 70 in Lesné's papers. Some look like "shockingly blatant" examples of image tampering, says Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer's expert at the University of Kentucky. The authors "appeared to have composed figures by piecing together parts of photos from different experiments," says Elisabeth Bik, a molecular biologist and well-known forensic image consultant. "The obtained experimental results might not have been the desired results, and that data might have been changed to ... better fit a hypothesis...."

Schrag's work, done independently of Vanderbilt and its medical center, implies millions of federal dollars may have been misspent on the research — and much more on related efforts. Some Alzheimer's experts now suspect Lesné's studies have misdirected Alzheimer's research for 16 years. "The immediate, obvious damage is wasted NIH funding and wasted thinking in the field because people are using these results as a starting point for their own experiments," says Stanford University neuroscientist Thomas Südhof, a Nobel laureate and expert on Alzheimer's and related conditions.

Lesné did not respond to requests for comment....

Some Alzheimer's experts see a failure of skepticism, including by journals that published the work.
Schrag has warned America's National Institutes of Health that the suspect work "not only represents a substantial investment in [NIH] research support, but has been cited ... thousands of times and thus has the potential to mislead an entire field of research."

And Harvard neurologic disease professor Dennis Selkoe told Science "There are certainly at least 12 or 15 images where I would agree that there is no other explanation" than manipulation. Selkoe's bigger worry, he says, is that the Lesné episode might further undercut public trust in science during a time of increasing skepticism and attacks. But scientists must show they can find and correct rare cases of apparent misconduct, he says. "We need to declare these examples and warn the world."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Crypto Fireside for sharing the story!

An unvaccinated young adult from New York recently contracted polio, the first U.S. case in nearly a decade, health officials said Thursday. The Associated Press reports: Officials said the patient, who lives in Rockland County, had developed paralysis. The person developed symptoms a month ago and did not recently travel outside the country, county health officials said. It appears the patient had a vaccine-derived strain of the virus, perhaps from someone who got live vaccine -- available in other countries, but not the U.S. -- and spread it, officials said. The person is no longer deemed contagious, but investigators are trying to figure out how the infection occurred and whether other people may have been exposed to the virus. The report notes that polio was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 1979, "meaning there was no longer routine spread."

Amazon is acquiring One Medical for $18 a share, an all-cash deal that values the primary health care provider at roughly $3.9 billion, the companies said Thursday. From a report: The deal deepens Amazon's presence in health care, which Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said is "high on the list of experiences that need reinvention."

The e-commerce giant hopes to improve how people book appointments and the experience of being seen by a physician, Lindsay said in a statement. "We love inventing to make what should be easy easier and we want to be one of the companies that helps dramatically improve the healthcare experience over the next several years," he said.

Apple published a nearly 60-page report Wednesday outlining all its health features and partnerships with medical institutions, arguing that such offerings are key to the tech giant's future. From a report: The company pointed to its breadth of existing services -- from sleep monitoring and fitness classes to atrial-fibrillation detection and cycle tracking -- and promised to build on that foundation. Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who oversees Apple's health endeavors, said in a statement attached to the report that the company will continue to innovate in "science-based technology."

"The health innovations we've pioneered have aimed to help break down barriers between users and their own everyday health data, between health-care providers and patients, and between researchers and study participants," he said. The report serves as a response to Apple critics, who have knocked the company for not doing as much as rivals in health care. Though the Apple Watch dominates the market, the device hasn't always gotten novel health features as quickly as competitors' products. And fellow tech titans such as Amazon.com and Google have made ambitious forays into the medical field -- with mixed results. Apple is arguing that it's a pioneer in health technology and positioned to use it as a growth driver in the years ahead.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Synchron, a brain-computer interface startup, reportedly implanted its first device in a US patient earlier this month. The startup implanted a 1.5-inch device into the brain of an ALS patient at Mount Sinai West medical center in New York on July 6, Bloomberg first reported. The purpose of the device is to allow the patient to communicate -- even after they have lost the ability to move -- by using their thoughts to send emails and texts. Bloomberg reported that Synchron has already implanted the device in four patients in Australia who have been able to use the brain implant to send messages on WhatsApp and shop online. Elon Musk's Neuralink has a similar mission, but is still waiting for FDA approval. "Neuralink and Synchron's products have several key differences: namely, size and installation," notes the report. "The Australian startup's product can be inserted into a human skull without cutting into it using a catheter that feeds the device through the jugular vein into a blood vessel in the brain. The process requires two separate surgeries."

"In contrast, Neuralink plans to make a much smaller and more powerful device that would require a portion of the individual's skull to be removed and would be performed using a robot." Neuralink also appears to be slightly more ambitious, with Musk referring to the device as "a Fitbit in your skull."

Two cases of the deadly Marburg virus have been identified in Ghana, the first time the Ebola-like disease has been found in the west African nation. From a report: Earlier in the month, blood samples taken from two people in the southern Ashanti region suggested they had the Marburg virus. The samples were sent to the Pasteur Institute in Senegal, which confirmed the diagnosis, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) said. "This is the first time Ghana has confirmed Marburg virus disease," said the GHS head, Patrick Kuma-Aboagye. No treatment or vaccine exists for Marburg, which is almost as deadly as Ebola. Its symptoms include high fever as well as internal and external bleeding. Ninety-eight people identified as contact cases were under quarantine, the GHS statement said, noting that no other cases of Marburg had yet been detected in Ghana. The World Health Organization declared Ghana's first outbreak. "Health authorities have responded swiftly, getting a headstart preparing for a possible outbreak," said the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti.

A new paper, published in the journal Science, found that when the Y chromosome was gone from blood cells in male mice genetically engineered to lose their Y chromosomes, scar tissue built up in the heart, leading to heart failure and a shortened life span. The New York Times reports: Because there was a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the loss of Y and ailments of aging in the mice, the study bolsters the notion that the same thing can happen in human males. Researchers have documented an increase in risk for chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer related to loss of the Y chromosome in many studies over the years, including the new one, which used data from a large genetic study of the British population. The loss of Y could even account for some of the difference between the life spans of men and women, the authors of the Science study say.

At least 40 percent of males lose the Y chromosome from some of their blood cells by age 70. And by age 93, at least 57 percent have lost some of it. The chromosome is lost sporadically from blood cells during cell division, when it is kicked out of some cells and then disintegrates. The result is what researchers call a mosaic loss of Y. There is no way, other than to stop smoking, to reduce the risk of losing the Y chromosome. And the condition is unrelated to men having lower levels of testosterone in their bodies as they age. Taking testosterone supplements would have no effect, nor would it reverse the consequences. [...]

It is too soon to say what men should do -- other than to stop smoking -- to protect themselves from losing their Y chromosomes or to alleviate the consequences. Those in [the researcher's] group found they could protect the hearts of the mice without Y chromosomes by blocking TGF-beta, a key molecule involved in the production of scar tissue. Dr. Stephen Chanock, the director of the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the National Cancer Institute, said the mouse study was "really cool." But he noted that there was no evidence yet that drugs to block TGF-beta would be effective in men who lost their Y. And, for now, there is little point in testing men for loss of Y, Dr. Chanock said, adding, "the over-interpretation of these data for monetary purposes worries me deeply."

Some Beijing residents returning from domestic travel were asked by local authorities to wear COVID-19 monitoring bracelets, prompting widespread criticism on Chinese social media by users concerned about excessive government surveillance. Reuters reports: According to posts published on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning on microblogging platform Weibo, some Beijing residents returning to the capital were asked by their neighborhood committees to wear an electronic bracelet throughout the mandatory home quarantine period. Chinese cities require those arriving from parts of China where COVID cases were found to quarantine. Authorities fit doors with movement sensors to monitor their movements but until now have not widely discussed the use of electronic bracelets.

The bracelets monitor users' temperature and upload the data onto a phone app they had to download, the posts said. "This bracelet can connect to the Internet, it can definitely record my whereabouts, it is basically the same as electronic fetters and handcuffs, I won't wear this," Weibo user Dahongmao wrote on Wednesday evening, declining to comment further when contacted by Reuters. This post and others that shared pictures of the bracelets were removed by Thursday afternoon, as well as a related hashtag that had garnered over 30 million views, generating an animated discussion on the platform.

A community worker at Tiantongyuan, Beijing's northern suburb, confirmed to state-backed news outlet Eastday that the measure was in effect in the neighbourhood, though she called the practice "excessive." A Weibo post and a video published on the official account of Eastday.com was removed by Thursday afternoon. Weibo user Dahongmao wrote on Thursday afternoon his neighbourhood committee had already collected the bracelets, telling him that "there were too many complaints."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Researchers successfully transplanted genetically modified pig hearts into two recently deceased people connected to ventilators, the New York University team announced today. The surgeries are the latest step forward in the field of animal-to-human transplants, or xenotransplantation, which has seen a flurry of successes so far this year -- raising hopes for a new, steady supply of organs to ease shortages. The only thing different about these heart transplants from a normal human-to-human heart transplant was the organ itself, the research team said in a statement.

The team performed the transplants on June 16th and July 9th, and each recipient was monitored for three days. In that time, the hearts functioned normally, and there weren't signs of rejection from the recipients, who were connected to ventilators to keep their body processes functioning semi-regularly, even after death. The two recipients were not able to be organ donors but were able to participate in whole-body donation for this type of research. The two pig hearts came from biotechnology company Revivicor, which produces genetically modified pigs (and also funded the research). The pigs had 10 genetic modifications -- four to block pig genes and prevent rejection and six to add human genes. A living person was successfully given a pig heart in early January, notes the report. While the person responded well to the transplant initially, they died of heart failure in March.

"The specific cause is still unknown, but infection with a pig virus may have contributed to his death," adds The Verge. "The pig hearts are supposed to be free of viruses, but experts say they can be hard to detect." A research paper in late June details everything that went wrong with the transplant.

Amazon is developing cancer vaccines in collaboration with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and it recently launched an FDA-approved clinical trial. From a report: Amazon and Fred Hutchinson are looking to recruit 20 participants over the age of 18 for the early stage, or phase 1, trial, according to a filing on clinicaltrials.gov, a database of clinical trials run by the National Library of Medicine. The goal is to develop "personalized vaccines" that can treat breast cancer and melanoma, a form of skin cancer, the filing states. Fred Hutchinson is listed as a sponsor of the study, while Amazon is listed as a collaborator, according to the filing. News of the partnership was first reported by Business Insider. The study was first posted last October, and it began June 9. It's expected to be complete by Nov. 1 of 2023. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the partnership, and said it's being led by Fred Hutch. "Amazon is contributing scientific and machine learning expertise to a partnership with Fred Hutch to explore the development of a personalized treatment for certain forms of cancer," the spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. "It's very early, but Fred Hutch recently received permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to proceed with a Phase I clinical trial, and it's unclear whether it will be successful. This will be a long, multi-year process -- should it progress, we would be open to working with other organizations in health care and life sciences that might also be interested in similar efforts."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: In 2020 [EndeavorRx] became the first such game to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the treatment of ADHD in children. Currently only available on prescription from doctors in the US, EndeavorRx at first glance looks very similar to countless other games. You control a little alien that races on a spaceship through different worlds having to collect things. But the app-based game was developed in conjunction with neuroscientists, and is designed to stimulate and improve areas of the brain that play a key role in attention function. The idea is that it trains a child with ADHD to both better multitask and ignore distractions, with a computer algorithm measuring his or her performance and customizing the difficulty of the game in real time. When doctors prescribe it, the child's parents get sent an activation link that is needed before the game will play.

Eddie Martucci, chief executive of Akili, the Boston-based tech firm behind EndeavorRx, says the game has been designed to boost cognitive progressing. "It is something that's very difficult to get through molecular means, like taking a pill. But it turns out that sensory stimuli can actually directly stimulate parts of the brain controlling cognitive function." His company now plans to launch the game in Europe in the next few years. Akili is one of only a handful of companies with clearance to offer a digital therapeutic as a prescription for medical conditions. Late last year, the FDA approved a virtual reality-based treatment for children with the visual disorder amblyopia, or lazy eye.

Adding salt to meals at the table is linked to an earlier death, according to a study of 500,000 middle-aged Britons. From a report: Researchers found that always adding salt to food knocks more than two years off life expectancy for men and one-and-a-half years for women. This does not include seasoning during the cooking process. The study did not definitively rule out other factors, such as salt consumption being a proxy for a generally less healthy lifestyle, but the team behind the work said the evidence was compelling enough that people should consider avoiding seasoning their meals.

"To my knowledge, our study is the first to assess the relation between adding salt to foods and premature death," said Prof Lu Qi of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, who led the work. "Even a modest reduction in sodium intake, by adding less or no salt to food at the table, is likely to result in substantial health benefits, especially when it is achieved in the general population." The findings were based on research involving more than 500,000 participants in the UK Biobank study, who were followed for an average of nine years. When joining the study between 2006 and 2010, they were asked, via a touchscreen questionnaire, whether they added salt to their foods and how often they did so.

Germany's BioNTech, Pfizer's partner in COVID-19 vaccines, said the two companies would start tests on humans of next-generation shots that protect against a wide variety of coronaviruses in the second half of the year. From a report: Their experimental work on shots that go beyond the current approach include T-cell-enhancing shots, designed to primarily protect against severe disease if the virus becomes more dangerous, and pan-coronavirus shots that protect against the broader family of viruses and its mutations. In presentation slides posted on BioNTech's website for its investor day, the German biotech firm said its aim was to "provide durable variant protection." The two partners, makers of the Western world's most widely used COVID-19 shot, are currently discussing with regulators enhanced versions of their established shot to better protect against the Omicron variant and its sublineages.

Rodrigo Perez Ortega writes via Science Magazine: With climate change, heat waves and cold fronts are worsening and taking lives worldwide: about 5 million in the past 20 years, according to at least one study. In a new study published today in Nature Medicine, an international team of researchers estimates that almost 900,000 deaths in the years between 2002 and 2015 could be attributable to extreme temperatures alone in major Latin American cities. This is the most detailed estimate in Latin America, and the first ever for some cities.

To estimate how many people died from intense heat or cold, researchers with the Urban Health in Latin America project -- which studies how urban environments and policies impact the health of city residents in Latin America -- looked at mortality data between 2002 and 2015 from registries of 326 cities with more than 100,000 residents, in nine countries throughout Latin America. They calculated the average daily temperatures and estimated the temperature range for each city from a public data set of atmospheric conditions. If a death occurred either on the 18 hottest or the 18 coldest days that each city experienced in a typical year, they linked it to extreme temperatures. Using a statistical model, the researchers compared the risk of dying on very hot and cold days, and this risk with the risk of dying on temperate days. They found that in Latin American metropolises, nearly 6% -- almost 1 million -- of all deaths between those years happened on days of extreme heat and cold. They also created an interactive map with the data for individual cities.

When the team analyzed the specific cause of these deaths in the registries, they found -- consistent with previous studies -- that extreme temperatures are often linked to deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Extreme heat makes the heart pump more blood and causes dehydration and pulmonary stress. Extreme cold, on the other hand, can make the heart pump less blood and cause hypotension and, in some cases, organ failure. The team also found older adults are especially vulnerable to extreme temperatures, with 7.5% of deaths among them correlated to extreme heat and cold during the study period. Although the numbers varied from year to year, in 2015, for instance, more than 16,000 deaths -- out of nearly 855,000 -- among people ages 65 or older were attributable to extreme temperatures. Latin America's aging population is projected to rise more quickly than other parts of the world -- from 9% in 2020 to 19% in 2050, by some estimates (PDF). [...] Although deaths on extremely cold days -- about 785,000 -- were much higher than those on extremely hot days -- about 103,000 -- overall there were more days with intense cold, which could explain this difference. But for some cities, such as Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Merida, heat is more deadly than cold: The researchers estimated that on very hot days, the chance of dying increases by 5.7% for every 1C increase in temperature.

Serhat Gumrukcu faces trial in a purported plot to kill an associate who could have exposed him and derailed a drug-development deal worth millions. From a report: Even as a teenager back in Turkey, Serhat Gumrukcu dazzled audiences. In a 2002 video, he opened one of his magic shows dancing with a cane that appeared to be levitating. He was introduced as a medical student and went by the stage name "Dr. No." A little more than a decade later, not long after Mr. Gumrukcu arrived in the U.S., he had his hand in multimillion-dollar oil and real-estate deals. Yet his best-known venture was in medicine. For a time, he thrilled investors with ideas for groundbreaking treatments and drew special notice from the government's top infectious-disease official, Anthony Fauci. In America, the magician had found a new, more lucrative audience.

Enochian Biosciences co-founded by Mr. Gumrukcu in 2018, paid more than $21 million to companies controlled by Mr. Gumrukcu and his husband for consulting, research and the licensing of potential drugs to treat influenza, hepatitis B, HIV and Covid-19, company financial filings show. "Dr. Gumrukcu is one of those rare geniuses that is not bound by scientific discipline or dogma. He sees connections and opportunities often missed," Enochian Vice Chairman Mark Dybul, now chief executive, said in a 2019 news release about Enochian's licensing of a hepatitis B drug from a company controlled by Mr. Gumrukcu. Mr. Gumrukcu's success as a biotech entrepreneur afforded the purchase last year of an $18.4 million office complex in North Hollywood, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, and, earlier, a $5.5 million house in the Hollywood Hills.

Yet much of what people saw in Mr. Gumrukcu was an illusion he cast, misrepresenting himself and his credentials, according to state and federal authorities, court records, former colleagues and those who have sued and won judgments against him over fraudulent medical and financial dealings. Prosecutors now allege that Mr. Gumrukcu arranged the murder of a business associate, Gregory Davis, who threatened to expose him as a fraud. Such a revelation would have put at risk the 39-year-old entrepreneur's deal with Enochian, they said. Mr. Gumrukcu has been in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles since his arrest on May 24. A federal grand jury indicted him on murder conspiracy charges, an offense punishable by death.

Clinics offering debunked cancer treatments are still allowed to advertise, despite the company's stated efforts to control medical misinformation. From a report: The ad reads like an offer of salvation: Cancer kills many people. But there is hope in Apatone, a proprietary vitamin C-based mixture, that is "KILLING cancer." The substance, an unproven treatment that is not approved by the FDA, is not available in the United States. If you want Apatone, the ad suggests, you need to travel to a clinic in Mexico. If you're on Facebook or Instagram and Meta has determined you may be interested in cancer treatments, it's possible you've seen this ad, or one of the 20 or so others recently running from the CHIPSA hospital in Mexico near the US border, all of which are publicly listed in Meta's Ad Library. They are part of a pattern on Facebook of ads that make misleading or false health claims, targeted at cancer patients.

Evidence from Facebook and Instagram users, medical researchers, and its own Ad Library suggests that Meta is rife with ads containing sensational health claims, which the company directly profits from. The misleading ads may remain unchallenged for months and even years. Some of the ads reviewed by MIT Technology Review promoted treatments that have been proved to cause acute physical harm in some cases. Other ads pointed users toward highly expensive treatments with dubious outcomes. CHIPSA, which stands for Centro Hospitalario Internacional del Pacifico, S.A, was founded in 1979 and refers to itself as a community hospital offering integrative treatments for cancer. On Facebook, the facility describes itself as being at the "cutting edge" of cancer research. But the hospital's foundational diet-based therapy, called the Gerson Protocol, is "all nonsense," says David Gorski, a surgical oncologist at Wayne State University in Michigan and the managing editor of the website Science-Based Medicine. Developed by a German doctor in the 1920s to treat migraines, the regimen consists of a special diet and frequent "detox" procedures. It has been discredited for decades in the medical community.

"Researchers at Tsinghua University in China have developed a new drug cocktail that can convert cells into totipotent stem cells, the very seeds of life..." writes New Atlas: Not all stem cells are created equal — they sit in a branching hierarchy of differentiation potential. Multipotent stem cells are found in many tissues in adults, where they can turn into a few types of cells associated with that tissue or organ to help healing. A step earlier in the development tree are pluripotent stem cells, which are found in embryos and can become almost any type of cell in the body.

But at the top of the chain sit what are known as totipotent stem cells, which can become any cell in the body as well as supportive tissues like the placenta. These mark the very beginning of development, including the first single cell that forms from a fertilized egg, and they persist for the first few stages of development. After that, the cells differentiate into pluripotent stem cells and further specialize into all the cells of the body as it develops.

In recent years scientists have been able to take adult cells and induce a pluripotent state in them, which forms the basis of research into stem cell regenerative medicine. But in the new study, the Tsinghua team took things a step further, returning pluripotent stem cells to a totipotent state for the first time...

This breakthrough could open up some major new opportunities, the team says. In the long run, scientists could potentially create a living organism straight from a mature cell, sidestepping the need for sperm and eggs. That could help people have children who otherwise couldn't, or aid conservation of endangered species.

The researchers do acknowledge, however, that ethical concerns will no doubt arise.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an announcement from London's Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine: A single MRI scan of the brain could be enough to diagnose Alzheimer's disease, according to new research by Imperial College London.

The research uses machine learning technology to look at structural features within the brain, including in regions not previously associated with Alzheimer's. The advantage of the technique is its simplicity and the fact that it can identify the disease at an early stage when it can be very difficult to diagnose. Although there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease, getting a diagnosis quickly at an early stage helps patients. It allows them to access help and support, get treatment to manage their symptoms and plan for the future. Being able to accurately identify patients at an early stage of the disease will also help researchers to understand the brain changes that trigger the disease, and support development and trials of new treatments....

The researchers adapted an algorithm developed for use in classifying cancer tumours, and applied it to the brain. They divided the brain into 115 regions and allocated 660 different features, such as size, shape and texture, to assess each region. They then trained the algorithm to identify where changes to these features could accurately predict the existence of Alzheimer's disease... They found that in 98 per cent of cases, the MRI-based machine learning system alone could accurately predict whether the patient had Alzheimer's disease or not. It was also able to distinguish between early and late-stage Alzheimer's with fairly high accuracy, in 79 per cent of patients.

Professor Eric Aboagye, from Imperial's Department of Surgery and Cancer, who led the research, said: "Currently no other simple and widely available methods can predict Alzheimer's disease with this level of accuracy, so our research is an important step forward...." The new system spotted changes in areas of the brain not previously associated with Alzheimer's disease, [which] opens up potential new avenues for research into these areas and their links to Alzheimer's disease.
Professor Aboagye adds that this new approach "could also identify early-stage patients for clinical trials of new drug treatments or lifestyle changes, which is currently very hard to do."