Biotech Disease Breakthroughs

Angus Liu | June 26, 2019 | FierceBiotech.com

Link between Parkinson's disease and the gut?

Parkinsons, huntingtons.png
Public Domain, Link
Mounting evidence is pointing to an association between the gut and Parkinson’s disease. New research coming out of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has added some weight to the connection and offered a new model for testing drugs aimed at treating the neurodegenerative disorder.

In mouse studies, Johns Hopkins scientists found that misfolded alpha-synuclein protein—which scientists believe accumulates in the brain and drives Parkinson’s—can travel from the gut to the brain. They published the findings in the journal Neuron.

Read more.


Angus Liu | June 27, 2019 | FierceBiotech.com

Treating pancreatic cancer by starving tumor cells

Gray1225.png
By Henry Vandyke Carter - Henry Gray (1918)Gray's Anatomy, Plate 1225, Public Domain, Link
Scientists have been trying to stop cancer by starving tumor cells of nutrients. Now a team of researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) has offered fresh insights into how that might be done, pointing to a possible way of developing new drugs to treat pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic tumor cells can turn to a nutrient supply route, called macropinocytosis, to survive and continue growing. Scientists hope to block this process, otherwise known as “cellular drinking,” to starve pancreatic tumors. But what molecular signaling pathway should they target?

Read more.


Press Assoc. | Aug. 14, 2019 | EveningExpress.co.uk

Aging, MS, New Discoveries

Complete neuron cell diagram en.svg
By LadyofHats
New research indicates that increasing brain stiffness with age causes brain stem dysfunction.

But scientists have demonstrated ways to return older stem cells to a younger, healthier state, potentially affecting future treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS).

The team, based at the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (University of Cambridge), studied old and young rat brains to understand the impact of age-related stiffening on oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs).

These cells are vital for maintaining normal brain function, and for the regeneration of myelin – the fatty sheath that surrounds nerves and which is damaged in multiple sclerosis (MS) Read more.

Sugar's gift to you: Blackstrap Molasses

The ABCs of Biotech for Christians - Third in a series - B is for Blackstrap Molasses

Though we may think of unfriendly and scary things when we think of biotech, it also encompasses the world of beautiful plants and their derivatives in relation to human health and other fields.

Molasses is the concentrate or residual remaining after beet (from sugar beets) or cane (from sugar cane) is cooked to refine it, and the Blackstrap version is the most concentrated form, distilled only from cane sugar. Where the name originated is uncertain but it is a good description of the product, black and loopy like a strap.

White, refined, crystallized sugar is warned against by many health and medical authorities as the main cause of obesity, hair loss, allergies, hypertension, diabetes and many other ailments. Molasses is hailed as a remedy for many diseases and a supplement for healthy hair, skin, joints and even mental-emotional deficits.

Cancer research has shown that people who eat sugary foods have more advanced stages of cancer and that these foods cause cancer growth. Yet blackstrap molasses may help to reverse cancer growth. These are things are easy to look up on the internet.

A clinical trial to discover if cancer may be a single disease with a multitude of manifestations is described on the National Center for Biotechnology Information subsite of the National Health Institutes website. A regimen of health supplements was used to treat patients who had many different types of cancer, and blackstrap molasses gets the first mention.

Our working hypothesis was that by re-supplying critical nutrients to cancer patients in an oral nutritional supplement cocktail and simultaneously cleansing the digestive and excretory systems by using the described methods of past centuries of medicine, we might cure a wide range of or perhaps all types cancers. Essential ingredients of the supplement include blackstrap molasses, apple cider vinegar, sulfur, quinine, rose oil, folic acid, vitamin B12 and molecular iodine [patent pending]. This supplement is currently being tested in a variety of stage III-IV cancer patients refractory to current therapies.

In conclusion, this paper presents the case that multiple, concurrent nutritional deficiencies may play a fundamental role in tumorigenesis and suggests that the disease process could be reversed by re-supplying the required nutrients in adequate amounts. In addition, a new approach to cancer is advocated that would unify our traditional mechanistic, physico-chemical methodologies with subtle energy-based concepts, under the umbrella of contemporary rigorous scientific testing methods. (ref)

Blackstrap molasses is called a “diabetes-friendly” sweetener because it is digested slowly. On the internet we even find that it may even cure diabetes (ref) and help with weight loss (ref). It contains calcium and magnesium to help guard against osteoporosis and potassium to help maintain normal blood pressure.

Sugar cane molasses is under study to produce a nutraceutical for iron deficiency which is a serious health problem that debilitates about 1.6 billion people globally every year. (ref) It is also being researched for a treatment in inflammatory bowel disease.

 

Depending on how energetic you feel, you can either make your own Blackstrap Molasses Coffee Alternative or grow your own sugar cane and make your own molasses.

Angel fish
Public Domain, Link

...and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind ... the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind ...the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. -Genesis 1

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A SistersSite eBook

Flesh and Bone and The Protestant Conscience is an e-book on Amazon.com. It is 99¢ and in the Amazon lending library as well. It is also available here in PDF format. The book description follows.

Would you let your conscience be your guide?

Does God care if the skin and bone of the dead are passed along to the living for medical uses? Is organ donation OK with God? Should you sign a Living Will?

Did you know that dead organ donors are often anesthetized before their organs are removed? Do you know the current definition of death? The conscience cannot function without facts.

As we ponder the ethics of in vitro fertilization, stem cell research and man-made chimeras, our thoughts trail off. How then should we live? (Ez 33:10)

How should a Christian think about euthanasia by starvation when doctors and the state attorney general all agree it is time to withhold feeding from a brain injured patient? Some things are family matters, but someday it may be our family.

Here is a small book to help you think about whether you want to sign your driver's license, donate a kidney, cremate your loved one, and many other practical questions that may arise in the course of your healthcare decisions or watch over others.

It offers a special focus on the doctrine of the Resurrection that is related to such decisions. Sunday School classes and Bible Study groups could use this book to facilitate discussion about the issues covered.