StemCell Therapy

It is a widely known fact that cancer is one of the major diseases causing death throughout both the developed and developing world, including South Africa.

Approximately 115 000 South Africans are diagnosed with cancer each year, and with a 6/10 survival rate it is easy to understand how news of such a diagnosis can fuel fear and anxiety for individuals and their families.

Against this background, one can easily understand why the need for hope from various sources becomes the lifeline for families dealing with cancer.When one thinks of the words hope, determination and inspiration, Richard Wright, when you meet him, embodies the meaning of these three words.

Having survived brain cancer three times, Richard has first-hand experience of how important holding on to hope fuelled his ability to stay emotionally strong when the disease weakened his body.

I didnt think Id see the age of 50, and am acutely aware of the gift ones age represents, said Richard.

As a result of his journey, Richard became acquainted with The Sunflower Fund and has become an inspiration to the staff as well as supporters of the cause at events in the past.

As part of my 50th birthday celebration, I am encouraging the public to take part in my #LoveYourAgeChallenge, in hopes of raising funds for The Sunflower Fund to assist patients who suffer from life-threatening blood disorders, continued Richard.

Join Richard in celebrating his age by celebrating your age. The challenge encourages individuals to create an activity of their choice, whether it is a 50-minute hike, baking 50 cakes or 50 minutes of meditation, making it relative to your age. Post your event selfie or video using the hashtag #LoveYourAgeChallenge and you could win great prizes.

Richard encouraged participants to spread the love by donating any amount to The Sunflower Fund to give hope. Any amount, no matter how big or small to reflect your age R5, R50 or R50 000.

The Sunflower Fund is a stem cell donor recruitment centre and registry that fights blood diseases by helping patients in need of a transplant find their life-saving matching donor. When a patient needs a transplant, the donor needs to be a DNA or genetic match, which is not as simple as matching a blood type. Patients have a 25 per cent chance of this match existing within the family. The remaining 75 per cent chance is based on finding a match from a database of strangers who have signed up to save a life should they match a patient.

An added factor is that the likelihood of this match most often exists within the same ethnic and cultural mix as the patient. As such, The Sunflower Fund is committed to building an ethnically diverse registry of donors, to give patients the best hope of a cure.

Our ambassador of hope programme is one of the key ways we work with people from various walks of life to help us raise awareness about the urgent need for blood stem cell donors, said Alana James, CEO of The Sunflower Fund. This awareness is vital to increasing the number of registered donors and we are pleased to have Richard on board as an Ambassador of Hope.

Richard is a husband, father, motivational speaker and advocate for determination and strength. He is a storyteller, skilled at using his experiences to inspire and transform the thinking of his audiences.

I also want to encourage individuals to be the hope by becoming stem cell donors. People have the power to change their mindset from just cancer awareness to being a part of the solution. As I always say mindset matters, added Richard.

Individuals between the ages of 18 and 55 can register as donors. If you have a consistent body weight of more than 50kgs and a BMI of less than 40, you could be eligible to be a donor.

For additional information on The Sunflower Fund, or to become a donor, visit https://www.sunflowerfund.org/

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#LoveYourAgeChallenge: Join cancer Ambassador of Hope in this fund-raiser - Brakpan Herald

While humans are all too familiar with the ravages of getting older, many trees seem to handle ageing a lot better.

Certain trees can live for thousands of years and appear to be immortal.

But not everyone is convinced these old timers can escape death due to old age.

Regardless, could humans with their relatively puny lifespans have something to learn from these ancient trees? Some scientists think so.

Establishing how old the oldest living tree is depends a bit on which plants are in the running for the title.

You could argue that Australia's Wollemi pine, which has been cloning itself for more than 60 million years, deserves the title. But that's kind of cheating because this involves multiple stems growing from the one rootstock.

This is why the oldest tree in the world is generally regarded as a single-stemmed bristlecone pine called Pinus longaeva.

This species can live to around 5,000 years and does well where most other plants cannot even grow in rocky, dry, high-altitude areas in the United States.

What's amazing is that scientists have not so far been able to show that getting older directly affects the health of such millennial trees, plant biologist Sergi Munne-Bosch from the University of Barcelona says.

It's because of this, some have suggested these trees are essentially immortal.

But in a recent article, Professor Munne-Bosch argues that it's likely even ancient trees could die from old age assuming something else doesn't kill them first.

He emphasises that there's a difference between ageing, which is about how long an organism has lived, and age-related deterioration, which is referred to as senescence.

"Just because we can't track senescence in long-lived trees doesn't mean they are immortal."

Professor Munne-Bosch points to recent research on centuries-old Ginkgo biloba trees that found no evidence of senescence.

The study was the first to look for evidence of age-related changes in cells of the cambium, a layer just beneath the bark that contains cells that can produce new tissue throughout the plant's life.

It confirmed the long-lived trees, which in this case were up to 667 years old, were just as healthy as younger ones says Professor Munne-Bosch.

"They grow very well, they produce seeds, they produce flowers, so they are healthy."

He points out that even though a 667-year-old tree seems old when compared to a human, it is relatively young for a ginkgo.

"This species can live for more than two millennia."

Professor Munne-Bosch argues that the ginkgo researchers' data shows that older trees had thinner vascular tissue and that this hints at possible age-related deterioration that would be more obvious in even older trees.

Yet despite this deterioration, he says these trees are more likely to die from insects, disease, fire, drought or loggers, than old age.

"For a species that can live for millennia, aging is not really a problem in evolutionary terms because they are much more likely to die of something else."

The problem is there are so few of these long-lived trees that it's hard to get the data to know for certain whether they can die of old age.

"We cannot prove it either way," Professor Munne-Bosch says, adding that age-related deterioration is likely to happen in these trees at such a different pace compared to in humans.

"For a Ginkgo biloba, six centuries is not as physiologically relevant as it is to us."

Brenda Casper, a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania says it's not clear that the changes found in the older Ginkgo biloba trees were necessarily detrimental to the tree.

But she agrees the low number of millennial trees makes it hard to study their longevity.

"It's difficult to find statistical evidence for senescence."

Even if there were enough trees, she says some of the age-related deterioration may be hard to detect, or we may not know what to look for.

"It's not just internal physiology per se but it's the interaction of the tree with its environment."

For example, she says it would be hard to measure whether age had made a tree more susceptible to disease, or less structurally sound so it's more likely to fall over in a windstorm.

Even if the jury is out on whether millennial trees are immortal, some experts say their longevity could be inspirational for medical research.

Professor Munne-Bosch says such trees can draw on a bag of tricks to help them "postpone death".

First is having a simple body plan with modular-like branches and roots. This means they can compartmentalise any damaged or dead roots or branches and work around them.

"They can lose part of leaves or roots and continue to be healthy..

And he says although 95 per cent of the trunk of a tree might be dead, the living cambium just beneath the bark is "one of the secrets of longevity" in trees.

Millennial trees have used the combination of these features to their best advantage and Professor Munne-Bosch says these tricks are providing a model for scientists researching the negative effects of ageing.

"Imagine if we could regenerate our lungs or circulatory system every year, we would be much healthier than we are."

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Professor of biomedical engineering at the University of New South Wales, Melissa Knothe Tate is one researcher who is inspired by millennial trees.

"They have units and if one unit breaks you can replace it with another unit."

Only a small percentage of an individual long-lived tree may be alive, but she argues it's all about survival of the cells that are able to regenerate the tree.

"Those that survive best, survive longest."

"Millennial trees are the best survivors because they've seen a lot."

While a tree and a human might seem worlds apart, Professor Knothe Tate sees the similarities, pointing to the role of stem cells in maintaining bones in humans.

She says cells add new layers to bone, like tree rings, to increase girth and when bone is injured, stem cells quickly help repair it.

"We're constantly renewing our bones and trees do something similar."

Professor Knothe Tate says she is using stem cells and new biomaterials that emulate tree cambium, to create replacement tissue in the lab, and has several patents for the work.

"I think about plants a lot when I'm up in the mountains and amongst the trees."

Professor Knothe Tate, who draws on her training in philosophy, biology and mechanical engineering for her work, sees other similarities that can inspire research.

For example, she likens the human brain to the network of roots and branches that helps a tree remain resilient if one part is damaged, another part can sometimes take up the slack.

"As parts of the brain are injured or die, it's remarkable what functionality we can retain,

"If we knew which of the brain's networks were essential for certain functions, we may be able to grow them."

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Professor Knothe Tate also set up a science education project for girls that explores the parallels between the biomechanics of trees and bones. It was inspired by her observation of how huge trees sway like a blade of grass in the wind.

She has high hopes for the potential of regenerative medicine research that draws on knowledge from other disciplines like plant biology to extend human life.

"We can then start to think about making ourselves immortal."

Plant biologist Professor Munne-Bosch is also enthusiastic.

"The future of medicine is very similar to what has evolved in millennial trees."

But while regenerating tissues will help humans live much longer, he doubts we will ever be immortal.

"It won't be forever, because we are more likely to die of something else, whether it be an accident or a pandemic."

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Are very long-lived trees immortal and what can they teach humans? - ABC News

Mystified by the need for defibrillation to save a 10-year-old from drowning, Michael Ackerman, M.D., Ph.D., vowed to dig for answers. That pivotal case during a Mayo Clinic pediatric cardiology residency was the catalyst for Dr. Ackermans career in genetic sleuthing of inherited sudden cardiac death syndromes. With help from the Center for Regenerative Medicine Biotrust, Dr. Ackermans team reprograms cell lines to zero in on precise causes and possible treatments for genetic heart disorders that increase the risk of sudden cardiac death. His research and practice focuses on inherited conditions like long QT syndrome (LQTS), catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) and Brugada syndrome (BrS) along with heart muscle diseases such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

Working with the Center for Regenerative Medicine has opened up a whole new investigative arm to our lab. It is bench to bedside research. We take cells from a blood sample my patients and then reprogram those cells to become cardiac cells. This research effort has been a powerful tool in gene discovery to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt when a monogenetic variant is indeed the cause of a sudden cardiac death syndrome, says Dr. Ackerman.

Reprogramming cells to identify disease-causing mutations

Reprogramming a patients cells is like a step back in time to when the cells were initially forming in the mothers womb. At that time, cells were dividing and could become any type of cell or tissue in the body. Reprogrammed cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, can be redirected to become new heart cells. Dr. Ackermans team uses these patient-specific cell lines to create a disease in a dish model and investigate whether genetic mutations are causing the patients genetic heart disease such as long QT syndrome.

Once we think weve found the root cause of disease, we then go to the patients cell line. We ask, does it show in the dish, in that patients re-engineered heart cells, a prolonged QT cellular phenotype? If it does, then we edit out and correct that variant of interest and at the cellular level test whether the abnormality disappears, says Dr. Ackerman.

Dr. Ackermans team then introduces that genetic variant into normal, healthy cells. If those cells produce a long QT phenotype, they have proof that exact genetic variant is the cause.

Using this disease in a dish model and other genetic sleuthing strategies, Dr. Ackermans team has discovered six of the 17 known genes that cause long QT syndrome. And, they have recently described two entirely new syndromes. One is triadin knockout syndrome, a heart arrhythmia that could lead to cardiac arrest in children during exercise. The second is an autosomal recessive genetic mechanism for calcium release channel deficiency syndrome, prevalent within Amish communities. That key discovery solved the mystery of why so many Amish children were dying suddenly during ordinary childhood play. The disease in a dish model is also useful for discovering new therapies. After creating the patients disease in a dish, Dr. Ackermans team tests potential new drug compounds to see if they could be effective.

We are developing a new gene therapy for the most common genetic subtype of long QT syndrome.With this model, the gene therapy vector is essentially curing the diseased long QT phenotype in the dish, says Dr. Ackerman.

Almost quit research

Dr. Ackerman began medical and graduate school at Mayo Clinic in 1988, where he worked in a research lab next to then fellow trainee, Andre Terzic, M.D., Ph.D., who now is director of Mayo Clinic Center for Regenerative Medicine. Initially not seeing the relevance to patient care, Dr. Ackerman finished his Ph.D. and left research vowing to never, ever return. True to his mentors predictions that youll be back, Mike, Dr. Ackerman felt the pull back to research to address unmet medical needs of his patients.He joined Mayo Clinics faculty in 2000 as one of the first genetic cardiologists with a goal of establishing a practice for patients at risk of sudden cardiac death from genetic heart diseases. Dr. Ackerman now directs the Mayo Clinic Windland Smith Rice Genetic Heart Rhythm Clinic and the Mayo Clinic Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory.

Dr. Ackermans return to research has provided many answers for patients, with over 600 peer-reviewed publications that have occurred since that time 23 years ago when Dr. Ackerman and his team first solved that 10-year-old boys near fatal drowning. It was a mutation in the gene causing type 1 long QT syndrome.

Dr. Ackerman is one of the innovators the Center for Regenerative Medicine collaborates with as it seeks to be a global leader and trusted destination for regenerative care driven by research and education.

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Tags: Brugada syndrome, Center for Regenerative Medicine Biotrust, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, long Q T syndrome, Mayo Clinic Center for Regenerative Medicine, Michael Ackerman, People, Research, Stem cell research, sudden cardiac death

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IntroductionThe Architecture of the NeuronBirthMigrationDifferentiationDeathHope Through Research

Until recently, most neuroscientists thought we were born with all the neurons we were ever going to have. As children we might produce some new neurons to help build the pathways - called neural circuits - that act as information highways between different areas of the brain. But scientists believed that once a neural circuit was in place, adding any new neurons would disrupt the flow of information and disable the brains communication system.

In 1962, scientist Joseph Altman challenged this belief when he saw evidence of neurogenesis (the birth of neurons) in a region of the adult rat brain called the hippocampus. He later reported that newborn neurons migrated from their birthplace in the hippocampus to other parts of the brain. In 1979, another scientist, Michael Kaplan, confirmed Altmans findings in the rat brain, and in 1983 he found neural precursor cells in the forebrain of an adult monkey.

These discoveries about neurogenesis in the adult brain were surprising to other researchers who didnt think they could be true in humans. But in the early 1980s, a scientist trying to understand how birds learn to sing suggested that neuroscientists look again at neurogenesis in the adult brain and begin to see how it might make sense. In a series of experiments, Fernando Nottebohm and his research team showed that the numbers of neurons in the forebrains of male canaries dramatically increased during the mating season. This was the same time in which the birds had to learn new songs to attract females.

Why did these bird brains add neurons at such a critical time in learning? Nottebohm believed it was because fresh neurons helped store new song patterns within the neural circuits of the forebrain, the area of the brain that controls complex behaviors. These new neurons made learning possible. If birds made new neurons to help them remember and learn, Nottebohm thought the brains of mammals might too.

Other scientists believed these findings could not apply to mammals, but Elizabeth Gould later found evidence of newborn neurons in a distinct area of the brain in monkeys, and Fred Gage and Peter Eriksson showed that the adult human brain produced new neurons in a similar area.

For some neuroscientists, neurogenesis in the adult brain is still an unproven theory. But others think the evidence offers intriguing possibilities about the role of adult-generated neurons in learning and memory.

The central nervous system (which includes the brain and spinal cord) is made up of two basic types of cells: neurons (1) and glia (4) & (6). Glia outnumber neurons in some parts of the brain, but neurons are the key players in the brain.

Neurons are information messengers. They use electrical impulses and chemical signals to transmit information between different areas of the brain, and between the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Everything we think and feel and do would be impossible without the work of neurons and their support cells, the glial cells called astrocytes (4) and oligodendrocytes (6).

Neurons have three basic parts: a cell body and two extensions called an axon (5) and a dendrite (3). Within the cell body is a nucleus (2), which controls the cells activities and contains the cells genetic material. The axon looks like a long tail and transmits messages from the cell. Dendrites look like the branches of a tree and receive messages for the cell. Neurons communicate with each other by sending chemicals, called neurotransmitters, across a tiny space, called a synapse, between the axons and dendrites of adjacent neurons.

There are three classes of neurons:

Scientists think that neurons are the most diverse kind of cell in the body. Within these three classes of neurons are hundreds of different types, each with specific message-carrying abilities.

How these neurons communicate with each other by making connections is what makes each of us unique in how we think, and feel, and act.

The extent to which new neurons are generated in the brain is a controversial subject among neuroscientists. Although the majority of neurons are already present in our brains by the time we are born, there is evidence to support that neurogenesis (the scientific word for the birth of neurons) is a lifelong process.

Neurons are born in areas of the brain that are rich in concentrations of neural precursor cells (also called neural stem cells). These cells have the potential to generate most, if not all, of the different types of neurons and glia found in the brain.

Neuroscientists have observed how neural precursor cells behave in the laboratory. Although this may not be exactly how these cells behave when they are in the brain, it gives us information about how they could be behaving when they are in the brains environment.

The science of stem cells is still very new, and could change with additional discoveries, but researchers have learned enough to be able to describe how neural stem cells generate the other cells of the brain. They call it a stem cells lineage and it is similar in principle to a family tree.

Neural stem cells increase by dividing in two and producing either two new stem cells, or two early progenitor cells, or one of each.

When a stem cell divides to produce another stem cell, it is said to self-renew. This new cell has the potential to make more stem cells.

When a stem cell divides to produce an early progenitor cell, it is said to differentiate. Differentiation means that the new cell is more specialized in form and function. An early progenitor cell does not have the potential of a stem cell to make many different types of cells. It can only make cells in its particular lineage.

Early progenitor cells can self-renew or go in either of two ways. One type will give rise to astrocytes. The other type will ultimately produce neurons or oligodendrocytes.

Once a neuron is born it has to travel to the place in the brain where it will do its work.

How does a neuron know where to go? What helps it get there?

Scientists have seen that neurons use at least two different methods to travel:

Not all neurons are successful in their journey. Scientists think that only a third reach their destination. Some cells die during the process of neuronal development.

Some neurons survive the trip, but end up where they shouldnt be. Mutations in the genes that control migration create areas of misplaced or oddly formed neurons that can cause disorders such as childhood epilepsy. Some researchers suspect that schizophrenia and the learning disorder dyslexia are partly the result of misguided neurons.

Once a neuron reaches its destination, it has to settle in to work. This final step of differentiation is the least well-understood part of neurogenesis.

Neurons are responsible for the transport and uptake of neurotransmitters - chemicals that relay information between brain cells.

Depending on its location, a neuron can perform the job of a sensory neuron, a motor neuron, or an interneuron, sending and receiving specific neurotransmitters.

In the developing brain, a neuron depends on molecular signals from other cells, such as astrocytes, to determine its shape and location, the kind of transmitter it produces, and to which other neurons it will connect. These freshly born cells establish neural circuits - or information pathways connecting neuron to neuron - that will be in place throughout adulthood.

But in the adult brain, neural circuits are already developed and neurons must find a way to fit in. As a new neuron settles in, it starts to look like surrounding cells. It develops an axon and dendrites and begins to communicate with its neighbors.

Although neurons are the longest living cells in the body, large numbers of them die during migration and differentiation.

The lives of some neurons can take abnormal turns. Some diseases of the brain are the result of the unnatural deaths of neurons.

- InParkinsons disease, neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine die off in the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that controls body movements. This causes difficulty initiating movement.

- InHuntingtons disease, a genetic mutation causes over-production of a neurotransmitter called glutamate, which kills neurons in the basal ganglia. As a result, people twist and writhe uncontrollably.

- InAlzheimers disease, unusual proteins build up in and around neurons in the neocortex and hippocampus, parts of the brain that control memory. When these neurons die, people lose their capacity to remember and their ability to do everyday tasks. Physical damage to the brain and other parts of the central nervous system can also kill or disable neurons.

-Blows to the brain, or the damage caused by a stroke, can kill neurons outright or slowly starve them of the oxygen and nutrients they need to survive.

-Spinal cord injurycan disrupt communication between the brain and muscles when neurons lose their connection to axons located below the site of injury. These neurons may still live, but they lose their ability to communicate.

Scientists hope that by understanding more about the life and death of neurons they can develop new treatments, and possibly even cures, for brain diseases and disorders that affect the lives of millions of Americans.

The most current research suggests that neural stem cells can generate many, if not all, of the different types of neurons found in the brain and the nervous system. Learning how to manipulate these stem cells in the laboratory into specific types of neurons could produce a fresh supply of brain cells to replace those that have died or been damaged.

Therapies could also be created to take advantage of growth factors and other signaling mechanisms inside the brain that tell precursor cells to make new neurons. This would make it possible to repair, reshape, and renew the brain from within.

For information on other neurological disorders or research programs funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, contact the Institute's Brain Resources and Information Network (BRAIN) at:

BRAINP.O. Box 5801Bethesda, MD 20824(800) 352-9424www.ninds.nih.gov

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Prepared by:Office of Communications and Public LiaisonNational Institute of Neurological Disorders and StrokeNational Institutes of HealthBethesda, MD 20892

NINDS health-related material is provided for information purposes only and does not necessarily represent endorsement by or an official position of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke or any other Federal agency. Advice on the treatment or care of an individual patient should be obtained through consultation with a physician who has examined that patient or is familiar with that patient's medical history.

All NINDS-prepared information is in the public domain and may be freely copied. Credit to the NINDS or the NIH is appreciated.

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Brain Basics: The Life and Death of a Neuron | National ...

If you thought COVID-19 symptoms couldn't get worse, doctors say a new symptom has emerged. Hallucinations. USA TODAY

A spiking COVID-19 case countis straining Florida's hospital system as nearly half of its intensive care units are at least 90% full.

Mississippi has also seen a recent strain on its hospitals. Five of the largest medical centers have no ICU bed space for new patients COVID-19 or otherwise and are being forced to turn patients away.

Meanwhile, some states are scaling back reopening guidelines or adding new requirements: Some bars in Nevada will be closing again Friday and restaurants can no longer serve parties more than six people.Kentucky will join the growing list of states that require face coverings in public, too.

In New Mexico, indoor dining at restaurants and breweries will be restricted again starting Monday, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham halted high school sports and said state parks will be closed to out-of-state residents.

Here are some recent developments:

Today's stats:The U.S. has surpassed 3.1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. More than133,000deaths have been confirmed, according toJohn Hopkins University data. Globally, there have been 12.3 million cases and over 556,000deaths.

What we're reading:ThreeArizona teachers shared a classroom for summer school.They thought they were being "very careful."All threecontracted COVID-19, and one died.The teachers who survived say their colleague's death is a stark reminder of the risks teachers will face if school reopens too soon.

Our live blog will be updated throughout the day. For first-in-the-morning updates,sign upfor The Daily Briefing.

R-0 may be the most important scientific term youve never heard of when it comes to stopping the coronavirus pandemic. USA TODAY

The Pac-12 will use a conference-only playing schedule for all fall sports should teams be able to compete in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, a personwith direct knowledge of the league's decision told USA TODAY Sports on Friday.

The person requested anonymity because the league had not made an announcement.

In doing so, thePac-12 joins the Big Ten in becoming the second Power Five conference to make a decisionthat could foreshadow similar changes across the entire Bowl Subdivision.

Paul Myerberg

Schools should prioritize safety and rely on local authorities inschool reopening plans, ajoint statementfrom associations of pediatricians, educators and superintendents says.

"Returning to school is important for the healthy development and well-being of children, but we must pursue re-opening in a way that is safe," says the statement from The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Federation of Teachers, the National Education AssociationandThe School Superintendents Association. "Science should drive decision-making on safely reopening schools."

The statement follows a push fromTrump to open schools across the nation andamid a nationwide debate over whether children should return to the classroom.

In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Californiastate prisons, upto 8,000 currently incarcerated people could be released by the end of August, the state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced Friday.

"Too many people are incarcerated for too long in facilities that spread poor health. Supporting the health and safety of all Californians means releasing people unnecessarily incarcerated and transforming our justice system,"Jay Jordan, Executive Director ofCalifornians for Safety and Justice, said in a press release.

Since the start of the pandemic, the state has releasedabout 10,000 people, according to the state'sDepartment of Corrections.

Activists have repeatedly called on the governor to address the outbreak atSan Quentin prison, where more than 200 staff and more than 1,300 prisoners have active cases, and at least six inmates have died, according to local news reports.

Amid a resurgence of COVID-19 in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Friday that the state will reactivate its makeshift coronavirus hospital at a convention center in Atlanta.

The 200-bed temporary hospital at theGeorgia World Congress Centerwas constructed in April but wound down operations at the end of May.

Nearly 3,000 people have died and more than 111,000 people have tested positive for the virus in the state.

At least 47 students at UC Berkeley tested positive for the coronavirus in just one week, and most of the new cases stem from a series of Greek life parties, university officials said.

In a message to the campus community, UniversityHealth Services Medical Director Anna Harte and Assistant Vice Chancellor Guy Nicolette said it was "becoming harder to imagine bringing our campus community back in the way we are envisioning."

"Generally, these infections are directly related to social events where students have not followed basic safety measures such as physical distancing, wearing face coverings, limiting event size, and gathering outside," the officials wrote.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott begged Texans to mask up in a Friday interview with eastern Texas TV station CBS19, saying face coverings were "the only way"businesses could stay open.

"Its disappointing"that some local officials are refusing to enforce the states mask order, Abbott said. "If we do not all join together and unite in this one cause for a short period of time it will lead to the necessity of having to close Texas back down."

Abbott's ordereffective July 3 requires face masksin public spaces in counties with 20 or more active COVID-19 cases.The order does not apply to people eating,drinking, swimming orexercising or those under 10 years old.

Joel Shannon

West Virginia is among states with the fewest COVID-19 cases, but the state now has the highest coronavirus transmission rate in the country, the head of the state's coronavirus response said Friday.

"The virus is spreading faster person to person in West Virginia right now than in any other state in the country,"Dr. Clay Marsh.The state's "RT value" the average number of people who become infected by an infectious personis the highest in the nation, at 1.37, Marsh said. "We can see that COVID is starting in that logarithmic phase, that compounding phase."

The state has doubled its number of active cases in the last 10-14 days.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday expanded Michigan's mask-wearing requirements, effective Monday, saying that wearing masks is the best way to reverse an increase in coronavirus cases.

The order requires the use of face coverings in crowded outdoor spaces and reiterates that individuals are required to wear a face covering whenever they are in an indoor public space. The mandate also requires any business that is open to the public to refuse entry or service to people who refuse to wear a face covering, with limited exceptions.

Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press

Shutting down states in the early days of the US COVID-19 outbreak prevented at least 250,000 deaths and as many as 750,000-840,000 hospitalizations, a new study found. Shelter-in-place orders took about two weeks to show an effect on hospitalizations and three weeks to limit the number of deaths, according to the study by researchers at the University of Iowa and National Bureau of Economic Research.

The authors, who published their results in the journal Health Affairs, also found that deaths from causes other than COVID-19 might have increased if hospitals had become overwhelmed; slowing cases saved those lives, as well, they said.

"These estimates indicate that [stay in place orders] played a key role in flattening the curves not only for cases, but also for deaths and hospitalizations, and eased pressure on hospitals from avoided COVID-19 admissions," the authors conclude.

Karen Weintraub

All 50 states had visitors from Floridathis week, according to data that 15 million U.S. mobile device users provided to the data company Cuebiq. Applying Cuebiqs sample to the whole population, approximately 1.5 million Floridians are now setting up shop in other states.

Residents have left the state in increasing numbers at a time when the crisis there got worse. In early June, just 5% of the states residents appeared in other states. That number has ticked up every week.

Cuebiqs data, which is based on cell phone locations, shows that most interstate visitors from Florida appeared in other parts of the South. About 38% of the states travelers were in Georgia at least once during the week, for example. Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee also topped the list of destinations for visitors from the hard-struck state.

States outside the region saw big Florida influxes as well. New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio all had more than 50,000 visits from Florida residents in the most recent week of data, based on an extrapolation of the cell phone location data.

Matt Wynn

New data on the experimental drug remdesivir confirms it can shorten the course of COVID-19 infections and suggests it also can save lives.

Gilead Sciences, Inc., a California pharmaceutical company that makes the drug, revealed data Friday about nearly 400 patients in its late-stage clinical trial.

According to the results, 74% of patients treated with remdesivir had recovered by their 14th day of hospitalization, compared to 59% of those who did not get the drug. Nearly 8% of the patients on remdesivir had died by day 14, versus more than 12% of patients who did not receive it.

The study also found patients who took the drug hydroxychloroquine along with remdesivir fared worse than those on remdesivir alone. The company recommended against using the drugs in combination.

Remdesivir, an antiviral initially developed to treat Ebola, has not yet been approved for widespread use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but it has been given emergency use authorization to treat COVID-19 patients.

Karen Weintraub

Congestion, runny nose, nausea and diarrhea are the four most recent COVID-19 symptoms that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added to its growing list of potential signs of the novel coronavirus.

The CDC previously said symptoms include chills, fever, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and a new loss of taste or smell. The agency now lists 11 symptoms on its website.

The additions come as health experts continue to learn more about the disease, and care for very ill COVID-19 patients is improving. Even so, the CDC states the current list doesn't include all possible symptoms for the virus.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips

Fifty-eight Major League Baseball players tested positive for the coronavirus upon reporting to their team, while an additional 13 tested positive after workouts began, according to data released by MLB on Friday.

Perhaps most disconcerting is that 10 teams reported positive test results during what MLB is calling "monitoring testing," meaning one-third of the league's teams had an infected player or staff member after workouts began last week.

Several teams have had workouts halted or curtailed while awaiting test results, and besides those testing positive, players who have come in contact with those testing positive have been temporarily sidelined, as well.

Gabe Lacques

As COVID-19 cases spikeacross, multiple states have taken measures to scale back their reopening plans. Here are some of the last moves:

Read more about states that arepause reopening or take new steps to slow the spread.

A Los Angeles Times report says that researchers are working on an upper-arm injection that would deliverantibody-rich blood plasma of COVID-19 survivors to provide potentially months of protection from the virus.

The approach is similar to one used for other diseases likehepatitis A and could be widely available across the United States, the Times reported.

However, the proposal has received push back from the federal government and pharmaceutical companies, who argue efforts in plasma-based therapy should focus on treating sick people rather than preventing infection, the Times report says.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told the newspaper that the research was promising but more work is needed to show thatcoronavirus antibodies work.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Friday he has not briefed President Donald Trump in at least two months and not seen him in person at the White House since June 2, despite a coronavirus resurgence that has strained hospitals and led several states to pause reopenings.

Fauci told the Financial Times he was "sure" his messages were sent to the president even though the two have not been in close contact in the past several weeks.

The comments from the Trump administration's director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases came as Trump has been critical of Fauci and spoken openly about issues on which they disagree.

In a Thursday interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump said Fauci had "made a lot of mistakes" but called him a "nice man." Trump also said "most cases" of coronavirus would "automatically cure. They automatically get better."

Fauci also in the FT interview said Trump was incorrect in claiming 99% of coronavirus cases were "harmless" and may have conflated some statistics.

Nicholas Wu

COVID survivors' main symptoms can linger for weeks or even months, causing pain, trouble breathing, nightmares and even organ failure. USA TODAY

Two scientists from the World Health Organization are traveling toBeijing on Friday to lay the groundwork for an investigation into the origins of the new coronavirus.

The researchers,an animal health expert and an epidemiologist, will work with counterparts in China to "look at whether or not it jumped from species to humanand what species it jumped from," WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris said.

The team will determine the logistics, locations and participantsfor a WHO-led international mission.

The virus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. Scientists believe the novel virusoriginated in bats, transferred to another mammal then jumpedto humans.

The Trump administration this week officially began withdrawing the United Statesfrom the WHO, of which President Donald Trump and his advisers have been sharply critical.

Americans are three times as likely to know someone in their community who has been sick with the coronavirus than they did in March, according to a new survey.

More than one-third of Americans (36%) say someone they know outside of their immediate family or work has been sick with the coronavirus, according to a new survey from the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project. That number is more than triple the number in mid-March, when it was 11%.

The survey also showed Black (11%) and Latino (11%) Americans are more likely than white Americans (7%) to have had an immediate family member get sick, according to the survey. These racial differences were not apparent in the survey from March.

Rebecca Morin

Nearly half of Florida's intensive-care units are at least 90% full, and more than 1 in 5 are completely full, according to state data.

Hospitals are increasingly strained under COVID-19, andhospitalizations across the state have jumped more than 13% just since July 1. More than 17,100 Floridians have been hospitalized for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

A total of 95 hospital ICUs were at least 90% full Thursday, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. That's nearly half the 207 ICUs that the agency is tracking. At least 45 hospital ICUs were at capacity, and 46 others had only one bed available in the units.

At least 4,111 people in Florida have died from the virus, according to the state a figure that would have made it the ninth leading cause of death in Florida last year, according to Florida Department of Health statistics. Florida set a one-day record Thursday with 120 deaths. The previous high, 83, was in late April.

Frank Gluck, Fort Myers News-Press

The five largest medical centers in Mississippi have no ICU bed space for new patients coronavirus or otherwise and are being forced to turn patients away, even as COVID-19 continue to surge.

In some cases, patients are being sent to facilities out of state and as far away as New Orleans. In many hospitals, patients admitted to the ER are being forced to spend the night before they receive treatment.

"(Wednesday), five of our biggest hospitals in the state had zero ICU beds. Zero," State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said. "Our biggest medical institutions who take care of our sickest patients have no room."

The transition from shelter-in-place to where we currently stand, with the highest number of hospitalizations since the first reported case of the coronavirus virus on March 11, has left the state "wide open," said Dr. Louann Woodward, UMMC vice chancellor for health affairs.

Justin Vicory, Mississippi Clarion Ledger

California is set to become the first state to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration over anew policy that prevents international students from staying in the U.S. if their college or university switches to online-only classes in the fall because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The announcement comes a day after some colleges and universities filed similar lawsuits or announced plans to do so.

The Trump administration revealed its new guidelines in a memo issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday. It says that international students will have to leave the country, or face possible deportation, if their schools switch to remote learning, which many have planned to do amid the pandemic.

President Donald Trumps attack on his own health experts guidance for safely reopening schools cracked open for public display a power strugglewithin the administration that has been building for months.

Trump blasted the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday as very tough & expensive and asking schools to do very impractical things.

But CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said on Thursday the guidance would stand, and his staff would provide some new documents to clarify the recommendations.

Theflare-up punctuates a conflict escalating for months, with the nations top scientists publicly sidelined in the Trump administrations initial coronavirus response. Earlier disagreements delayed the release of the reopening guidance for schools and businesses.

Public health leaders who worked at the CDC under prior presidents said they had never seen anything like this weeks open discord."It underminesleadership for everyone involved, said Dr.JeffreyKoplan, a former CDC director."It's public health malpractice to say, 'Open without worrying about anything.'"

Read more here:
Coronavirus updates: California to release 8,000 inmates; masks 'only way' to prevent another shutdown, Texas Gov. says - USA TODAY

Knox County Sheriffs Office; Facebook Robin Howington and Destiny Oliver

A Tennessee woman is accused of fatally shooting her 5-year-old daughter, then trying to blame the killing on two different men and her 2-year-old son, according to multiple reports.

Robin Howington, 37, has been indicted by a grand jury. She is being held on a $500,000 bond on charges of first-degree murder, child neglect, false reporting, tampering with evidence and attempted tampering with evidence, all stemming from the Sept. 14, 2019, death of her daughter, Destiny Oliver.

The little girl was shot in the chest inside Howington's Fountain City home. She was rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.

According to an indictment obtained by multiple outlets,Howington allegedly tried blaming three separate individuals for the fatal shooting.

At first, reports the Knoxville News Sentinel, which cites her indictment, Howington allegedly claimed a man she did not know found his way inside and shot Destiny once before fleeing in a black Chrysler 300.

Under questioning, Howington allegedly changed her story, claiming to police Destiny's father was the man who shot the child point blank in the chest, saying the violence unfolded soon after a heated argument between the two parents, according to the indictment.

WATE-TV reports she allegedly said that the father fled in a white Chrysler 300, the indictment states.

As police searched the surrounding area after the shooting, a gun was discovered stashed in a bush outside Howington's home.

Police allege that she told them her boyfriend who is not Destiny's father hid the gun there. However, investigators obtained video footage shot by a neighbor that allegedly shows Howington hiding the weapon, reports WVLT-TV, the indictment states.

Detectives showed the footage to Howington, who allegedly admitted stashing the gun in the bush after wiping it down, according to the indictment. She allegedly said she wanted to protect her 2-year-old son, who'd found the firearm in a closet and shot his sister.

The indictment alleges she "did unlawfully kill [Destiny Oliver] during the perpetration of aggravated child neglect."

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Howington has yet to enter pleas to the charges against her, and her attorney could not be reached for comment.

The tampering charges stem from Howington's alleged efforts to destroy her cell phone the evening of her daughter's killing.

Police allege she told them she did not want detectives finding evidence on the phone of illicit marijuana sales she had allegedly conducted, according to the indictment.

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Tenn. Mom Accused of Fatally Shooting Daughter, 5, Then Trying to Blame Toddler Son - MSN Money

By: Express News Service | Surat | Published: July 10, 2020 8:50:59 pm He was immediately taken to the NCH trauma centre where doctors declared him dead on arrival.

A 56-year-old executive engineer fell down from the tenth floor of the Stem Cell Hospital at New Civil Hospital (NCH) in Surat, where work to convert the facility into a dedicated Covid hospital is in progress. It has not been established whether the engineer committed suicide or accidentally fell down, police said.

Jashwant Shihora (56), a resident of Parle Point area in Surat, who worked as an executive engineer at the electrical department of Project Implementation Unit, reached the Stem Cell Hospital at NCH on Friday morning, to conduct a routine check.

According to police sources, Jashwant had gone to the tenth floor alone and fell down under mysterious circumstances. The other labourers immediately gathered at the spot even as Jashwants head was profusely bleeding. He was immediately taken to the NCH trauma centre where doctors declared him dead on arrival.

Surat district collectorate officials along with Khatodara police had also reached the spot. The statements of a few engineers working there were taken and the police began a probe.

Khatodara police inspector KB Zala said, We have registered a case of accidental death and started a probe, It is difficult to say at this moment whether he had committed suicide or accidentally fallen down. He was alone at the topmost floor of the building. We are looking into all aspects.

In view of the rise in Covid-19 cases in Surat, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani had arrived in the city on July 4 to take stock of the situation. While addressing media persons at the district collectors office, he had said, The Stem Cell Hospital building (600 beds) which at present is not being used, as some work is pending there, will be converted to a Covid hospital within a week. The Kidney Hospital building (700 beds) will also be converted into a dedicated Covid hospital.

Both buildings are located in the premises of the NCH campus and only their external structure has been made so far. Following the CMs announcement, district administrative officials had given contracts to three agencies to develop both hospitals.

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Surat: Engineer falls to death from tenth floor of under construction Covid hospital - The Indian Express

Four more biotechs are raising their offers in an already record year for biotech IPOs.

Softbank-backed Relay Therapeutics scratched out its original $200 million filing and proposed a $250 million raise that would make them a $1.5 billion company. CAR-T developer Poseida Therapeutics bumped itself up $74 million to $224 million. Off-the-shelf cell therapy startup Nkarta upped from $150 million to $215 million and then priced even higher, at $252 million. Frances Inventiva did its own modest reset, raising its bar from $102 million to $108 million.

Poseida, Nkarta and Inventiva priced today. Relay will price next week.

Barring a surprise flop, the latest flurry of raisesmeans there will be 13 $200 million-plus biotech IPOs in 2020 before August. By contrast, all of 2019 saw two biotechs pass that mark; 2018 saw 7 do so.

The run of eye-catching deals began in the first days of April when, after a pair of pandemic-driven stock market crashes, the small and little-known biotech Zentalis managed to score $165 million in a public offering. At the time, Nasdaqs Jordan Saxe told Bloomberghe expected biotech to open the IPO market back up, with its investors more focused on the long term than a short term that had the potential to be brutal. He predicted 30-35 IPOs for $3.5 billion and a series of blank check companies, a pair of predictions that have since looked prescient.

Its not just private companies that are getting in on the action. Public biotechs, too, have put out for large raises. This week alone Vir Biotechnology offered $300 million in a secondary offering, Revolution Medicines offered $156 million and Akero Therapeutics offered $188.2 million.

The buzz has allowed, among other things, very early stage companies to attract significant interest, including a single week in June when three preclinical biotechs raised over $200 million in a single week.

That trend has continued into this week. Nkarta, focused on natural killer cell therapies, has yet to bring a candidate into the clinic, although they plan to do so later this year. Relay Therapeutics, focused on solid tumors, only started their first trial earlier this year.

Poseida and Inventiva, though, are further along. With backing from Novartis, Poseidas BCMA CAR-T is already in Phase II and, earlier this year, they started recruiting for a Phase I with another CAR-T therapy. Inventiva is in Phase II for a NASH drug and a mucopolysaccharidosis type VI drug.

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Another four biotechs scratch out the first number and ask for more as IPO boom continues - Endpoints News

The 2020 award celebrates outstanding research in rare diseases Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Takeda) (TSE:4502/NYSE:TAK) and the New York Academy of Sciences announced today the Winners of the third annual Innovators in Science Award for their excellence in and commitment to innovative science that has significantly advanced the field of rare disease research.

Each Winner receives a prize of US $200,000.

This press release features multimedia.

View the full release here: https://www.

businesswire.

com/news/home/20200708005039/en/The 2020 Winner of the Senior Scientist Award is Adrian R.

Krainer, Ph.

D.

, St.

Giles Foundation Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Prof.

Krainer is recognized for his outstanding research on the mechanisms and control of RNA splicing, a step in the normal process by which genetic information in DNA is converted into proteins.

Prof.

Krainer studies splicing defects in patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a devastating, inherited pediatric neuromuscular disorder caused by loss of motor neurons, resulting in progressive muscle atrophy and eventually, death.

Prof.

Krainers work culminated notably in the development of the first drug to be approved by global regulatory bodies that can delay and even prevent the onset of an inherited neurodegenerative disorder.

Collectively, rare diseases affect millions of families worldwide, who urgently need and deserve our help.

Im extremely honored to receive this recognition for research that my lab and our collaborators carried out to develop the first approved medicine for SMA, said Prof.

Krainer.

As basic researchers, we are driven by curiosity and get to experience the thrill of discovery; but when the fruits of our research can actually improve patients lives, everything else pales in comparison.

The 2020 Winner of the Early-Career Scientist Award is Jeong Ho Lee, M.

D.

, Ph.

D, Associate Professor, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

Prof.

Lee is recognized for his research investigating genetic mutations in stem cells in the brain that result in rare developmental brain disorders.

He was the first to identify the causes of intractable epilepsies and has identified the genes responsible for several developmental brain disorders, including focal cortical dysplasias, Joubert syndromea disorder characterized by an underdevelopment of the brainstemand hemimegalencephaly, which is the abnormal enlargement of one side of the brain.

Prof.

Lee also is the Director of the National Creative Research Initiative Center for Brain Somatic Mutations, and Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of SoVarGen, a biopharmaceutical company aiming to discover novel therapeutics and diagnosis for intractable central nervous system (CNS) diseases caused by low-level somatic mutation.

It is a great honor to be recognized by a jury of such globally respected scientists whom I greatly admire, said Prof.

Lee.

More importantly, this award validates research into brain somatic mutations as an important area of exploration to help patients suffering from devastating and untreatable neurological disorders.

The 2020 Winners will be honored at the virtual Innovators in Science Award Ceremony and Symposium in October 2020.

This event provides an opportunity to engage with leading researchers, clinicians and prominent industry stakeholders from around the world about the latest breakthroughs in the scientific understanding and clinical treatment of genetic, nervous system, metabolic, autoimmune and cardiovascular rare diseases.

At Takeda, patients are our North Star and those with rare diseases are often underserved when it comes to the discovery and development of transformative medicines, said Andrew Plump, M.

D.

, Ph.

D.

, President, Research & Development at Takeda.

Insights from the ground-breaking research of scientists like Prof.

Krainer and Prof.

Lee can lead to pioneering approaches and the development of novel medicines that have the potential to change patients lives.

Thats why we are proud to join with the New York Academy of Sciences to broadly share and champion their workand hopefully propel this promising science forward.

Connecting science with the world to help address some of societys most pressing challenges is central to our mission, said Nicholas Dirks, Ph.

D.

, President and CEO, the New York Academy of Sciences.

In this third year of the Innovators in Science Award we are privileged to recognize two scientific leaders working to unlock the power of the genome to bring innovations that address the urgent needs of patients worldwide affected by rare diseases.

About the Innovators in Science AwardThe Innovators in Science Award grants two prizes of US $200,000 each year: one to an Early-Career Scientist and the other to a well-established Senior Scientist who have distinguished themselves for the creative thinking and impact of their research.

The Innovators in Science Award is a limited submission competition in which research universities, academic institutions, government or non-profit institutions, or equivalent from around the globe with a well-established record of scientific excellence are invited to nominate their most promising Early-Career Scientists and their most outstanding Senior Scientists working in one of four selected therapeutic fields of neuroscience, gastroenterology, oncology, and regenerative medicine.

Prize Winners are determined by a panel of judges, independently selected by the New York Academy of Sciences, with expertise in these disciplines.

The New York Academy of Sciences administers the Award in partnership with Takeda.

For more information please visit the Innovators in Science Award website.

About Takeda Pharmaceutical Company LimitedTakeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (TSE:4502/NYSE:TAK) is a global, values-based, R&D-driven biopharmaceutical leader headquartered in Japan, committed to bringing Better Health and a Brighter Future to patients by translating science into highly-innovative medicines.

Takeda focuses its R&D efforts on four therapeutic areas: Oncology, Rare Diseases, Neuroscience, and Gastroenterology (GI).

We also make targeted R&D investments in Plasma-Derived Therapies and Vaccines.

We are focusing on developing highly innovative medicines that contribute to making a difference in people's lives by advancing the frontier of new treatment options and leveraging our enhanced collaborative R&D engine and capabilities to create a robust, modality-diverse pipeline.

Our employees are committed to improving quality of life for patients and to working with our partners in health care in approximately 80 countries.

For more information, visit https://www.

takeda.

com.

About the New York Academy of SciencesThe New York Academy of Sciences is an independent, not-for-profit organization that since 1817 has been committed to advancing science, technology, and society worldwide.

With more than 20,000 members in 100 countries around the world, the Academy is creating a global community of science for the benefit of humanity.

The Academy's core mission is to advance scientific knowledge, positively impact the major global challenges of society with science-based solutions and increase the number of scientifically informed individuals in society at large.

Please visit us online at www.

nyas.

org.

.

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Takeda and the New York Academy of Sciences Announce 2020 Innovators in Science Award Winners - BusinessGhana

By Dr. Bimal Chhajer

Since the inception of COVID pandemic, the impact due to various heart ailments seems to be subsided. Though it is known that the rate of mortality and morbidity due to heart attacks are underestimated globally, yet many countries are still facing the wrath of its mortality. While the prime focus of most of the countries is to develop a vaccine for n-COVID-19, in the interim people are instructed to follow the preventive measures like social isolation, sanitization, hand washing, avoiding handshakes and so on.

The recent data suggests that around 1.2 crore people have been infected globally, with a mortality rate of 5.4 lakh. India accounts for 7.4 lakh cases with a mortality of 20,000 till now. The statistics in comparison to the impact of Coronary Artery Diseases (CAD) and other heart ailments seems evidently low.

On an average around 20 crore people succumb to some form of heart ailment with a mortality rate of 10% accounting for 2 crore lives lost. India being the present-day leader in terms of number of heart disease patients across the world attribute to a massive 6 crore people being diagnosed every year. As the numbers are still on an exponential rise, an estimate of 9000 per day seems to lose their lives suffering from heart problems, which in this current scenario seems to be avoided.

COVID and Cardiac Relationship

Various studies have also claimed that people with pre-existing heart conditions have a direct 11.6 % higher risk of mortality due to the COVID infection. And co-morbidity of diabetes and hypertension further raises the risk by upto 8 folds attributing to the lowered immunity and decreased speed of body response to tackle inflammation with increased age along with viral myocarditis to some extent. There has also been a link established with increasing age, while people above the age of 60 years are four times vulnerable to death, 9 times if the age is above 70 years and 15 times if the age is above 80 years.

Evidently, the rate of mortality due to COVID is restricted to within 2% whereas heart diseases kill over 10%, and still neglected. There are 8-10 crore (80-100 million) heart patients in India and every 10 seconds one person dies of heart disease in this country.

Why heart surgeries Natural Bypass technique is useful

Hospitals in India perform more than 2 lakh open heart surgeries annually and are increasing annually by 25%. But the cases of heart attacks are not going down. The surgeries done are only palliative. This raises a big question mark on the use of unnecessary Angioplasties and Bypass surgeries in India and the 10,000 Heart Hospital Industry driven by the greedy Heart Surgeons and Interventional Cardiologists. In India more than 5 lac stents are being put every year and some 60,000 Bypass surgeries are being done in the heart Hospitals and 85% of them are done on stable heart patients which can be easily avoided. Present day Cardiologists are in the wrong track by emphasizing more use of Bypass surgery or Angioplasty, medicines, emergency treatments but they are overlooking the real cause of heart attack and heart disease.

Since the intervention procedure requires exposure of blood to various infection risks, it is not at all safe to undergo such procedure when one can naturally cure themselves.

External Counter Pulsation (ECP) also known as Natural Bypass technique is an approved mechanical process without pushing wires, stents, etc. into the body but dilates blood vessels and enable body to grow new blood vessels much like bypass and stem cell therapy. Most patients can walk longer distance and faster, have fewer episodes of pain chest and require less medication after the therapy.

The patients experience better quality of life while tests can confirm the improved cardiac status. Patients have decreased chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, tiredness as well as a significant improvement in exercise tolerance and energy. They can walk longer distance and faster more comfortably. Medication is reduced in almost all patients. Stress Thallium can picture the heart muscles blood flow while the new non-invasive Cardiovascular Cartography can map hearts blood flow and study the Oxygen demand reserve ratio, blood vessel elasticity, myocardial burden, etc.

Lifestyle management is the key

Yoga and Diet based Lifestyle management along with Optimum Medical Management is the key to the solution of heart diseases. Not only that they are highly effective for healthy heart, but also prevent Bypass surgery or Angioplasty. SAAOL (Science and Art of Living) has been treating heart patients for the last 25 years successfully and its theory is now being proven correct by the most modern medical research. To avoid heart attack all the patients need is a through training on lifestyle and cover of Allopathic medicines.

Cardiac ailments being a lifestyle related ailment and hence the treatment should also be focused in the same direction. While cardiac ailments remain to be a growing burden in the Indian society, affecting millions of people and the economy of the country, it is time to eradicate them from the root.

Zero Oil Cooking Triglycerides is a form of oil (commonly known) which forms blockages in the coronary arteries causing various types of cardiac ailments. This indicates that by adding any amount of oil in our daily lives we are killing ourselves indirectly in the long run. Though most of us add oil in our foods to add flavor and taste to it but fortunately oils do not have any taste, and one can try tasting one spoon of oil for confirmation. Addition of oil in the food is done only to cook or season the spices which are responsible for providing the taste. But does anybody know that the taste can be easily achieved in the food without adding a drop of oil?

We have developed more than 1000 kinds of recipes without oil and they are equally tasty. For our basic requirement of fats the nature has packed some fats/triglycerides with every food like rice, wheat, pulses, fruits and vegetables.

Safety Circle The eduVaccine revolves around the concept of Reversal of heart diseases through regular monitoring of heart health through a SAAOL Safety Circle which can guide every adult of the country to take steps to reverse and prevent heart disease. This technique has benefitted over 2 lakh heart patients in the past 24 years with non-invasive treatment modules like lifestyle change, US FDA approved EECP and a combination of Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, and Detoxification. With the development of the SAAOL Safety circle which is the best indicator of the heart health has benefitted many to prevent future heart complications. It has three circles and 12 factors to control, six parameters related to medical and four each related to healthy diet and lifestyle habits.

(The author is Director of SAAOL Heart Center. Views expressed are personal.)

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Preventing heart diseases naturally at the time of COVID-19 Pandemic - The Financial Express

The FDA has put a phase 1 trial of Cellectis off-the-shelf CAR-T therapy UCARTCS1A on clinical hold after learning of a death in the study. Cellectis said the multiple myeloma patient suffered a cardiac arrest after receiving the highest dose of the anti-CS1 allogeneic CAR-T.

Before joining the Cellectis trial, the patient underwent multiple prior lines of treatment, including with autologous CAR-T cells, without success. In the Cellectis trial, the patient was the first person to receive the higher, 3 million cells per kilogram dose of UCARTCS1A. The patient experienced cytokine release syndrome of undisclosed severity and died of a cardiac arrest 25 days after treatment.

The FDA has placed the trial on clinical hold while Cellectis evaluates the case. According to Cellectis, plans were already afoot to expand the lower, 1 million cells per kilogram dose cohort before the patient death. Preliminary data suggest 1 million cells per kilogram may be the phase 2 dose.

Fierce Innovation Awards: Life Sciences Edition 2020

Submit your entry to demonstrate innovative technologies and services that have the potential to make the greatest impact for biotech and pharma companies.

There are signs the lower dose also has some safety issues. Analysts at Jefferies think investigators gave one or more of the three low-dose patients rituximab to activate the CAR-T safety switch. Work is underway to update the phase 1 protocol to mitigate the potential risks posed by UCARTCS1A.

The modifications may include increased monitoring of parameters related to cytokines. The Jefferies analysts think Cellectis should exclude patients previously treated with anti-BCMA CAR-Ts, such as Johnson & Johnsons JNJ-4528, due to risks related to back-to-back rounds of lymphodepletion, but note that management at the biotech think it is important to enroll that pre-treated population.

In a follow-up note, the analysts identified the use of cyclophosphamide, a chemotherapy drug, in the lymphodepletion regimen as a potential cause of the cardiac arrest. The argument is based on a 2017 paper that describes the case of a patient who died of acute heart failure after receiving a high dose of cyclophosphamide as part of an autologous stem cell transplantation treatment.

Many patients receive cyclophosphamide without suffering cardiac complications, but the analysts see reasons to think the subject enrolled in the Cellectis trial may have been at higher risk. Notably, prior exposure may increase risk, according to the analysts, suggesting the patients previous round of lymphodepletion may have been a factor.

Even if cyclophosphamide is at the heart of the problem, the analysts still think the UCARTCS1A dose is a contributing factor. With patients in the low-dose cohort also experiencing adverse events, the analysts see dosing at below 1 million cells per kilogram as one possible outcome of the situation.

Shares in Cellectis fell 13% in after-hours trading following news of the clinical hold. The value of Allogene Therapeutics, which licensed CAR-T assets that originated at Cellectis, held steady, likely reflecting a belief that the safety issue is limited to UCARTCS1A.

The Jefferies analysts see little or no read-through to other allogeneic programs, noting that the UCARTCS1A trial started at a higher dose than Cellectis two other clinical programs and that Allogene is testing several lymphodepletion regimens. The FDA placed a clinical trial of another Cellectis CAR-T, UCART123, on hold in 2017 after a patient died, but cleared it to resume months later.

The rest is here:
Death in Cellectis off-the-shelf CAR-T trial triggers FDA hold - FierceBiotech

By Associated Press

WASHINGTON: Desperate to solve the deadly conundrum of COVID-19, the world is clamouring for fast answers and solutions from a research system not built for haste.

The ironic, and perhaps tragic, result: Scientific shortcuts have slowed understanding of the disease and delayed the ability to find out which drugs help, hurt or have no effect at all.

As deaths from the coronavirus relentlessly mounted into the hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of doctors and patients rushed to use drugs before they could be proved safe or effective.

A slew of low-quality studies clouded the picture even more.

'People had an epidemic in front of them and were not prepared to wait,'said Dr.Derek Angus, critical care chief at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

'We made traditional clinical research look so slow and cumbersome.'

ALSO READ |Hydroxychloroquine has become highly politicised in US but India uses it widely: White House official

It wasn't until mid-Junenearly six months in when the first evidence came that a drug could improve survival.

Researchers in the United Kingdom managed to enroll one of every six hospitalized COVID-19 patients into a large study that found a cheap steroid called dexamethasone helps and that a widely used malaria drug does not.

The study changed practice overnight, even though results had not been published or reviewed by other scientists.

In the United States, one smaller but rigorous study found a different drug can shorten recovery time for seriously ill patients, but many questions remain about its best use.

Doctors are still frantically reaching for anything else that might fight the many ways the virus can do harm, experimenting with medicines for stroke, heartburn, blood clots, gout, depression, inflammation, AIDS, hepatitis, cancer, arthritis and even stem cells and radiation.

'Everyone has been kind of grasping for anything that might work.And that's not how you develop sound medical practice,'said Dr.Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic researcher and frequent adviser to the U.S.Food and Drug Administration.

ALSO READ |'Feelingbetter': BrazilPresident Bolsonaro says will use hydroxychloroquine to cure his COVID-19

'Desperation is not a strategy.Good clinical trials represent a solid strategy.'

Few definitive studies have been done in the U.S., with some undermined by people getting drugs on their own or lax methods from drug companies sponsoring the work.

And politics magnified the problem.

Tens of thousands of people tried a malaria medicine after President Donald Trump relentlessly promoted it, saying, 'What have you got to lose?'Meanwhile, the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr.Anthony Fauci, warned 'I like to prove things first.'

For three months, weak studies polarized views of hydroxychloroquine until several more reliable ones found it ineffective.

'The problem with 'gunslinger medicine,' or medicine that is practiced where there is a hunch ...is that it's caused society as a whole to be late in learning things,'said Johns Hopkins University's Dr.Otis Brawley.

'We don't have good evidence because we don't appreciate and respect science.'

He noted that if studies had been conducted correctly in January and February, scientists would have known by March if many of these drugs worked.

Even researchers who value science are taking shortcuts and bending rules to try to get answers more rapidly.

ALSO WATCH:

And journals are rushing to publish results, sometimes paying a price for their haste with retractions.

Research is still chaoticmore than 2,000 studies are testing COVID-19 treatments from azithromycin to zinc.

The volume might not be surprising in the face of a pandemic and a novel virus, but some experts say it is troubling that many studies are duplicative and lack the scientific rigor to result in clear answers.

'Everything about this feels very strange,'said Angus, who is leading an innovative study using artificial intelligence to help pick treatments.

'It's all being done on COVID time.It's like this new weird clock we're running on.'Here is a look at some of the major examples of 'desperation science'underway.

To scientists, it was a recipe for disaster: In a medical crisis with no known treatment and a panicked population, an influential public figure pushes a drug with potentially serious side effects, citing testimonials and a quickly discredited report of its use in 20 patients.

Trump touted hydroxychloroquine in dozens of appearances starting in mid-March.

The Food and Drug Administration allowed its emergency use even though studies had not shown it safe or effective for coronavirus patients, and the government acquired tens of millions of doses.

Trump first urged taking it with azithromycin, an antibiotic that, like hydroxychloroquine, can cause heart rhythm problems.

After criticism, he doubled down on giving medical advice, urging 'You should add zinc now ...I want to throw that out there.

In May, he said he was taking the drugs himself to prevent infection after an aide tested positive.

Many people followed his advice.Dr.Rais Vohra, medical director of a California poison control center, told of a 52-year-old COVID-19 patient who developed an irregular heartbeat after three days on hydroxychloroquine from the drug, not the virus.

'It seems like the cure was more dangerous than the effects of the disease,' Vohra said.

Studies suggested the drug wasn't helping, but they were weak.

And the most influential one, published in the journal Lancet, was retracted after major concerns arose about the data.

Read the rest here:
'Desperation science' slows the hunt for coronavirus drugs amid rising death toll - The New Indian Express

By Alexandra Marvar | July 9th, 2020

For nearly a century, scientists have been studying Alzheimers a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people per year but that still has no cure. Currently drugmakers and scientists test preventative Alzheimers drug treatments by identifying participants who are at higher risk of developing the disease, and then observing whether the treatment in question prevents the diseases onset. One in ten people develop Alzheimers after age 65, and one in three after age 85. Thus, this observation may take years or even decades which is part of why progress has moved at a snails pace.

An added challenge is that trial participants must have symptoms of Alzheimers to be eligible but the sheer appearance of symptoms indicates that many brain cells have already died, so by the time symptoms have appeared and candidates join trials, it is generally too late for any treatment to have a significant effect on their symptoms.

In a breakthrough, a research team team at Queen Mary University of London has developed a new system to efficiently screen potential Alzheimers treatments that may be able to greatly expedite the path to a cure.

For this study, published Thursday evening Eastern Daylight Time in the Nature group journal Molecular Psychiatry, the research group consisted of a cohort of people living with Down syndrome, who have as much as a 70 percent higher likelihood of developing Alzheimers during their lifetime. Those with the syndrome carry an extra chromosome 21, which contains a gene that increases Alzheimers risk.Researchers collected hair cells from the participants and reprogrammed the hair cells to become stem cells. Then, in a petri dish environment, they grew those stem cells into brain cells.

In these brain-like cells, the researchers observed a rapidly developing pathology that resembled Alzheimers, down to the hallmark trio of Alzheimers indicators: amyloid plaque-like lesions, progressive neuron death and accumulations of tau protein tangled up inside neurons.

With access to this test environment, the team then experimented with two drugs known to inhibit beta-amyloid production, applying them to the new brain cells. In six weeks, they found the drugs successfully prevented the onset of Alzheimers-pathology.

Although the two drugs the Queen Mary University of London researchers experimented with have failed clinical trials for other reasons and therefore arent suitable treatments for Alzheimers in the end, they were able to demonstrate proof of concept: This system of obtaining and developing cells and creating Alzheimers-prone, brain-like cells as a test environment could be used as an Alzheimers drug testing platform for other preventative drugs in the future.

The hope is that, by creating a lab-controlled cellular environment that replicates the human brain as it develops Alzheimers, the time it takes to test potential treatments could be diminished greatly, and the path to a cure could be significantly shortened. The researchers saw results within six weeks. If that expedited timeline to determine the effectiveness of a drug saves years of research, it could save millions of lives not to mention the suffering on the part of people living with Alzheimers and their loved ones.

This work represents a remarkable achievement, as this is the first cell-based system that has the full trio of Alzheimers pathologies, without any artificial gene over-expression, said Queen Mary University of London Professor Dean Nizetic, lead author on the study. This system opens up the prospect for screening for new drugs aimed at delaying or even preventing Alzheimers before neuronal death starts.

Although its still early days, the system raises a theoretical possibility for further development as a tool to predict who might develop Alzheimers. The same stem cell process could be used on anyones hair follicles, the resulting brain cells of which may or may not then develop Alzheimers-pathology in the dish. The idea would be to catch the people at higher risk of early disease in a cell-based system, before it starts in a persons brain and allow for the possibilities of individualized preventive interventions.

However, he said, they are still a long way from reaching this goal, though study co-author Professor John Hardy added that the potential development of a new, human model of the disease would be a great step forward.

See the article here:
Scientists Have Discovered a Way to Speed Up Alzheimer's Drug Testing - Being Patient

There have been 108,614 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Arizona and 1,963 coronavirus-related deaths, as of Wednesday morning.

The number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Arizona continues to rise.

In an effort to track the changes, 12 News has started a daily live blog.

Here is the live blog for Wednesday, July 8.

Joe Biden makes statement on "testing failures" in Arizona

Former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden made a statement Wednesday calling for federally-managed, community-based testing in Arizona.

Biden called continued and growing spread of coronavirus in the state a result of President Trump's words to slow testing down.

Below is the full statement from Biden:

"Arizonans have been forced to endure 13 hours in line in the boiling heat for a COVID-19 test, hospitals are overwhelmed, the test positivity rate is soaring, and the pleas of local leaders for help were repeatedly dismissed. Enough. The Trump Administration must immediately resume operating federally-managed community-based testing around the country and establish multiple sites in Arizona.

It must open them in every hot spot in the country and in every underserved community, and it must keep increasing the number of testing sites until there are no more lines. The crisis in Arizona is the direct result of Donald Trump's failure to lead and his desire to "slow the testing down," and Americans are suffering the consequences. The President must act."

COVID-19 cases reported in Arizona on Wednesday

There have been108,614confirmed cases of coronavirus in Arizona and 1,963coronavirus-related deaths as of Wednesday, according to the state's latest numbers.

That is an increase from 105,094 cases and 1,927 coronavirus-related deaths reported as of Tuesday.

A week ago, there were 84,092cases and 1,720deaths reported in Arizona.

Cases reach 108,000 on Wednesday, two days after reaching 100,000

The Arizona Department of Health Services said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases topped 108,000, one day after reaching the 105,000 mark and two days after reaching 100,000.

Wednesday also marked the fourth straight day with more than 3,000 new cases reported in Arizona.

Arizona reached 50,000 coronavirus cases a little over two weeks ago, on June 21.

Gov. Doug Ducey announced in a tweet that state officials are working with the federal government to increase testing in Maryvale and west Phoenix.

Wednesday's high case day came one day after Arizona reported a record-high 117 deaths on Tuesday. Health officials said 52 of those deaths were from death certificate matching.

There were 5,025 cases reported on the collection date of June 29, the day with the most collected diagnoses so far. That is subject to change.

Health officials said the days with the highest numbers of reported deaths was June 23 and 25, when 38 people died each day. That is subject to change.

Health officials continued to stress that people should continue social distancing, wearing masks in public and stay home when possible.

New York Times: Arizona has the world's worst coronavirus outbreak

Arizona is No. 1 -- but not in a good way.

According to the New York Times, Arizona is the No. 1 spot in the entire world with the most new coronavirus cases per million residents in the last seven days.

Florida and South Carolina followed shortly behind.

"There is no country in the world where confirmed coronavirus cases are growing as rapidly as they are in Arizona, Florida or South Carolina. The Sun Belt has become the global virus capital," the outlet reported.

The chart ranked the countries with the most confirmed new cases over the past week, adjusted for population size, and treated each U.S. state as if it were a country.

Patrick Ptak, Gov. Doug Ducey's spokesman, said in an email that the report from the New York Times was "misleading at best."

United States reaches 3 million cases of coronavirus

The United States has become the first country to reach three million confirmed cases of COVID-19.

The milestone was reached Wednesday morning, according to tracking by Johns Hopkins University.

By comparison, just one other country -- Brazil -- has passed the 1 million mark.

The Johns Hopkins University tracker shows more than 131,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19. There have been more than 936,000 recoveries.

Phoenix restaurant closes doors after positive test among employees

MacAlpine's Diner & Soda Fountain in Phoenix was forced to close its doors after one of its employees tested positive for COVID-19.

The company said it would temporarily close after an employee tested positive.

"The last day she worked was on June 25, when her symptoms were not yet present," the company said in an email.

"She had asked for the next week off due to a prior engagement."

The employee entered the building on July 2 to pick up her paycheck and her temperature was taken, but it was in the regular range. The employee had a mild case.

"Although the last day she worked was quite some time ago, we feel it is our responsibility to notify our customers of this situation and take any extra precautions necessary," the email continued.

"We will be temporarily closed for the next few weeks and will be thoroughly sanitizing the diner and antique stores."

"We want to reassure you that we will reopen again when it is safe for the public and our employees."

Bullhead City to close beaches, boat launches on weekends

All beaches, boat launches and associated parks in Bullhead City will be closed on weekends through Labor Day because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mayor Tom Brady issued an emergency proclamation Tuesday about the closures on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Most parks will be open to the public Mondays through Thursdays in the northwestern Arizona city along the Colorado River.

Gates and fencing will be installed to prevent beach and boat launch access.

Brady says out-of-towners crowded Bullhead Citys beaches last weekend at "unacceptable levels.

He says non-compliance and overcrowding are not acceptable in trying to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The above article is from the Associated Press.

Navajo Nation cases grow by 27, one more death

The Navajo Department of Health reported 27 new COVID-19 positive cases for the Navajo Nation and one more death.

The total number of COVID-19 positive cases for the Navajo Nation is 7,941.

The total number of deaths has reached 379 as of Tuesday.

Reports from all 12 health care facilities on and near the Navajo Nation indicate that approximately 5,650 individuals have recovered from COVID-19.

60,323 people have been tested for COVID-19.

CDC expands list of groups at higher risk of severe COVID-19 illness

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded its list of individuals who are considered at an increased risk of getting severely ill from COVID-19.

The CDC explained that it's clear a substantial number of Americans are at increased risk of severe illness from the coronavirus pandemic highlighting the importance of continuing to follow preventive measures.

Experts determined there was consistent evidence these conditions increase a person's risk, regardless of age:

Masks now required in public

Gov. Doug Ducey allowed individual Arizona cities to create their own policies about face-covering requirements and enforcement on Wednesday.

A face covering has proven to be effective at limiting the spread of COVID-19, according to the CDC. The virus is primarily spread by in-person contact through sneezes and coughs.

Many cities, including Phoenix, have adopted their own mask requirement that is now in effect.

How to get tested for coronavirus

If you have reason to believe you have contracted coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, this is what you should do.

Arizona releases ZIP code locations of coronavirus cases, other data

The Arizona Department of Health Services has released expanded data points regarding coronavirus cases in the state.

The AZDHS website now features the location of confirmed cases in Arizona by zip code.

You can see the current ZIP code map here and can find yours by clicking around or searching for your ZIP code in the top right of the map.

More information on coronavirus cases from Wednesday

There have been 108,614 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Arizona and 1,963 coronavirus-related deaths as of Wednesday.

That is an increase from 105,094 cases and 1,927 coronavirus-related deaths reported as of Tuesday.

That's an increase of 3,520 new cases reported on Wednesday, a slight decrease from the 3,653 new cases reported on Tuesday.

There was 36 new deaths reported on Wednesday, a major decrease from the record-high 117 deaths reported on Tuesday.

There were 5,025 cases reported on the collection date of June 29, the day with the most collected diagnoses so far. That is subject to change.

Health officials said the days with the highest numbers of reported deaths was June 23 and 25, when 38 people died each day. That is subject to change.

In total, 15,219 new tests were reported on Wednesday, an increase from the 11,418 new tests reported on Tuesday.

There have been a total of 827,089 PCR and Serology tests reported to the state as of Wednesday.

11.4% of those tests have been positive, an increase from 11.3% on Tuesday.

Here's a county breakdown:

Click on the links below to find more information from each county's health department:

COVID-19 is believed to be primarily spread through coughs or sneezes.

It may be possiblefor the virus to spread by touching a surface or object with the virus and then a person touching their mouth, nose or eyes, but this is not thought to be the main method of spread, the CDC says.

You should consult your doctor if you traveled to an area currently affected by COVID-19 and feel sick with fever, cough or difficulty breathing.

There is no vaccine for the coronavirus, so the best way to prevent COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases is to:

You can text FACTS to 602-444-1212 to receive more information on the coronavirus and to ask questions.

MORE RELATED ARTICLES:

Here is the original post:
Coronavirus in Arizona on July 8: Cases, deaths on the rise - 12news.com KPNX

By David Bautz, PhD

NASDAQ:BCLI

READ THE FULL BCLI RESEARCH REPORT

Business Update

KOL Event for Alzheimers Program

On July 8, 2020, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:BCLI) conducted a Key Opinion Leader (KOL) webinar to discuss the companys upcoming Phase 2a clinical trial of NurOwn in patients with Alzheimers Disease (AD). The event included presentations by two of the lead investigators for the upcoming trial, Dr. Philip Scheltens, Professor of Cognitive Neurology and Director of the Alzheimer Centre at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Dr. Bruno Dubois, Professor of Neurology at the Neurological Institute of the Salptrire University Hospital in Paris, France. The presentation can be found here.

The companys Phase 2a trial (BCT-201-EU) is expected to enroll approximately 40 patients with prodromal to mild AD. It will be taking place at medical centers in France and the Netherlands. To be eligible for the trial, patients must have been diagnosed with prodromal to mild dementia at least six months prior to enrollment. In addition, patients must score between 20-30 on the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) and have a Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) global score of 0.5-1.0. The MMSE is a series of questions that are designed to assess a patients mental skills, with the maximum score being 30 points and a score of 20-24 suggesting mild dementia. The CDR is a scale used to characterize six domains of cognitive and functional performance with a score of 0.5 suggesting very mild dementia and a score of 1.0 suggesting mild dementia.

The primary objective of the trial is to assess the safety and tolerability of three intrathecal injections of NurOwn in AD patients. Following bone marrow aspiration during a 10-week run-in period, patients will be treated three times with NurOwn, with eight weeks between treatments. Follow-up visits will occur 12 and 26 weeks following the final injection of NurOwn for a total trial length of 52 weeks. The following figure gives an overview of the trial design.

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum will be collected prior to treatment and again at Weeks 0, 8, and 16 to assess changes in various neurotropic, neurodegenerative, and inflammatory factors (e.g., VEGF, HGF, NfL, NfH, MCP-1, IL-6), markers associated with amyloid deposition (e.g., a40, a42), and markers of tau protein levels (e.g., p-tau, t-tau). Additional clinical outcome measures will be analyzed through administration of the following tests:

Clinical Dementia Rating ScaledSum of Boxes (CDR-SB)

Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT)

Neuropsychological Test Battery (NTB)

Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) subtests

Mini Mental State Examination(MMSE)

AmsterdamInstrumentalActivitiesofDailyLivingQuestionnaire-ShortVersion(A-IADL-Q-SV)

Alzheimers Disease

Alzheimers disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia in older adults. The disease is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer, who identified the first case in a 50-year-old woman named Auguste Deter in 1902. Dr. Alzheimer followed her case until her death in 1906, at which point he first publicly reported on it (Alzheimer, 1907).

After Ms. Deters death, Dr. Alzheimer examined her brain and found many abnormal clumps (now known as amyloid plaques) and tangled bundles of fibers (now known as neurofibrillary tangles). Over the next five years, 11 similar cases were reported in the medical literature, with some of them already using the term Alzheimers disease (Berchtold et al., 1998).

The most common early symptom of AD is a gradually worsening ability to remember new information. This is due to neurons associated with forming new memories dying off first. As neurons in other parts of the brain die, individuals experience different symptoms, which include:

Memory loss that disrupts daily life

Inability to plan or solve problems

Difficulty completing familiar tasks

Confusion with location and time

Difficulty with visual images and spatial relationships

Problems with words in speaking or writing

Withdrawal from social activities

Changes in mood, including apathy and depression

Each person progresses through AD at a different rate, and little is known about how or why there is such a marked variation, thus predicting how it will affect someone is quite difficult. One thing that is common to everyone diagnosed with AD is that his or her cognitive and functional abilities will gradually decline. As the disease progresses symptoms can include confusion, irritability, aggression, mood swings, and long-term memory loss. In the final advanced stage of the disease, people need help with the basic activities of living (e.g., bathing, dressing, eating, and using the restroom), they lose the ability to communicate, fail to recognize loved ones, and eventually become bed bound and reliant on round-the-clock care (Frstl et al., 1999). The inability to move makes them more prone to infections, including pneumonia, which are often a contributing factor to the death of those with AD.

Competing Theories for the Cause of Alzheimers

The root cause of Alzheimers is still unknown; however, it is likely to involve a number of different factors as opposed to being due to one single cause. These factors are likely a combination of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle. There are a number of hypotheses that exist to explain the cause of the disease, with the two dominant hypotheses focused on amyloid and tau.

Amyloid hypothesis: This hypothesis proposes that extracellular beta-amyloid deposits are the fundamental cause of the disease (Hardy et al., 1991). Beta-amyloid is a fragment of the larger protein amyloid precursor protein (APP), mutations of which are known to cause FAD. Several lines of evidence support the amyloid hypothesis: 1) the location of APP is on chromosome 21, while those with Down Syndrome (trisomy 21) almost all show signs of AD by 40 years of age (Lott et al., 2005); 2) APOE4 is a major genetic risk factor for AD, and while apolipoproteins enhance the breakdown of beta-amyloid, some isoforms are less capable of performing this task than others, leading to more beta-amyloid buildup on the brain (Polvikoski et al., 1995); 3) mice that harbor a mutant form of APP develop amyloid plaques and Alzheimers-like pathology (Games et al., 1995). Lastly, amyloid plaques are readily identifiable by microscopy in the brains of AD patients (Tiraboschi et al., 2004). While the brains of many older individuals develop some plaques, the brains of AD patients show severe pathological changes specifically within the temporal neocortex (Bouras et al., 1994).

Tau hypothesis: Tau is a protein located mainly within the axonal compartment of neurons and is an important element in microtubule stabilization and neurite outgrowth. In AD, a proportion of tau protein becomes abnormally phosphorylated, dissociates from axonal microtubules, and accumulates in paired helical filaments inside the neuron (Goedert et al., 1991). When this occurs, the microtubules disintegrate causing the collapse of the neurons transport system (Igbal et al., 2005). Just as with beta-amyloid plaques, tau tangles are readily observable in the brains of those affected by AD.

In addition to amyloid and tau, inflammation has been an underappreciated and often overlooked mediator in patients with AD (Akiyama et al., 2000). A multitude of inflammatory markers are found in AD patients brains and a number of studies have shown a link between chronic inflammation and an increased risk of developing AD (Walker et al., 2017; Tao et al., 2018). Thus, a treatment such as NurOwn that can decrease inflammatory mediators could prove beneficial in AD patients.

On Track to Repot Topline Data from Phase 3 ALS Trial in 4Q20

On July 2, 2020, BrainStorm announced that all doses have been administered in the pivotal Phase 3 trial ofrecen NurOwn in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and that it remains on track to report topline data in the fourth quarter of 2020.

The ongoing randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, multi-dose Phase 3 clinical trial is testing the ability of NurOwn to alter disease progression as measured by the ALSFRS-R (NCT03280056). Cells were extracted once from each patient prior to treatment, with all administrations of NurOwn derived from the same extraction of cells due to a cryopreservation process the company developed for long-term storage of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC). Just as with the companys prior studies, there was a 3-month run-in period prior to the first treatment with two additional NurOwn treatments occurring two and four months following the first treatment. The company is focusing the trial on faster-progressing ALS patients since those patients demonstrated superior outcomes in the Phase 2 trial of NurOwn.

BrainStorm Joins Russell 2000 and Russell 3000; Granted SME Status by EMA

On June 23, 2020, BrainStorm announced that its shares would be included in the Russell 2000 Index and the Russell 3000 Index. The annual reconstitution of the Russell indexes is done to capture the 4,000 largest U.S. stocks by market capitalization.

On June 15, 2020, BrainStorm announced that the company has been granted Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME) status by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). SME status allows the company to participate in a number of financial incentives including a 90-100% reduction in the EMA fee for scientific advice, clinical study protocol design, endpoints and statistical considerations, quality inspections of facilities, and fee waivers for selective EMA pre- and post-authorization regulatory filings, including Orphan Drug and PRIME designations.

Conclusion

Were excited about the potential for NurOwn in AD and we look forward to the initiation of the Phase 2a trial later in 2020. We have recently made a few changes to our model, including the inclusion of NurOwn in AD and lowering of the discount rate from 20% to 15% for all indications. We model for the company to file for approval of NurOwn in AD in 2026 and to be granted approval in 2027. We currently estimate peak sales of over $2 billion for NurOwn in AD in both the U.S. and E.U. Using a 25% probability of approval leads to an NPV of $113 million. Combined with the NPV for NurOwn in ALS ($700 million) and MS ($41 million) along with the companys current cash position and potential cash from warrants leads to a valuation for the company of a bit less than $900 million. Dividing by the companys current fully diluted share count of 35.7 million leads to a valuation of $25 per share.

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BCLI: KOL Event Gives Overview of the use of NurOwn in Alzheimer's Disease; Raising Valuation to $25/Share - Zacks Small Cap Research

Patients with cancer often incur bone marrow damage, resulting in the destruction of stem cells. Stem cell transplants are used to replenish lost or damaged cells that have been affected by cancer and depending on where the stem cells come from these, the procedure may be a bone marrow transplant (BMT), peripheral blood stem cell transplant, or a cord blood transplant.

Typically, in a stem cell transplant, physicians administer high doses of chemotherapy, occasionally in conjunction with radiation therapy, to kill all cancer cells. This is known as myeloablative therapy.

Here are the two main types of transplants, as outline by the American Cancer Society:

In an autologous stem cell transplant, the patient serves as their own donor. Auto means self, therefore this procedure means harvesting your own stem cells from either your blood or bone marrow, then freezing them for preservation. Following high-dose chemo and radiation therapy, the frozen cells are thawed and returned to the (self) donor. Autologous transplants are sometimes used for testicular cancer and brain tumors, but are mainly utilized to treat leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. For the latter, autologous stem cell procedures offers patients a chance for achieving sustained remission. One advantage of autologous stem cell transplant is that youre getting your own cells back. When you getyour own stem cells back, you dont have to worry about them (called the engrafted cells or the graft) being rejected by your body, says the American Cancer Society.

Despite the benefits, as with all procedures, there are risks involved, including graft failure which occurs when the transplanted stem cells dont go into bone marrow fail to properly produce blood cells. A possible disadvantage of an autologous transplant is that cancer cells might be collected along with the stem cells and then later put back into your body, the ACS says, adding that another disadvantage of a autologous stem cell transplants is that your immune system is the same as it was before your transplant. This means the cancer cells were able to escape attack from your immune system before, and may be able to do so again.

But how exactly do physicians prevent any residual cancer cells from being transplanted with healthy cells? In a process known as purging, stem cells are treated before being infused back into the patients blood. Although purging carries its benefits, a potential downside, according to the ACS, is that normal cells may be lost during this process, which in turn could lead to unsafe levels of white blood cells as your body takes longer to produce normal blood cells. Cancer centers will also sometimes use in vivopurging, which involves not treating the stem cells, and instead administering anti-cancer drugs to patients post-transplant. The ACS notes, however, that the need to remove cancer cells from transplanted stem cells or transplant patients and the best way to do it continues to be researched.

Whereas autologous procedures infuse stem cells from your own body, allogeneic stem cell transplants use cells from a donor with a very similar tissue type (in many cases a relative, usually a sibling). In cases where the ideal donor is not a relative, physicians may opt to perform a matched unrelated donor (MUD) transplant, which as the ACS notes, are usually riskier than those with a relative who is a good match.

Allogeneic transplants comprise of the same process as autologous stem cell transplants where stem cells are harvested, frozen, and subsequently thawed and put back following high-dose chemo and/or radiation therapy. In some cases, the procedures involve the infusion of blood extracted from the placenta and umbilical cord of a newborn because the cord contains a high number of stem cells that quickly multiple. By 2017, an estimated 700,000 units (batches) of cord blood had been donated for public use. And, even more have been collected for private use. In some studies, the risk of a cancer not going away or coming back after a cord blood transplant was less than after an unrelated donor transplant, writes the ACS.

A benefit of an allogeneic transplant is that donor stem cells create their own immune cells, which may eliminate any residual cancer cells that remain after high-dose treatment, which is known as the graft-versus-cancer effect. Moreover, because the donor stem cells are free of cancer, donors can be asked to donate stem cells or white blood cells multiple times.

As with autologous stem cell procedures, this donor dependent transplant also carries risk. The transplant, or graft, might be destroyed by the patients body before reaching the bone marrow. Allogeneic stem cell transplants also augment the risk of graft-versus-host-disease, where cells from the donor attack healthy cells in the recipients body. Furthermore, despite the healthy cells being tested before transplant, allogeneic procedures still carry a certain risk of infections because, as the ACS writes, your immune system is held in check (suppressed) by medicines calledimmunosuppressivedrugs. Such infections can cause serious problems and even death.

Because theres a plethora of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) combinations, which are inherited from both parents, finding an exact donor match can often be an arduous task. The search usually starts at siblings, and theres a 25% chance of a sibling being a perfect match. In the event that a sibling does not match, the search moves onto extended family (and parents) who are less likely to match.

The ACS writes: As unlikely as it seems, its possible to find a good match with a stranger. To help with this process, the team will use transplant registries, like those listed here. Registries serve as matchmakers between patients and volunteer donors. They can search for and access millions of possible donors and hundreds of thousands of cord blood units.

Read the rest here:
The Two Types of Stem Cell Transplants for Cancer Treatment - DocWire News

Farrah Fawcett became an actress known for her beauty andcompassionate nature. As June 25 marked the 11th anniversary of her passing, we looked at memorable moments in her career - from that swimsuit poster to her role in "Charlie's Angels."

At the age of 62, Farrah Fawcett passed away on June 25, 2009, in Santa Monica, California. While her death came on the same day as Michael Jackson's passing, it brought her battle with cancer to a final close.

Her final days, Fawcett spent worried about her family -her son, Redmond, in particular. Fawcett shared Redmond with Ryan O'Neal with whom she had a complicated relationship, and his bumpy road down the wrong path heightened her protective instinct.

Fawcett's close friend Mela Murphy, who stayed by her side at St. John's Health Center until she died, recalled the actress's final moments to PEOPLE and said:

She was saying his name, Redmond.' That was the last thing she said.I told her Id take care of him, that Ill always be there for him."

The actress died a few hours later after what Jaclyn Smith, Fawcett's co-star in "Charlie's Angels," called a "relentless fight" against anal cancer.

Following her first cancer diagnosis in 2006, Fawcett founded The Farrah Fawcett Foundation in aid of HPV-related cancer research after she got declared cancer-free in February 2007.

But the status was short-lived, asa routine check-up three months later revealed a small malignant polyp. Fawcett went to Germany to undergo experimental stem-cell treatment, but sadly it didn't have the results they hoped on.

However, Fawcett remained steadfast in her battle against the disease, one her partner Ryan O'Neal knew about from first-hand experience.

O'Neal and Fawcett initially separated in 1997 after almost two decades together. But when doctors told O'Neal in 2001 that he had leukemia, they reconciled until she died in 2009.

During her acting career, Fawcett earned 10 award wins and 23 nominations, and it includes her role in "Charlie's Angels." Then there is that unforgettablered swimsuit Fawcett posedin during 1976.It sold12 million copies and becamethebest-selling poster of all time.

The poster launched Farrah Fawcett into stardom since she had only done small roles and television commercials up until that point.

Fawcett had even remained under the radar with roles in series such as "I Dream of Jeannie," "The Flying Nun," and a recurring role in "Harry O" when she decided to accept the poster deal.

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Farrah Fawcett Glimpse into Life and Final Days of the Beloved 'Charlie's Angels' Star - AmoMama

Following an initial trial, researchers concluded that UAECell19 reduced the duration of hospitalisation from 22 days to just six. Image Credit: iStock

Abu Dhab:The Abu Dhabi Stem Cell Centre (ADSCC) has now treated more than 2,000 patients suffering from COVID-19, with 1,200 already fully recovered from the effects of the virus.

ADSCC announced today that it had succeeded in ramping up the number of treatments from 73 in the initial clinical trials. The large increase was a result of a major effort by staff at the centre to treat as many people as possible, following the UAE Governments decision to make it available free of charge to all moderate-to-high risk COVID-19 patients in the country.

The Governments decision came after the treatment, branded UAECell19, demonstrated efficacy and an impressive safety profile was reflected in the absence of significant changes in adverse events reported, absence of any unexpected serious reactions (such as anaphylaxis, allergic reactions or sudden death) and an absence of any lung complications as determined by radiological exams from inhalation of the nebulised product.

A team of doctors and researchers at ADSCC, led by Dr Yendry Ventura, announced in May that they had developed a new treatment for COVID-19 patients. UAECell19, an autologous stem cell-based therapy, appears to help the body fight the virus and makes the virus less harmful.

Quicker recovery

Following an initial trial, researchers were able to conclude that UAECell19 reduced the duration of hospitalisation from 22 days to just six, when compared to patients who had received standard treatment.

Further analyses revealed that patients treated with the stem cells were 3.1 times more likely to recover in less than seven days than those treated with standard therapy, and 67 per cent of the patients who received stem celltreatment owed this recovery to the new treatment.

ADSCC has since secured intellectual property rights protection for UAECell19, which opens the way for the treatment to be shared widely so more patients can benefit from it.

ADSCC said researchers are at various stages of investigative efforts to establish effectiveness (Phase 3 trial), optimal efficacy of dosageand efficacy to treat other respiratory diseases such asthma, COPDand cystic fibrosis.

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COVID-19: UAE treats 2000 virus patients with novel stem cell therapy - Gulf News

The temperature reached 90 degrees in Harrah, Oklahoma, on a June day two years ago when 50-year-old Alanna Jean Orr went into the Kickapoo Casino in what turned out to be a gamble with the life of her 5-year-old grandson.

She'd left him locked in her car parked under the glaring sun and fed the slot machines for six hours. When she finally did return, the grandson, Maddox Ryan Durbin, was dead. His grandmother was soon the defendant in a federal felony murder case.

Orr pleaded guilty and was sentenced last month to 17 years in prison.

It sometimes happens that way that kids perish in steaming hot cars, where interior temperature can become deadly within 10 minutes because they're deliberately left alone while a parent or caregiver does something else.

But not most of the time.

Most of the time, parents accidentally kill their babies in a tragic collision of tightly packed schedules, changed routines and lack of sleep. Their parents simply forget they were in the back seat a phenomenon that, unfathomable as it may seem, is backed by real science.

Since 1998, 54 percent of the 853 pediatric hot car deaths were accidental, according to federal safety statistics. Another 25 percent of the kids who died managed to lock themselves in cars when their parents turned their backs. People who intentionally left children in cars, as Orr in Oklahoma did two years ago, represent 19 percent of cases.

But something different is happening this year, and it could be an "unintended consequence" of coronavirus stay-at-home orders, says Jan Null, a San Jose State University research meteorologist and adjunct professor.

That unintended consequence is relatively good news: Usually, this time of year, nearly 20 kids would have died from being left in hot cars.

This year, the number is six.

Null who keeps a running registry of pediatric vehicular heatstroke deaths on his website, noheatstroke.org, also has a warning: As more people return to work with disrupted schedules, that number could spike.

"It's hard to prove a negative," Null says, but the supposition among agencies and organizations working to stem hot car deaths is that people are staying home more and haven't made the abrupt routine changes that can lead to what's been described as "forgotten baby syndrome."

Six kids have died of vehicular heatstroke this year; last year at this time, three times as many kids had died in hot cars.

"Usually, there would be eight to 10 by June 15," says Janette Fennell, a Philadelphia woman who founded and heads Kids and Cars, an advocacy group leading the call for automakers to install smart technology to alert drivers of passengers left in vehicles.

An average of 39 kids a year die in hot cars but 2019 and 2018 were record years with 53 and 54 hot car deaths, respectively.

In three of the hot car deaths this year, including a double fatality in Oklahoma, children locked themselves in cars during play, a circumstance Null says warrants more focus by child safety advocates given the number who perish in that way in a typical year.

Null worries that could happen more during the pandemic as parents do their jobs from home, juggling their professional responsibilities with teaching at home during the regular school year and, now that kids are on summer break, trying to find child care. That increases the imperative to make sure cars are locked and key fobs are tucked safely out of kids' reach.

"Teach them cars are not playhouses," he says. "If a child is missing, check the pool first, but next check all the cars, including trunks and foot well areas, places they can die in a short time. If they're hiding in the back yard or a closet, they're in trouble, but they're not dead."

The other three hot car deaths in 2020 appear to involve children who were accidentally forgotten, according to news reports.

Their parents forgot them?

How is that possible?

In many cases, a parent completely loses awareness that the child is in the car, according to David Diamond, professor of psychology, molecular pharmacology and physiology at the University of South Florida, who has studied the hot car death phenomenon for 15 years.

His research shows parents can forget their kids are in the car as a result of competition among the brain's memory systems.

"Memory is a machine," Diamond told The Washington Post in its 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning piece examining the phenomenon of hot car deaths, "and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you're capable of forgetting your cell phone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child."

Parents across the socioeconomic spectrum forget their kids in the back seat, according to The Post report, which examined the cases of parents criminally charged in their children's deaths.

Read the full story on The Washington Post: Fatal Distraction: Forgetting A Child In The Back Seat Of A Car Is A Horrifying Mistake. Is It A Crime?

"The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant," Diamond told The Post. "The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it's supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back it can entirely disappear."

Some parents who accidentally forgot their children in the back seat were acquitted. Most faced public vilification. All face a lifetime of grief and guilt.

No one thought parents would be saddled with such heartache in the early 1990s when car safety experts recommended rear-facing child seats in the back of the car to reduce the potential for injury or death to children when front passenger-side airbags deployed.

Fennell, the Kids and Cars founder, and other child safety advocates, have called on Congress to direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require new vehicles to be equipped with systems that detect the presence of a child or other occupant left alone in a vehicle and issue warnings to prevent vehicular heatstroke.

Last month, U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey announced they were including the recommended changes in House Resolution 2, known as the Moving Forward Act.

Separate bills to require automakers to install technology to warn parents their kids are in the back seat are moving through the House and Senate.

"Even if a person is out of position in a seat, the technology can easily sense that because it already knows who's in the car," Fennell says. "If a baby's all alone, all sorts of alarms will go off."

Both Fennell and Null, the meteorologist, worry about what could happen when the pandemic ends and people return to their normal routines after what is a prolonged period of stress for Americans.

"We are extremely worried about that," Fennell says. "The No 1 indicator for a child being left alone in a car is a change in routine. We don't have any normal anymore. Maybe every day will be seen somewhat as a change in routine."

Adds Null: "Are people more stressed and are their routines so disrupted they don't know whether they're coming or going? What will the end of the year look like with all this confusion in parents' lives? It's a whole new landscape."

According to Null's research, cars can heat up quickly, even on mild days. For example:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration offers some tips for parents:

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Why Fewer Kids Are Dying In Hot Cars -- And Why Number May Spike - Patch.com

DENVER Irene M. Hillson, 97, of Denver, formerly of Waterloo, died Thursday, June 25, at home.

She was born Nov. 15, 1922, in Iowa, daughter of Albert K. and Hilda A. Klooster Johnson. She married Robert G. Bob Todd Hillson on June 1, 1946, in Blue Earth, Minn.; he died Feb. 21, 2009.

She worked as a family assistant for many families at nursing homes and private homes.

Survivors: a son, Daris Hillson of Waterloo; two daughters, Adri (Bob) Lang of Denver, and Betty Otting of Waterloo; four grandchildren, James (Rosie) Hillson, Gregory Jensen, Kendra (Quinn) Taplin, and Kayla (Bryan) Sinclair; a stepgrandson, Ray Soto; two foster grandchildren, Jennie Love and Mickey Henderson; nine great-grandchildren, Monica Rynearson, Ivy Mae Hillson, Payton Hillson, Cora Jensen, Sawyer Jensen, Alaina Taplin, Nora Taplin, Karah Sinclair, and Brock Sinclair; three stepgreat-grandchildren, Olivia, Gabbie and Sophia Soto; and a sister, Lois Patten of Grinnell.

Preceded in death by: her parents; her husband; a sister, Margaret Wirtjes; and a brother, Raymond Johnson.

Services: 1 p.m. Friday, July 3, at Kearns Funeral Service Kimball Chapel with burial in the Garden of Memories Cemetery, both in Waterloo. Visitation is 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, and also one hour before the service at the funeral home. The family asks that masks be worn. The service will be recorded and posted to the funeral home website.

Memorials: to the family.

Irene enjoyed visiting with family and friends, caregiving, reading and both flower and vegetable gardening.

Kearns Funeral Service Kimball Chapel is in charge of arrangements (319) 233-3146. Online condolences may be left at http://www.kearnsfuneralservice.com.

As a young woman, Irene felt the conviction to follow the teachings of Jesus and became part of a worldwide fellowship of believers. She remained true to that choice the rest of her life.

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Obituaries in the Sunday and Monday Courier, June 28-29 - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier