#7: 🕹 Lab-Grown Brain Cells Play Pong
Scientists connected neurons to the video game Pong and the cells learned to play
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💬 In this issue:
🐁 Genes Linked To Longevity In A Study Of 3,000 Mice
🏈 Psychedelics May Help With Sports-Related Mental Health
💰 Using Web3 To Disrupt Traditional Science Funding
🕹 Lab-Grown Brain Cells Play Video Game Pong
Genes Linked To Longevity In A Study Of 3,000 Mice
In a new collaborative study published in the journal Science on healthy aging, the DNA of more than 3,000 genetically diverse mice were analyzed for genes correlating with aging to understand how DNA variants can impact longevity.
The researchers identified that the contributions of various longevity genes varies between males and females. Both male and female mice had a single longevity locus localized on Chromosome 12. Some genes do not affect lifespan until the mice, in particular male mice, reach a certain age.
Additionally, the researchers found that longevity correlated to body weight and growth, and noted that early-life nutrition in the mice had a significant impact on longevity, as it also does in humans. Several of these longevity genes were correlated in humans and the worm model, C. elegans, suggesting evolutionary conservation.
PTSD In Elite Athletes: Psychedelics May Help With Sports-Related Mental Health
PTSD is typically thought of in relation to veterans of recent wars and victims of abuse, and psychedelics have been researched in the last decades to help with these groups manage and even recover from PTSD. In addition to these notable groups, PTSD is thought to be more prevalent in elite athletes than in the general population, due to trauma incurred in sports participation through direct physical injury, witnessed traumatic events or abusive dynamics within sports teams or with coaches.
Elite athletes may not receive appropriate recognition of their mental health issues because of the tendency of athletes to mask symptoms or injury, particularly of PTSD and other trauma-related disorders. Researchers at the University of Melbourne argue that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy should be investigated as a novel treatment option for addressing mental health issues in elite athletes.
Recently Sports Illustrated reported professional athletes from the NBA and NFL are seeking treatment for their mental health from psychedelics. Kenny Stills, a wide receiver in the NFL, was the first NFL player to speak out about using psychedelics to treat his depression. Specifically, he sought after ketamine therapy. Ketamine is an anesthetic with hallucinogenic effects, which is legal for medicinal use in the US, and therefore could not jeopardize his standing in the NFL. He went to a clinic run by Field Trip Health, for an in-person Ketamine-Assisted psychotherapy program where he could take the medication under the supervision of a licensed therapist.
“What ketamine does is it kind of takes away these extra levels of anxiety and the different processes that are happening in the brain so that we can really be our true self,” Stills says.
Field trip health reports that they typically see patient’s depression or anxiety scores go from severe to mild, and sustained for 120 days on average after treatment.
The stance of professional sports organizations to determine if psychedelics are allowed varies. The world anti-doping agency, which governs Olympics policy, bans MDMA from competition but does not mention other psychedelics. The NBA prohibits ketamine, LSD and MDMA in its drugs of abuse category. Similarly, the MLB prohibits those in addition to ayahuasca, psilocybin and mescaline. The UFC, on the other hand, is considerably more progressive and has done research into psychedelic use and the idea to possibly set up athletes in clinical trials with reputable research institutions.
Using Web3 To Disrupt Traditional Science Funding
Let me get you up to speed
Most therapeutics are developed like this: Scientists at a research university discover a molecule that could treat a disease, the school patents it, and that patent spins out into a biotech startup searching for venture capital funding. After enough research and development, a large pharmaceutical giant will buy the assets or acquire the company altogether.
Because of this, taxpayer dollars that fund research at public universities often lead to privatized therapeutics that are sold back to the public.
…wtf? that’s messed up!
Along this therapeutic development process, there are huge structural bottlenecks to getting research funding, and there are further obstacles in how we translate those scientific discoveries into new medicines and products. Due to lack of funding or lack of “hype”, many scientific discoveries fall into “The Valley of Death.” Additionally, this traditional model of development and funding promotes the development of translational science - science that can become a product, while not incentivizing basic research which is instrumental to furthering human knowledge and ultimately leading to translational science.
How do we fix it?
Outside of the traditional funding mechanisms - public grants and venture capital, a third funding mechanism is emerging as Web3 technologies are being used to open access to funding to scientific projects. Many crypto billionaires are publicly showing interest in funding science, and demonstrating a larger appetite for high-risk projects than traditional venture capital.
Ethereum creator, Vitalik Buterin has put major investments into longevity science, and Coinbase co-founder, Brian Armstrong sold 2% of his shares in Coinbase and to start his anti-aging company, NewLimit, with a $50M seed investment.
Crowdfunding has traditionally been challenging for scientific research, but crypto crowdfunding is proving to be successful with a big impact. Gitcoin is an organization to build and fund public goods. Each donation is quadratically matched - meaning the number of donors has more impact than the amount donated, resulting in a $1 donation becoming ~$10 after matching. In the latest round, Decentralized Science (DeSci) projects raised a total of $567,983.
DeSci organizations like VitaDAO have raised funds to distribute grants more quickly than traditional organizations like the NIH, leveraging the collective knowledge of members of the DAO for deal sourcing and review. So far the DAO has funded over 15 projects on longevity research through traditional equity funding and their novel funding instrument, the IP-NFT. The IP-NFT links the scientific intellectual property to a non-fungible token, which can then be traded and monetized, giving credit to the original researchers who often get forgotten and left behind once the IP is acquired by Big Pharma.
Elliot Herschberg and Dr. Jocelynn Pearl dive deep into these topics in their latest long-form article (~20 min read) spelling out the biggest issues with scientific funding and development.
Lab-Grown Brain Cells Play Video Game Pong
Cortical Labs, described as a biological computing startup, is looking to revolutionize computing to allow us to enter the post-silicon age. Dr. Brett Kagan and his team grew human brain cells in a petri dish, aptly named DishBrain, and connected these cells to the game-world with electrodes. The cells produced electrical activity on their own and learned how to play the game Pong, as reported in their paper in Neuron.
The purpose of neurons in your brain is information processing. Typically when researchers do experiments and study brain cells, they analyze if the cells survive or not under certain stressors. This measurement is missing the true function of the brain cells. If scientists are able to tap into the information processing capabilities of the cell, many more research areas can be explored.
You can hear more from the team directly on the BBC Radio 4 podcast here.
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This is fascinating, love to see this usage in professional sports! The intersection begins.