Firm adds a new wrinkle to anti-aging products – The Logan Banner

HUNTINGTON Serucell Corporation, a cosmeceutical company based in Huntington, has developed the worlds only dual-cell technology to create and produce anti-aging skincare products, and they did it in Huntington.

Serucell KFS Cellular Protein Complex Serum is made start to finish at Serucells laboratory on the south side of Huntington.

This has been one of the best kept secrets in West Virginia, said Cortland Bohacek, executive chairman and a co-founder of Serucell Corporation.

The company soft launch was in September 2018 at The Greenbrier Spas. The Official online launch was April 2019 and is getting exposure with some well known sellers like Neiman Marcus, local dermatologist and plastic surgeons offices and several other retail locations from New York to California. It is also sold online at serucell.com.

One person that has tried the product is Jennifer Wheeler, who is also a Huntington City Council member.

As a consumer I have an appreciation of the quality of the product and the results Ive seen using it, she said. It has been transformative for my skin and seems like its success will be transformative for our city as well.

She said Serucell and the people behind it are impressive on every level.

In my role on council, Im especially grateful for the companys conscious effort to stay and grow in our city, Wheeler said.

A one-ounce bottle of the serum costs $225. The recommended usage is twice per day and it will last on average of about six weeks.

Serucells active ingredient is called KFS (Keratinocyte Fibroblast Serum), which is made up of more than 1,500 naturally derived super proteins, collagens, peptides and signaling factors that support optimal communication within the cellular makeup of your skin.

This is the first and only dual-cell technology that optimizes hydration and harnesses the power of both keratinocytes and fibroblasts, two essential contributors to maintaining healthy skin by supporting natural rejuvenation of aging skin from the inside out, said Jennifer Hessel, president and CEO of the company.

When applied to the skin, KFS helps boost the skins natural ability to support new collagen and elastin, strengthen the connection and layer of support between the upper and lower layers of your skin. The result, over time is firmer, plumper and smoother skin, according to Hessel.

Why it works so naturally with your skin is because it is natural, Hessel said. These proteins play an important role in strengthening the bond between the layers of your skin, and thats where the re-boot happens.

KFS is the creation of Dr. Walter Neto, Serucells chief science officer and co-founder of the company. Neto is both a physician and a research scientist, specializing in the field of regenerative medicine with an emphasis on skin healing and repair.

Neto said Serucells technology unlocks the key to how our cells communicate and harnesses the signaling power actions to produce the thousands of bioactive proteins necessary to support the skins natural rejuvenation.

Originally from Brazil, Neto studied at Saint Matthews University and completed his clinical training in England. His clinical research on stem-cell cancer therapies, bone and tissue engineering and wound and burn healing led to his discovery in cell-to-cell communication, and ultimately the creation of Serucells KFS Cellular Protein Complex Serum.

Neto received multiple patents for the production method of Serucell KFS Serum. He lives in Huntington with his wife and four golden retrievers and works alongside his longtime friend, Dr. Brett Jarrell.

I have known Brett since I was 18 years old, Neto said.

Jarrell practices emergency medicine in Ashland, Kentucky, and oversees all aspects of quality control for Serucell. He received his bachelors degree in biology from Wittenberg University, his masters degree in biology from Marshall University and his medical degree from the Marshall University School of Medicine. Jarrell completed his residency at West Virginia University and is board certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine.

Jarrell has served as a clinical instructor of emergency medicine at the Marshall School of Medicine, president of the West Virginia chapter of the American College of Emergency Medicine and he has published a number of peer-reviewed journal articles on stroke research.

Jarrell also lives in Huntington.

Another co-founder of the company is Dr. Tom McClellan.

McClellan is Serucells chief medical officer and director of research and is a well-respected plastic and reconstructive surgeon with a private practice, McClellan Plastic Surgery, in Morgantown.

McClellan completed his plastic and reconstructive surgery training at the world-renowned Lahey Clinic Foundation, a Harvard Medical School and Tufts Medical School affiliate in Boston, Massachusetts. While in Boston, he worked at Lahey Medical Center, Brigham and Womens Hospital, as well as at the Boston Childrens Hospital. McClellan is board certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery.

In addition to his practice and role at Serucell, McClellan utilizes his surgical skills through pro bono work with InterplastWV, a non-profit group that provides comprehensive reconstructive surgery to the developing world. He has participated in surgical missions to Haiti, Peru and the Bahamas.

McClellan lives in Morgantown with his family.

All three doctors here have strong connections to West Virginia, and we didnt want to leave, Neto said. We all want to give back to West Virginia, so that is the main reason we have our business here in Huntington.

We are building a company we believe can make a difference in the community, Hessel added. Our goal is to grow Serucell and build our brand right here in Huntington. There is a pool of untapped talent here in Huntington. When we expand our business here, we can provide another reason for young people to be able to stay and grow their careers, whether it is in science, operations or manufacturing. The team is a pretty excited to make an impact in the community where it all started.

Hessel decline to give sales numbers, but said the business has been growing each year since the product was introduced. She also declined to give the number of employees at the facility, but did say it has sales representatives across the country.

For more information, visit serucell.com.

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Firm adds a new wrinkle to anti-aging products - The Logan Banner

The Major Discoveries That Could Transform the World in the Next Decade – Livescience.com

The last decade ushered in some truly revolutionary advances in science, from the discovery of the Higgs boson to the use of CRISPR for Sci-Fi esque gene editing. But what are some of the biggest breakthroughs still to come? Live Science asked several experts in their field what discoveries, techniques and developments they're most excited to see emerge in the 2020s.

The universal flu shot, which has eluded scientists for decades, may be one truly groundbreaking medical advances that could show up in the next 10 years.

"It has sort of become a joke that a universal [flu] vaccine is perennially just five to 10 years away," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore.

Related: 6 Flu Vaccine Myths

But now, it appears that this "may actually be true," Adalja told Live Science. "Various approaches to universal flu vaccines are in advanced development, and promising results are starting to accrue."

In theory, a universal flu vaccine would provide long-lasting protection against the flu, and would eliminate the need to get a flu shot each year.

Some parts of the flu virus are constantly changing, while others remain mostly unchanged from year to year. All of the approaches to a universal flu vaccine target parts of the virus that are less variable.

This year, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) began its first-in-human trial of a universal flu vaccine. The immunization aims to induce an immune response against a less variable part of the flu virus known as the hemagglutinin (HA) "stem." This Phase 1 study will look at the safety of the experimental vaccine, as well as participants' immune responses to it. Researchers hope to report their initial results in early 2020.

Another universal-vaccine candidate, made by the Israeli company BiondVax, is currently in Phase 3 trials, which is an advanced stage of research that looks at whether the vaccine really is effective meaning that it protects against infection from any strain of flu. That vaccine candidate contains nine different proteins from various parts of the flu virus that vary little between flu strains, according to The Scientist. The study has already enrolled more than 12,000 people, and results are expected at the end of 2020, according to the company.

In the last decade, scientists have successfully grown mini-brains, known as "organoids," from human stem cells that differentiate into neurons and assemble into 3D structures. As of now, brain organoids can only be grown to resemble tiny pieces of a brain in early fetal development, according to Dr. Hongjun Song, a professor of neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. But that could change in the next 10 years.

"We could really model, not just cell type diversity, but the cellular architecture" of the brain, Dr. Song said. Mature neurons arrange themselves in layers, columns and intricate circuits in the brain. Currently, organoids only contain immature cells that cannot forage these complex connections, but Dr. Song said that he expects the field may overcome this challenge in the coming decade. With miniature models of the brain in hand, scientists could help deduce how neurodevelopmental disorders unfold; how neurodegenerative diseases break down brain tissue; and how different peoples' brains might react to different pharmacological treatments.

Someday (though perhaps not in 10 years), scientists may even be able to grow "functional units" of neural tissue to replace damaged areas of the brain. "What if you have a functional unit, pre-made, that you could click into the damaged brain?" Song said. Right now, the work is highly theoretical, but "I think in the next decade, we'll know" whether it could work, he added.

In this decade, rising sea levels and more extreme climate events revealed just how fragile our beautiful planet is. But what does the next decade hold?

"I think we will see a breakthrough when it comes to action on climate," said Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University. "But we need policies that will accelerate that transition, and we need politicians who will support those policies," he told Live Science.

In the next decade, "the transformation of energy and transportation systems to renewables will be well under way, and new approaches and technologies will have been developed that allow us to get there faster," said Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And, "the increasing climate-related impacts from severe weather and perhaps from sea-level rise finally get enough people's attention that we really begin to take climate change seriously."

Good thing too, because based on recent evidence, there's a scarier, more speculative, possibility: Scientists might be underestimating the effects that climate change have had on this century and beyond, Wuebbles said."We should learn much more about that over the next decade."

Related: The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted

In the last decade, the biggest news in the world of the very small was the discovery of the Higgs boson, the mysterious "God particle" that lends other particles their mass. The Higgs was considered the crowning jewel in the Standard Model, the reigning theory that describes the zoo of subatomic particles.

But with the Higgs discovered, many other less-famous particles began taking center stage.This decade, we have a reasonable shot at finding another of these elusive, as-yet-still hypothetical particles the axion, said physicist Frank Wilczek, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (In 1978, Wilczek first proposed the axion). The axion is not necessarily a single particle, but rather a class of particles with properties that rarely interact with ordinary matter. Axions could explain a long-standing conundrum: Why the laws of physics seem to act the same on both matter particles and their antimatter partners, even when their spatial coordinates are flipped, as Live Science previously reported.

Related: Strange Quarks and Muons, Oh My! Nature's Tiniest Particles Dissected

And axions are one of the leading candidates for dark matter, the invisible matter that holds galaxies together.

"Finding the axion would be a very great achievement in fundamental physics, especially if it happens through the most likely path, i.e., by observing a cosmic axion background which provides the 'dark matter.'" Wilczek said. "There's a fair chance that could happen in the next five to 10 years, since ambitious experimental initiatives, which could get there, are blossoming around the world. To me, weighing both the importance of discovery and likelihood of it happening, that's the best bet."

Among those initiatives is the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) and the CERN Axion Solar Telescope, two major instruments that are hunting for these elusive particles.

That said, there are other possibilities too we may yet detect gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime, emanating from the earliest period in the universe, or other particles, known as weakly interacting massive particles, that could also explain dark matter, Wilczek said.

On Oct. 6, 1995, our universe got bigger, sort of, when a pair of astronomers announced the discovery of the first exoplanet to orbit a sun-like star. Called 51 Pegasi b, the orb showed a cozy orbit around its host star of just 4.2 Earth days and a mass about half that of Jupiter's. According to NASA, the discovery forever changed "the way we see the universe and our place in it." More than a decade later, astronomers have now confirmed 4,104 worlds orbiting stars outside of our solar system. That's a lot of worlds that were unknown just over a decade ago.

So, the sky's the limit for the next decade, right? According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sara Seager, absolutely. "This decade will be big for astronomy and for exoplanet science with the anticipated launch of the James Webb Space Telescope [JWST]," said Seager, a planetary scientist and astrophysicist. The cosmic successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, JWST is scheduled to launch in 2021; for the first time, scientists will be able to "see" exoplanets in infrared, meaning they can spot even faint planets that orbit far off from their host star.

What's more, the telescope will open a new window into the characteristics of these alien worlds. "If the right planet exists, we will be able to detect water vapor on a small rocky planet. Water vapor is indicative of liquid water oceans since liquid water is needed for all life as we know it, this would be a very big deal," Seager told Live Science. "That's my number one hope for a breakthrough." (The ultimate goal, of course, is to find a world that has an atmosphere similar to that of Earth's, according to NASA; in other words, a planet with conditions capable of supporting life.)

And of course, there will be some growing pains, Seager noted. "With the JWST, and the extremely large ground-based telescopes anticipated to come online, the exoplanet community is struggling to transform from individual or small team efforts to large collaborations of dozens or over one hundred people. Not huge by other standards (e.g., LIGO) but it's tough nonetheless," she said, referring to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, a huge collaboration that involves more than 1,000 scientists across the globe.Originally published on Live Science.

Originally published on Live Science.

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ESPN reporter Edward Aschoff diagnosed with pneumonia and HLH before he died – WPVI-TV

When ESPN reporter Edward Aschoff died, he had been diagnosed with multifocal pneumonia and a rare disease known as HLH, his fiance tweeted.

Aschoff was first admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with pneumonia in many parts of his lungs but was brought back to the emergency room when antibiotic treatment failed and he got worse, Katy Berteau said.

HLH, hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, is a rare disease that affects the immune system.

She did not provide any further details about the manner of Aschoff's death, which occurred on his 34th birthday.

Other people, including Aschoff himself, expressed surprise about the seriousness of the illness in a young man in apparently good health.

"Anyone ever had multifocal (bilateral) pneumonia in their early 30s as some who never gets sick and has a very good immune system? Asking for two friends ... my lungs," he tweeted on December 5.

More questions have come up about his second diagnosis, HLH. It is unclear if Aschoff had HLH or pneumonia first, if one came from the other, and exactly how he died so quickly.

Here is what we know about the diseases Aschoff's had:

Pneumonia is when air sacs in the lungs fill with fluid or pus. It can be caused by a virus, bacteria or a fungus, causing a fever and respiratory problems.

It can occur in one or both lungs, and multifocal means the pneumonia occurs in multiple places.

Thousands of people die around the world each year of pneumonia, but most healthy people can fight it off, especially with antibiotics and antiviral medications. The people most at risk are the young, elderly, frail or immune-compromised.

What is HLH?

HLH is a rare disease that affects the immune system, making certain white blood cells attack other blood cells and enlarging the spleen and liver, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

It can be inherited or acquired, Johns Hopkins said. About a quarter of cases are passed down through families, and the rest come from infections, a weakened immune system and cancer.

Is it dangerous?

There is treatment for HLH, and acquired forms may clear when properly treated, Johns Hopkins said. If familial HLH goes untreated, it is usually fatal.

Treatments include chemotherapy, immunotherapy, steroids, antibiotic drugs and antiviral drugs. Stem cell transplants can cure HLH in most cases if drug treatments don't work, Johns Hopkins said.

There is no way to prevent HLH, the medical center said.

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Alligator Skin, Human Clones and Other Things Being Banned in 2020 – The New York Times

California lawmakers made their fashion ruling: Crocodile handbags were out. Alligator boots, too. But for Louisiana, the nations top producer of all things made from alligator skin, those were fighting words.

The states attorney general filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month to stop Californias ban on alligator and crocodile products from taking effect in 2020. Last week, a federal judge agreed to temporarily block the new law, meaning Louisiana and California are headed for a showdown in court.

Every year on Jan. 1, hundreds of new state and federal laws take effect across the country. Many are mundane, but some can be contentious and not just in the world of fashion.

As 2020 arrives on Wednesday, Arkansas will ban state-funded human cloning, while Illinois will legalize marijuana. Texas will try to save lives in school shootings, but not by taking action on guns. Heres a look at changes coming across the country.

Texas

When a gunman opened fire at a high school in Santa Clarita, Calif., in November, a choir teacher barricaded her students behind a grand piano and grabbed a gunshot wound kit, wrapping the wounds of a freshman girl who had been shot in the torso and shoulder. The girl survived.

In Texas, which has seen its own rash of mass shootings, a new law will require local school districts to stock similar kits on their campuses, equipped with tourniquets, chest seals, compression bandages, bleeding-control bandages, emergency blankets, latex-free gloves, markers and scissors. University Health System, a San Antonio-based public hospital, will train students and school employees to use them.

Arkansas

Arkansas lawmakers voted to prohibit state funding of human cloning or destructive embryo research, stating that the prospect of creating new human life solely to be exploited or destroyed has been condemned on moral grounds as displaying a profound disrespect for a human life.

The new law will also block funds to state educational institutions investigating stem cell research using embryos. In vitro fertilization, however, will not be affected.

Arizona, Maryland and Missouri prohibit the use of state funds to pay for reproductive cloning, while North Dakota, South Dakota and Oklahoma are the only states to ban all forms of human cloning.

California

Wondering why youre seeing a flurry of updates to our terms of service and privacy policy emails in your inbox?

California, home of some of the countrys big tech giants, such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo, is rolling out a landmark digital privacy law that will regulate data collection from consumers. The California Consumer Privacy Act requires companies to comply with new privacy and transparency standards.

Consumers will be able to request access to information that tech companies have collected about them and ask that the data be deleted. Users can also opt out of companies selling their personal data including photos, and information on what they buy and where they go to other businesses.

California is the first place to implement such a law in the United States. In 2018, the European Unions data protection law took effect, protecting all residents in the member countries.

Illinois

Illinois will become the 11th state in the country, and the second in the Midwest, to legalize recreational marijuana sales and use. As early as 6 a.m. on New Years Day, anyone 21 and over with a valid drivers license will be able to purchase cannabis products at state-licensed stores.

The state has approved 35 medical cannabis dispensaries to sell pot and other products. There are, however, limits on how much an individual can purchase: 30 grams of marijuana, 500 milligrams of edibles and five grams of concentrated THC oils.

California

The state was set to institute a ban on any merchandise made of alligator or crocodile skin, including popular boots and handbags, until the Louisiana attorney generals office filed a lawsuit and a federal judge issued a hold.

The temporary restraining order is the first step in protecting Louisianas alligator industry, which creates jobs, supports our economy and contributes to much-needed coastal restoration efforts, Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said in a news release Friday.

Louisiana is the United States leading producer of alligator skins, according to the Louisiana Alligator Advisory Council. In 2017, the alligator industry generated almost $100 million for the state, the group said.

California will still go ahead with a ban on cosmetics companies importing or selling products that have been tested on animals.

NEW YORK

New York will become the latest state to eliminate cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, which could see more than 40 percent of inmates released from pretrial detention, according to the Center for Court Innovation.

Bail can still be set for people accused of more violent crimes, including sexual offenses, domestic abuse, witness tampering and conspiracy to commit murder. When deciding whether to set bail on those cases, judges are still expected to consider the defendants financial ability to pay.

Over the past few years, several states have taken similar steps as part of an effort to reduce the criminalization of poverty. California became the first state to abolish cash bail entirely last year. New Jersey has also all but eliminated cash bail, while New Mexico has minimized its use.

New Jersey

Employers in New Jersey will be banned from screening applicants based on their past salaries or benefits history or asking what they previously earned, a rule intended to address the gender wage gap and promote equal pay among workers. Seventeen states including California, Hawaii and Maine have passed similar laws. And in recent years, such laws at the county level have been passed across the country.

Colorado

Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, Colorado has suffered several more mass shootings. The state will now become the latest to implement a red flag law, which will allow family members or law enforcement officials to petition a court to confiscate firearms from people who are deemed by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others.

Colorado follows in the footsteps of at least 17 states, including Florida, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana and California, which have approved some version of a red flag law. In Colorado, the seizure of firearms can be extended to 364 days, after which the burden of proof is on owners to have their firearms returned.

LOOKING AHEAD

Some new state laws wont take effect until the summer. Beginning July 1, businesses in Washington State will be banned from putting expiration dates on gift cards. The new law will protect recipients if they do not use their gift cards in a timely fashion, and service charges will no longer be allowed.

Vermont residents will not be able to throw peels, eggshells, seeds, pits, bones, coffee grounds, loose-leaf tea, oil and other food scraps in landfills beginning on July 1. Trucking companies will be required by the states universal recycling law to provide scrap collection services to all residents and businesses. Supermarkets and restaurants will also have to comply with mandatory composting across the state.

Car owners across a number of states, including California, Hawaii, Kansas and Alabama, will be charged fees to register zero emission vehicles in the new year. With the growing trend of green technology, these special fees, which range from $50 to $200, are expected to make up lost gas-tax revenue that pays for upgrading and repairing roads and bridges across the country.

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Alligator Skin, Human Clones and Other Things Being Banned in 2020 - The New York Times