Fox News anchor Bret Baier has the latest on the Murdoch Children's Research Institute's partnership with the Gladstone Institutes for the'Decoding Broken Hearts' initiative on'Special Report.' Australia's Murdoch Children's Research Institute is helping scientists use stem cell medicine and artificial intelligence to develop precision therapies for pediatric heart disease, the leading cause of death and disability in children. Around 260,000 children die from heart disease around the world each year. In the U.S., a child is born with a heart defect every 15 minutes. "We're really interested in understanding how kids develop heart disease and where we can interfere to stop it progressing," Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) Heart Disease Group Leader David Elliott said.

An unimaginable amount of data is continually being generated by scientific experiments, longitudinal studies, clinical trials, and hospital records--but what can be done with all this information? Barbara Engelhardt (she/her), PhD, is building machine-learning models and statistical tools to make use of that data and find ways to better understand, and even prevent, disease. She is now joining Gladstone Institutes as a senior investigator. "Barbara is an innovator in computational biology," says Katie Pollard, PhD, director of the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology. "She brings vast expertise in statistical models and will help expand our machine-learning program. We're thrilled she's joining our team."

The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. She joined information-technology executives from MGH, Gladstone Institutes and biotechnology company Ginkgo Bioworks on a virtual panel about Covid-19 research, which was hosted Thursday by data storage company VAST Data Inc. It was important to have large amounts of data storage, easy access to data and enough computational power to build complex AI models, Dr. Kalpathy-Cramer said. Researchers from various task forces at MGH have come together over the past several months to use AI algorithms in a number of ways, she said. They are using AI models to predict which Covid-19 patients will require more advanced treatments and to estimate how many intensive-care unit beds might be needed at a given time, Dr. Kalpathy-Cramer said.

Researchers have used machine learning to predict the conditions needed for stem cells to develop a certain way, which could be used to grow 3D organ models. Researchers have used a computational model to learn how to manipulate stem cell arrangement, including those that may eventually be useful in generating personalised organs. According to the team, their discovery could be used to develop model organs grown from a patient's own cells, which could'revolutionise' how diseases are treated by increasing disease understanding or testing drugs. The study was conducted by a team from Gladstone Institutes, in collaboration with Boston University, both US. Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, similar to the stem cells found in an embryo, have the potential to become nearly every type of cell in the body.

It's harder than you might think to look at a microscope image of an untreated cell and identify its features. To make cell characteristics visible to the human eye, scientists normally have to use chemicals that can kill the very cells they want to look at. A groundbreaking study shows that computers can see details in images without using these invasive techniques. They can examine cells that haven't been treated and find a wealth of data that scientists can't detect on their own. In fact, images contain much more information than was ever thought possible.