At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, scientists have created microscopic lasers that may end up being used for imaging inside the body, control of biological activity via optogenetics, and performing novel biological studies on living specimens. The lasers, which are about 5 microns in diameter, smaller than red blood cells, turn infrared (Read more...)
Tag: Genetics
New Microscopy Technique Can Image Living Tissues in Real Time
Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new microscopy technique that can image living tissue in real time, without the need for chemical stains or dyes. The technique can achieve significant detail, such as allowing researchers to see the movement of vesicles, which are tiny transport packages, between cells. This approach could (Read more...)
Grown Cartilage Used to Fix Diseased Joints Responsible for TMJ Dysfunction
Temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ) is a condition which makes it difficult to chew on food and talk, while being quite painful and unpleasant. It’s caused by the breakdown of the cartilage disc that brings together two bones of the jaw. Researchers from University of California, Irvine, University of California, Davis, and Th (Read more...)
Nano Scale Matrix Promotes Neural Stem Cell Growth Without Risk of Cancer
Growing neural stem cells is a complicated process that has the potential to result in the unintended production of cancer cells. In large part this is due to the addition of growth factors to the culture mix, which can result in indiscriminate cellular multiplication. Now researchers from the Hong Kong Baptist University have developed a [… (Read more...)
Light Beams Guide Growth of Cells and Entire Tissues
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), a European intergovernmental research organization, has announced that its scientists have managed to harness the power of optogenetics to guide how cells and tissues grow. They were able to generate different tissue shapes, a capability that may develop into growing tissues for therapeutic applications (Read more...)
Hairy Frosted Glass Slides Capture Circulating Tumor Cells for Screening and Early Diagnosis
Biopsies are typically the way prostate cancer is identified, but prostate cancers also release circulating tumor cells (CTCs) that are telltale signs of the presence of the disease. Because they’re so rare and difficult to separate from whole blood, CTCs remain rarely used for establishing diagnoses. Researchers from the Chinese Academy of S (Read more...)
Particles Made of Silk Protect Immune System Boosting Drugs to Fight Cancer
Peptides, or strings of amino acids, are being investigated as a way to help activate the immune system to fight cancer and other diseases. Delivering them into the interior of immune system’s cells is difficult because they’re easily broken apart by the body. Now a team of researchers from Switzerland and Germany have developed a [&hel (Read more...)
System for 3D Printing Bioengineered Muscles and Tendons
A team of Swiss researchers has developed a microplate system for printing engineered muscle and tendon tissue. The investigators were able to create a microwell plate that allows tissue to adhere to it and the system constantly monitors progress, screens the growth and selects the desired results. The system may end up being used for […]
Device Delivers Drugs Direct to Heart to Help Recover from Heart Attacks
A team of researchers from the U.S. and Ireland have developed a device that can be used to deliver drugs directly to a damaged region of the heart. The capability has the potential to provide a direct therapeutic option to guide how the heart recovers following a heart attack, leading to improved cardiac function. As […]
Stem Cell Derived Nerve Cells Improve Breathing in Rats with Spinal Cord Injuries
Researchers at Drexel University College of Medicine and the University of Texas at Austin were able to treat rats that have spinal cord injury with neurons grown in a petri dish. The animals, whose breathing abilities were severely stifled by the injury, showed improvement in their breathing following the therapy. This is an impressive result [&he (Read more...)
Imec Develops Organ-On-Chip Device to Improve Drug Candidate Screening
The drug development process is a long road that involves not only many years of research and large piles of money, but also a great deal of pre-clinical and clinical testing. Animals used during in vivo testing are not always good human analogues, and humans of course are always at risk for potentially serious side […]
3D Printed Artificial Corneas Seeded with Stem Cells to Alleviate Shortage of Donors
At Newcastle University in the UK researchers have managed to print replacement corneas, potentially alleviating the shortage of donor corneas that exists right now. The artificial corneas are made from a combination of alginate, collagen, and a pinch of human stem cells that are made to differentiate into corneal stromal cells. The mix, which has (Read more...)
E. Coli in an Electronic Pill Can Detect Bleeding in the Stomach
Researchers at MIT have developed an ingestible chip containing genetically engineered E. coli. When swallowed, the bacteria can detect blood in the stomach, and produce light. The chip contains components that measure the amount of light produced and relays this information to a nearby smartphone, allowing a simple and non-invasive diagnosis of ga (Read more...)
Japanese Researchers Figure Out How to Connect Neurons Together
Cultured groups of neurons and even brain organoids are now routine in neuroscience research, and yet the connections between individual neurons that materialize are effectively random. In order to be able to setup tightly controlled experiments in which the neuronal networks are precisely designed, a scientist needs a method to connect individual (Read more...)
Blood Test for Quick and Early Diagnosis of Pancreatic Cancer
Pancreatic cancer is notoriously famous for being a merciless killer, but the reality is that our current inability to diagnose it early is what makes it so intractable. Earlier diagnosis would allow therapies to be initiated before the cancer becomes untreatable. Researchers at University of California, San Diego may have just developed a blo (Read more...)
Robot Taught to Grow Kidney Organoids from Pluripotent Stem Cells
Organoids have become a new way of studying the details of how our tissues function and to test potential new drugs in a highly realistic environment. Growing these three dimensional bits of organs from stem cells is not easy, which is why Petri dishes continue to be the standard in cellular culturing. Now researchers at […]
(Read more...)Scientists Create Maps of Gonorrhea’s Resistance to Antibiotics
A team of European researchers has mapped the genome of various strains of gonorrhea, creating a way to identify antibiotic resistance before trying different regimens of antibiotics. By sequencing DNA gathered from patient samples, the researchers were able to spot individual cases of resistance and to correct faulty lab test results. While import (Read more...)
AmnioStem Amniotic Fluid Stem Cell Therapy for Stroke
Creative Medical Technology Holdings, a Phoenix, Arizona firm, has filed for a patent for its AmnioStem amniotic fluid derived stem cell therapy for treatment of stroke. According to the company, “The patent application covers the use of the Company’s newly licensed AmnioStem stem cell as a production means for generation of nanoparticl (Read more...)
IonStar Delivers Nearly Perfect Proteomics in Large Groups of People
Measuring the amount of specific proteins present in the body can help to diagnose diseases that are otherwise difficult to identify. This has been a challenge and even the best existing technology, known as MaxQuant, is not great at measuring low concentrations of proteins and performs poorly in certain situations. Now researchers at State Un (Read more...)
Researchers Present “Neuronal Cookbook” for Making Neurons from Skin Cells
A team of researchers at The Scripps Research Institute have developed a so-called “neuronal cookbook” that provides other scientists a set of instruction for how to convert skin cells into different types of brain neurons. The new methodology should allow researchers to generate exactly the type of cells they need and to study them in (Read more...)