Researchers at the University of Chicago have developed light-activated nanowires that can stimulate neurons to fire when they are exposed to light. The researchers hope that the nanowires could help in understanding complex brain circuitry, and they may also be useful in treating brain disorders. Optogenetics, which involves genetically modifying (Read more...)
Tag: Genetics
Multicolor Fluorescent Proteins Reveal How New Heart Cells Form
Heart attacks cause parts of the heart’s tissue to die, reducing its capacity to eject blood. There’s been recent evidence that the heart does indeed grow new cells after early childhood development, but the source of these new cells has been an intriguing mystery. In order to identify where new cardiomyocytes come from, researchers at (Read more...)
Device Measures Stiffness of Tens of Thousands of Cells to Screen Drugs for Safety (Video)
Force cytometry, or measurement of strength of cells, can be a useful indicator for assessing how specific drugs affect cell function. Rapidly performing thousands of force cytometry tests can help speed up drug testing, particularly for compounds intended to treat blood pressure, stroke, muscular dystrophy, and asthma. Scientists at UCLA and Rutge (Read more...)
3D Printed Clip Turns Smartphone into Powerful Microscope
Modern smartphones feature incredible image sensors that are much better than professional equipment from only a few years ago. They’re great for microscopy and simple attachments in front of the lens can give great views of blood, cells, and other specimens. The only problem is that the sample has to be illuminated and having LEDs […]
(Read more...)Brain Organoids Show Formation of Brain Wrinkles
Our regular readers might have noted that the development of organ-on-a-chip devices has become a popular research trend. Tiny living parts of real human organs can be sustained for long periods of time inside of specially designed chambers that feed the organoids and provide researchers a window to examine them under a microscope. All sorts [&hell (Read more...)
Placenta-on-a-Chip to Screen for Drug Safety During Pregnancy
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a microfluidic chip that mimics the placental barrier. Their device paves the way for drug screening to determine which drugs can cross the placental barrier, allowing researchers to assess drug safety for pregnant women. Pharmacological treatment for pregnant women can be risky, as some (Read more...)
Upconversion Nanoparticles Deliver Light Deep Into Brain to Power Optogenetic Therapies
Optogenetics is a powerful method developed over the past few years that lets scientists use light to activate specific genetically modified neurons within the brain. This technology still has a lot of time left in the lab before it can help to address human diseases, but that reality may be a bit closer thanks to […]
Intestine on a Chip Technique Opens Door to Personalized Medicine
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute have developed a way to effectively culture donor intestinal cells in an organ-on-a-chip device. The technique opens the door to developing personalized medicines for intestinal conditions. Compared with traditional cell culture techniques, organ-on-a-chip microfluidic devices allow researchers to study phy (Read more...)
National Institute of Standards and Technology Releases Stem Cell Tracking App
Popularizing stem cell therapies will require the systematic, consistent production of billions of cells and carefully monitoring their production to prevent unintended side effects. Even now, growing and differentiating groups of cells for lab experiments is a process requiring close quality control. The National Institute of Standards and Technol (Read more...)
Gene Therapy and Optogenetic Goggles for Retinitis Pigmentosa. Interview with Dr. Bernard Gilly, CEO of GenSight Biologics
GenSight Biologics, a biopharmaceutical company based in France, is developing gene therapies for rare diseases that cause blindness. The company has recently received approval in the UK for its Phase I/II PIONEER trial, which will test a treatment combining gene therapy with a visual stimulation device for people with retinitis pigmentosa, an incu (Read more...)
Oxygen-Permeable Silicone Chip Allows the Mass-Production of Hair-Making Tissue
Researchers at Yokohama National University in Japan have developed a technique to mass-produce “hair follicle germs” – cellular aggregates that can be implanted into the skin and allowing new hair to grow. The technique brings a regenerative medical therapy for hair loss closer to clinical reality. Hair loss can be psychologicall (Read more...)
High Throughput System for Studying Single-Cell Gene Regulation
Collaborators at the University of Basel, Switzerland and Max Planck Institute, Germany have developed a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip for monitoring gene regulation of individual bacterial cells. The device lets scientists control a number of environmental variables of thousands of cells at the same time while closely watching what happens to every o (Read more...)
3D Printing Living Cells Into Useful Biomedical Objects
There have been a number of techniques recently developed for printing objects with living cells inside of them. The technology can lead to custom tissue replacements and other medical applications, but all these methods are quite slow. That’s because living cells have to somehow be carefully moved through microfluidic channels to mix wi (Read more...)
Artificial Brain Synapses Replicated in a Chip
Our brains mainly consist of brain cells and the connections between them, making them quite modular and incredibly adaptable. Brain synapses, the connections between neurons, seem to be responsible for at least some of the computational magic that allows us to think, move, and respond to all sorts of stimuli. Being able to replicate the […]
(Read more...)Blood Vessel on a Chip to Study Angiogenesis and Test Anti-Cancer Drugs
Scientists at the Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, have developed a blood vessel on a chip. The device makes it simpler to study angiogenesis, the process of new blood vessel growth. In addition, the technology could aid researchers in developing new anti-cancer drugs that act by inhibiting angiogenesis in tumors. Angiogene (Read more...)
Microfluidic Mixer Combines Fluids without Backflow to Make Advanced Portable Diagnostics Practical
Lab on a chip devices are designed to perform advanced diagnostics and drug testing using small samples of blood and other body fluids. We’ve written about many such devices, including for assessing the effectiveness of chemo and for picking out circulating tumor cells, but microfluidic technologies that rely on capillary or vacuum powered te (Read more...)
Microfluidic Device Mimics the Blood-Retinal Barrier
Researchers in Barcelona have developed a microfluidic chip that mimics the human blood-retinal barrier. The device contains several parallel compartments, containing different cell types, to mimic the layered structure of the retina. The researchers hope to use the device to test the effect of drugs on the retina and to better study diabetic retin (Read more...)
Biomeme’s Portable PCR System Expands Research Possibilities
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is one of the most widely used techniques in biological research and testing, allowing researchers to amplify and identify even small quantities of DNA or RNA. It serves a wide variety of uses, from genetic testing to infectious disease identification to forensics. Thermal cyclers, the machines that run PCR, are a [& (Read more...)
Cryogenic 3D Printing to Make Replica Brain and Lung Tissues
Printing biological tissues, a necessary precursor to creating replacement organs, is not easy, but constructing extremely soft and fragile tissues that resemble the brain and lungs is even more difficult. Researchers at Imperial College London and Kings College London are now using extremely cold temperatures in combination with 3D printing to cre (Read more...)
Biomaterial Scaffold to Culture T Cells for Immune Cell Therapy
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute have developed a biomaterial scaffold that mimics the actions of antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in stimulating T cell growth and survival. The scaffold allowed the researchers to significantly expand T cell numbers in a dish, compared with existing culture methods, and could bring T cell therapies, such as (Read more...)