Kidney injuries from exposure to too many drugs are common among certain groups of patients, particularly those spending time in the ICU. Kidney injuries can also happen during drug testing, wounding subjects while eliminating candidate drugs far along their development pipeline. Engineers at Draper have now developed a so-called kidney-on-a-chip, (Read more...)
Tag: Genetics
Implant Containing Living Pancreatic Cells Controls Blood Sugar Without Insulin Injections
Patients with Type I diabetes have a poorly functioning pancreas that doesn’t produce enough, or any, insulin to metabolize blood glucose. Constant and regular injections are a norm for millions suffering from the disease. But now researchers at Cornell University, working with others from Novo Nordisk and University of Michigan Medical (Read more...)
DiffuserCam: Lensless 3D Imaging without Scanning
Three dimensional images can now be created from a single two dimensional image using a new computational imaging technique developed by a research team at the University of California, Berkeley. A hallmark of the new approach is that it does not require a complex, expensive hardware setup, but instead relies on a compact, inexpensive, lensless [&h (Read more...)
All you should know about Waardenburg syndrome
A look at Waardenburg syndrome, a group of diseases that cause changes in the body and eye color. Find out about how rare it is and the diagnosis.
Microbeads Significantly Improve Ultrasonic Targeting for Therapy, Research
Ultrasonic therapy, sonogenetics, and ultrasounic modulation are techniques that rely on focused, high precision sound waves to do things like stimulating neural cells to fire, motivating other cells to repair themselves, and killing tumors by damaging their cellular membranes. So-called cavitation bubbles, in which air bubbles rapidly vibrate, are (Read more...)
Developed: Brain-on-a-Chip Featuring Multiple Cell Types
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a way to create “brain-on-a-chip” devices that can be used to study brain function, how various chemical compounds influence it, and what can be done to protect the brain from toxic chemicals, etc. The technology may help lessen the need for laboratory animals, speed up (Read more...)
TeloYears Genetic Test Kit: Product Review
A few months ago, Medgadget spoke with Jason Shelton, CEO of Telomere Diagnostics (TDx) about the new company’s TeloYears genetic test. Compared to other genetic tests, TeloYears assesses an individual’s telomeres, a biomarker that changes with age. TDx’s goal is to provide consumers a new way to quantify their aging progress thro (Read more...)
Plasmonic Biosensor to Detect Exosomes with Naked Eye
Exosomes are vesicles that are released by the body’s cells that end up in our blood, urine, and other bodily fluids. The importance and roles they play within our bodies still has to be elucidated, but there’s already a lot of signs that exosomes are biomarkers of disease and indicators of various cellular processes. Studying [… (Read more...)
Nanopore DNA Reader with Greater Accuracy Thanks to a Bit of Luck in The Laboratory
Scientific collaborators at University of Rochester and University of Ottawa have developed a new DNA reader based nanopores that can accurately identify the nucleotides passing through. It consists of a silicon nitride membrane, that has nano-sized pores within its body, and a biosensor membrane with only one nanopore. The two membranes are positi (Read more...)
New Technique Allows Mass Production of Bioengineered Liver Tissue
Researchers at Yokohama City University and Cincinnati Children’s Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine have developed a large-scale method to produce bioengineered liver tissue from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The technique could provide viable, consistently produced liver transplants, offering hope to patients with li (Read more...)
Cytotwister, A Unique 3D Stem Cell Bioreactor: Interview with Dr. Hsin-Hsin Shen of Industrial Technology Research Institute
Stem cells are up-and-coming therapies, and a major engineering problem has been scaling up the cell manufacturing to create enough cells for different therapeutic applications. Cytotwister, from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan, makes a step towards solving that with a unique 3D stem cell bioreactor system that address (Read more...)
Scientists Create Living 3D Printer Ink Made of Live Bacteria
Researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have reported in journal Science Advances on a way of 3D printing materials infused with live bacteria. The development may lead to devices such as implantable blood filters and bacterial factories that produce biomolecules for drugs and other therapies. A myriad of other applications may find use from this (Read more...)
Cells Powered by Magnetic Nanoparticles Help Heal Post Infarct Hearts
Heart attacks result in dead myocardial tissue that forms a scar, and so patients are left with a chronically weakened heart. Replacement heart cells or stems cells that can become desired cardiac cells can be grown in the lab and injected into the dead tissue, but it’s a major challenge to keep them in place […]
Vibrator Detects Protein Biomarkers of Disease, Already Tried as Concussion Detector
Scientists at Purdue University have developed a novel new way of detecting biomarkers within blood and other bodily fluids, potentially opening the possibility of being able to quickly and easily detect a wide variety of diseases and monitor their progress. The team’s microelectromechanical system (MEMS) relies on vibration to spot a looked- (Read more...)
Carefully Controlled Light Pulses Can Trigger Neurons to Fire
Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a technique of using a flurry of very short light pulses of different wavelengths to control how mouse neurons fire. Eventually, the technique might be useful for influencing cells in the body that respond to light, such as those in the retina, to treat light-sensitive circadian or […]
(Read more...)Duke University Heart Patch Shows Promise in Repairing Cardiac Tissue Damage
Researchers at Duke University have developed an artificially-engineered patch consisting of fully functional human heart muscle tissue that can be used to repair damaged areas of the heart. While it’s not the first cardiac tissue to be artificially engineered, it’s significant in that it’s the first that is large enough to be cli (Read more...)
Genome Editing Primes T-Cells to Attack Cancer
Scientists at Cardiff University in the UK have found a way to enhance the cancer-destroying ability of T-cells through DNA editing. The research team used CRISPR genome editing technique to remove the receptors naturally present on T-cells, and instead replace them with receptors that would recognize specific cancers cells, causing the T-cells to (Read more...)
New Cell Culture Technique For High Speed, Continuous Cell Production
Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK have developed a new cell culture technique that allows scientists to produce enormous quantities of cells using a very small growth area. The key to the method is a “peptide amphiphile” coating that allows cells to grow and then “peel away” and detach from the growth surface, le (Read more...)
Spraying Technique Creates Muscle Fibers
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) have developed an electrospraying technique that can incorporate living cells into a 3D synthetic polymer scaffold. The cells can then grow to form elongated fibers, mimicking natural muscular tissue, and the technique brings the possibility of lab-developed o (Read more...)
Mirrors Improve Imaging of Biological Specimens by Light Sheet Microscopy
Though we’ve reached the diffraction limit of light in optical microscopes long ago, scientists are continuing to improve the images produced by them. Researchers National Institutes of Health and the University of Chicago just announced a new development that allows for much higher quality imaging of biological samples using light sheet (Read more...)