A team of researchers headed by groups at University of Nottingham and Queen Mary University London have come up with a smart material that forms into new blood vessels. Made out of graphene oxide and a protein, the material is 3D printed and naturally forms into tubular shapes that are very similar to blood vessels. […]
Tag: Genetics
New Customizable Bio-Ink for Printing Organs, Tissues
3D printing of tissues and organs requires a bio-ink that can host the living cells that are required for every unique application. A viable construct requires an extracellular matrix that will have the right mechanical and biochemical properties for the intended cells. Researchers at Rutgers University believe they’re on track to being able to print […]
Chip Recreates Blood-Brain Barrier to Study Delivery of Drugs to Brain
The blood-brain barrier is one of the greatest challenges that modern medicine has to overcome if we want to be able to fight neurological diseases using drugs. Animal models serve a purpose, but they’re not very good at replicating the human blood-brain barrier (BBB) as results often don’t translate during clinical trials. A better way […]
Plasma Protein Levitation Technique Could Provide New Diagnostic Tool
Researchers at Michigan State University have developed a technique to levitate plasma proteins using a magnetic field. The technique provides very accurate information on the density of the proteins, and could reveal signatures of disease, potentially allowing clinicians to diagnose various conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, more easily. The technique involves mixing a sample of […]
Genomic Profiling for Precision Medicine: Interview with David Spetzler, Caris Life Sciences
Caris Life Sciences, a Dallas-based innovator in molecular science focused on fulfilling the promise of precision medicine, has developed the MI Genomic Profiling Similarity (GPS) score to compare the molecular characteristics of specific tumors against those in the Caris database. This allows clinicians to identify the molecular subtype of their patients’ tumors and guide personalized […]
Device Links Up to 10 Organ Chips to Form Body-on-a-Chip
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute have developed a “body-on-a-chip” consisting of up to 10 organ-on-a-chip devices that are linked together to mimic blood flow between different organ systems. The new system allows for more comprehensive drug testing, enabling researchers to see the effects of a drug on multiple organ systems simultaneously. The Wyss team […]
Gene Delivery Device to Make Engineered Cell Therapies Much Cheaper
Engineered cell treatments, such as CAR-T cell cancer immunotherapies and hematopoietic stem cell gene therapies, are extremely expensive. In large part that is because it’s not easy to grow myriads of precisely engineered cells that are originally sourced from the patient being treated. Now, researchers at University of California, Riverside and City of Hope National […]
Eyevensys Non-Viral Gene Therapy for Ocular Diseases: Interview with Patricia Zilliox, CEO of Eyevensys
Eyevensys, a clinical-stage biotechnology company based in France, has developed a method to perform non-viral gene therapy in the eye, with the aim of treating ocular diseases. The system uses ocular electrotransfection to deliver therapeutic genes into the eye. Consisting of an ocular device and an electrical pulse generator, the system can deliver DNA plasmids […]
3D Printed Liquid Biopsy Device Captures Most Cancer Cells
Circulating tumor cells can point to the existence of cancer and provide information about its progression. Capturing these cells remains a tricky process. Dozens of devices have been developed that do their best to grab onto only the cancer cells being looked for, but they all suffer from problems such as poor efficiency, damage to […]
Optogenetic Brain System to Give Blind People Sight
While there has been a good deal of progress in designing ever more advanced visual prostheses, some of the more impressive existing devices try to take over the functionality of the eye by directly stimulating the optic nerve or even the visual cortex of the brain. While this is impressive in itself, researchers at SUNY […]
CRISPR-Responsive Materials Deliver Therapy on Biological Cues
CRISPR gene editing is a technique famous for its potential to edit the genomes of living organisms, including humans. Using the technique, it may be possible to reverse congenital conditions, kill off viruses, and do things previously only imagined. But now it has been employed to do something else entirely, and that is to give […]
Lensless Endoscope Captures 3D Images of Objects Smaller Than Individual Cells
Researchers from TU Dresden in Germany have developed a new ultrathin lensless endoscope for biomedical applications. Their work demonstrates that the endoscope, only 200 microns in diameter, can self-calibrate and adjust its focus to perform 3D imaging. This exciting development can be used for optogenetic applications, as well as monitoring cells and tissues. Typical endoscopes […]
Artificial Protein Switch for Smart Cell Therapies
Researchers from University of California, San Francisco and the University of Washington have developed a new artificial protein switch, dubbed LOCKR. Their work demonstrates that the new switch can be used to control many intracellular processes, including mediating molecular traffic inside a cell, degrading specific proteins, and causing a cell to self-destruct. This exciting development […]
Using Microparticles to Measure Oxygen in Tissues
The field of tissue engineering is rapidly progressing, in large part thanks to hydrogel scaffolds that provide a comfortable home for new cells. A major issue that researchers bump against is tracking how well oxygen reaches freshly grown cells within such scaffolds, which can indicate how well the new cells are generally functioning. Now, researchers […]
Generating Hallucinations Using Optogenetics
About a decade ago, Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University developed a technology called optogenetics. It allows scientists to stimulate individual nerve cells using light beams within the brains of live and moving animals. Now, this technology has been used to generate visual hallucinations within lab mice, causing them to act as though the things they’re […]
New High-Res Holographic Microscope to Study Live Cells
Nanolive, a spinoff company of École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, has just introduced a holographic microscope that can image live cells at high resolution over extended time periods. Nanolive’s CX-A device relies on a low energy light beam to penetrate the sample, which does not interfere with internal cell activity. At every […]
Lipid Nanoparticles Deliver CRISPR/Cas9 into Organs with High Efficiency
Researchers at Tufts University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a new lipid nanoparticle which can deliver CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tools into organs with high efficiency, suggesting that the system is promising for clinical applications. The CRISPR/Cas9 system is currently being investigated as a way to treat a variety of diseases with a […]
Artificial Bacterial Protein Allows Stem Cells to Home to the Heart
Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a way to make stem cells move toward heart tissue when they are injected intravenously. The treatment could improve the efficacy of stem cell therapies for heart disease, which are currently hampered when most injected cells are filtered out of circulation by organs such as the lungs […]
Microfluidic Chip Allows Embryonic Stem Cells to Differentiate
Complex multicellular organisms, such as ourselves, start out from stem cells that differentiate into different kinds of cells. This process is controlled by groups of cells that secrete special signaling molecules called morphogens, which guide nearby stem cells to turn into the kinds of cells that should be located in that region. This is an […]
Floating Flexible Sensor to Monitor Engineered Tissues and Cell Cultures
Tissue engineering is a vibrant research field poised to revolutionize how we heal organs and tissues following damage from injury and disease. One of the difficulties that scientists working with cultured cells discover is the inability to closely monitor a number of characteristics of their cellular cultures. One reason is that water and electronics don’t […]