Advances in medical technology continue apace, with sophisticated new medical devices and therapies becoming available on an ongoing basis. However, medical technology often comes at a premium, and for low-resource regions sometimes even relatively basic medical devices, such as hearing aids, are inaccessible because they are too expensive. Similarly, basic equipment, such as centrifuges, that […]
Tag: Genetics
DNA Microscopy Visualizes Genetic Content of Tissue Samples
Fundamentally new microscopy techniques don’t come out very often, but scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have just unveiled a new method of “imaging” tissue samples that provides a complex genetic and biomolecular picture of what’s going on inside individual cells. “It’s an entirely new category of microscopy,” explained Aviv Regev, one of the […]
Scientists Develop Accurate Model of Blood-Brain Barrier
The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is the primary reason that so few medicines exist to treat brain conditions. Drugs that can attack tumors elsewhere usually can’t penetrate the defenses of the BBB, so figuring out how to get through it is important for the development of future drugs and other therapies. There have been attempts to […]
Mini-Brain Platform Mimics Human Brain to Help Develop Drugs, Test Therapies
Studying the effect of potential therapies on the human brain is exceedingly difficult. Laboratory animals have proven to be less than ideal as mimics for identifying how a given therapy will work in people, leading to exceedingly long and difficult research journeys. Now AxoSim, a company based in New Orleans, will soon be making its […]
Liquid Biopsy for Monitoring Transplanted Stem Cells
Researchers from the University of Maryland, University of Pennsylvania, and Emory University have demonstrated that a blood test can be used to track the efficacy of transplanted stem cells. They analyzed tiny cellular components called exosomes that were secreted from transplanted stem cells. “Exosomes contain the signals of the cells they’re derived from – proteins […]
3D Printed ELISA Pipette Tips for Low Cost Medical Testing
Researchers at the University of Connecticut have developed a 3D printed enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) device, which fits onto a normal pipette and substantially reduces the time and cost of this common medical test. The device could allow for medical testing in remote or low-resource regions, where such tests would otherwise be unavailable. ELISA tests […]
Magnetic Beads Strip Blood Samples to Allow Circulating Tumor Cell Isolation
Researchers at the University of Georgia have developed a microfluidic chip to isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples. Unlike other devices, this new chip uses magnetic microbeads to strip all the cells from the blood, leaving only the CTCs, in a technique the researchers have called “integrated ferrohydrodynamic cell separation”. The device is […]
Synthetic Proteins Designed to Halt Growth of Cancers
Stanford University scientists have developed a novel approach to halting the growth of cancer cells while preserving normal function in healthy cells. The research was published in journal Science, and though it was so far conducted only on groups of cancer cells outside a body, the findings are incredibly promising. The new approach focuses on […]
System Separates, Sequences Circulating Tumor Cells from Whole Blood
Engineers at the University of Michigan have developed a high speed microfluidic chip that can separate circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from whole blood and analyze them. The technology, which may make biopsies and other diagnostic tests unnecessary in many cases, is impressive in that it is able to attract highly rare CTCs and to sequence […]
Intestine Chip to Study Human-Microbiome Interactions
Researchers at the Harvard Wyss Institute have developed a microfluidic chip that allows bacteria and human epithelial cells to be co-cultured. The device will allow researchers to study how the gut and bacteria interact, helping them to identify the role of the microbiome in health and disease. With reported involvement in a huge array of […]
Bioengineered Viruses Used to Kill Antibiotic-Resistant Infection
Scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have achieved a world’s first of beating a bacterial infection using an engineered virus. This was done in a 15-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis who had a severe case of Mycobacterium. The girl received a double lung transplant, but then developed the infection that antibiotics could not kill. […]
Scientists Figure Out How to Merge Single-Cell Datasets for Medical Research
Our cells express a myriad of different genes. So-called “single-cell datasets”, which are profiles of gene expression of a single cell, are very useful in medical research because they explain, in minute detail, ongoing intracellular physiology. But, they can be quite massive and since different labs can use different techniques to create and publish these […]
Scientists Figure Out How to 3D Print Vascular Networks for Printed Organs
The field of tissue engineering has seen a lot of progress, with complex 3D systems being developed that offer strength, contain multiple cell types, and that can even perform a biological function. All this is child’s play if there is no viable vascular network to supply the nutrients to all the cells and to route […]
Material Made from DNA Undergoes Metabolism, Powers Itself
Scientist at Cornell University have developed a remarkable new material, which is made out of DNA and which undergoes metabolism. One of the crucial aspects of life is metabolic activity, which essentially means that large molecules are broken down and small molecules are used to build larger ones. The dynamic material that the Cornell team […]
Engineered Matrix to Improve T Cell Immunotherapy
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have developed an “artificial lymph node” to help multiply antigen-specific T cells to fight cancer. They used a hydrogel that contains immunostimulatory antigen-presenting nanoparticles to encourage T cells to proliferate, and have increased activity against specific antigens. Current T-cell based therapies for cancer involve extraction and expansion of T cells. […]
3D-Printed Heart From Patient’s Own Tissues
Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel have developed a 3D printing approach to create a heart with a patient’s own cells. The investigators used patient-derived cellular and acellular material obtained from fatty tissue, along with a unique bioprinter, to 3D-print a heart. The team isolated cells from a patient tissue sample and used genetic […]
Microbial Signature for Colorectal Cancer Identified Using Machine Learning
Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, the University of Trento in Italy, and other international collaborators leveraged a machine learning algorithm to identify a subset of gut bacteria associated with colorectal cancer, the third most common cancer worldwide. They performed a meta-analysis of eight studies of gut bacteria and colorectal […]
AI Outlines Working Neurons Faster Than Humans, Speeds Research of Brain
Artificial intelligence techniques are becoming important tools in medicine and biomedical research. Tasks that require a great deal of precision, patience, and previous knowledge can now be taught to computers. A field where AI may be particularly useful is neurology, as the time scales and number of cells involved can be overwhelming for many experiments. […]
Aligning Living Cells Within 3D Printed Tissues Using Ultrasound
One of the ways of making bioengineered tissues is to embed living cells within 3D printed constructs. This is already a common practice in labs around the world, but researchers at North Carolina State University have figured out a way of improving the technique. One limitation of simply dumping cells into a 3D printed structure […]
Miniaturized Optical Chip Can Identify Individual Biomolecules for Personalized Medicine
Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have developed an optical chip that can identify individual biomolecules in small sample volumes, using an ordinary camera and metasurfaces, an emerging technology in photonics. The researchers hope that their technology could pave the way for diagnostic chips that can identify trace amounts of disease biomarkers in blood […]