Staples and sutures are currently used to seal soft tissues together in clinical practice, but researchers at Arizona State University have come up with an alternative technique that resembles welding. It may end up being used to seal tissues during surgeries and to treat wounds, and in many cases simply to enhance the effectiveness of […]
Tag: Nanomedicine
Nanoparticles Inside Samples of Mucus to Measure COPD Development
Management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) suffers not only from a lack of effective therapies, but also from an inability to track the disease’s progression. Spirometers that measure how much air patients can displace using their lungs are the “gold standard,” but that standard is pretty poor in helping to predict how COPD will […]
Nanoparticles for RNA Vaccine Delivery Help Stop Melanoma Tumor Growth
RNA vaccines are a promising way to harness the immune system to fight cancers and infections. Some are currently in clinical trials, but the technology is still in its early stages. A major impediment to the effectiveness of RNA vaccines is the difficulty in getting them into the correct immune cells to produce the desired […]
Light Activated Compound Kills Hypoxic Tumors
Photodynamic therapy is a technique that relies on photosensitizer chemicals to generate reactive species that kill cancer cells. These compounds can be delivered into tumors and then light is used to activate them. One of the main reasons for the slow adoption of this technology is that tumors are usually oxygen deprived and the photosensitizers […]
Nanoelectrode Chip to Study Neuronal Network Activity of Thousands of Cells
Though the patch clamp electrode allowed neuroscientists to study electrical signals from inside neural cells, it is a tool with very limited capabilities. No more than about a dozen cells at a time can be studied, but the brain and the neural system operate on much larger scales. To help study entire neuronal networks comprising […]
Discreet Wearable for Hair Regrowth Using Body-Generated Electricity
While there are some devices and medications out there to help slow hair loss and regrow hair, they’re bulky, uncomfortable, or have substantial side effects. Low-frequency electric stimulation, delivered in pulses and over extended time periods, has a great deal of potential as an effective way to promote hair growth. The problem is that it […]
Minimally Invasive Biopsies Provide Maximum Pathology Data
Current pathology techniques for analyzing biopsy tissues are lacking in their ability to detect cancer in small samples. Being able to rapidly study the distribution of protein expression within cells, gathered from minuscule samples, could be an important tool for early diagnosis and monitoring of cancer. Now, researchers at National University of Singapore have reported […]
Bacterial Swarmbots to Produce Biologic Drugs
Biologics, being a group of drugs synthesized from biological sources, are often produced using bacteria. The manufacturing processes are usually slow and laborious, though they do benefit from economies of scale. Producing small quantities of biologics is typically limited to research labs, and even there it is limited in scope. Researchers at Duke University have […]
Light Powered Robot Made from Hydrogel to Operate Inside Body
Engineers at University of California, Los Angeles have come up with a tiny new robot that can be controlled and powered using a beam of light. Called OsciBot, because of its oscillating motion, the robot is made entirely out of a light-responsive hydrogel and doesn’t carry its own power source, relying on an external constant […]
Magnetically Controlled Microbots for Drug Delivery and Hyperthermia Therapy in Cancer
Researchers in Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea have developed biodegradable microrobots that can be magnetically controlled to deliver drugs and provide hyperthermia treatment at the site of a tumor. This latest research effort attempts to provide a delivery option for two different therapy pypes by creating biodegradable microrobots that can […]
Gold Nanoclusters Power a Simple Cancer Urine Test
Researchers at Imperial College London and MIT have developed a simple cancer urine test based on injected gold nano-clusters which enter the urine only in the presence of cancer. So far, the researchers have used the test to detect colon cancer in mice. A positive result is indicated through a simple color change, meaning that […]
Nanoscale Light Manipulation for Detection of Tiny Pathogens
Viruses are so small that to be able to detect them using light you need instruments that work on the nanoscale. Sensors so perfect are very hard to make, as most manufacturing processes disrupt nanoscale structures. Now, a team at Purdue University has developed a way to combine 3D plasmonic nanoarrays, special light manipulation devices, […]
Nanodiamonds Cross Blood-Brain Barrier to Image Inside, Deliver Drugs
The blood-brain barrier is nearly impenetrable to most drugs and contrast agents, making it difficult to diagnose and treat diseases afflicting the brain. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now developed a way of using nanodiamonds coated with a biopolymer to penetrate through the blood-brain barrier and deliver therapies, as well […]
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 […]
Plugging Holes in Blood Vessels Caused by Nanoparticle Therapy
While targeting nanoparticles to attack cancer cells can be effective at reducing primary tumors, they tend to create tiny holes within blood vessel walls that let some cancer cells escape and metastasize elsewhere. This is a serious side effect that may limit the usefulness of many nanoparticle-based cancer therapies in the long run, so researchers […]
Gold Nanostars Help Design New Nanomedicines
Researchers from Northwestern University have developed a novel way to track how nanoparticles interact with cancer cells and whether they reach their tagets. The team’s work shows that if a nanoparticle targets cancer cells, it undergoes more rotational and translational movement compared to nanoparticles that cannot target cancer cells effectively. This exciting development can be […]
Neurons Grow on Crosslinks of Carbon Nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes have a host of interesting properties. They are biocompatible and electrically conductive, so have been investigated as a possible material for growing nerve tissues. To make carbon nanotubes cooperate as desired, novel forms are required and researchers at SISSA (International School for Advanced Studies) and University of Trieste in Italy have now developed […]
LipoGlo Makes Bad Cholesterol Glow Inside Zebrafish
So-called “bad cholesterol” is a molecular complex of fat and protein. Specifically, the protein is Apolipoprotein-B, or ApoB, and the fat is cholesterol. While ApoB helps fat molecules to move around the blood vasculature, it is also what makes cholesterol stick to vessel walls, forming dangerous plaques that are one of the main causes of […]
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 […]
Hydrogels with Flexible Electronics Herald New Medical Possibilities
Scientists around the world are actively using hydrogels as novel materials to interface with the body in a variety of ways. At the same time, the field of flexible electronics has progressed to the point that there’s real demand to integrate electronic components with hydrogels. Now, researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology […]