Most implantable and wearable medical devices benefit from having on-board batteries powering them, but because conventional batteries have specific internal geometries, they end up being blocky and not flexible. This limits development of the electronic devices, especially pliable ones, since the human body itself is mostly soft and flexible. Whil (Read more...)
Tag: Nanomedicine
Two-Dimensional Nanodisks Deliver Proteins, Growth Factors to Repair Cartilage
Once cartilage is damaged, there is little that can be done to repair it. Unlike many other tissues, cartilage doesn’t heal well and consequences of injuries and disease can last a lifetime. Now researchers at Texas A&M University have developed an unusual new class of materials that may give cartilage a way of repairing itself. [… (Read more...)
Microscopic Robots Scrape at Bacterial Biofilms to Clean Teeth
Anyone unaware of what biofilms are should know that brushing one’s teeth and receiving regular dental cleanings are recommended primarily to fight bacterial biofilms. Bacteria group together and protect themselves with a unique shield that biological and chemical methods have difficulty penetrating. The stuff is so persistent that dentists u (Read more...)
Electrospinning Gun Protects Wounds with Nanofiber Mesh
An Israeli company called Nanomedic has begun showing off its impressive device for applying an electrospun material to the surface of wounds. Electrospinning involves using electricity to produce extremely fine polymer threads. This technology is almost always used during manufacturing. The SpinCare product is the first portable electrospinning de (Read more...)
Nanocomposite Heart Valve to Replace Animal-Derived Devices
Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have developed a nanocomposite biomaterial heart valve that could provide an alternative to the animal valves that are currently used as heart valve replacements. Moreover, the nanocomposite valves can be delivered to the heart through a transcatheter, allowing for minimally invasive placement (Read more...)
Implant Attached to Heart Generates Electricity to Power Pacemaker
Pacemakers, defibrillators and other cardiac implants are life saving devices, but the batteries inside of them remain their Achilles’ heel. Every five to ten years they have to be replaced in another invasive surgery that patients abhor and that put a high cost on the healthcare system. Harvesting energy from inside the body to power [&helli (Read more...)
Researchers Design Rapid Method to Custom Build Drug Ferrying Particles
While many drugs are able to treat some condition or disease exceedingly well, it may be very hard to get that drug to the part of the body where it is most effective. Moreover, releasing a drug in a controlled fashion is another important factor for many medications. When developing drug ferrying particles, researchers end […]
Injectable Bone Scaffolding Made of Plant Cellulose
The majority of bone implants, cements, and grafts are hard objects that don’t always work well in filling the space they’re supposed to inhabit. Soft objects can gently expand and relocate their mass evenly over a volume, and they tent to be less dense so as to leave room for cells to make home inside […]
Tiny Microrobot Created Using Silicon Wafers Could Aid in Drug Delivery
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed wireless bug-shaped microrobots using nanofabrication techniques. They are able to produce a million of the devices from a 4-inch silicon wafer. The microrobots can “walk,” survive in harsh environments, and can function even after passing through a hypodermic syringe, suggest (Read more...)
Researchers Give Animals Infrared Vision
Even those of us with perfect vision are actually blind in some ways. Many birds can see ultraviolet light and snakes can detect infrared, something we don’t have the right retinal cells for. But now researchers at University of Massachusetts Medical School and University of Science and Technology of China have shown that it may soo (Read more...)
Microfluidic Device Pulls Exosomes from Blood to Test for Cancer
Exosomes are tiny vesicles that seemingly all the cells in our bodies produce. Initially, exosomes were thought to be a way for cells to expunge built-up trash, but over the past decade or so scientists have discovered that they seem to play an important role in regulating a variety of biochemical processes. One thing that […]
Microfluidic Device Separates Circulating Tumor Cells by Size to Help Spot Cancer
Tumors tend to shed cells that travel down the bloodstream, spreading the disease wherever they end up landing. Though these circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are the reason that cancers metastasize to distant places in the body, they’re also a great biomarker for spotting the existence of tumors. The extreme rarity of CTCs, though, makes d (Read more...)
Self-Assembled Hybrid Drug Delivery Vesicles for Safe Passage Through Bloodstream
Scientists at the RIKEN research institution in Japan have developed new soft nanovesicles to carry and release drugs within the body. The hybrid shells, made of lipids and peptides, open up and release their cargo when exposed to heat. The combination of lipids and peptides as the materials of the vesicles allows them to both securely [&helli (Read more...)
Nanoparticles Highlight Organ Transplant Rejection Through Fluorescent Urine
Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a sophisticated nanoparticle that can alert clinicians to the early stages of transplanted organ immune rejection through a simple urine test. The nanoparticles can accumulate in transplanted organs and detect immune rejection, whereupon they release molecules that turn the urine of the organ recipient flu (Read more...)
Microrobots Take Minutes to Detect C. diff in Stool Samples
Detecting bacterial infestations within the GI system, particularly using low cost methods, takes so much time that treatment is often administered too late. Clostridium difficile (C. diff) is a particular nasty nuisance that kills many frail patients, and even with a hospital lab it can take up to two days to get the results. Researchers (Read more...)
Graphene Biosensors to Detect Lung Cancer
Exhaled breath is rich in biomarkers that can point to the presence of disease. In particular, ethanol, acetone, and isopropanol can point to the presence of lung cancer, so having a way of measuring these chemicals in breath might provide a way to diagnose lung cancers or to screen for them. Current methods of measuring […]
(Read more...)Microrobots Swim Through Vessels, Deform to Snake Through Tortuous Passageways
Researchers at Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have developed tiny robots that could pave the way for advanced drug delivery. Inspired by bacteria, the microrobots can swim through fluids and modify their shape so as to pass through narrow blood vessels or intricate structures. The researchers ho (Read more...)
Electronic Nanomesh Gently Hugs Beating Heart Cells
Unlike with most other cells, studying the heart’s beating cardiomyocytes is prone to difficulty because attaching rigid sensors to moving cells hinders the movement of those cells. A collaboration of Japanese scientists at University of Tokyo, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, and RIKEN research institute have developed (Read more...)
Contrast Agent for Optical Coherence Tomography Improves Imaging of Tissues, Vessels
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an imaging technique that allows ophthalmologists to view the eye’s blood vessels, to study the structure of tissues in various clinical and scientific applications. Though this technology is already widely used, there’s been a constant demand to improve its imaging resolution. Researchers at Stanfo (Read more...)
New Sensor Detects HER-2 Breast Cancer Biomarker in 15 Minutes
A few years ago researchers identified the Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER-2) protein as a biomarker for the presence of certain types of breast cancer. Tests for it, though, are expensive and take much time to produce results. Researchers at the University of Connecticut and University of Hartford have now developed a cheap (Read more...)