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 (Read more...)
Tag: Pathology
Self-Healing Bacteriophage Hydrogel to Target Infections, Cancer
Antibiotics are the predominant tool when fighting bacterial infections, but bacteriophages could potentially be a lot more effective. Bacteriophages are viruses that attack bacteria and because they avoid injuring human cells they are a promising therapeutic tool, if used correctly. Moreover, they can be used alongside antibiotics, since the two d (Read more...)
Diagnostic Pill Samples Bacteria While Traveling Inside Gut
The microbiome inside our gut contains a wide variety of bacterial species, some of which are a source of disease. Currently, only the lower intestine can be sampled non-invasively to learn about the bacterial flora within, so there’s actually little knowledge about what goes on higher up the GI tract. Researchers at Tufts University have [&h (Read more...)
New Infrared Chemical Imaging Method to Diagnose Cancers
Prostate cancer can be very difficult to diagnose, with way too many patients undergoing surgeries that turn out to be unnecessary. Now, researchers at Purdue University, Boston University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an infrared chemical imaging technique that may improve diagnostic studies and in the process cut down on exc (Read more...)
CompCyst Tool Developed to Identify Precancerous Cysts
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a new computational and biomolecular tool, dubbed CompCyst, that can identify precancerous pancreatic cysts. The technology provides a new method for reliably identifying cancer-causing cysts from those that are not cancer-causing. The teams work demonstrates that in over half of pa (Read more...)
Looking Deep Into Body Using Virtual Ultrasound Lens
Light is a great tool for imaging the outside of the body and for looking at the interior using endoscopes, but looking through more than a few millimeters of tissue typically requires other modalities such as X-rays and ultrasound. Using light to peer through skin, muscle, and other soft tissues has remained an elusive goal […]
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 wit (Read more...)
Chemo Tester Identifies Which Formulation Works for Each Patient
Chemotherapy is challenging for patients, as it can be terribly brutal on their bodies, but also for physicians trying to figure out which medication to deliver. Now, a new device has been developed at Rutgers University that can test whether a given chemo agent works on a patient’s specific tumor. The idea is that a […]
Scientists Develop New Probe to Light Up Cancer
A team of researchers in Ireland has collaborated on developing a new fluorescent molecular probe that can hone in on and light up cancer in an exciting new way. The technology will hopefully have important consequences for cancer resection surgeries, allowing physicians to remove tumors while sparing healthy tissues. Previously developed fluoresce (Read more...)
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 [&he (Read more...)
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 electron (Read more...)
Low Cost Medical Devices for Low-Resource Regions: Interview with Prof. Saad Bhamla, Georgia Tech
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. Similar (Read more...)
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 o (Read more...)
Virtual Biopsy for Skin Lesions Using Vibrational Optical Coherence Tomography
Tissue biopsies of skin lesions can be unpleasant and quite painful. Moreover, a biopsy typically doesn’t sample the whole lesion and doesn’t provide much information about a given lesion’s size and depth. Now, scientists at Rutgers University have developed and tested a new device that relies on two different mechanisms to analyz (Read more...)
Ultra-Thin Probe Assesses Tissues Deep Within Lungs
Assessing the health of tissues deep inside the body is a major need and challenge in medicine. Imaging modalities such as MRI, CT, and ultrasound provide very little information about the composition and environment of tissues being examined. Now, researchers at the University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University, and Bath University, all in the U (Read more...)
Mid-Infrared Imaging Made Practical for Medicine by Danish Researchers
Different wavelengths of light reveal the world in unique ways, but some are hard to see using the human eye and modern imaging technologies. Mid-infrared light, for example, can be used to look at a variety of biological processes in the body, but it is hard to track when it’s used to film at a […]
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& (Read more...)
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 unavail (Read more...)
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 separ (Read more...)