Researchers have developed a new tool and technique that uses “vortex ultrasound” – a sort of ultrasonic tornado – to break down blood clots in the brain. The new approach worked more quickly than existing techniques to eliminate clots formed in an in vitro model of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). “Our previous work looked at various techniques that use ultrasound to eliminate blood clots using what are essentially forward-facing waves,” says Xiaoning Jiang, co-corresponding author of a paper on…
… piloted in Gaza, Sri Lanka and Ukraine. Imperial researchers have developed a low-cost, easy-to-manufacture stabiliser for broken bones to help in regions where such devices are expensive or in short supply and people sometimes resort to homemade options. The stabiliser, known as an external fixator, holds broken bones in place with metal pins or screws attached to a surrounding metal frame. When soft tissue is severely damaged together with bone, external fixators are the first step in keeping fractures…
Ion-tunable antiambipolarity in mixed ion-electron conducting polymers enables biorealistic organic electrochemical neurons. Researchers at Linköping University (LiU), Sweden, have created an artificial organic neuron that closely mimics the characteristics of biological nerve cells. This artificial neuron can stimulate natural nerves, making it a promising technology for various medical treatments in the future. Work to develop increasingly functional artificial nerve cells continues at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics, LOE. In 2022, a team of scientists led by associate professor Simone Fabiano…
The glittering, serpentine structures that power wearable electronics can be created with the same technology used to print rock concert t-shirts, new research shows. The study, led by Washington State University researchers, demonstrates that electrodes can be made using just screen printing, creating a stretchable, durable circuit pattern that can be transferred to fabric and worn directly on human skin. Such wearable electronics can be used for health monitoring in hospitals or at home. “We wanted to make flexible, wearable electronics…
Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”), a clinical stage, end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, held the launch ceremony for Life Star – a 6th generation Intelligent Robotics Drug Discovery Laboratory – in Suzhou BioBAY Industrial Park on Dec. 29. The fully automated AI-powered robotics laboratory performs target discovery, compound screening, precision medicine development, and translational research. The lab will allow Insilico to further accelerate its end-to-end drug discovery and optimize the success rate of its drug development as it moves its novel therapeutics…
Smart gadgets in the home might soon be able to tell you what’s wrong with you. But the technology is good news for a lot of other things too. Some people do such smart and difficult things that it’s hard to see what in the world they might have to do with you and me, so we just shrug them off. But that’s often the wrong response. What if you had a simple gadget at home that could tell you…
Implantable platform provides prolonged treatment of Type 1 diabetes. A quarter-sized device created at Houston Methodist could drastically alter the course of treatment for Type 1 diabetes, a chronic condition that impacts millions of Americans and does not have a cure. In a study published in the Dec. 26 issue of Nature Communications, a research team led by Houston Methodist delivered islet cells and immunotherapy directly into a 3D printed device akin to a bioengineered pancreas, called the NICHE. The…
Technique provides model for studying genesis of age-related macular degeneration and other eye diseases. Scientists used patient stem cells and 3D bioprinting to produce eye tissue that will advance understanding of the mechanisms of blinding diseases. The research team from the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, printed a combination of cells that form the outer blood-retina barrier—eye tissue that supports the retina’s light-sensing photoreceptors. The technique provides a theoretically unlimited supply of patient-derived tissue…
How can you trace a single diseased cell in an intact brain or a human heart? The search resembles looking for a needle in a haystack. The teams of Ali Ertürk at Helmholtz Munich and LMU Munich and Matthias Mann at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich have now developed a new technology named DISCO-MS that solves the problem. DISCO-MS uses robotics technology to obtain proteomics data from ‘sick’ cells precisely identified early in the disease….
FDA approves new use of imaging agent to help light the way for surgeons during lung cancer surgery. Surgery, especially surgery to remove cancerous tumors, relies on a range of tools and techniques as well as on the skill of the surgeon. Now, new imaging agent Cytalux will make surgery to remove lung cancer tumors a little more exact. The inside of the human body famously looks nothing like an anatomy textbook, lacking the bright color coding to differentiate between…
Harvard and 1955 Capital collaborate to launch surgical robotics startup. When a tiny mechanical insect achieved flight in the summer of 2012, its wafer-thin wings flapping almost invisibly at a rate of 120 times per second, it was the culmination of an ambitious engineering effort. The first controlled flight of the RoboBee in the Harvard Microrobotics Lab of Prof. Robert Wood, relied on hard-won breakthroughs in design, materials, and manufacturing. In the early days of the National Science Foundation-sponsored project,…
Method offers new approach to treating neurological conditions such as epilepsy. Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and MIT have developed a new method to target diseased neurons in the brain and change their long-term behavior using light, paving the way for potential new treatments for neurological conditions such as epilepsy and autism. The research is published in Science Advances. “We envision that this technology will provide new opportunities for high spatiotemporal resolution control of…
USC researchers Megan McCain and postdoc Megan Rexius-Hall have engineered a microscale model that can replicate key aspects of myocardial infarction and might one day serve as a testbed for new personalized heart drugs. Researchers at the University of Southern California Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering have developed a “heart attack on a chip,” a device that could one day serve as a testbed to develop new heart drugs and even personalized medicines. “Our device replicates some key features…
A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has, for the first time, produced dark-field X-ray images of patients infected with the corona virus. In contrast to conventional X-ray images, dark-field images visualize the microstructure of the lung tissue, thereby providing additional information. This approach has the potential to provide an alternative to computed tomography (CT), which requires a significantly higher radiation dose. The lungs of Covid-19 patients are normally visualized using computed tomography (CT). CT technology uses…
Researchers are using a natural material derived from seaweed to promote vascular cell growth, prevent blood clots and improve the performance of synthetic vascular grafts used in heart bypass surgery. The new approach, developed and tested at the University of Waterloo, is especially important in cases involving small artificial blood vessels – those less than six millimetres in diameter – which are prone to clots that can develop into full blockages. “There is a crucial need to develop synthetic vascular…
… revealed by high-resolution three-dimensional imaging. Insights that are not possible with conventional two-dimensional platforms include characterization of obliterated airways in tuberculosis and hemorrhage from ruptured blood vessels in COVID-19 lungs, at near-microscopic levels. Gross anatomy reveals three-dimensional shapes of pathology at a large scale. Histology, in contrast, reveals the microscopic anatomy of biological structures. But that magnification comes at a cost — histology shows only two-dimensional shapes because it studies small, flat slices of stained tissue. This lack of…
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