Bioengineered corneal tissue for minimally invasive vision restoration in advanced keratoconus in two clinical cohorts. Researchers and entrepreneurs have developed an implant made of collagen protein from pig’s skin, which resembles the human cornea. In a pilot study, the implant restored vision to 20 people with diseased corneas, most of whom were blind prior to receiving the implant. The study jointly led by researchers at Linköping University (LiU) and LinkoCare Life Sciences AB has been published in Nature Biotechnology. The…
Scientists from the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI) have developed a contact lens that can capture and detect exosomes, nanometer-sized vesicles found in bodily secretions which have the potential for being diagnostic cancer biomarkers. The lens was designed with microchambers bound to antibodies that can capture exosomes found in tears. This antibody- conjugated signaling microchamber contact lens (ACSM-CL) can be stained for detection with nanoparticle-tagged specific antibodies for selective visualization. This offers a potential platform for cancer pre-screening and…
The new research project IQ-Sense – Integrated Spin Systems for Quantum Sensors aims to measure physical quantities such as temperature, pressure, magnetic or electric fields with unprecedented precision. Such measurements using quantum sensors are of fundamental importance in the natural and engineering sciences, but also in the life sciences and medicine. The project brings together research groups from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) and Technische Universität München (TUM), both in Bavaria, Germany. The complementary expertise represented in the project includes physics, chemistry,…
UMass Amherst team engineers biofilm capable of producing long-term, continuous electricity from your sweat. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced that they have figured out how to engineer a biofilm that harvests the energy in evaporation and converts it to electricity. This biofilm, which was announced in Nature Communications, has the potential to revolutionize the world of wearable electronics, powering everything from personal medical sensors to personal electronics. “This is a very exciting technology,” says Xiaomeng Liu,…
Innovative medical technology can save lives. Outdated approval processes delay rapid market introduction. To shorten the time from development to certification, the KIMEDS joint project aims to develop an AI-supported safety solution across the entire lifecycle of medical software. The BMBF is funding this three-year project with 1.46 million euros. Cybermedical systems and programmable electronic medical systems (PEMS) are shaping medicine. This development will continue to intensify with increasing digitization up to semi-autonomous or robotic-assisting systems. These medical devices enable…
Applied neuroscience … How does work affect our daily lives and how does it affect our mental and physical health? How do technical solutions change people and how can devices be made more human-centric? A five-person team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO is investigating these issues. In the NeuroLab, a laboratory for neuroergonomics, scientists are researching concepts and methods for developing intelligent interfaces between technology and humans. The NeuroLab is a test environment for neuroergonomic questions that…
Fraunhofer technology for respiratory patients. Patients with severe respiratory or lung diseases require intensive treatment and their lung function needs to be monitored on a continuous basis. As part of the Pneumo.Vest project, Fraunhofer researchers have developed a technology whereby noises in the lungs are recorded using a textile vest with integrated acoustic sensors. The signals are then converted and displayed visually using software. In this way, patients outside of intensive care units can still be monitored continuously. The technology…
New stamp-sized ultrasound adhesives produce clear images of heart, lungs, and other internal organs. Ultrasound imaging is a safe and noninvasive window into the body’s workings, providing clinicians with live images of a patient’s internal organs. To capture these images, trained technicians manipulate ultrasound wands and probes to direct sound waves into the body. These waves reflect back out to produce high-resolution images of a patient’s heart, lungs, and other deep organs. Currently, ultrasound imaging requires bulky and specialized equipment…
Tiny imaging device lays groundwork for high-resolution 3D imaging during clinical procedures. Researchers have created a photoacoustic imaging endoscope probe that can fit inside a medical needle with an inner diameter of just 0.6 millimeters. Photoacoustic imaging, which combines light and sound to create 3D images, can provide important clinical information, but until now the instruments have been either too bulky or too slow for practical use as forward-viewing endoscopes. “Traditional light-based endoscopes can only resolve tissue anatomical information on…
A Nagoya University research group has developed an AI algorithm that accurately and quickly diagnoses idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. The algorithm makes its diagnosis based only on information from non-invasive examinations, including lung images and medical information collected during daily medical care. Doctors have waited a long time for an early means of diagnosing idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a potentially fatal disease that can scar a person’s lungs. Except for drugs that can delay the disease’s progression, established therapies…
An advanced form of cardiac MRI, developed by academics at UCL in collaboration with the Royal Free Hospital, has for the first-time enabled clinicians to measure the effectiveness of chemotherapy in patients with the life-limiting condition ‘stiff heart syndrome’. Researchers say the breakthrough, published in the European Heart Journal, means doctors will now be able to better guide treatment strategies and, by doing so, improve patients’ prognosis. Light-chain cardiac amyloidosis (stiff heart syndrome) occurs when plaques of protein called amyloid build up…
New research from Binghamton University, State University of New York offers a second life for CDs: Turn them into flexible biosensors that are inexpensive and easy to manufacture. In a paper published this month in Nature Communications, Matthew Brown, PhD ’22, and Assistant Professor Ahyeon Koh from the Department of Biomedical Engineering show how a gold CD’s thin metallic layer can be separated from the rigid plastic and fashioned into sensors to monitor electrical activity in human hearts and muscles…
… Performs PCR Faster than Similar Tests on the Market. Researchers at Columbia Engineering and Rover Diagnostics team up to develop a low-cost, portable platform that gives RT-PCR results in 23 minutes that match laboratory-based tests. For more than 30 years, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been the gold standard in molecular diagnostic testing, detecting genetic material, such as those from a virus or from human DNA. But PCR, including reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), is mostly done at…
Scientific advancements have often been held back by the need for high volumes of data, which can be costly, time-consuming, and sometimes difficult to collect. But there may be a solution to this problem when investigating how our bodies fight illness: a new machine learning method called “MotifBoost.” This approach can help interpret data from T-cell receptors (TCRs) in identifying past infections to specific pathogens. By focusing on a collection of short sequences of amino acids in the TCRs, a…
… on a mission to one day battle cancer. Scientists add artificial components to bacteria for better control and an extra therapeutic effect in seeking and destroying tumor cells Stuttgart – A team of scientists in the Physical Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems have combined robotics with biology by equipping E. coli bacteria with artificial components to construct biohybrid microrobots. Firstly, as can be seen in Figure 1, the team attached several nanoliposomes to each…
University of Toronto Engineering team creates bioartificial left ventricle. Lab-grown model is made with living heart cells and capable of pumping fluid inside a tube. University of Toronto Engineering researchers have grown a small-scale model of a human left heart ventricle in the lab. The bioartificial tissue construct is made with living heart cells and beats strongly enough to pump fluid inside a bioreactor. In the human heart, the left ventricle is the one that pumps freshly oxygenated blood into…
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