By recreating the helical structure of heart muscles, researchers improve understanding of how the heart beats. Heart disease — the leading cause of death in the U.S. — is so deadly in part because the heart, unlike other organs, cannot repair itself after injury. That is why tissue engineering, ultimately including the wholesale fabrication of an entire human heart for transplant, is so important for the future of cardiac medicine. To build a human heart from the ground up, researchers…
A nanotechnology platform developed by KAUST scientists could lead to new treatments for degenerative bone diseases. The system takes advantage of tiny iron wires that bend in response to magnetic fields. Bone-forming stem cells grown on a mesh of these nanowires get a kind of physical workout on the moving substrate. They then transform into mature bone much faster than is typical of other culturing conditions, with a differentiation protocol that lasts just a few days instead of a few…
For patients with a broken shin bone, a new generation of smart orthopaedic implants is being developed that can not only monitor healing progression at the bone fracture site, but can use controlled micromotions to actively stimulate the repair process. At Saarland University, this innovative medical technology is being developed by an interdisciplinary team of medical specialists, engineers and computer scientists. The team led by Professors Bergita Ganse and Tim Pohlemann has now collated all of the available data on…
New device has the potential to provide an alternative to opioids and other highly addictive drugs. A Northwestern University-led team of researchers has developed a small, soft, flexible implant that relieves pain on demand and without the use of drugs. The first-of-its-kind device could provide a much-needed alternative to opioids and other highly addictive medications. The biocompatible, water-soluble device works by softly wrapping around nerves to deliver precise, targeted cooling, which numbs nerves and blocks pain signals to the brain….
… and other vital parameters from the ear canal. The prototype tested in the terraXcube extreme environment simulator is particularly suitable for emergency interventions. During an emergency medical intervention, measuring vital parameters is not always possible. Victims are often uncooperative, spaces uncomfortable and the equipment one can carry very limited, just think of a helicopter rescue or the scene of a car accident. Eurac Research in collaboration with the companies Minnova Med and Kerr Srl has patented a space-saving, noninvasive…
Predicting the future: A long-term study has shown a common bone density scan can also show calcified plaque build-up in the abdominal aorta – revealing if someone is at increased risk of developing dementia. Late-life dementia is becoming increasingly common in people after 80 years of age. A new long-term study has shown a simple and common scan can reveal if people are at increased risk of developing the condition late in life. Late-life dementia develops when brain cells are…
New research introduces self-powered smart implants to monitor spinal fusion healing. Spinal fusion—fusing two vertebrae together—can treat a wide variety of spinal disorders. Often, surgeons will use a cage to provide support where the disk once was between the vertebrae. But what if those cages could support the spine’s healing in more ways than one? Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering are creating patient-specific 3D-printed smart metamaterial implants that double as sensors to monitor spinal healing….
New cooperation of GSI/FAIR, Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen and Varian. It is an important step to extend future treatment methods in the fight against cancer: The GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, the Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen (THM) and Varian, a Siemens Healthineers company from Palo Alto, California, intend to jointly advance medical-technical developments in the field of FLASH therapy and further pave the way to clinical application. To this purpose, an agreement was concluded among the three collaborators. The collaboration aims to allow…
… offer potential to improve delivery of drugs into the eyeball. Published research on new eye treatment delivery shows improvement over hypodermic needles. A collaborative team, including scientists from the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI), has developed a novel, self-plugging microneedle for injecting therapeutics into the eyes, potentially solving one of the major challenges of treating eye diseases – accurate delivery of therapeutic drugs to the retina, while guarding against possible complications at the injection site. Recently published in…
… to bring health care closer to precisely targeted drug delivery. If you’ve ever swallowed the same round tablet in hopes of curing everything from stomach cramps to headaches, you already know that medicines aren’t always designed to treat precise pain points. While over-the-counter pills have cured many ailments for decades, biomedical researchers have only recently begun exploring ways to improve targeted drug delivery when treating more complicated medical conditions, like cardiovascular disease or cancer. A promising innovation within this…
… using AI-enabled surgical robot. A novel AI-empowered robotic device successfully underwent clinical trial for assisting in percutaneous nephrolithotomy— surgery for removing kidney stones. Percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) is an efficient, minimally-invasive, gold standard procedure used for removing large kidney stones. Creating an access from the skin on the back to the kidney—called renal access, is a crucial yet challenging step in PCNL. An inefficiently created renal access can lead to severe complications including massive bleeding, thoracis and bowel injuries, renal…
Faster diagnosis could help limit deadly outbreaks. A new tool can quickly and reliably identify the presence of Ebola virus in blood samples, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and colleagues at other institutions. The technology, which uses so-called optical microring resonators, potentially could be developed into a rapid diagnostic test for the deadly Ebola virus disease, which kills up to 89% of infected people. Since it was discovered in 1976,…
Insilico Medicine to launch a fully automated AI-driven robotics lab later this year. Insilico Medicine’s end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platform, Pharma.AI, draws its strength from the quality and quantity of its data. As Insilico scientific advisory board member and Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry Dr. Michael Levitt has said, Insilico’s platform capitalizes on the ability of artificial intelligence to take vast amounts of data from many different components and find patterns and make predictions that can point the way to…
Researchers have developed 3D printed artificial heart valves designed to allow a patient’s own cells to form new tissue. To form these scaffolds using melt electrowriting – an advanced additive manufacturing technique – the team has created a new fabrication platform that enables them to combine different precise, customized patterns and hence to fine-tune the scaffold’s mechanical properties. Their long-term goal is to create implants for children that develop into new tissue and therefore last a lifetime. In the human…
Visible light triggers Rice’s molecular machines to treat infections. Molecular machines that kill infectious bacteria have been taught to see their mission in a new light. The latest iteration of nanoscale drills developed at Rice University are activated by visible light rather than ultraviolet (UV), as in earlier versions. These have also proven effective at killing bacteria through tests on real infections. Six variants of molecular machines were successfully tested by Rice chemist James Tour and his team. All of…
Another success for Oldenburg’s hearing research: Collaborative Research Centre at the University of Oldenburg to receive funding for another four years. Smart hearing aids that adapt to the individual needs of the user: for the last four years, the researchers of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) Hearing Acoustics have been working towards this goal. Now the German Research Foundation (DFG) has extended the funding of the project. Led by Prof. Dr. Volker Hohmann, a hearing researcher at the University of…
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