Medical Engineering

The novel high-throughput-bioprinting technique opens the door for tissue fabrication with high cell density at scale. Three-dimensional (3D) printing isn’t just a way to produce material products quickly. It also offers researchers a way to develop replicas of human tissue that could be used to improve human health, such as building organs for transplantation, studying disease progression and screening new drugs. While researchers have made progress over the years, the field has been hampered by limited existing technologies unable to…

Defibrillator with sternum electrode implanted for the first time at Göttingen University Medical Center to prevent sudden cardiac death. At the Heart Center of the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG), a new type of defibrillator with a sternum electrode was implanted for the first time in a patient with cardiac arrhythmia: The Aurora system is a defibrillator that lies outside the heart and prevents sudden cardiac death. According to the German Heart Foundation, around 65,000 people die of sudden cardiac…

Chemists at the University of Jena develop graphene-based biosensor. Just like other biosensors, a graphene-based biosensor requires a functionalised surface on which only specific molecules can attach. If, for example, a specific biomarker is to be detected from a blood or saliva sample, a corresponding counterpart – a so-called capture molecule – must be applied to the sensor surface. The problem: “If graphene is functionalised directly, its electronic structure changes unfavourably,” explains Prof. Dr Andrey Turchanin from the University of…

…for diagnostics and blocks cell entry. A tiny, four-fingered “hand” folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report. Dubbed the NanoGripper, the nanorobotic hand also could be programmed to interact with other viruses or to recognize cell surface markers for targeted drug delivery, such as for cancer treatment. Led by Xing…

… for continuous blood pressure monitoring. A team of researchers at the University of California San Diego has developed a new and improved wearable ultrasound patch for continuous and noninvasive blood pressure monitoring. Their work marks a major milestone, as the device is the first wearable ultrasound blood pressure sensor to undergo rigorous and comprehensive clinical validation on over 100 patients. The technology, published on Nov. 20 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, has the potential to improve the quality of cardiovascular…

… paving the way for personalized, blood-based, 3D-printed implants. Scientists have created a new ‘biocooperative’ material based on blood, which has shown to successfully repair bones, paving the way for personalised regenerative blood products that could be used as effective therapies to treat injury and disease. Researchers from the Schools of Pharmacy and Chemical Engineering at the University of Nottingham have used peptide molecules that can guide key processes taking place during the natural healing of tissues to create living…

Recommendations published in The Lancet Oncology call for good clinical practice of new technologies to modernize decades-old standard of care for brain cancer patients. An international, multidisciplinary team of leading neuro-oncology researchers and clinicians has released new recommendations for good clinical practice — a set of guidelines that helps ensure clinical trial results are reliable, and patients are protected — regarding the use of artificial intelligence methods to more accurately diagnose, monitor and treat brain cancer patients. The team recently…

UKB robotically suspends cervix with a body’s own tendon. If a woman’s pelvic floor is severely weakened, the uterus and vagina may descend. As a result, affected women suffer from prolapse symptoms and possibly bladder, bowel and sexual dysfunction. If conservative treatment options do not help, the uterus does not necessarily have to be removed, but can be surgically suspended using a synthetic mesh. Since 2022, single hospitals in Germany have also been performing this procedure using a body’s own…

… that monitor internal biomarkers to detect and assess airway diseases. Xiaoguang Dong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is leading a team of researchers that has developed a system of artificial cilia capable of monitoring mucus conditions in human airways to better detect infection, airway obstruction, or the severity of diseases like Cystic Fibrosis (CF), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD) and lung cancer. The research was published in the November 4 issue of PNAS in the article, “Sensory Artificial Cilia for In Situ…

Surgical field expansion plate allows surgeons more independence. Robot-assisted heart surgery usually requires an assistant at the operating table to help the surgeon insert the robot arm through a small incision. The assistant has to constantly make sure the surgeon has enough room to operate via the robot arm. For greater independence on the surgeon’s side, an Osaka Metropolitan University-led group has developed a device that can secure the surgical field. Graduate School of Medicine Professor Toshihiko Shibata and Associate…

Safe, efficient healthcare… How can surgery be made more cost-effective, safer and more efficient in the future? An interdisciplinary French-German team has developed high-tech hybrid operating rooms that harness the power of 5G and AI to unlock whole new applications. A medical emergency requires complicated surgery. But the closest specialist is hundreds of kilometers away. These days, this kind of situation could be a life-or-death issue, but just a few short years from now, surgeons might be able to operate…

Single-cell technology… Bright prospects for personalized medicine: Experts from the Fraunhofer Institute for Microengineering and Microsystems IMM harness their know-how in microfluidics and single-cell technologies to print organ structures. They will be presenting their developments at the joint Fraunhofer booth (Hall 3, Booth E74) at the MEDICA 2024 trade show from November 11 to 14. Single-cell technologies play a key role in studying and characterizing cells. Dr. Christian Freese, Head of Infection and Cancer Diagnostics at Fraunhofer IMM, and his…

Hardly any other chemical substance can compete with PFAS, due to their unique properties. That explains why it is so hard to find a replacement for these toxic “forever chemicals”, which accumulate in the environment and do not break down over time. A team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM has succeeded in developing solutions that hold great promise of targeted substitution for PFAS in fields including medical engineering. The planned ban on the use…

To test complex brain functions during neurosurgical procedures, surgeons must operate on awake, locally anesthetized patients. This allows surgeons to interact with them and test how their intervention affects brain function. However, opening the skull while the patient is awake is extremely stressful for them psychologically. A new robot-assisted and optically precisely monitored laser procedure developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen is set to enable gentle, vibration-free and virtually silent craniotomies while the patient is…

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, the University Medical Center Freiburg, and Stryker Leibinger GmbH & Co. KG have been awarded the Research Prize for Digitalization in Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery 2024 for their publication entitled “Validation of a Finite Element Simulation for Predicting Individual Knee Joint Kinematics.” The award ceremony took place on October 25, 2024, during the German Congress for Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery (DKOU 2024) in Berlin. Knee injuries are among the most common…

The combination of phototherapy and chemotherapy could offer a more effective way to fight aggressive tumors. Patients with late-stage cancer often have to endure multiple rounds of different types of treatment, which can cause unwanted side effects and may not always help. In hopes of expanding the treatment options for those patients, MIT researchers have designed tiny particles that can be implanted at a tumor site, where they deliver two types of therapy: heat and chemotherapy. This approach could avoid…