In particular, biomedical applications, an area where the use of biocompatible polycarbonates is established well, have been left out.
for example, could provide many more possibilities for biomedical applications n
#New material opens possibilities for super-long-acting pills (Nanowerk News) Medical devices designed to reside in the stomach have a variety of applications,
including prolonged drug delivery, electronic monitoring, and weight-loss intervention. However, these devices, often created with nondegradable elastic polymers, bear an inherent risk of intestinal obstruction as a result of accidental fracture or migration.
As such, they are designed usually to remain in the stomach for a limited time. Now, researchers at MITS Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have created a polymer gel that overcomes this safety concern
and could allow for the development of long-acting devices that reside in the stomach, including orally delivered capsules that can release drugs over a number of days, weeks,
which is a medical emergency potentially requiring surgical intervention, says Koch Institute research affiliate Giovanni Traverso,
as there is a greater risk for fracture if a device is too large or too complex.
a professor of medical science and engineering at Brown University who was not involved with this study.
patients adherence to long-term therapies for chronic illnesses is only 50 percent in developed countries, with lower rates of adherence in developing nations.
Medication nonadherence costs the U s. an estimated $100 billion every year, the bulk of which comes in the form of unnecessary hospitalizations.
The researchers also say that single-administration delivery systems for the radical treatment of malaria
and other infections could significantly benefit from these technologies. In a March 2015 commentary piece in Nature("Perspective:
Special delivery for the gut"),Traverso and Langer wrote that the GI TRACT is an area rife with opportunity for prolonged drug delivery in tackling this global health problem.
they envision an emerging field of orally delivered devices that can maximize adherence and therapeutic efficacy y
and proof of principle,"says Harald Ott of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who grew the limb."
"says Daniel Weiss at the University of Vermont College of Medicine in Burlington, who works on lung regeneration."
Hand transplants have also been successful, but the recipient needs lifelong immunosuppressive drugs to prevent their body rejecting the hand.
Results of hand transplants show that this happens through the recipient's nerve tissue penetrating into the hand
while muscle cells could come from biopsies from large muscles, such as in the thigh.""If you took about 5 grams, the size of a finger,
"At present, if you lose an arm, a leg or soft tissue as part of cancer treatment or burns,
but what about that time you had measles or was it chicken pox? Your blood knows:
It could also be used to identify links between viral infections and mysterious diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome.
and could help doctors identify hidden infections.""A lot of people have hepatitis C, for example, without realising,"says Elledge.
You could imagine routinely screening people in this way, he says. To develop Virscan, Elledge and his colleagues used an international database to look up all viruses known to infect humans around 1000 strains from 206 viral species. Using this information,
doctors have a pretty good idea of what you've got, "he says. Moreover, the immune system takes a
so you might not find a strong antibody response in the early stages of an infection.
as a result of an infection and those triggered by a vaccine. Instead the technique might be useful in outbreaks of new viruses. Understanding how our immune system responds to other viral fragments might reveal clues as to
For example, Elledge's team will be collaborating with another group to test people with chronic fatigue syndrome,
to see if they might have been infected with any of the same viruses."Multiple sclerosis is wheeled usually out as being linked to a virus,
He envisages screening wild populations of animals thought to be linked to emerging diseases.""You could test the wild bat population to get a good idea of
which could boost our ability to track the spread of diseases such as cancer. Humar and his colleagues developed three ways to get cells to emit visible light.
Viruses there contaminated a plant where bacteria were used to make drugs for two rare genetic disorders, Gaucher disease and Fabry disease, cutting off supplies.
so the only way to cut down on incidences of the disease is to decrease the number of mosquitoes that carry it.
reducing the population of the disease-carrying insects by 95 percent, according to a study published last week in PLOS Neglected Tropical diseases.
Since dengue is primarily spread through the mosquito species Aedes aegypti, Oxitec has engineered a male mosquito that, to female mosquitoes in the wild, looks just like the usual males.
or transmit the disease. Juazeiro, a city in northeast Brazil, was a great place to try them out.
dengue has been on the rise in Brazil, with an estimated 16 million new cases every year.
Many of the mosquitoes that carry the disease are also resistant to pesticides, which meant that Brazilians were left with few options to decrease dengue prevalence.
The neighborhood in which the researchers tested the modified mosquitoes was a low-income area with high rates of dengue infection
according to local public health officials. Over a one-year period, the researchers released the modified males into the local environment
and monitored the resulting eggs, looking for a characteristic fluorescent marker engineered into the malesgenome.
In the course of that year, the number of disease-carrying mosquitoes decreased by 95 percent as compared to a control group in a neighborhood next door.
This isn Oxitec first attempt to decrease the prevalence of disease-carrying mosquitoeshe company did another trial in the Cayman islands in 2010ut this test was the most successful.
The researchers hope to scale up their efforts to eradicate dengue and the insects that carry it in a larger area n
and reduce anxiety. They recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to turn their prototypes in to consumer-ready models,
and a microwave Carbon nanoparticles can be incredibly useful in the treatment of many types of disease,
and deliver medicine to wherever it's most needed in the body. They're also relatively easy to track as they move through the system,
and interfere with them as they deliver their medicine.""These tiny particles are camouflaged kind of, I would say,
"That clinical use involves the carbon spheres being coated with polymer-a polymer that can gradually release drugs into the system to fight cancer and other diseases.
"This is a versatile platform to carry a multitude of drugs-for melanoma, for other kinds of cancers and for other diseases,"says Rohit Bhargava."
"You can coat it with different polymers to give it a different optical response. You can load it with two drugs,
so you can do multidrug therapy with the same particles.""H/T: Techrada d
#World first underground urban farm opens for business in London The world first underground urban farm has started trading in London,
#Scientists are figuring out how to make medicinal marijuana, without the high Scientists have figured out how to separate the pain relieving qualities of medical marijuana from its psychological side-effects in an effort to offer people a new high-free option.
which is not only responsible for the high associated with the drug-plus hallucinations, delusions, memory loss, and feelings of anxiety or calm-it also been shown to slow tumour growth in mice.
And now, scientists have figured out that the mechanisms by which the drug delivers its desired medical effects
"There has been a great deal of medical interest in understanding the molecular mechanisms at work in THC, so that the beneficial effects can be harnessed without the side-effects,"one of the team,
the researchers figured out that negative psychological side-effects of the drug, such as memory defects, mood swings, anxiety,
and paranoia, were triggered by a single pathway in the brain that was separate from the pathway that triggers the drug cancer-killing properties.
Doctors have begun routinely using a device known as the Pea pod to measure the body composition of the infants.
With this information health care workers can then personalize the baby's nutritional supplements to help with appropriate weight gain.
Charles Simmons, MD, chair of the Department of Pediatrics and director of the Division of Neonatology, says,
health care workers have performed hundreds of analyses of breast milk. Simmons, the Ruth and Harry Roman Chair in Neonatology in honor of Larry Baum said the information from both analyses should ultimately lead to healthier weight gain, better neurological outcomes and shorter hospital stays
for babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. Cedars-Sinai received the Pea pod in late spring and has begun just using it on a regular basis.
when babies were placed on their backs to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, the incidence of plagiocephaly--commonly known as flat head--have risen dramatically.
Ellen Mack, RNC, MN, neonatal clinical nurse specialist, said the babies are evaluated constantly to determine
because with the lower surface tension we expect less risk of head flattening and less risk for pressure ulcers."
or plan for the next one or rule out therapies that are unlikely to remain effective for long said Duke graduate student Pablo Gainza-Cirauqui who co-authored the paper.
and in humans to treat viral infections that antibiotics are powerless to cure. My kids are now 15 and 13
The percentage of infections caused by the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus that have proven resistant to treatment has risen steadily from just over 2 percent in 1975 and 29 percent in 1991 to more than 55 percent today--resulting in more than 11000 deaths in the U s. each year a higher death
The drugs called propargyl-linked antifolates show promise as a treatment for MRSA infections but have yet to be tested in humans.
The researchers are now using their algorithm to predict resistance mutations to other drugs designed to combat pathogens like E coli and Enterococcus.
We might even be able to coax a pathogen into developing mutations that enable it to evade one drug
Their computational approach could be especially useful for forecasting drug resistance mutations in other diseases such as cancer HIV
and influenza where raising resistant cells or strains in the lab is more difficult to do than with bacteria the researchers say.
The system could be tested with transplant patients at UPMC later this year. The findings, which were published online in the American Journal of Transplantation,
suggest that it's possible to use the technique of"machine perfusion"with a newly created cell-free oxygenated solution to expand the number of high-quality livers available for transplant,
explained senior investigator Paulo Fontes, M d.,UPMC transplant surgeon, associate professor, Starzl Transplantation Institute, Department of Surgery, Pitt School of medicine,
and easily moved around their pens just hours after they woke up from the surgery,
Professor Mahiran said in pharmaceuticals an innovation has produced successfully a drugs delivery method to penetrate the'blood brain barrier'especially for diseases that are associated with the brain such as Alzheimer Parkinson epilepsy and meningitis.
Gas sensors or implantable chips for medical applications which can gather information about blood sugar levels
--and can perhaps be used to target unsavory antibiotic resistance genes in bacterial pathogens and occasionally in beneficial bacteria.'
or even prevent many of the blunt-force injuries we see today.""Seepersad led the work along with UT Austin research scientist Michael Haberman.
and include medical diagnostics and fluorescence spectroscopy as well as UV curing and disinfection. A further application field is plant lighting, for
which the FBH has developed and manufactured a module enabling irradiation with UV-B light of a specific wavelength.
enabling in-situ measurements in various security and health relevant fields including biology, medicine, food control, and pharmacy.
Researchers develop a faster way to treat the heart after a heart attack Stem cell have been the main focus of healing therapy research
For healing after a heart attack, the ideal time to administer these therapies is when reopening the clogged blood vessel
While stem cells show promise for heart attack treatment, the process of harvesting and reintroducing the cells
A new study in the American Journal of Physiology--Heart and Circulatory Physiology reports a more practical approach called microsphere therapy that can be kept on hand
Heart attacks occur when the heart's blood vessel is blocked and blood flow stops, cutting off oxygen to the heart.
researchers from Erasmus Medical center in The netherlands used a biodegradable material called Polyactive, which keeps proteins intact,
and tested the microspheres'effectiveness in pigs with induced heart attacks. The researchers observed that the microspheres were not toxic
The therapy, however, did not improve heart function. It also did not decrease the size of the area damaged by the heart attack or the composition of the scar.
According to the researchers, while the method needs to be optimized, the study shows that microsphere therapy can potentially be an"off-the-shelf and immediate alternative to stem cell therapy"for treating heart attacks and potentially other diseases s
#Biodegradable, flexible silicon transistors Now researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with a new solution to alleviate the environmental burden of discarded electronics.
In addition, PLA is biocompatible and thus suitable for medical use, for instance in absorbable suture threads.
and Australian chemists have figured out how to unboil egg whites an innovation that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry,
Shear stress within thin, microfluidic films is applied to those tiny pieces, forcing them back into untangled,
For example, pharmaceutical companies currently create cancer antibodies in expensive hamster ovary cells that do not often misfold proteins.
and make cancer treatments more affordable. Industrial cheese makers farmers and others who use recombinant proteins could also achieve more bang for their buck.
#Lawrence Livermore technology could help detect diseases in commercial swine industry Agricultural officials who seek to detect diseases affecting the commercial swine industry may gain a new ally a biological detection system developed by Lawrence Livermore
A study by LLNL and Kansas State university scientists found that the Lawrence Livermore Microbial Detection Array (LLMDA) could help identify diseases in the commercial swine industry.
which is published by the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians. Many of the diseases affecting the commercial swine industry involve complex syndromes caused by multiple pathogens
including emerging viruses and bacteria. One pivotal advantage of the Livermore-developed LLMDA over other detection technologies is that it can detect within 24 hours any bacteria
said Raymond obrowland, professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at Kansas State College of Veterinary medicine. t really the future of diagnostics for both humans and animals.
New infectious diseases in animal food production systems can create enormous impacts that can affect domestic consumption and exports
as well as public health in the case of diseases that can move from animals to humans, the paper authors wrote.
Two examples of new diseases introduced into the swine industry include theinfluenza A virus subtype H1n1 and Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus.
Two other foreign diseases, African swine fever and classical swine fever, remain constant threats to the U s. industry. he best assurance for the timely identification of known and unknown threats is to employ techniques
Currently, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays represent one technology widely used for pathogen detection but typically only a handful of microorganisms can be identified in a single test.
Another method of detecting pathogens, DNA sequencing, greatly expands the number of microorganisms that can be identified,
and requires significant expertise. he LLMDA can identify co-infections from a single sample, said LLNL biologist Crystal Jaing,
The array also can identify co-infections faster and cheaper than DNA sequencing. In their paper, the authors noted that as the LLMDA technology cost decreases and throughput increases
it becomes feasible to look at microarrays as everyday tools for use in the diagnostic laboratory. he beauty of the LLMDA is that it lets you identify unknown diseases that the researcher isn looking for,
and polymicrobial. hese multiple bacteria and viruses end up in a disease syndrome. Wee looking at a complex situation
and we need the tools that can give us a comprehensive look at the disease factors involved.
oral fluid and tonsils from pigs that have co-infections of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) and Porcine circovirus-2 (PCV-2). The LLMDA easily identified PRRSV and PCV-2,
Clostridium and Staphylococcus. he use of the microarray technology could help the U s. detect the emergence of foreign animal diseases at their outset to prevent major disease outbreaks,
including clinical medicine, food safety testing, environmental monitoring and biodefense o
#DNA mutations get harder to hide Rice university researchers have developed a method to detect rare DNA mutations with an approach hundreds of times more powerful than current methods.
and lead author and graduate student J. Sherry Wang applied their new molecular tools to 44 DNA samples with known cancer-related single-nucleotide variants.
as a significant step toward advancing personalized medicine. The ability to accurately find mutations that are biomarkers for disease will help clinicians determine treatment paths for patients,
Zhang said. It may also help identify rare mutations and subtypes of infectious diseases as well as drug-resistant strains.
A single-nucleotide variant occurs when one of the four basic components that make up DNA
but mutations can leave the body vulnerable to disease, or even be the root cause.
The ability to accurately find rare single-nucleotide mutations is becoming increasingly important as scientists drill down into genomes to find biomarkers for early cancer detection. ee trying to solve the needle-in-a-haystack problem,
The needle youe looking for might be a cancer-mutation DNA or bacterial-pathogen DNA,
when there not as much cancer DNA floating around, he said
#A new kind of wood chip: collaboration could lead to biodegradable computer chips Portable electronics typically made of nonrenewable,
as a result of human exploitation and disease-related die offs, says Joshua Miller, Phd student in the Department of Biological sciences and lead author on the study. hus,
which allows for a better therapeutic potential. The team of researchers tested the therapeutic potential of these carbon nanoparticles by loading them with an anti-melanoma drug
and mixing them in a topical solution that was applied to pig skin. However, scientists have to make sure they coated particles properly,
Scientists also found that they can alter the infusion of the particles into melanoma cells by adjusting the polymer coatings.
It is a very versatile platform to treat melanoma, other kinds of cancers and other diseases.
as well as to make it carry several different drugs at the same time to allow for a multidrug therapy with the same particles.
which will eventually lead to innovative drug therapies for cancer and other diseases i
#Actuators that mimic ice plants Engineers developing moveable robot components may soon take advantage of a trick plants use.
where they create clothing that kills bacteria, conducts electricity, wards off malaria, captures harmful gas and weaves transistors into shirts and dresses. otton is one of the most fascinating and misunderstood materials,
which could help in warding colds, flu and other diseases. Two of Hinestroza students created a hooded bodysuit embedded with insecticides using metal organic framework molecules,
Malaria kills more than 600,000 people annually in Africa. While insecticide-treated nets are common in African homes
to attack E coli, a bacterium that causes food poisoning; Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common disease-causing bacterium; Ralstonia, a genus of bacteria containing numerous soil-borne pathogen species;
and Staphylococcus epidermis, a bacterium that can cause harmful biofilms on plastics like catheters in the human body.
The nanoparticles were effective against all the bacteria. The method allows researchers the flexibility to change the nanoparticle recipe in order to target specific microbes.
#New material opens possibilities for super-long-acting pills Medical devices designed to reside in the stomach have a variety of applications,
However, these devices, often created with nondegradable elastic polymers, bear an inherent risk of intestinal obstruction as a result of accidental fracture or migration.
Now, researchers at MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have created a polymer gel that overcomes this safety concern
which is a medical emergency potentially requiring surgical intervention, says Koch Institute research affiliate Giovanni Traverso,
as there is a greater risk for fracture if a device is too large or too complex.
a professor of medical science and engineering at Brown University who was not involved with this study. his is a very smart approach.
patientsadherence to long-term therapies for chronic illnesses is only 50 percent in developed countries, with lower rates of adherence in developing nations.
Medication nonadherence costs the U s. an estimated $100 billion every year, the bulk of which comes in the form of unnecessary hospitalizations.
The researchers also say that single-administration delivery systems for the radical treatment of malaria
and other infections could significantly benefit from these technologies. Source: MIT, written by Kevin Leonard e
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