Now, two groups of scientists are reporting for the first time that two new nucleotides can do the same thing--raising the possibility that entirely new proteins could be created for medical uses.
A Universal Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Substrate for All Excitation Wavelengths"),the photonics advancement aims to improve our ability to detect trace amounts of molecules in diseases, chemical warfare agents, fraudulent
"The ability to detect even smaller amounts of chemical and biological molecules could be helpful with biosensors that are used to detect cancer, Malaria, HIV and other illnesses."
#Intelligent bacteria for detecting disease Another step forward has just been taken in the area of synthetic biology.
in association with Montpellier Regional University Hospital and Stanford university, have transformed bacteria into"secret agents"that can give warning of a disease based solely on the presence of characteristic molecules in the urine or blood.
The bacteria thus programmed detect the abnormal presence of glucose in the urine of diabetic patients.
published in the journal Science Translational Medicine("Detection of pathological biomarkers in human clinical samples via amplifying genetic switches
and are considered often to be our enemies, causing many diseases such as tuberculosis or cholera. However, they can also be witnessed allies,
Since the advent of biotechnology, researchers have modified bacteria to produce therapeutic drugs or antibiotics. In this novel study
Medical diagnosis is a major challenge for the early detection and subsequent monitoring of diseases.""In vitro"diagnosis is based on the presence in physiological fluids (blood and urine, for example) of molecules characteristic for a particular disease.
Because of its noninvasiveness and ease of use, in vitro diagnosis is of great interest. However, in vitro tests are sometimes complex,
and require sophisticated technologies that are often available only in hospitals. This is where biological systems come into play.
Living cells are real nanomachines that can detect and process many signals and respond to them.
in association with Professor Eric Renard (Montpellier Regional University Hospital) and Drew Endy (Stanford university), applied this new technology to the detection of disease signals in clinical samples.
The authors used the transcriptor's amplification abilities to detect disease markers, even if present in very small amounts.
and detected the abnormal presence of glucose in the urine of diabetic patients.""We have deposited the genetic components used in this work in the public domain to allow their unrestricted reuse by other public
"Our work is focused presently on the engineering of artificial genetic systems that can be modified on demand to detect different molecular disease markers,
In future, this work might also be applied to engineering the microbial flora in order to treat various diseases, especially intestinal diseases
Air pollution is the world largest single environmental health risk, causing one in every eight deaths according to figures released last year by the World health organization.
decades of exposure to only slightly higher levels a level we wouldn even notice can increase the risk of heart and lung diseases,
stroke and cancer. o work out the factors we should be worried about, and how we can intervene,
where detection of toxic gases is needed at the parts-per-million level. Monitoring air quality,
#New composite protects from corrosion at high mechanical stress (Nanowerk News) Material researchers at the INM Leibniz Institute for New Materials will be presenting a composite material
New composite protects from corrosion at high mechanical stress. This patented composite exhibits its action by spray application,
As a result, it can withstand high mechanical stress. The coating passes the falling ball test with a steel hemispherical ball weighing 1. 5 kg from a height of one meter without chipping
or other commonly used wet chemistry processes and cures at 150-200c. It is suitable for steels, metal alloys and metals such as aluminum, magnesium and copper,
New materials for energy application, new concepts for medical surfaces, new surface materials for tribological systems and nano safety and nano bio.
#Team develops transplantable bioengineered forelimb in an animal model (w/video) A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has made the first steps towards development of bioartificial replacement limbs suitable for transplantation.
"explains Harald Ott, MD, of the MGH Department of Surgery and the Center for Regenerative medicine, senior author of the paper."
Over the past two decades a number of patients have received donor hand transplants, and while such procedures can significantly improve quality of life,
they also expose recipients to the risks of lifelong immunosuppressive therapy. While the progenitor cells needed to regenerate all of the tissues that make up a limb could be provided by the potential recipient
the experience of patients who have received hand transplants is promising.""In clinical limb transplantation, nerves do grow back into the graft, enabling both motion and sensation,
The actuators are customizable to accommodate each patient's specific hand size and pathology. Image:
A team of undergraduate students also contributed to an early glove design as part of his ES227 Medical device Design Course.
which could help patients suffering from muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), incomplete spinal cord injury, or other hand impairments to regain some daily independence and control of their environment.
in relation to making it customizable for the specific pathologies of each individual and understanding what control strategies work best
"For patients suffering from muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and incomplete spinal cord injury, the soft robotic glove could allow them to regain some of their daily independence through robotic gloveassisted hand functions.
Walsh and his team have also been aided in their work through key expertise from two other Wyss Core Faculty members George Whitesides, Ph d,
Down the road, the team is interested in developing the glove beyond an assistive device to a rehabilitation tool for various hand pathologies,
. who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical school and Boston Children's Hospital and Professor of Bioengineering AT SEAS."
For the authors of the research, finding a nanothermometer sensitive enough at this scale is a great step forward in the field of nanotechnology, with applications in biology, chemistry, physics and even in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases s
#Injectable nanoelectronics for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases It's a notion that might be pulled from the pages of science-fiction novel-electronic devices that can be injected directly into the brain,
and treat everything from neurodegenerative disorders to paralysis. It sounds unlikely, until you visit Charles Lieber's lab. A team of international researchers, led by Lieber, the Mark Hyman, Jr.
would it be possible to deliver the mesh electronics by syringe needle injection, a process common to delivery of many species in biology and medicine-you could go to the doctor
and you inject this and you're wired up.'"'"Though not the first attempts at implanting electronics into the brain-deep brain stimulation has been used to treat a variety of disorders for decades-the nano-fabricated scaffolds operate on a completely different scale.
and administered like any other injection. After injection, the input/output of the mesh can be connected to standard measurement electronics
so that the integrated devices can be addressed and used to stimulate or record neural activity.""These type of things have never been done before, from both a fundamental neuroscience and medical perspective,
"Lieber said.""It's really exciting-there are a lot of potential applications.""Going forward, Lieber said, researchers hope to better understand how the brain
whose speed and precision make them useful for cataract and other eye surgeries. A femtosecond is one-quadrillionth,
reduce pollution-related health problems and eliminate emissions from the United states. There is very little downside to a conversion, at least based on this science."
such as viral disease markers, which appear when the immune system responds to incurable or hard-to-cure diseases,
including HIV, hepatitis, herpes, and many others. The sensor will enable doctors to identify tumor markers,
whose presence in the body signals the emergence and growth of cancerous tumors. The sensitivity of the new device is characterized best by one key feature:
according to its developers, the sensor can track changes of just a few kilodaltons in the mass of a cantilever in real time.
One Dalton is roughly the mass of a proton or neutron, and several thousand Daltons are the mass of individual proteins and DNA molecules.
So the new optical sensor will allow for diagnosing diseases long before they can be detected by any other method,
If you place antibodies to certain viruses on the cantilever, it'll capture the viral particles in the analyzed environment.
and UV radiation (Nanowerk News) RMIT University researchers have created wearable sensor patches that detect harmful UV radiation and dangerous, toxic gases such as hydrogen and nitrogen dioxide (Small,"Stretchable
stretchy electronic sensors are also capable of detecting harmful levels of UV radiation known to trigger melanoma.
and shortening the time to market of medicines in order to fully exploit them before patents run out.
Researchers then created a prototype BOC to assess the toxicological risk of new candidate compounds
They want to know the drug toxic liability as soon as possible to eliminate failures from their programme,
Understanding the long-term toxicity of drugs Traditionally the potential harmfulness of drugs has been tested on cells grown on plates in a 2d format.
so the tests only reveal results for acute toxicity, i e. drugs that would harm patients almost as soon as they are administered.
allowing for testing of longer-term toxicity effects. The drug being tested passes in a nutrient solution across these various compartmentalised rgansand the plate is connected with analytical methods such as mass spectroscopy to analyse the drug metabolites produced.
but they might also be toxic. This metabolite toxicity can't be detected by classic 2d culture.
Commercial multi-tissue device could be ready in three years A device comprising rat cells,
and more commonly used drugs known to be toxic to the liver such as paracetamol, were passed over these tissues to test the device worked correctly.
representing a liver, tumour, heart muscle and neurological system, and they developed early prototypes with six and eight compartments that the project demonstrated could be extended to human cell cultures. arly-stage backing from the EU has helped really us develop a robust prototype
#Engineers'synthetic immune organ produces antibodies Cornell engineers have created a functional, synthetic immune organ that produces antibodies
and can be controlled in the lab, completely separate from a living organism. The engineered organ has implications for everything from rapid production of immune therapies to new frontiers in cancer or infectious disease research.
The immune organoid was created in the lab of Ankur Singh, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering,
Like a real organ, the organoid converts B cells which make antibodies that respond to infectious invaders into germinal centers,
mature and mutate their antibody genes when the body is under attack. Germinal centers are a sign of infection
and are not present in healthy immune organs. The engineers have demonstrated how they can control this immune response in the organ
get activated and change their antibody types. According to their paper, their 3-D organ outperforms existing 2-D cultures and can produce activated B cells up to 100 times faster.
the organ could be used to study specific infections and how the body produces antibodies to fight those infections from Ebola to HIV. ou can use our system to force the production of immunotherapeutics at much faster rates,
he said. Such a system also could be used to test toxic chemicals and environmental factors that contribute to infections or organ malfunctions.
The process of B cells becoming germinal centers is understood not well, and in fact, when the body makes mistakes in the genetic rearrangement related to this process,
blood cancer can result. n the long run, we anticipate that the ability to drive immune reaction ex vivo at controllable rates grants us the ability to reproduce immunological events with tunable parameters for better mechanistic understanding of B cell development and generation of B cell tumors,
as well as screening and translation of new classes of drugs, Singh said g
#3d potential through laser annihilation (Nanowerk News) Whether in the pages of H g wells, the serial adventures of Flash gordon,
or that epic science fiction saga that is Star wars, the appearance of laser beamsor rays or phasers or blastersultimately meant the imminent disintegration of our hero
used in targeted surgeries, precision manufacturing and in the exploration of materials at the nanoscale.
The relationship between genes and specific traits is complicated more than simple one-to-one relationships between genes and diseases.
but scientists are just beginning to explore how, specifically, genetic variations affect health and disease. Two major statistical challenges to finding these connections involve analysing associations between many different genetic variants and multiple traits,
"But the simple models we use to do this are too simplistic to uncover the complex dependencies between sets of genetic variants and disease phenotypes."
because the materials can assemble in water instead of more toxic organic solutions that are used widely today.
and a favorable fracture behavior including self-healing ability. Key to the success are the supramolecular bonds within the soft polymer matrix.
but at substantial stress levels, the bonds can open up and provide fracture energy dissipation by stick/slip interactions and frictional sliding of the platelets against each other."
"These so-called sacrificial bonds allow full control over the material on different levels, because, depending on their amount,
"He said that makes it ideal for medical applications because the microrobotic tentacles can't damage tissues or even blood vessels.
#Smart insulin patch could replace injections for diabetes Painful insulin injections could become a thing of the past for the millions of Americans who suffer from diabetes, thanks to a new invention from researchers at North carolina State university and the University
painless patch could lower blood glucose in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes for up to nine hours.
More preclinical tests and subsequent clinical trials in humans will be required before the patch can be administered to patients,
A paper describing the work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. e have designed a patch for diabetes that works fast,
and the UNC Diabetes Care Center. he whole system can be personalized to account for a diabetic weight and sensitivity to insulin,
Diabetes affects more than 387 million people worldwide, and that number is expected to grow to 592 million by the year 2035.
Patients with type 1 and advanced type 2 diabetes try to keep their blood sugar levels under control with regular finger pricks and repeated insulin shots, a process that is painful and imprecise.
MD, Phd, co-senior author of the PNAS paper and the director of the UNC Diabetes Care Center, said,
njecting the wrong amount of medication can lead to significant complications like blindness and limb amputations,
or even more disastrous consequences such as diabetic comas and death. Researchers have tried to remove the potential for human error by creating losed-loop systemsthat directly connect the devices that track blood sugar
they had to figure out a way to administer them to patients with diabetes. Rather than rely on the large needles
The researchers tested the ability of this approach to control blood sugar levels in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes.
They gave one set of mice a standard injection of insulin and measured the blood glucose levels,
They also found that the patch did not pose the hazards that insulin injections do.
Injections can send blood sugar plummeting to dangerously low levels when administered too frequently. he hard part of diabetes care is not the insulin shots,
or the blood sugar checks, or the diet but the fact that you have to do them all several times a day every day for the rest of your life,
the director of the North carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC Tracs) Institute and past president of the American Diabetes Association. f we can get these patches to work in people,
bio-inspired process unlike current approaches that rely on high temperatures, pressures, toxic solvents and expensive precursors,
In particular, current chemical synthesis methods use high temperatures and toxic solvents, which make environmental remediation expensive and challenging.
or chemical environment to provide unique functionality in a wide range of applications from energy to medicine.
what may be a major leap forward in the quest for new treatments of the most common form of cardiovascular disease,
known as atherosclerotic vessel disease, is the leading cause of heart attacks and strokes that claim some 2. 6 million lives a year worldwide, according to the World health organization.
and cardiac hypertrophy through biodegradable polymer-encapsulated delivery of glycosphingolipid inhibitor), "builds on recent research by the same team that previously identified a fat-and-sugar molecule called GSL as the chief culprit behind a range of biological glitches that affect the body's ability to properly use, transport
That earlier study showed that animals feasting on high-fat foods remained free of heart disease if pretreated with a man-made compound, D-PDMP,
and clear out D-PDMP was a major hurdle in efforts to test its therapeutic potential in larger animals and humans.
but not potent enough to stop the disease from advancing. Perhaps, most importantly, the team says,
and pumping dysfunction, the hallmarks of advanced disease.""Our experiments illustrate clearly that while content is important,
"says lead investigator Subroto Chatterjee, Ph d.,a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Johns hopkins university School of medicine and a metabolism expert at its Heart and Vascular Institute."
and its ability not merely to prevent disease but to mitigate some of its worst manifestations."
D-PDMP treatment improved heart function in mice with advanced forms of atherosclerotic heart disease, marked by heart muscle thickening
if a poor state of health is caused by disease or a lack of water anyway,
They contribute to the early detection of diseases that affect grapevines, such as flavescence dore and black wood, declares Stefano Sgrelli, Ceo of Salt&lemon.
#New device tracks chemical signals within cells Biomedical engineers at the University of Toronto have invented a new device that more quickly
and could identify new targets for cancer medications. Throughout the human body, certain signalling chemicals--known as hormones--tell various cells
leading to cancer. To look into the responses of different cells, the U of T team harnessed the emerging power of digital microfluidics,
They then deliver a third drop containing fluorescent antibodies that stick only to the proteins modified in the cascade.
Looking at the antibodies in a microscope provides a snapshot of what has changed and what hasn't. By building up a series of snapshots at different time intervals,
or proteins that could be targeted by drugs, eventually leading to new medicines to fight cancer r
It also helps improve our understanding of the development of some diseases that involve a defective transportation to the nuclear pores-such as intestinal ovarian and thyroid cancer r
are being developed by mechanical engineers at Drexel University as a part of a surgical toolkit being assembled by the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) in South korea.
and very much in its infancy when it comes to medical applications, Kim said. project like this,
is an opportunity to push both medicine and microrobotics into a new and exciting place.
Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, is classified by its spiral shape, which enables both its movement and the resultant cellular destruction.
is being designed by Bradley Nelson from ETH Zurich, a pioneer in the field of microrobotic surgery.
stenting and angioplasty. Stenting is a way of creating a bypass for blood to flow around the block by inserting a series of tubes into the artery,
while angioplasty pushes out the blockage by expanding the artery with help from an inflatable probe. urrent treatments for chronic total occlusion are only about 60 percent successful,
#University spinout signs deal to commercialize microchips that release therapeutics inside the body (Nanowerk News) An implantable,
microchip-based device may soon replace the injections and pills now needed to treat chronic diseases:
Earlier this month, MIT spinout Microchips Biotech partnered with a pharmaceutical giant to commercialize its wirelessly controlled, implantable,
each capped with a metal membrane, that store tiny doses of therapeutics or chemicals. An electric current delivered by the device removes the membrane,
for example, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and osteoporosis. Michael Cima (left) and Robert Langer Now Microchips Biotech will begin co-developing microchips with Teva Pharmaceutical, the worlds largest producer of generic drugs,
to treat specific diseases, with licensing potential for other products. Teva paid $35 million up front, with additional milestone payments as the device goes through clinical trials before it hits the shelves.
Obviously, this is a huge validation of the technology, Cima says. A major pharmaceutical company sees how this technology can further their efforts to help patients.
to $289 billion annually in unnecessary health care costs from additional hospital visits and other issues.
Failure to follow prescriptions, the study also found, causes around 125,000 deaths annually and up to 10 percent of all hospitalizations.
While its first partnership is for treating chronic diseases, Microchips Biotech will continue work on its flagship product, a birth-control microchip, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
A lot of the therapies are trying to chemically trick the endocrine systems, Cima says. We are doing that with this artificial organ we created.
a single dose of therapeutics is released into the body. Wild ideas Inspiration for the microchips came in the late 1990s,
and somewhat fantastical, applications beyond drug delivery, including disease diagnostics and jewelry that could emit scents.
and researchers from Microchips, conducted the microchips first human trials to treat osteoporosis this time with wireless capabilities.
In that study, published in a 2012 issue of Science Translational Medicine, microchips were implanted into seven elderly women,
Results indicated that the chips delivered doses comparable to injections and did so more consistently with no adverse side effects.
said Robert L. Geahlen, Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at Purdue. We were able to show the turn off of this kinase very rapidly alters the physical properties of the cell.
The paper was authored by former doctoral student Alexander X. Cartagena-Rivera, now a postdoctoral fellow at the National institutes of health's National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD;
who is affiliated with the Purdue Center for Cancer Research. And thats one of the reasons we were looking at this particular type of cancer cell with this particular form of Syk in it.
One goal of the research is to correlate physical properties of cells with tumor suppression and the action of the kinase on the cell.
#Chitosan coated, chemotherapy packed nanoparticles may target cancer stem cells (Nanowerk News) Nanoparticles packed with a clinically used chemotherapy drug
and kill cancer stem-like cells, according to a recent study led by researchers at The Ohio State university Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital
and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC-James). Cancer stem-like cells have characteristics of stem cells
and are present in very low numbers in tumors. They are highly resistant to chemotherapy
and radiation and are believed to play an important role in tumor recurrence. This laboratory and animal study showed that nanoparticles coated with the oligosaccharide called chitosan
and encapsulating the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin can target and kill cancer stem-like cells six times more effectively than free doxorubicin.
The study is reported in the journal ACS Nano("Chitosan-Decorated Doxorubicin-Encapsulated Nanoparticle Targets and Eliminates Tumor Reinitiating Cancer Stem-like Cells").
""Our findings indicate that this nanoparticle delivery system increases the cytotoxicity of doxorubicin with no evidence of systemic toxic side effects in our animal model,
"says principal investigator Xiaoming (Shawn) He, Phd, associate professor of Biomedical engineering and a member of the OSUCCC-James Translational Therapeutics Program."
"We believe that chitosan-decorated nanoparticles could also encapsulate other types of chemotherapy and be used to treat many types of cancer."
"This study showed that chitosan binds with a receptor on cancer stem-like cells called CD44,
enabling the nanoparticles to target the malignant stem-like cells in a tumor. The nanoparticles were engineered to shrink,
break open, and release the anticancer drug under the acidic conditions of the tumor microenvironment and in tumor-cell endosomes and lysosomes,
which cells use to digest nutrients acquired from their microenvironment. He and his colleagues conducted the study using models called 3d mammary tumor spheroids (i e.,
, mammospheres) and an animal model of human breast cancer. The study also found that although the drug-carrying nanoparticles could bind to the variant CD44 receptors on cancerous mammosphere cells,
researchers at University of Michigan Life sciences Institute and University of Texas Southwestern Medical center have discovered. The findings,
The phenomenon of RNAI is expected to find applications in medical treatments. RNAI is mediated by RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC),
for example as gene therapy to suppress the production of a disease-causing protein n
#Photonic crystal fibre: a multipurpose sensor Glass fibres can do more than transport data. A special type of glass fibre can also be used as a high-precision multipurpose sensor,
a co-author of the study, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, and lecturer at the MIPT Section of the Physics and Chemistry of Nanostructures (DMCP).
which could overcome current shortcomings of low drug efficacy and multi-drug resistance in the treatment of cancer as well as viral and bacterial infections.
"the study identified a new mechanism of targeting multi-subunit complexes that are critical to the function of viruses, bacteria or cancer,
Guo holds a joint appointment at the UK Markey Cancer Center and in the UK College of Pharmacy."
or die and thus, no longer able to cause disease. ne of the vexing problems in the development of drugs is drug resistance,
former Dean of the UK College of Pharmacy and current UK provost. r. Guo's study has identified a new mechanism of efficiently inhibiting biological processes that are critical to the function of the disease-causing organism,
Guo focuses much of his work on the use of ribonucleic acid (RNA) nanoparticles and a viral nanomotor to fight cancer
viral infections and genetic diseases. He is well-known for his pioneering work of constructing RNA nanoparticles as drug carriers u
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