called plasmonic biosensors, could ultimately become a key asset in personalised medicine by helping to diagnose diseases at an early stage.
Personalised medicine is one of the new developments that is deemed to revolutionise health care. A key component is the detection of biomarkers, proteins in blood or saliva, for example,
whose presence or abnormal concentration is caused by a disease. Biomarkers can indicate the presence of diseases long before the appearance of symptoms.
However, currently the detection of these molecules still requires specialised laboratories and is costly. Thanks to the EU-funded research project called NANOANTENNA
nanotechnologists and biomedical researchers with the aim of developing a so-called plasmonic nanobiosensor for the detection of proteins.
and early detection of diseases, done in point-of-care (POC) or bed-side conditions."
because it will be a component of future medicine, "says Alexandre Brolo, professor of chemistry specialised in nanotechnology research,
He also believes that such approach will make medical care more cost effective.""You want something that is very cheap
and is not going to put a big burden on the health care system, "says Brolo. Another expert agrees."
Moreover, thanks to the inclusion of sulfur atoms, they are cheaper to make and less toxic than conventional lithium-ion power packs.
Ozden explained that the even distribution of stress along the belly-flopping nanotube which is many times longer than it is wide breaks carbon bonds in a line nearly simultaneously.
Fan calls his approach"a simple stress-based fabrication method"that, when applied to nanoparticle arrays, forms new nanostructures with tunable properties."
This external stress manually induced transitions in the film that synthesized new materials, "he said.
The stress-induced synthesis processes are simple and clean. No thermal processing or further purification is needed to remove reaction byproducts r
toxic liquids such as toluene and hexane are used usually as solvents in the carbon-carbon and carbon-nitrogen bond-forming reactions.
These toxic liquid solvents raise many issues for concern including environmental pollution, high cost of disposal, health problems and poisoning during the disposal process.
However, this new technology is able to replace those toxic liquids as it allows carbon-carbon and carbon-nitrogen bond-formation with the use of metal nanoparticles as a catalyst
#Scientists develop a'nanosubmarine'that delivers complementary molecules inside cells With the continuing need for very small devices in therapeutic applications there is a growing demand for the development of nanoparticles that can transport
and neutral environment) makes these nanoparticles an ideal vehicle for the controlled activation of therapeutics directly inside the cells Raymo says.
#Nanoparticles could provide easier route for cell therapy UT Arlington physics researchers may have developed a way to use laser technology to deliver drug and gene therapy at the cellular level without damaging surrounding tissue.
The method eventually could help patients suffering from genetic conditions, cancers and neurological diseases. In a study published recently by the journal Nature's Scientific Reports,
to heat up and destroy cancer cells in the lab. The team used the new photothermal delivery method in lab experiments to introduce impermeable dyes and small DNA molecules into human prostate cancer and fibroblast sarcoma cells."
vaccinations, cancer imaging and other medical treatments. Currently, the predominant practice is using viruses for delivery to cells.
Koymen, Mohanty and Gu have taken their collaboration to a new level as they keep building toward valuable implications for human health and disease treatment."
"Carbon nanoparticles produced for the cancer study varied from five to 20 nanometers wide. A human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.
So, they can be used to enhance contrast of optical imaging of tumors along with that of MRI I
At the 90â°and 45â°impact angles on the other hand fewer atoms were involved in the impact so the stress was concentrated more on fewer atoms.
that's why when bone density decreases, fractures become more likely. But using the right mathematically determined structures to distribute
The new technology also has major medical implications. Currently, memory used in computers and phones is made with silicon substrates, the surface on
To obtain medical information from a patient such as heart rate or brainwave data, stiff electrode objects are placed on several fixed locations on the patient's body.
In everyday life, we mostly know X-ray imaging as a medical procedure that enables physicians to see inside the human body without harming the patient.
much like a medical X-ray CT SCAN. With the aid of special computer software researchers combine these images to form a three-dimensional picture,
I believe this approach has significant value as a platform for more detailed investigations of realistic systems important for these new biomedical applications of DNA NANOPARTICLE pairings,
"Nanoparticles are extraordinarily small particles at the forefront of advances in many biomedical, optical and electronic fields,
and"hot injection"or other existing synthetic approaches are slow, costly, sometimes toxic and often wasteful.
Hygienic conditions and sterile procedures are particularly important in hospitals, kitchens and sanitary facilities, air conditioning and ventilation systems, in food preparation and in the manufacture of packaging material.
and cures thermally or photochemically. Selective variation of the individual components allows the developers to react to the particular and different needs of potential users.
#Nanotechnology takes on diabetes A sensor which can be used to screen for diabetes in resource-poor settings has been developed by researchers
and tested in diabetic patients, and will soon be tested field in Sub-saharan africa. A low-cost, reusable sensor which uses nanotechnology to screen for
and monitor diabetes and other conditions, has been developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Cambridge, for use both in clinics and home settings.
The sensors use nanotechnology to monitor levels of glucose, lactate and fructose in individuals with diabetes or urinary tract infections
and change colour when levels reach a certain concentration. They can be used to test compounds in samples such as urine, blood, saliva or tear fluid.
Earlier this year, clinical trials of the sensors were carried out at Addenbrooke's Hospital to monitor glucose levels in 33 diabetic patients.
According to the International Diabetes Federation, there are an estimated 175 million undiagnosed diabetic patients worldwide, 80%of
"These sensors can be used to screen for diabetes in resource-poor countries, where disposable test strips and other equipment are simply not affordable,
The researchers are developing a prototype smartphone-based test suitable for both clinical and home testing of diabetes and other clinically relevant conditions."
and adopted as a diagnostic tool for routine diabetes screening, "said Yunuen Montelongo who co-authored the article e
Water-splitting photocatalyst that is abundant and inexpensive with low toxicity discovered More information: Amorphous Tio2 coatings stabilize Si Gaas and Gap photoanodes for efficient water oxidationn by S. Hu et al.
heart problems and deep vein thrombosis has been developed by researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN).
"Diseases caused by blood clots can be potentially fatal. Genetic testing can improve the treatment of such medical conditions.
By combining our expertise in molecular diagnostics and nanotechnology, we have developed a new genetic test that can determine the appropriate drug dosage to be administered for each patient."
They are used to treat stroke, irregular heartbeat and deep vein thrombosis. Warfarin is the most widely prescribed oral anticoagulant drug.
Doctors currently determine the right dosage by monitoring the patients'reactions and adjusting the dosage accordingly.
therefore help doctors to decide the correct dosage for the patient. This minimizes side effects and improves treatment outcomes.
IBN's test has been validated by the National Cancer Centre Singapore, the National University Cancer Institute Singapore,
By making molecular diagnostics information more readily available, doctors will be able to provide personalized treatment that is safer and more effective
what happens under stress. In most thin film transistors, the material starts to crack, which,
and nanometer scale is crucial from semiconductor electronics to biochemistry and medicine. Explore further: High-resolution microscopy technique resolves individual carbon nanotubes under ambient condition c
in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Michigan, have developed a 3-D artificial enzyme cascade that mimics an important biochemical pathway that could prove important for future biomedical and energy applications.
For example, defects found in the pathway cause anemia in humans.""Dehydrogenase enzymes are particularly important
"said Walter. The work also opens a bright future where biochemical pathways can be replicated outside the cell to develop biomedical applications such as detection methods for diagnostic platforms."
enabling surgeons to better determine which tissue to remove and which to leave. Research by Jeremy Duczynski from the University of WA's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry investigated
whether the nanoparticles would work as effective optical contrast agents to provide an estimate of the size and shape of tumour margins during surgery.
When doctors perform an MRI they administer a contrast agent: a chemical that when injected into the bloodstream
and internal bleeding contains gadolinium a rare-earth metal. Recently biomedical researchers have found ways to increase the effectiveness of certain contrast agents by associating them with nanoparticles.
The contrast agent being used is packaged inside or bonded to the surface of microscopic particles which can be designed to target certain regions of the body
or dyes instead of one or a contrast agent along with another type of diagnostic aid or a medication doctors could more efficiently test for
and limit the number of injections received by patients. Just like toddlers sharing a new toy
#Ultra-sensitive nano-chip capable of detecting cancer at early stages developed Today the majority of cancers are detected on the macroscopic level
when the tumor is composed already of millions of cancer cells and the disease is starting to advance into a more mature phase.
But what if we could diagnose cancer before it took hold -while it was still only affecting a few localized cells?
It would be like putting a fire out while it was still just a few sparks
An international team of researchers led by ICFO-Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels announce the successful development of a lab-on-a-chip platform capable of detecting protein cancer markers in the blood using the very latest advances
The device is able to detect very low concentrations of protein cancer markers in blood enabling diagnoses of the disease in its earliest stages.
The detection of cancer in its very early stages is seen as key to the successful diagnosis and treatment of this disease.
This cancer-tracking nanodevice shows great promise as a tool for future cancer treatments not only because of its reliability sensitivity and potential low cost but also because of its easy carry on portable properties which is foreseen to facilitate effective diagnosis and suitable
treatment procedures in remote places with difficult access to hospitals or medical clinics. Although very compact (only a few square centimeters) the lab-on-a-chip hosts various sensing sites distributed across a network of fluidic micro-channels that enables it to conduct multiple analyses.
and are programed chemically with an antibody receptor in such a way that they are capable of specifically attracting the protein markers circulating in blood.
and if cancer markers are present in the blood they will stick to the nanoparticles located on the micro-channels as they pass by setting off changes in
thus providing a direct assessment of the risk for the patient to develop a cancer.
and treatment monitoring of cancer. In 2009 Prof. Quidant's research group at ICFO in collaboration with several groups of oncologists joined the worldwide effort devoted to the ultra-sensitive detection of protein markers located on the surface of cancer cells and in peripheral blood
which had been determined to be a clear indicator of the development of cancer. In 2010 they successfully obtained funding for the project called SPEDOC (Surface Plasmon Early Detection of Circulating Heat shock proteins and Tumor Cells) under the 7th Framework Program (FP7) of the European commission.
The effort was boosted also by generous philanthropic support from Cellex Foundation Barcelona. Today's announcement is an important outcome of this project t
#Stronger black solar coating that retains original color and absorption properties Solar thermal panels developed at EPFL are are dressed up in unique and patented new materials.
more selective and less toxic than the chromium used thus far. As such this new material provides high durability in the open air at temperatures of 300°C to 400°C,
and that are less toxic than chromium. That's why we followed the trail of these materials."
One chiral form of Thalidomide worked as an effective treatment for morning sickness in early pregnancy,
resulting in more than 10,000 children worldwide being born with serious birth defects, such as shortened or missing limbs.
#Silly Putty material inspires better batteries Using a material found in Silly Putty and surgical tubing, a group of researchers at the University of California,
and medical devices and even fast food and using it to create next generation battery materials, "said Zachary Favors,
The structure of these nanometre scale machines is at the heart of our understanding of health and disease,
or DNA sequence from one animal into the genome of another plays a critical role in a wide range of medical researchncluding cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and diabetes.
and repel DNALLOWING injections to occur with a tiny, electrically conductive lance,"explained Brian Jensen, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University."
This ability to inject DNA into cells without causing cell death leads to"more efficient injections,
"This may enable future automation of the injections, without requiring manual injection, "Jensen says. It may also mean that injections can be performed in animals with cloudy or opaque embryos."
"Such animals, including many interesting larger ones like pigs, would be attractive for a variety of transgenic technologies,
"said Jensen.""We believe nanoinjection may open new fields of discovery in these animals.""As a next step, Jensen and colleagues are performing injections into cells in a cell culture using an array of lances that can inject hundreds of thousands of cells at once."
"We expect the lance array may enable gene therapy using a culture of a patient's own cells,
and are a key factor in illnesses that result from animal bites and stings and bacterial infections.
but if those nanoparticles cannot be digested effectively they can accumulate in the liver creating a risk of secondary poisoning especially among patients who are already at risk of liver failure.
This will inspire many new designs for detoxification techniques since 3d printing allows user-specific or site-specific manufacturing of highly functional products Chen said.
Nanosponge decoy fights superbug infections More information: Paper: Bio-inspired detoxification using 3d printed hydrogel nanocomposites www. nature. com/ncomms/2014/140full/ncomms4774. htm h
#Flexible supercapacitor raises bar for volumetric energy density Scientists have taken a large step toward making a fiber-like energy storage device that can be woven into clothing
They envision the fiber supercapacitor could be woven into clothing to power medical devices for people at home or communications devices for soldiers in the field.
and serve as energy-carrying wires in medical implants. Yuan Chen a professor of chemical engineering at NTU led the new study working with Dingshan Yu Kunli Goh Hong Wang Li Wei and Wenchao Jiang at NTU;
The device was subjected to constant mechanical stress and its performance was evaluated. The fiber supercapacitor continues to work without performance loss even after bending hundreds of times Yu said.
Such clothing could power biomedical monitoring devices a patient wears at home providing information to a doctor at a hospital Dai said.
Associate professor Baohua Jia led a team of researchers from Swinburne's Centre for Microphotonics to create a micrometre thin film with record-breaking optical nonlinearity suitable for high performance integrated photonic devices used in all-optical communications, biomedicine
Tumors appeared accelerate the tissue aging process by 36 years and healthy breast tissue near breast tumors were an average of 12 years older than tissue elsewhere in the body.
In contrast transforming adult human cells into#pluripotent stem cells which reprograms them to act like embryonic stem cells effectively resets the cells'clock to zero Horvath says.#
#To make it happen the team removed parts of skull from three patients experiencing frequent drug-resistant epileptic seizures then attached a packet of electrodes to their exposed brains.
#Fruit flies Boost STI Immunity Before Sex Among the promiscuous common fruit fly sexually-transmitted infections run rampant.
and stress response genes when they hear the courtship song of a male. This helps them fight off sexually-transmitted infection from the fungus Metarhizium robertsii.
One of these genes#Turandot M#(Totm)# specifically protected the flies against STIS. When the flies were exposed to#a topical infection of the same fungus the#expression of Totm didn't help at all.
The researchers suggest that this immune anticipation is likely to be far more common than currently appreciated in insects#as they write in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. T he courtship-induced preemptive upregulation of Totm might be representative of a general pattern of immune anticipation
in insects underlining the intimate link between brain behaviour and immunity u
#Gunk-Proof Everything Anyone who's worn waterproof boots knows that although they shed moisture they're magnets for grime.
#Wii Fit Plus Helps Diabetics Control Blood sugar As you might already know playing Wii Fit is a funny thing.
In a randomized controlled trial older adults with type 2 diabetes had better controlled blood sugar after playing Wii Fit Plus for half an hour a day every day for 12 weeks.
Their blood sugar#level#reductions were on par with study participants who received the â##standard careâ#doctors normally give people with diabetes the U k. s National Health service reports.
This is encouraging because getting set up to play Wii Fit Plus is cheaper than other forms of diabetes care National Health service reports.
The National Health service has a good breakdown of the study which is one of the first to so rigorously examine the health benefits of active video games.
The bottom line is that there s evidence playing Wii Fit Plus daily can help those with type 2 diabetes though it s not exactly a proven treatment yet.
#Preventing Superbugs By Deactivating Antibiotics With A Flash Of Light Bacterial resistance is becoming one of the most serious problems in the medical world
#Drug Cures Mice Of Down syndrome With A Single Dose Cure Down syndrome with a single injection?
A team of scientists from John Hopkins University and the National institutes of health have cured newborn mice of Down syndrome by injecting them with a drug that stimulates
People with Down syndrome usually have smaller brain volumes than control groups including significantly smaller cerebellums a portion of the brain involved in motor control.
The researchers led by Roger Reeves of the John Hopkins University School of medicine treated newborn mice that had been engineered genetically to have Down syndrome-like characteristics with a small molecule called SAG.
After a single injection of SAG on the day the mice were born their cerebellums developed normally into adulthood.
But the drug is a long way from becoming a human cure. The Hedgehog pathway plays an important role
It's possible enhancing the biochemical events that lead to growth in the brain would cause issues elsewhere in the body like potentially raising the risk of cancer.
Down syndrome is very complex and nobody thinks there's going to be a silver bullet that normalizes cognition Reeves said in a statement.
What about the physical characteristics of Downs syndrome? Will the child still have mongoloid characteristics
Down syndrome creates a great many genetic expressions to the individual. some dont get all that are possible. most likely any physiological characteristics would be largely permanent after birth.
The treatment could also create any number of problems being given in utero. this injection was given after the mice were born
and Android#that can be used for the detection of radioactivity in everyday life such as exposure on airplanes from medical patients or from contaminated products.
mosquitoes whiteflies and dragonflies which pick up dinner and pathogens from various food sources. We call them flying syringes she says.
Sampling the viruses they carry could enable her to detect a pathogen early. Usually you wait for an outbreak
An associate professor of food safety and plant biosecurity at Virgina Tech Schmale sends drones armed with petri dishes into the atmosphere to capture airborne crop pathogens.
The data he has gathered explains how pathogens ride on wind currents and provides a glimpse into an almost unknown ecosystem far above our heads.
He's planning to adapt his model to predict the movement of plant pathogens which could help farmers preemptively protect their crops by describing where to strategically deploy pesticides.
They dramatically sped up the study of genetics and disease. The techniques Zhang helped develop called TALE
Zhang plans to use the techniques to study the genetics of autism and schizophrenia. He has begun already to insert genes linked to each disorder one by one into animal models to observe their effects.
and reassembled as often happens in cancer even undamaged genes are expressed at different levels than in a normal chromosome.
Just last year, more than 200 people in Lahore died after contaminated cardiac medicines containing a toxic amount of an anti-malaria drug hit the city's supply.
and patients are desperate for affordable medicine. Consider this: The World health organization says that at least 10 percent to 30 percent of the pharmaceutical market in these countries is compromised."
"says Zaman, now a biomedical engineer at Boston University. The bogus-drug trade isn't just a problem for the world's poorest patients:
Zaman has made a cheap handheld scanner called Pharmacheck to quickly identify fake medicine in villages
clinics, and hospitals. Users (who need only a few days'training) dissolve samples inside a small beaker in the machine.
But others, particularly those in developing countries, might contain an ineffective amount of medicine or release the right amount in the wrong way;
Too strong a signal right away could mean that the medicine wasn't made properly and is probably toxic.
Too weak a signal means there might not be enough of the active ingredient to be effective (in antibiotics,
Others contain an ineffective amount of medicine. Meanwhile, the FDA is ramping up deployment of its own handheld scanners,
In the future such a clone could be a source of stem cells for super-personalized therapies made from people's own DNA.
You also fail to mention just how many advances in modern medicine we were given by the Germans.
And yes a lot of medical breakthroughs came from the horrible experiments done by the Nazi's
-which might not actually manage to develop into a human even under the right conditions-than of individuals who suffer daily with crippling diseases that were thrust upon them by chance
Stem cell research is an incredibly valuable source of information concerning real diseases that real humans are really suffering from right at this very moment.
Stem cell-derived organs might in future provide accurate disease models for screening of pharmaceutical compounds reducing the requirement for animal testing
and potentially getting new medicines to the people who need them more rapidly. Not to mention the potential applications of stem cell-derived organs in toxicology screens for new pharmaceutical compounds
in order to reduce the chances of severe side effects manifesting further down the line in real living people.
'there is enormous medical potential here and I think that to deny such potential for the individuals who will most benefit from it in future
#Which Drugs Actually Kill Americans Infographic Death reporting in the U s. requires an underlying cause the event or disease that lead to the death.
This chart represents all those listed in the CDC database as accidental poisoning intentional self-poisoning assault by drugs
And about a quarter of all overdose death certificates don't have the toxicity test results listed at all landing them in the unspecified stripe.
or one on diabetes or obesity it would fit but not here. How can you put up this graph
But at the end at our death a doctor will often just list one or a few things that nailed our coffin not all
Good to see the folks over at Popsci are focusing on Cannabis and the many benefits of this wonder plant.
Upon autopsytheir fatty liver disease resembled that of an alcoholic. However the culprit was excess sugar
overdoses from cannabis and all of the psychedelics COMBINED (LSD mescaline etc) are practically zero and need to be lumped in with'overdose by assault'(basically murder by poisoning)
in order to even show up as a single pixel wide line on this graph. Diverdan I believe'treatment related'would fall under unintentional self-harm the largest sub-category.
but in reality those levels could never be reached. http://www. druglibrary. org/schaffer/library/mj overdose. htmmarijuana also doesn't cause cancer. http://www. washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25
Those methods still can't yield a toxic response and nullify the risks associated with smoking.
Remember the difference between a medicine and a poison is dose. I think the next question people should be asking
Cannabis being lumped into the same category as LSD and overdose by assault. What is represented not effectively conspicuously seemingly by design are drugs that cause zero deaths.
It does not show deaths from chronic health problems caused by drug use nor accidents (car crashes falls) nor suicides while intoxicated.
If all these other deaths were shown the death count for alcohol would be much much greater. 2. Overdose deaths from cannabis LSD magic mushrooms
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