#Reseachers Create First Integrated Circularly Polarized Light detector on a Silicon chip What do you get when you combine some biomimicry, metamaterials and nanowires?
which in one chirality alleviates morning sickness in pregnant women and in the other causes birth defects.
in a press release. ortable detectors could be used to determine drug chirality in hospitals and in the field. n research published in the journal Nature Communications,
genetic disorders are the leading cause of death. But pediatricians typically can scan an infant entire genome
and analyze the entire genome of a critically ill infant to find a diagnosis that can significantly alter the course of treatment.
In a new study published in Genome Medicine, pediatricians explained how hardware and software specialized for genetic analysis can provide such fast and lifesaving information.
Lead researcher Stephen Kingsmore, a pediatrician and genomics expert at Children Mercy Hospital in Kansas city, explains that doctors typically run targeted genetic tests for specific diseases
looking for disease-causing mutations. But with more than 8000 possible genetic diseases, such tests eren really relevant to clinical care, he tells IEEE Spectrum.
Whole-genome sequencing is a different matter entirely. These scans check for mutations at each of the 3. 2 billion locations on the human genome.
That cheap enough to make economic sense in medical emergencies, like those encountered in a neonatal intensive care unit.
After that, Kingsmore team used in-house software to search through the mutations for those associated with a disease that matched the baby symptoms.
These programs an almost make an instant diagnosis, says Kingsmore, noting that Children Mercy is going to make its software packages available as freeware by the end of the year.
and diagnosed a genetic disease in 20 of those babies. In 13 cases, the doctors dramatically changed their treatment plans.
For example, a baby with liver failure received the proper surgeries and pharmaceutical treatments based on the accurate diagnosis of a rare genetic disorder,
and is now a healthy 2-year-old. In other cases, the genome scan allowed doctors to rule out diseases,
which Kingsmore says can be equally valuable. octor always worry: id I miss something that was treatable??
But if a certain disease-associated mutation isn found, doctors needn give justin-case treatments.
The DRAGEN processor delivered its critical speed gains to the hospital servers thanks to its architecture,
every infant born in the developed world will have sequenced its genome in the hospital.?It just a matter of time before clinical genomics will be with us everywhere,
Automating medicine to this degree, from genome sequencing to diagnosis, doesn alarm Kingsmore. In fact, he thinks it will be necessary
if we want to make use of today best genetic technologies: f wee going to scale this,
treat cancer, strengthen polymers, sterilize medical devices, and even to make diamonds green and pearls black.
A key accelerator parameter is the acceleration gradient, the energy (measured in mega electron volts, Mev) gained per meter of travel.
When the terahertz pulse reflects off the left wall (around the injection pinhole) it catches the electrons,
Investors are even jonesing for cannabis startups; Snoop Dogg announced a $25 million fund, and Founders Fund invested in Privateer Holdings$75 million fund,
#The device is intended for use in remote laboratory settings to diagnose various types of cancers and nervous system disorders, such as Alzheimer,
as well as detect drug resistance in infectious diseases. To use the camera it is necessary to first isolate
The team is currently using the tool to etect the presence of malaria-related drug resistance. g
a company that develops interactive 3d software and media with a medical focus, to develop an Oculus Rift version of the game.
This includes issues that are common in both developed and emerging markets from E coli and Salmonella to SARS and even the norovirus.
medical devices and Internet of things devices anything that doesn require massive amounts of electricity. It will be launching on Kickstarter in one month for $99,
who previously spent ten years researching digital health and holding clinical trials at Columbia University Medical center.
Through a disease management and doctor communication platform, Microhealth is attempting to crowdsource the management of rare, chronic conditions, starting with hemophilia.
The updates are shared with the patient doctor who can use the data to regulate dosage
If a patient with hemophilia gets a cut, he won stop bleeding until he intravenously injects enough of this protein.
And treatment is incredibly expensive around $300, 000 per patient per year, Miguel says. sually patients will infuse all of the time
Currently, 10 percent of hemophilia patients in the U s. nearly 3, 000 people) are using Microhealth,
and right now doctors don know that. y simply prompting patients to log the exact amount of medication that theye injecting,
doctors can personalize treatment to match the metabolism and the daily activity of each patient.
Doctors can also request pictures and additional information from patients, who often live hundreds of miles from hemophilia treatment centers,
And hemophilia is just the first chronic disease that the company will tackle. The team has started already working with rheumatoid arthritis patients,
and plan to launch versions of the app for multiple sclerosis and high cholesterol patients in the future. magine a patient has cancer,
and only so much time to live, so choosing the right medication is saving his life,
In 1880, Dr. Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon, published a paper on how fingerprints can be used for identification.
Gomez Andonaegui found that the price fluctuated so much that it was major stress in running his business.
Juan M. Banda, a biomedical informatics researcher at Stanford, has created a tool that helps patients
and doctors search through pharmaceutical research, sourced from eight NIH-and FDA-approved medical databases,
while youe still taking those antibiotics you were prescribed last week for your sinus infection. The hack is potentially a lot more useful for patients with serious conditions who are taking multiple prescription drugs for an extended period of time.
Banda says he hopes to automate some of this in the future to make it easier for patients to interact with medical research. y hope is to make this bigger
#Cells that regenerate liver without cancer risk NEW YORK: Scientists have discovered new type of cells which are an important part of liver regeneration.
When healthy liver cells are depleted by long-term exposure to toxic chemicals, the newly discovered cells,
and grow without causing cancer, which tends to be a risk with rapid cell division.""Hybrid hepatocytes represent not only the most effective way to repair a diseased liver,
They then exposed healthy mice to three known cancer-causing pathways and watched the hybrid hepatocytes closely.
Liver cancer never originated from these cells s
#Cells in mice restore liver damage without cancer risk In a breakthrough discovery, medical researchers have discovered a type of cell in mice
which restores liver damage without the risk of cancer. The researchers have also found the similar cells in human.
When healthy liver cells are depleted by long-term exposure to toxic chemicals, the newly discovered cells,
known as hybrid hepatocytes, generate new tissue more efficiently than normal liver cells. In the study, the researchers studied liver function in mice following long-term exposure to carbon tetrachloride, a chemical commonly associated with Superfund sites.
They were able to isolate the hybrid hepatocytes after observing how the tissue regenerated and then exposed healthy mice to three known cancer-causing pathways and watched the hybrid hepatocytes closely.
The researchers noticed that liver cancer never originated from these cells. Lead author Michael Karin of the University of California said that the hybrid hepatocytes represented not only the most effective way to repair a diseased liver,
but also the safest way to prevent fatal liver failure by cell transplantation. The study is published in the journal Cell l
A first of its kind device that transforms paralysis victims'breath into words has been developed by researchers,
#Scientists identify protein that will help treatment of arthritis Scientists have identified a protein that regulates the severity of tissue damage caused by rheumatoid arthritis.
C5orf30, regulates the severity of tissue damage caused by rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease that causes pain, inflammation, stiffness and damage to the joints of the feet, hips, knees, and hands.
Although there is no cure for RA new effective drugs are increasingly available to treat the disease
and prevent deformed joints. To conduct the research, scientists from University college Dublin and the University of Sheffield,
analyzed DNA samples and biopsy samples from joints of over 1, 000 Rheumatoid arthritis patients in the UK and Ireland."
or personalised medicine,"said Gerry Wilson from the University college Dublin's School of medicine and Medical science in Ireland,
and its significance in human health and disease,"said co-author Munitta Muthana from the University of Sheffield.
One of the biggest difficulties with treating rheumatoid arthritis is early diagnosis. With early diagnosis and aggressive treatment,
The team identified novel factors that might be used in reprogramming cells into so-called pluripotent stem cells for possible treatment of a range of diseases including infertility.
#More effective drugs for diabetes in the offing Scientists have found a new way to lower blood sugar levels by reducing glucose production in the liver,
paving the way for more effective drugs for type 2 diabetes. Some treatments for type 2 diabetes make the body more sensitive to insulin,
the hormone that lowers blood sugar. But new research at Washington University School of medicine in St louis suggests a different strategy:
They did so by shutting down a liver protein involved in making glucose, an approach that may work in patients with type 2 diabetes."
"We think this strategy could lead to more effective drugs for type 2 diabetes, "said principal investigator Brian N Finck, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Geriatrics and Nutritional Science."
"A drug that shuts down glucose production has the potential to help millions of people affected by the most common form of diabetes,
"said Finck. Finck worked with researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical centre and the biopharmaceutical company Metabolic Solutions Development Co. The company is involved in clinical trials that are evaluating the drug compound MSDC-0602 as a treatment for diabetes.
The new study demonstrates that the compound works, at least in part, by inhibiting a protein that's key to glucose production in the liver.
The research team, led by first author Kyle S Mccommis a postdoctoral research scholar, cut sugar production in liver cells by inhibiting a key protein involved in transporting pyruvate, a building block of glucose, from the bloodstream into the energy factories of liver cells, called mitochondria.
In addition to diabetes, the researchers also think that interfering with pyruvate transport may help patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition common in people with obesity y
Such a molecular profile could be useful for distinguishing people at earlier risk of age-related diseases.
This could improve upon the use of chronological age and complement traditional indicators of disease, such as blood pressure.
and should be able to transform the way that'age'is used to make medical decisions.
The researchers demonstrated that patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease had altered an'healthy ageing'RNA signature in their blood,
and therefore a lower healthy age gene score, suggesting significant association with the disease. Timmons added that this is the first blood test of its kind that has shown that the same set of molecules are regulated in both the blood
and the brain regions associated with dementia and it can help contribute to a dementia diagnosis. He noted that this also provides strong evidence that dementia in humans could be called a type of'accelerated ageing
'or'failure to activate the healthy ageing program.''The authors say that their'healthy age gene score'could be integrated to help decide which middle-aged subjects could be offered entry into a preventative clinical trial many years before the clinical expression of Alzheimer's.
single-cell embryos obtained from fertility clinics. They wanted to edit the gene responsible for B-thalassemia, a fatal blood disorder.
CRISPR (pronounced like`crisper')has swept through the scientific world in the last few years and is poised now for commercial use.
"Another pioneer, Feng Zhang of Broad Institute, has founded a company called Editas Medicine for using CRISPR in therapeutics.
Its CEO Katrine Bosley said they are working to translate the promise of CRISPRCAS9 genome editing technology into a new class of medicines to treat serious, genetically driven diseases."
and we are working to apply it to treat a broad range of diseases at the genetic level where patients don't have good therapeutic options."
Scientists have developed a breakthrough lab-on-chip device that can substantially reduce the cost of sophisticated lab tests for medical disorders and diseases such as HIV,
Lyme disease and syphilis. The new device uses miniaturised channels and valves to replace"benchtop"assays-tests that require large samples of blood
and clinics everywhere,"said Mehdi Ghodbane, who earned his doctorate in biomedical engineering at Rutgers University.
Until now, animal research on central nervous system disorders, such as spinal cord injury and Parkinson's disease, has been limited because researchers could not extract sufficient cerebrospinal fluid to perform conventional assays."
The discovery could also lead to more comprehensive research on autoimmune joint diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis through animal studies.
#New antibody may fight HIV better Scientists have identified a novel antibody that could more effectively detect and neutralise HIV virus in an infected patient.
Proteins called broadly neutralising antibodies (bnabs) are a promising key to the prevention of infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The bnabs have been found in blood samples from some HIV patients whose immune systems can naturally control the infection.
These antibodies may protect a patient's healthy cells by recognising a protein called the envelope spike, present on the surface of all HIV strains and inhibiting, or neutralising
even as it takes on different conformations during infection-making it easier to detect and neutralise the viruses in an infected patient.
In 2013, invasive MRSA infections were estimated responsible for an 9, 937 deaths in the US, researchers said.
Although current infection rates are declining, the majority of these deaths, about 8, 150, were associated with inpatient stays in health care facilities, according to the Active Bacterial Core surveillance report by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in US.
The discovery shows that the potential new antibiotics are unlike contemporary antibiotics because they contain iridium,
which is important for delivery of antibiotics to where they are needed to fight infections in the body.
A version of the antibiotic was tested for toxicity in mice with no ill effects.""Within the next few years, we hope to identify various characteristics of these antibiotics,
The study was published in the journal Medicinal Chemistry Communications s
#A super computer that knows if you're going to die NEW YORK: A super computer developed in the US can predict the likelihood of a person's death with almost 100 per cent accuracy,
The machine, installed at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical centre, draws on the data of more than 250,000 people collected over a period of 30 years to make speedy diagnoses,
The machine's ability to speedy disease recognition could potentially save lives as well as predict patients'imminent demise, the report added."
This artificial intelligence is really about the augmenting of doctors'ability to take care of patients,"Steve Horng,
a doctor at the hospital, was quoted as telling BBC. Patients at the hospital are linked up to the super computer
which collects and analyses data about their condition every three minutes, measuring everything from oxygen levels to blood pressure to give doctors"everything we need to know about a patient".
"When the computer says no, doctors can"predict with 96 per cent confidence "when patients may die."
"If the computer says you're going to die, you probably will die in the next 30 days,
Paralysed for more than a deca de due to a spinal cord injury, the man could even identify which me chanical finger was being gently to uched,
The new method-which uses the same type of waves used in medical sonograms-may have advantages over the light-based approach-known as optogenetics-particularly
when it comes to adapting the technology to human therapeutics. In optogenetics, researchers add light-sensitive channel proteins to neurons they wish to study.
"When we make the leap into therapies for humans, I think we have shot a better with noninvasive sonogenetics approaches than with optogenetics,
Young men with cancer could be helped by the process s
#From reel to real: Potter-style invisibility cloak a reality now WASHINGTON: Scientists have developed a Harry Potterstyle ultra-thin invisibility cloak that can conform to the shape of tiny objects
#Protein system can detect viral infection, kill cancer cells MIT engineers have developed a modular system of proteins that can detect a particular DNA sequence in a cell
"said Shimyn Slomovic, a postdoc at Massachusetts institute of technology's Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and the paper's lead author."
The researchers can programme the system to produce proteins that alert immune cells to fight the infection, instead of GFP."
#Paraplegic man walks using only his brain power A brain-to-computer echnology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enab ed a man paralysed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such
doctors n Southern California reported on Wednesday. The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in The british-based Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation,
along with a Youtube video. The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain o bypass the injured spinal cord
and spinal injury victims regain some mobility. Dr An Do, a study co-author, said clinical applications were many years away.
brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury,"said biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic, who led the research.
#Paraplegic man walks using only his brain power A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralysed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics,
doctors in Southern California reported on Wednesday. The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in The british-based Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation,
along with a Youtube video. The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain to bypass the injured spinal cord
and spinal injury victims regain some mobility. Dr An Do, a study co-author, said clinical applications were many years away.
brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury,"said biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic, who led the research.
accurate detection of Ebola infections is needed to control outbreaks. Laboratory tests using preparations of Ebola virus
Virologists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San antonio prepared the viral samples for testing. The system combined a microfluidic chip for sample preparation and an optofluidic chip for optical detection.
and patch, eliminating the need for open heart surgery. Pedro delnido, contributing author on the study, said,
Catheterisations are preferable to open heart surgery because they don't require stopping the heart, putting the patient on bypass,
As the glue cures, pressure from the positioning balloons on either side of the patch help secure it in place.
#Two-step therapy for breast tumour shows promise Disabling a cancer-causing pathway and administering an immune-molecule-based'mop-up'therapy can eradicate a type of breast tumour in mice,
according to researchers who said that the treatment could slash the amount of chemotherapies required in humans to half."
"This line of research is important to future therapy for Her2-positive breast cancers because it defines a way to make the current treatment better
Currently, this antibody treatment must be combined with chemotherapy to increase the proportion of patients it helps.
which is needed to make the targeted therapy work. This therapy, when translated for use in humans,
would be beneficial in reducing toxicity because the amount of antibody could be decreased by two-thirds and the amount of chemotherapy by at least half.
This in turn reduces the cost of treatment so that individuals previously not able to afford targeted therapy will be able to do so."
"All of the therapeutic agents used in this preclinical study are approved and we expect to try ordered therapy plus interferon in clinical trials soon,
"Greene said. Interferon-gamma is a small protein called a cytokine normally produced by T cells as part of the immune response.
It is a well-known cytokine to immunologists but is used not by oncologists so much because of other side effects.
It works by rendering the tumour cells more susceptible to Her-2 inhibitors so that tumour cells are killed effectively.
In addition, this combination therapy also augments host tumour immunity which can be a good advantage for this therapy,
researchers said. In a series of experiments in breast cancer cell lines and transgenic mice that develop breast cancer as adults,
the team found that interferon-gamma on its own had no effect on tumours. Treatment of the tumours with anti-erbb2/neu mabs followed by interferon-gamma led to a considerable inhibition of tumour growth
and reduction of tumour size in the mice when the therapy is combined with a typical chemotherapeutic agent.
#Cure for cancer might accidentally have been found, and it could be malaria Scientists might have made accidentally a huge step forward in the search for a cure for cancer discovering unexpectedly that a malaria protein could be an effective weapon against the disease.
Danish researchers were hunting for a way of protecting pregnant women from malaria, which can cause huge problems
because it attacks the placenta. But they found at the same time that armed malaria proteins can attack cancer, too an approach
which could be a step towards curing the disease. that can then bury into cancer cells and release the toxin,
killing them off. The scientists have found that in both cases the malaria protein attaches itself to the same carbohydrate.
It is the similarities between those two things that the cure could exploit. The carbohydrate ensures that the placenta grows quickly.
and a tumor,"said Ali Salanti from University of Copenhagen.""The placenta is an organ,
In a manner of speaking, tumors do much the same, they grow aggressively in a relatively foreign environment."
"The process has already been tested in cells and on mice with cancer, with the findings described in a new article for the journal Cancer cell.
because the protein appears to only attach itself to a carbohydrate that is only found in the placenta and in cancer tumors in humans."
"In the tests on mice, the animals were implanted with three different types of human cancers.
It reduced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma tumours to about a quarter of their size, got rid of protstate cancer entirely in two of six mice
and kept alive five out of six mice that had metastatic bone cancer compared to a control group all of
which died.""We have separated the malaria protein, which attaches itself to the carbohydrate and then added a toxin,
"said Mads Daugaard, a cancer researcher at Canada's University of British columbia and one of the scientists that worked on the research."
"By conducting tests on mice, we have been able to show that the combination of protein
#Blood cancer develops from prior blood disorder Researchers have discovered how an incurable type of blood cancer develops from an often symptomless prior blood disorder.
and ways to identify those most at risk of developing the cancer. All patients diagnosed with myeloma,
a cancer of the blood-producing bone marrow, first develop a relatively benign condition called'monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance'or MGUS."
"Our findings show that very few changes are required for a MGUS patient to progress to myeloma as we now know virtually all patients with myeloma evolve from MGUS,
"A drug that interferes with these initial metabolic changes could make very effective treatment for myeloma,
and only progresses to cancer in approximately one in 100 cases. However, currently there is no way of accurately predicting which patients with MGUS are likely to go on to get myeloma.
It specifically affects antibody-producing white blood cells found in the bone marrow, called plasma cells. For the study, the researchers compared the cellular chemistry of bone marrow
and blood samples taken from patients with myeloma, patients with MGUS and healthy volunteers. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the metabolic activity of the bone marrow of patients with MGUS was significantly different to plasma from healthy volunteers,
but there were very few differences at all between the MGUS and myeloma samples. The research team found over 200 products of metabolism differed between the healthy volunteers
and patients with MGUS or myeloma, compared to just 26 differences between MGUS patients and myeloma patients.
The findings suggest that the biggest metabolic changes occur with the development of the symptomless condition MGUS and not with the later progression to myeloma.
The researchers believe that these small changes could drive the key shifts in the bone marrow required to support myeloma growth.
The study was published in Blood Cancer Journal l
#Premature birth may weaken brain connections Premature birth may result in weakened connections in brain networks linked to attention, communication and the processing of emotions, thereby increasing risk of neurological and psychiatric disorders,
new research has found.""We found significant differences in the white matter tracts and abnormalities in brain circuits in the infants born early,
compared with those of infants born at full term, "said principal investigator Cynthia Rogers, assistant professor of child psychiatry at Washington University School of medicine in St louis. White matter tracts in the brain are made of axons that connect brain regions to form networks.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor brain imaging to compare 58 babies born at full term with 76 infants born at least 10 weeks early.
Each full-term baby was scanned on his or her second or third day of life. Each premature baby
meanwhile, received a brain scan within a few days of his or her due date. The researchers found that some key brain networks--those involved in attention,
offering an explanation for why children born prematurely may have elevated an risk of psychiatric disorders. The researchers also found differences in preemies'resting-state brain networks,
These brain circuit abnormalities likely contribute to problems that materialize as the children get older,
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