According to Intel announcement, Ticea eveloped a low-cost, easy-to-use testing device to diagnose HIV infections in low-resource communities. er invention is described as a disposable microfluidic cartridge which costs less than $5
for his research on curbing the spread of disease in aircraft cabins, and second runner-up Karan Jerath, who efined and tested a novel device that could allow an undersea oil well to rapidly
when it comes in contact with certain sexually-transmitted infections. Named. T. EYE the condom indicates
when it finds infections, such as chlamydia and syphilis. It will turn the corresponding color for whatever strain of bacteria it finds.
Pretty gross, but useful. It might be an awkward moment, but it could save a life.
so that people can take immediate action in the privacy of their own homes without the invasive procedures at the doctors,
Fove could be used as a medical HMD where surgeons use it for detailed camera work
and can also interact with the system without requiring a nurse to do everything. There also interactive cinema, productivity for finance and security, virtual market research, dangerous situation simulation,
#Breast cancer victims die due to lack of radiologists in India. This startup offers an answer In 2012,145,
is too inefficient to solve the problem because of the country lack of radiologists. To combat that, Mumbai-based UE Lifesciences has invented a low-cost and portable breast screening device for early-stage detection of breast cancer.
The fund will also bring in mentors from Manipal Hospitals, Narayana Health, and Pfizer. he devices could become the new standard of care for breast screening in India and other low-resource markets around the world.
and classify tumors. It pairs with a smartphone via bluetooth. The scanning results appear on the phone screen.
if any abnormalities are detected. Because women with dense breasts are at a higher risk of breast cancer,
and commercialized innovative medical devices like Notouch Breastscan and Infrascan. He co-founded UE Lifesciences in 2009 to develop innovative yet cost
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.
#Canadian Space Robotics Technology to Help Sick Children Not much rivals the dexterity of a good surgeon hands.
fatigue or even tremors after a long day at the hospital can make things challenging,
That is why Toronto Sickkids Centre for Image-Guided Innovation & Therapeutic Intervention (CIGITI) turned to the Canadian space technology behind Canadarm,
The third prototype of Kidsarm, the first image-guided robotic surgical arm in the world specifically designed for pediatric surgery,
is currently being tested at Sickkids Hospital, and researchers are hoping that the technology might soon lend a helping hand to surgeons around the country.
While more testing is needed, the robot is also promising for fetal, cardiac, neurological and urological surgeries.
Using a pair of hand controllers in conjunction with high-precision, real-time imaging technology, surgeons can pinpoint the area of concern to make it easier to reconnect delicate vessels,
for example. Kidsarm is equipped also with miniaturized dexterous tools that can cut, coagulate, apply suction, or use a laser.
It is capable of working 10 times faster and with more accuracy than a surgeon hands when performing intricate procedures.
so that surgeons can compensate for the tissue motion that sometimes makes these surgeries difficult. A stereo camera generates a 3d point cloud,
This allows the surgeon to automate the suturing of small vessels and other microsurgical tasks.
Thanks to this technology, Kidsarm is capable of performing intricate procedures such as the suturing of blood vessels and tissues 10 times faster and with more accuracy than a surgeon hands.
One day, this technology may help by making medical procedures on children less invasive and less painful, allowing them to return home fasterso that kids can be kids i
and patterns are features of a number of neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism and schizophrenia. With these new findings, e now have an opportunity to investigate how gene mutations that cause
or increase the risk for these disorders disrupt the mechanisms of visual recognition memory, says Bear,
a Howard hughes medical institute investigator. e anticipate that this knowledge will suggest entirely novel approaches to treating these diseases.
#3d printed Heart Model Makes Surgery Safer and Less Dangerous Three-dimensional printing technology has just found yet another use, this time it heart surgery.
When planning for an invasive procedure, surgeons are limited often to two-dimensional MRI and CT (computerized tomography) images,
which can lead them to form a widely inaccurate view of their patient physiology. Although three-dimensional images are also now available,
Confronted with a rare and particularly difficult case of congenital heart failure, Richard Kim, MD, from the Children Hospital of Los angeles (CHLA) took a step forward
and ordered a fully-3d model of his patient heart. s useful as scans are for visualizing structural defects,
Kim patient Esther Perez was born with a ventricular septal defect (a physical hole in the wall which divides the left and right ventricles of the heart muscle) a fairly common heart condition.
and complex surgery, currently performed at only a handful of pediatric hospitals in the US.
Studying the heart model allowed Kim to accurately plan the procedure thereby increasing safety and making follow-up surgery unnecessary. nstead of opening the chest
and making a decision about how to proceed, I could immediately begin fixing the problem,
me to plan the surgery in advance, which meant Esther spent less time in surgery and received less anesthesia,
making the procedure safer. Frank Ing, MD, Chief of Cardiology and co-director of the Heart Institute at CHLA, thinks that
since only a small number of 3d models have been used for heart surgery, the jury is still out
whether they actually improve surgical outcomes, but added that? our experience suggest that using models saves time in the OR,
which means increased safety and decreased costs. The use of 3d models is also likely to translate into a need for fewer surgeries
and allow children to spend less time recuperating in intensive care. Thanks to this innovative technique, Esther made a speedy recovery
and is expected to live a life free of medical complications. Otherwise she would have required multiple surgeries during the first years of her life.
In addition to surgical planning, 3d printing has also been used for other medical applications according to a recent article on Med Device Online
oncologists were able to use a 3d printed model that mimics the density of organs in a patient body,
which allowed to more accurately determine an appropriate dose of radiation. As 3d printing becomes cheaper,
medical professionals are hoping to include 3d printers into their regular toolset i
#New high-speed 3-D microscope gives deeper view of living things Opening new doors for biomedical and neuroscience research, Elizabeth Hillman,
associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering and of radiology at Columbia University Medical center (CUMC), has developed a new microscope that can image living things in 3d at very high speeds.
In doing so, she has overcome some of the major hurdles faced by existing technologies, delivering 10 to 100 times faster 3d imaging speeds than laser scanning confocal, two-photon,
and light-sheet microscopy. Hillman new approach uses a simple, single-objective imaging geometry that requires no sample mounting or translation,
2015. he ability to perform real-time 3d imaging at cellular resolution in behaving organisms is a new frontier for biomedical
The emergence of fluorescent proteins and transgenic techniques over the past 20 years has transformed biomedical research,
and Kimara Targoff (assistant professor of pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics), all of whom are starting to use the SCAPE system in their research. eciphering the functions of brain
lithography holography and biomedical imaging. Based on a chaotic cavity laser the technology combines the brightness of traditional lasers with the lower image corruption of light emitting diodes (LEDS.
and biomedical engineering and diagnostic radiology. his chaotic cavity laser is a great example of basic research ultimately leading to a potentially important invention for the social goodsaid co-author A. Douglas Stone the Carl A. Morse Professor
%while our laser has the speckle contrast of 3%.So our new laser has eliminated completely the issue of coherent artifact for full-field imaging. o-author Michael A. Choma assistant professor of diagnostic radiology pediatrics
The sensor reported in a proof-of-concept study in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry has the potential to eliminate finger-pricking for many people with diabetes.
Joseph Wang and colleagues in San diego note that diabetes affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Many of these patients are instructed to monitor closely their blood glucose levels to manage the disease.
The researchers conclude that the device could potentially be used for diabetes management and for other conditions such as kidney disease e
#Microfluidic device allows researchers to predict behavior of patientsblood cells Patients with sickle cell disease often suffer from painful attacks known as vaso-occlusive crises during
Blood transfusions can sometimes prevent such attacks but there are currently no good ways to predict when a vaso-occlusive crisis which can last for several days is imminent. ou don know exactly
and Vannevar bush Professor of Engineering Emeritus have developed a tiny microfluidic device that can analyze the behavior of blood from sickle cell disease patients.
It could also help researchers test the efficacy of new drugs for sickle cell disease which occurs in about 300000 newborns per year more than 75 percent of them in Africa.
and Gregory Kato of the Department of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. People with sickle cell disease an inherited genetic disorder have a variant form of hemoglobin that causes their red blood cells to take on a characteristic sickle shape when in low-oxygen conditions.
Patients now have an average life expectancy of 45 to 50 years in the United states up from only 14 years as recently as 1973.
Disease severity varies among patients depending on how much abnormal hemoglobin is present in their cells. Sickle cells can squeeze through most blood vessels
and may lead to improved treatments for those with sickle cell disease. Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT (with footage from Ming Dao) Using this device to measure blood samples from 25 sickle cell disease patients the researchers were able to determine how deoxygenation affects red blood cellssickling rates;
their rate of getting stuck in capillaries; and how quickly they regain their usual shape
if the device can be used to reliably predict individual patientsrisk of a vaso-occlusive crisis. his technique represents a major advance to further our understanding and treatment of vaso-occlusion due to sickle cell disease.
and treating other diseases where the deformability of blood cells is affectedsays Guruswami Ravichandran a professor of aeronautics
and they also plan to pursue it as a tool to test potential new drugs for sickle cell disease.
To demonstrate the device usefulness for evaluating new drugs the researchers analyzed a drug called Aes-103 now in phase II clinical trials to treat sickle cell disease
which has cracked a code that governs infections by a major group of viruses including the common cold and polio.
and therefore prevent disease. Professor Peter Stockley Professor of Biological Chemistry in the Faculty of Biological sciences at Leeds, who led the study,
However, they are still among the most potent and damaging of infectious pathogens. Rhinovirus (which causes the common cold) accounts for more infections every year than all other infectious agents put together (about 1 billion cases),
while emergent infections such as chikungunya and tick-borne encephalitis are from the same ancient family.
Other single-stranded RNA VIRUSES include the hepatitis C virus HIV and the winter vomiting bug norovirus.
This breakthrough was the result of three stages of research. In 2012, researchers at the University of Leeds published the first observations at a single-molecule level of how the core of a single-stranded RNA VIRUS packs itself into its outer shell remarkable process
Quite naturally, stress can have a negative effect on the libido but it has been linked to delayed pregnancy success in couples highly motivated to conceive,
But what may be the molecular reasons behind lasting effects of stress on fertility? A joint team of researchers at University of California and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research have set out to answer this very question their findings were published last week on elife.
which activated under stress, could be to blame for lasting negative effects on infertility in healthy females.
the researchers were able to preserve all aspects of reproductive health in post-stress mice, thus suggesting a single molecular target that could help alleviate a range of stress-induced fertility problems. t is possible that manipulation of RFRP3 signaling in humans may relieve stress-related reproductive dysfunction,
including decreased sex drive, impaired fertility, and increased miscarriages the researchers said. Currently, as many as 630%of couples under 30 years of age are unable to conceive within 3 months of trying and 15%remain disappointed within 1 year.
which experience significant reproductive disadvantage linked to stress. Written by Egle Marija Ramanauskaite
#Robots Learn by Watching Videos Imagine having a personal robot prepare your breakfast every morning.
Successfully fighting off an infection depends on the interactions between these cells. A new device developed by MIT engineers offers a much more detailed picture of that cellular communication.
and collects data on each as they interact with each other the researchers have learned already more about how T cells major players in the immune response become activated during infection.
Hidde Ploegh an MIT professor of biology and member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is also a senior author of the paper.
and study diseases in functioning human muscle outside of the human body. The study was led by Nenad Bursac associate professor of biomedical engineering at Duke university
and those that make taking muscle biopsies difficult. ursac and Madden started with a small sample of human cells that had progressed already beyond stem cells
To see if the muscle could be used as a proxy for medical tests Bursac and Madden studied its response to a variety of drugs including statins used to lower cholesterol
Clenbuterol does not harm muscle tissue in rodents at those doses showing the lab-grown muscle was giving a truly human response. ne of our goals is to use this method to provide personalized medicine to patientssaid Bursac. e can take a biopsy from each patient grow many
Bursac#s group is also trying to grow contracting human muscles using induced pluripotent stem cells instead of biopsied cells. here are a some diseases like Duchenne Muscular dystrophy for example that make taking muscle biopsies difficultsaid Bursac. f
professor of biomedical engineering medicine and nursing at Duke university. The research was supported by NIH Grants R01ar055226 and R01ar065873 from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin disease and UH2TR000505 from the NIH Common Fund for the Microphysiological Systems Initiative.
Source: Duke university By Ken Kinger n
##Single-photon emission enhancement#seen as step toward quantum technologies Researchers have demonstrated a new way to enhance the emission of single photons by using yperbolic metamaterials,
such as materials used for biomedical purposes. This new method of radical polymerization doesn involve heavy metal catalysts like copper.
and are embedded by the plastic matrix. e use carbon fibers in those areas where the part undergoes intense mechanical stress;
either or both of these processes could be faulty in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),
#Smart devices track hand-washing in hospitals to help reduce the spread of infection In fact,
Administrators usually just spend a few days a month monitoring health care workers, noting hand-hygiene habits on a WHO checklist.
and Philip Liang SM 6 is using smart devices to monitor hand hygiene among hospital staff
which affected one in 25 U s. hospital patients in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A 2014 study in the Journal of Infection and Public health concluded that compliance with WHO hand-washing rules jumped 25 percent in one month when staff used Medsense in a 16-bed hospital unit at Salmaniya
Currently, the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospital in London is studying the correlation between the Medsense system and reduction in HAIS.
wee trying to be a support system for the hospital. In the atient zone Medsense consists of four smart devices,
and can collect data around the clock. leanstart General Sensing may tackle a serious health care issue, but its core technology started as a novelty item:
When a researcher requested the technology to monitor health care staff, however, the startup decided to get a clean start in the health care industry,
hich they say is recession-proof, Gips says. And after learning about WHO hand-hygiene guidelines, the team developed Medsense as an automated way to help administrators monitor hand-washing among staff.
In 2011, researchers at Queen Mary Hospital in Hong kong published a paper in the journal Biomed Infectious disease that found Medsense was 88 percent accurate in monitoring staff compliance with THE WHO guidelines.
and Medsense has been trialed in 10 hospitals across the United states and Europe, and in Saudi arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar.
as the wearers move through the atient journeythe waiting room, pre-procedure, procedure, and recovery room. General Sensing creates digital floor maps of an area being studied;
Another possible application is real-time location of surplus staff particularly important when there a sudden influx of patients in one area of a hospital,
#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
#Nature Inspires First Artificial Molecular Pump Using nature for inspiration, a team of Northwestern University scientists is the first to develop an entirely artificial molecular pump, in
#Discovery of a treatment to block the progression of multiple sclerosis A drug that could halt the progression of multiple sclerosis may soon be developed thanks to a discovery by a team at the CHUM Research Centre and the University of Montreal.
and they have shown that blocking this molecule could delay the onset of the disease and significantly slow its progression.
These encouraging results from in vitro tests in humans and in vivo tests in mice were published in the Annals of Neurology. e believe we have identified the first therapy that will impact the quality of life of people with multiple sclerosis by significantly reducing the disability and the disease progression
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease that is characterized by paralysis, numbness, loss of vision, and gait and balance deficits that lead to chronic disability.
There is no effective cure. The disease particularly affects young adults in northern countries. In Canada, nearly 75,000 people have MS. The brain is protected normally from attacks by the blood-brain barrier.
The blood-brain barrier prevents immune cells lymphocytes from entering the central nervous system. In people with MS there is often leakage.
Two types of lymphocytes, CD4 and CD8, find a way to cross this protective barrier. They attack the brain by destroying the myelin sheath that protects neurons,
In 2008, Dr. Prat team identified a cell adhesion molecule, called MCAM (Melanoma Cell adhesion molecule), which plays a crucial role in dysregulation of the immune system observed in multiple sclerosis. ur studies have shown that MCAM is necessary for the migration of CD4 and CD8 across the blood-brain barrier.
If we block the interaction of MCAM with the protein to which it normally binds
we decrease the disease activity, he said. Independently, the biotechnology company Prothena Corporation plc also discovered complementary data regarding MCAM,
The results are extremely positive. e observed a decrease of approximately 50%of the disease in mice with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE),
. What is especially significant is that we can stop the disease from the first symptoms
Later, the diseases progresses and the disability worsens, leading to the use of a cane or wheelchair.
Currently, none of the drugs available on the market affect the disease progression. Prothena has developed a potentially disease-modifying antibody, called PRX003,
which is designed, to inhibit MCAM function and thus prevent migration of destructive lymphocytes into tissue.
Prothena expects to initiate clinical trials of PRX003 in healthy volunteers by the end of June,
and anticipates a study in patients with psoriasis in 2016. Beyond psoriasis, anti-MCAM antibodies may be useful for treating a variety of diseases
including progressive forms of multiple sclerosis. Source: University of Montrea e
#Hydrogen-Powered Hycopter Drone can fly for 4 Hours on a Single Charge This month,
the Singapore-based company Horizon Unmanned Systems (HUS) presented the world first hydrogen-powered, multi-rotor UAV (Unmanned aerial vehicle) that uses its own structural elements to store fuel. e realized that the structures of these drones were hollow inside,
San diego School of medicine and Moores Cancer Center and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute created a model that allows them to track cellular behavior during the earliest stages of human development in real-time.
said co-senior author of the study David Cheresh, Phd, Distinguished Professor of Pathology, vice-chair for research and development and associate director for translational research at UC San diego. nd if wee ever going to use stem cells to develop new organ systems,
this new insight on the autonomic nervous system also has implications for rare inherited conditions such as neurofibromatosis,
tuberous sclerosis and Hirschsprung disease. hese observations may help to explain certain human disease syndromes in which abnormalities of the nervous system appear to be associated, for previously unclear reasons,
with vascular abnormalities, said co-senior author Evan Snyder, MD, Phd, professor and director of the Center for Stem Cells and Regenerative medicine at Sanford-Burnham. urthermore, we demonstrate here that modeling human development
and disease in the lab must take into account multiple cell types in order to reflect the actual human condition.
in collaboration with scientists from the Institut Gustave Roussy and CEA, have succeeded in restoring normal activity in cells isolated from patients with the premature aging disease Cockayne syndrome.
This enzyme is overexpressed in Cockayne syndrome patient cells, and leads to mitochondrial defects, which in turn play a crucial role in the appearance of symptoms leading to aging in affected children.
Rare genetic diseases cause accelerated premature aging. To date, there is no treatment for these pathologies. Understanding the causes of premature aging diseases may also help elucidating the process of normal aging.
One such disease, Cockayne syndrome (CS), has an incidence of about 2. 5 per million births and,
in its most severe form, is associated with a life span of less than seven years. Children with Cockayne syndrome show marked signs of premature aging
such as loss of weight, hair, hearing and sight, as well as facial deformation and neurodegeneration. Cockayne syndrome is caused by mutations in
either of two genes involved in the repair of DNA damage induced by ultraviolet (UV) rays.
CS patients are hypersensitive to sunlight and burn easily. For decades it was believed that the premature aging process associated with this disease was caused essentially by DNA repair deficiency.
By comparing cells from CS patients and from patients with another, related syndrome causing only UV hypersensitivity,
the team led by Miria Ricchetti (Institut pasteur) with Laurent Chatre (CNRS, at the Institut pasteur), in collaboration with Alain Sarasin (CNRS, at the Institut Gustave Roussy) and Denis Biard (CEA), discovered that the defects in CS cells are actually due to excessive production of a protease (HTRA3),
and induced by oxidative cell stress. In CS cells, HTRA3 degrades a key component of the machinery responsible for DNA replication in mitochondria (the cellular owerhouses, thereby affecting mitochondrial activity.
Until now, neurodegeneration and aging have largely been attributed to the damage inflicted on cells by mitochondrial free radicals.
The new study shows that free radicals also activate the expression of a protein known as HTRA3
By means of two new therapeutic strategies, using an HTRA3 inhibitor or a broad-spectrum antioxidant to capture free radicals,
This progress both paves the way for new therapeutic approaches, which could soon be tested in patients,
The development of therapeutic strategies targeting premature aging diseases could therefore open new research possibilities in terms of preventive therapies for the pathologies associated with normal aging a
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011