#New material opens possibilities for super-long-acting pills Medical devices designed to reside in the stomach have a variety of applications,
However, these devices, often created with nondegradable elastic polymers, bear an inherent risk of intestinal obstruction as a result of accidental fracture or migration.
Now, researchers at MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have created a polymer gel that overcomes this safety concern
which is a medical emergency potentially requiring surgical intervention, says Koch Institute research affiliate Giovanni Traverso,
as there is a greater risk for fracture if a device is too large or too complex.
a professor of medical science and engineering at Brown University who was not involved with this study. his is a very smart approach.
patientsadherence to long-term therapies for chronic illnesses is only 50 percent in developed countries, with lower rates of adherence in developing nations.
Medication nonadherence costs the U s. an estimated $100 billion every year, the bulk of which comes in the form of unnecessary hospitalizations.
The researchers also say that single-administration delivery systems for the radical treatment of malaria
and other infections could significantly benefit from these technologies. Source: MIT, written by Kevin Leonard e
Because these immune-system cells play important roles in a wide range of diseases, from diabetes to AIDS to cancer, the achievement provides a versatile new tool for research on T cell function,
as well as a path toward CRISPR/Cas9-based therapies for many serious health problems. Using their novel approach,
a protein that has attracted intense interest in the burgeoning field of cancer immunotherapy, as scientists have shown that using drugs to block PD-1 coaxes T cells to attack tumors.
The CRISPR/Cas9 system has captured the imagination of both scientists and the general public, because it makes it possible to easily
are an obvious candidate for medical applications of the technology, as these cells not only stand at the center of many disease processes,
but could be gathered easily from patients, edited with CRISPR/Cas9, then returned to the body to exert therapeutic effects.
But in practice, editing T cell genomes with CRISPR/Cas9 has proved surprisingly difficult, said Alexander Marson, Phd, a UCSF Sandler Fellow,
There are a lot of potential therapeutic applications and we want to make sure wee driving this as hard as we can.
and medicine. t been great to be part of this exciting collaboration, and I look forward to seeing the insights from this work used to help patients in the future,
and eventually for therapeutic use. e tried for a long time to introduce Cas9 with plasmids or lentiviruses,
He hopes that Cas9-based therapies for T cell-related disorders, which include autoimmune diseases as well as immunodeficiencies such as ubble boy disease,
will enter the clinic in the future. here actually well-trodden ground putting modified T cells into patients.
There are companies out there already doing it and figuring out the safety profile, so there increasing clinical infrastructure that we could potentially piggyback on as we work out more details of genome editing,
and deliver drugs and vaccines, a olar spongethat can capture and release carbon dioxide emissions andplastic material that gets better with age.
Evaluating this drug-induced liver injury is a critical part of pharmaceutical drug discovery and must be carried out on human liver cells.
Oren Shibolet, Head of the Liver Unit at the Tel-aviv Sourasky Medical center, who was involved not in this study. he method provides access to unlimited amounts of functional liver cells
#Nonsurgical approach helps people with paralysis voluntarily move their legs In a study conducted at UCLA,
It is believed to be the first time voluntary leg movements have ever been relearned in completely paralyzed patients without surgery.
The results are reported in the Journal of Neurotrauma. hese findings tell us we have to look at spinal cord injury in a new way,
neurobiology and neurosurgery. Edgerton said although it likely will be years before the new approaches are widely available,
he now believes that it is possible to significantly improve quality of life for patients with severe spinal cord injuries,
because youe not going to recover function below the lesion, 'he said. hey have been told that for decades,
The finding led Edgerton to believe the same approach could be effective for people with complete paralysis. In the new research,
a drug often used to treat anxiety disorders. Researchers placed electrodes at strategic points on the skin, at the lower back and near the tailbone and then administered a unique pattern of electrical currents.
stepping and voluntary control of movements after paralysis. t was said remarkable. dgerton most experts, including himself, had assumed that people who were paralyzed completely would no longer have had neural connections across the area of the spinal cord injury.
The researchers do not know yet whether patients who are paralyzed completely can be trained to fully bear their weight and walk.
But he and colleagues have published now data on nine people who have regained voluntary control of their legs our with epidural implants
and when the subjects see their legs moving for the first time after paralysis, they say it a big deal. he men in the newest study ranged in age from 19 to 56;
their injuries were suffered during athletic activities or, in one case, in an auto accident. All have been paralyzed completely for at least two years.
The research was funded by the National institutes of health National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (grants U01eb15521 and R01eb007615), the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation,
the Walkabout Foundation and the Russian Scientific Fund. hese encouraging results provide continued evidence that spinal cord injury may no longer mean a lifelong sentence of paralysis
director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. he potential to offer a life-changing therapy to patients without requiring surgery would be a major advance;
It a wonderful example of the power that comes from combining advances in basic biological research with technological innovation. dgerton estimates that cost to patients of the new approach could be one-tenth the cost of treatment using the surgical epidural stimulator
because no surgery is required, it would likely be more easily available to more patients. The study co-authors were conceived Gerasimenko,
as well as Daniel Lu, associate professor of neurosurgery, researchers Morteza Modaber, Roland Roy and Dimitry Sayenko, research technician Sharon Zdunowski, research scientist Parag Gad, laboratory
and Adam Ferguson, assistant professor of neurological surgery at UC San francisco. Edgerton and his research team also plan to study people who have severe,
but not complete, paralysis. heye likely to improve even more, he said. The scientists can only work with a small number of patients, due to limited resources,
Almost 6 million Americans live with paralysis, including nearly 1. 3 million with spinal cord injuries. person can have hope, based on these results,
Edgerton said. n my opinion, they should have hope. s
#Scientists decipher the molecular basis of an as yet incurable leukemia in children Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of cancer in children.
It can occur in various forms, differing by specific changes in the genetic material of the leukemia cells,
but also by their response to therapies. An international team of scientists from Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hannover, Heidelberg, Kiel,
and Zurich has succeeded in decoding the molecular characteristics of an as yet incurable subtype of leukemia,
paving the way for new therapeutic approaches. Although intensive research over the least decade has led to significant improvement of the survival rates of children suffering from ALL
a subset of patients still remains resistant to treatment. One such example is a very aggressive and incurable subtype associated with a t (17;
resulting in the formation of a new oncogenic protein encoded by parts of the genes TCF3 and HLF, respectively (TCF3-HLF-positive leukemia cells).
With the aim of identifying therapeutic entry points for this incurable form of ALL THE consortium team decoded both the genome and the transcriptome of the cancer cells,
Further, researchers from the team of Jean-Pierre Bourquin from the University Children Hospital in Zürich
By establishing a umanized mouse model they provided an invaluable tool for testing the therapeutic response of the leukemic cells to different drugs.
The cells thus behaved in a similar manner than in the patient, offering attractive possibilities for translational medicine.
which has shown already efficiency in other type of cancers. Source: MP s
#Paralyzed men move legs with new noninvasive spinal cord stimulation Five men with complete motor paralysis were able to voluntarily generate step-like movements thanks to a new strategy that non-invasively delivers electrical
stimulation to their spinal cords, according to a new study funded in part by the National institutes of health. The strategy, called transcutaneous stimulation, delivers electrical current to the spinal cord by way of electrodes strategically placed on the skin of the lower back.
A man with complete motor paralysis moves his legs voluntarily while receiving electrical stimulation to his spinal cord via electrodes placed on his back.
nevertheless, the results signal significant progress towards the eventual goal of developing a therapy for a wide range of individuals with spinal cord injury. hese encouraging results provide continued evidence that spinal cord injury may no longer mean a lifelong
sentence of paralysis and support the need for more research, said Roderic Pettigrew, Ph d.,M d,
. director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at NIH. he potential to offer a life-changing therapy to patients without requiring surgery would be a major advance;
. and Claudia Angeli, Ph d.,from the University of Louisville, Kentuckyeported that four men with complete motor paralysis were able to generate some voluntary movements while receiving electrical stimulation to their spinal cords.
believing it could greatly expand the number of paralyzed individuals who could potentially benefit from spinal stimulation. here are a lot of individuals with spinal cord injury that have gone already through many surgeries
and has been shown to induce locomotion in mice with spinal cord injuries. While receiving the stimulation, the men were instructed at different points to either try to move their legs
The researchers suggest that this change was due to the ability of electrical stimulation to reawaken dormant connections that may exist between the brain and the spinal cord of patients with complete motor paralysis. Surprisingly, by the end of the study,
noninvasive stimulation can help individuals regain some autonomic functions lost due to paralysis such as the ability to sweat,
Edgerton also wants to test noninvasive stimulation on individuals who have partial paralysis. e have focused on individuals with complete paralysis throughout this whole process
that those individuals with partial injuries have even more room for improvement, said Edgerton. Though a noninvasive stimulation could offer advantages over a surgically implanted device
whether undergoing surgery to implant a stimulator is warranted. Alternatively, Edgerton speculates it may be possible early after an injury for noninvasive stimulation to help patients achieve a certain level of motor control that then allows them to continue to improve with physical rehabilitation
and avoid surgery altogether. ll patients are going to need something slightly different, and maybe noninvasive stimulation is going to be best in some cases and epidural stimulation in others,
said Edgerton. hat we need to do is maximize the clinical tool box that we have
so that the physician and the patient can select a therapy that is best for them. ource:
and someone with schizophrenia would be a leap in our understanding of how our brains shape who we are (or vice versa).
or producing designer therapeutics and perhaps one day even non-biological polymers. No one has developed ever something of this nature. e felt like there was a small very small chance Ribo-T could work
#Injectable Implants Could Help Crack the Brain Codes A new type of flexible electronic device shows promise for long-term brain mapping
and could be a more effective way to provide therapeutic stimulation. Understanding how the brain worksr doesn,
which can be delivered via injection, could be a gentler alternative. In the near term, the technology could yield valuable insights about how the electrical activity of certain circuits,
like schizophrenia or Parkinson disease (see racking the Brain Codesand hining a Light on Madness.
Further down the road, the concept could lead to a better way to deliver therapeutic stimulation to address neurodegenerative diseases,
One current therapeutic use of implanted electronics is called deep brain stimulation, which is approved FDA and used to treat Parkinson disease.
The therapy involves inserting electrodes into certain regions of the brain and producing electrical pulses meant to regulate abnormal ones.
This approach is also being studied as a treatment for other disorders, such as epilepsy. Today technology is limited, not by the electronics,
which are already eally powerful, but because the interface between the brain tissue and the electronics is far from ideal,
Implants for deep brain stimulation often must be repositioned or have adjusted their settings, and usually don last for more than a few years.
They also demonstrated the ability to record signals from the injected implants by attaching a wire to a section of the mesh that remains outside the body.
for instance, a pollution sensor to keep tabs on asthma, or just a simple phone with basic capabilities.
who plans to use the handheld device to study mosquitoes that transmit malaria and other diseases in the Amazon."
giving the option of more personalised diagnosis and treatment to cancer patients.""It's not ready for prime time yet,
and treat diseases. They've published the details of a series of sensors, memory switches and circuits that can be encoded into the human gut bacterium Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron.
Eventually, it's hoped that the resulting gut computers could help the early detection and treatment of disorders like inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer r
The results could have implications for medical research, said Babu. For example, n the human population you have many individuals that carry single nucleotide polymorphisms
#Tasty Visuals To help those with visual impairments make out the shape and movement of objects, a company has developed a device that takes visual information
Instead, the team suggests in a study published today (June 25) in the neurology journal Brain,
and director of Northwestern Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer Disease Center, said in a statement. Neuroscientist Carl Wernicke discovered in 1874 that some stroke victims with damage to the left sides of their brains suffered language impairment,
which came to be known as Wernicke aphasia. Because those patients could often speak clearly, though nonsensically,
Instead of working with stroke victims, Mesulam and his colleagues studied patients with a rare form of language-affecting dementia called primary progressive aphasia (PPA.
realized that PPA patients with damage to Wernicke area did not exhibit the same same trouble with word meaning as stroke victims with similar brain damage.
we saw a different map of language by comparing two different models of disease, one based on strokes that destroy an entire region of brain, cortex as well as underlying pathways,
and the other on a neurodegenerative disease that attacks mostly brain cells in cortex rather than the region as a whole, Mesulam said in the press release.
PCR-based assays to diagnose infection. The test required an entire vial of a patient blood,
using both tests to assess 106 suspected Ebola patients at two clinics in Sierra leone as well as 284 previously collected blood samples.
but overall the results bode well for Reebov continued use as a quick Ebola diagnostic in West Africa. his is an important proof-of-principle that the test can really be used in a field setting, infectious disease doctor Charles Chiu of the University of California, San francisco,
Compared with an estimated cost of $100 for a PCR-based diagnosis Reebov runs just $15 per test. e were surprised by the performance, coauthor Nira Pollock,
an infectious disease doctor at Boston Children Hospital, told Science. t was more sensitive than I expected for a rapid antigen diagnostic test. his test can be done in very austere environments,
from the group of Miguel Nicolelis at the Duke university Medical center in Durham, North carolina. In the first, the researchers used electrodes to link the brains of three monkeys to a computer
#Lab on chip device to shed light on how cancer spreads 19 may 2015these rare circulating tumour cells (CTCS) can be found at low levels in a cancer patient bloodstream
the spread of cancer from one part of the body to another. The new device-which is described in a Nature Methods paper is expected to enable researchers to capture clusters of these cells
melanoma or prostate cancer successfully captured CTC clusters in from 30 to 40 percent of samples from each group.
an observation that could have important implications with the increased attention to immune-system-based cancer therapies. e are only at the beginning of our quest to understand the role and biology of CTC clusters,
offering high-quality artificial legs to people who have lost limbs, often through injuries from landmines. n
The mind control technology could ultimately give people with severe disabilities, motor neurone disease or locked in syndrome the ability to control digital media by thought alone, according to Cyrus Saihan,
head of business development at BBC Digital. or anybody who can use standard remote controls for any reason,
#Cold plasma technique helps wounds heal quicker 29 june 2015medical researchers in Germany have developed a technique which,
will help open wounds to heal more quickly. A particular problem in older people, open wounds such as ulcers, complications from diabetes and skin conditions like dermatitis and psoriasis are painful, often difficult to treat,
and create a path for further infections. The treatment method uses cold plasma as a healing agent, the first time this has been used on human beings.
It uses the skin itself as an electrode in an electrical discharge process. The treatment device
about the size of a hand-held torch, houses an electrode that the doctor holds close to the wound site.
and the skin lectrodecreates an electrical field that ionises the air in the gap, bathing the wound in a nonthermal
who developed the technique working with the company Cinogy and the Department of Dermatology, Venereology and Allergology at the University Medical centre Göttingen.
it combines the effect of several other therapies but works faster. V, ozone and electrotherapy are already available,
and the simplicity of its use could make it suitable for first aid at home. anticipate that in the future,
Parents could care for the wound using a small Plasmaderm stick instead of iodine. And I could even imagine the device itself being able to measure
#Synchrotron shines a light on future medical devices According to the international team, this technique could be important in the development of devices that are highly sensitive to magnetic fields,
such as in medical diagnostics for example. Their results are published in Nature Communications. Three-dimensional structures in materials and biological samples can be investigated using X-ray tomography,
#Argus II ionic eyeimplanted for first time in patient with AMD A man with age related macular degeneration has become the first person with the condition to receive an implant to restore his sight.
Ray Flynn, 80, had the Argus II device implanted during a four-hour procedure carried out by Prof Paulo Stanga at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital.
California-based Second sight and previously implanted into to patients with advanced retinitis pigmentosa, converts video images from a miniature camera installed in Flynn glasses.
in time the benefits derived from the implant will increase as we find the best settings for the patient
How it works Argus II is Second sight second-generation implantable device intended to treat profoundly blind people suffering from degenerative diseases.
space exploration and medical applications abound for low-density, nontoxic structural shielding materials Lightweight composite metal foams can absorb energy from impacts
The discovery means the materials could be useful in spacecraft, the nuclear industry and in medicine.
#Tiny'wrist'to assist needle surgery A tiny flexible wrist component for needle-sized surgical equipment could enable surgeons to perform operations in tiny spaces
which would involve incisions so small that they could be sealed just with surgical tape, rather than sutures.
which would form part of the suite of equipment for a type of minimally invasive technique known as needlescopic surgery,
Needlescopic surgery, also known as mico-laproscopy, uses instruments about the size of a sewing needle inserted through incisions that are typically 5-10mm long.
is developing a surgical robot for needlescopic surgery, which a surgeon would operate remotely, like the Da vinci robot which is used now mainly for abdominal operations such as prostate surgery. he Da vinci uses a wire
-and-pulley system that is extremely difficult to miniaturise any further, so it won work in smaller spaces like the head and neck, said Webster.
Instead of Da vinci rigid rods tipped with pulley-operated instruments Webster team is working on a robot
the surgeon can move the tip of the needle to the site of surgery with great accuracy.
when the surgeon gets the needle tip where it needs to go. Without a riston the end of the needle, it hard for the the surgeon to cut
or remove tissue, or repair damage. Most microlaproscopy uses sharp-edged rings or heated wires on the end of the needle to scrape
Combined with a pincer on the end of the wrist, this could allow surgeons to make precise cuts
a professor urology surgery at Vanderbilt who is consulting on the project. here are a myriad of potential applications in some really exciting areas such as endoscopic neurosurgery,
This would allow us to do surgeries that at present require much larger incisions and may even enable us to perform operations that are not feasible at present. he team is now working on the user interface and control software for the device,
and hopes to test it first in transnasal surgery, which aims to remove tumours at the base of the skull by inserting instruments through the nose. t should be useful for a number of other operations as well,
said Webster. e think once we give this tool to surgeons they will find all kinds of applications we haven thought of.
scientists develop machines that adapt to injury Intelligent robots that can adapt to injury, or even become more powerful under attack,
robots that can dapt like animalsto injuries and recover within minutes. The ability for robots to cope with unforeseen challenges is seen as a crucial step towards the widespread use of smart machines everywhere from the home to the battlefield,
Clune and his colleagues have managed to reproduce this nimal-likeability to adapt to injury in a six-legged walking robot
#White house unveils $215 million plan to develop patient-specific medical treatments The White house unveiled a"Precision Medicine Initiative"today a $215 million investment that will go toward building a database containing genetic information
"Most medical treatments have been designed for the verage patient, according to A white house statement. As a result, treatments can be very successful for some patients,
"The Precision Medicine Initiative will leverage advances in genomics, emerging methods for managing and analyzing large data sets while protecting privacy,
and health information technology to accelerate biomedical discoveries.""The White house investment is split in four parts.
About $70 million will go to the National Cancer Institute, a subsection of the NIH, so it can increase its efforts to identify genetic mutations that contribute to a person's cancer risk.
The FDA, for its part, will receive $10 million to improve its databases, as well as the technologies used to analyze DNA.
and Women Hospital showed that Americans worry that insurance companies and employers may discriminate against them based on their family histories or genetic test results.
If that's the case, then precision medicine"will be useless, "as basic medicine is where all the ideas for how to use that information is produced.
Eisen also told The Verge that the money will be flushed down the toilet "if the databases developed through this initiate are constructed poorly."
"The potential for precision medicine to improve care and speed the development of new treatments has begun only just to be tapped,"according to the White house statement.
But in many parts of the world they carry deadly diseases and are major threat to the health of a population.
000 cases of yellow fever each year. And of these, 30,000 result in death. There has been a number of efforts over the years to solve this problem,
Aedes aegypti isn't known for carrying malaria but it is responsible for spreading other deadly diseases like yellow fever, dengue fever,
and the chikungunya virus.""When we injected Nix into mosquito embryos, we found that more than two-thirds of the female mosquitoes developed male genitals
we'll have our best weapon yet in the fight against mosquito-borne diseases s
"Sorto is one of a handful of people who have been given brain implants to help move objects with their minds since 2006,
Today's study differs from most previous research in the area of the brain researchers targeted for implants
Information from the implants in the posterior parietal cortex transmit the intent to pick up a pint of beer
The first time Sorto tried to control a robotic arm, 16 days after surgery, he pantomimed a handshake with a researcher."
It's a tough problem to solvethe implants aren't ready for prime time yet, Andersen says,
That's because right now, Sorto has wire bundling connecting his implant to the computer that controls his robot limb.
which could be a prime site for infections. Sorto hasn't had any infections there yet,
Andersen says.)Ideally, the implants would need to be wireless, but the amount of information coming out of the chips is so large,
it's a tough problem to solve, Andersen says. Infections aren't the only worry.
The chip is like a microscopic pincushion that's pushed into the brain, Pruszynski says.
What's more, the body is a corrosive place so the implant has to be stable for a long period of time
because it's not feasible to repeat serious surgery every 5 years, he says. like a microscopic pincushion that's been pushed into the brain But
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