But many of the advances rely on petroleum-based plastics and toxic materials. Yu-Zhong Wang, Fei Song and colleagues wanted to seek a greener way forward.
compact micro-actuators for aerospace, automobile, biomedical, space and robotics applications; and ultra-low thermal signature actuators for sonars and defense applications.
#Freshly squeezed vaccines (Nanowerk News) MIT researchers have shown that they can use a microfluidic cell-squeezing device to introduce specific antigens inside the immune systems B cells,
and implementing antigen-presenting cell vaccines. Such vaccines, created by reprogramming a patients own immune cells to fight invaders,
hold great promise for treating cancer and other diseases. However, several inefficiencies have limited their translation to the clinic,
and only one therapy has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. While most of these vaccines are created with dendritic cells,
a class of antigen-presenting cells with broad functionality in the immune system, the researchers demonstrate in a study published in Scientific Reports("Ex Vivo Cytosolic Delivery of Functional Macromolecules to Immune Cells")that B cells can be engineered to serve as an alternative.
As cells pass through the Cellsqueeze device at high speed, narrowing microfluidic channels apply a squeeze that opens small, temporary holes in the cells'membranes.
As a result, large molecules antigens, in the case of this study can enter before the membrane reseals.
Courtesy of SQZ Biotech) We wanted to remove an important barrier in using B cells as an antigen-presenting cell population,
helping them complement or replace dendritic cells, says Gregory Szeto, a postdoc at MITS Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the papers lead author.
Darrell Irvine, a member of the Koch Institute and a professor of biological engineering and of materials sciences and engineering, is the papers senior author.
A new vaccine-preparation approach Dendritic cells are the most naturally versatile antigen-presenting cells.
In the body, they continuously sample antigens from potential invaders which they process and present on their cell surface.
The cells then migrate to the spleen or the lymph nodes, where they prime T cells to mount an attack against cells that are infected cancerous
or, targeting the specific antigens that are ingested and presented. Despite their critical role in the immune system, dendritic cells have used drawbacks
when for cell-based vaccines: They have a short lifespan, they do not divide when activated,
B cells are also antigen-presenting cells, but in contrast to dendritic cells, they can proliferate
Whereas dendritic cells constantly sample antigens they encounter, A b cell is programmed genetically only to bind to a specific antigen that matches the receptor on its surface.
As such, A b cell generally will not ingest and display an antigen if it does not match its receptor.
Using a microfluidic device, MIT researchers were able to overcome this genetically programmed barrier to antigen uptake by squeezing the B cells.
Cellsqueezes microfluidic channels are etched on silicon chips and sealed with a glass layer. The channels temporarily deform cells
the researchers pass a suspension of B cells and target antigen through tiny, parallel channels etched on a chip.
temporary holes in their membranes, allowing the target antigen to enter by diffusion. This process effectively loads the cells with antigens to prime a response of CD8 or killer T cells,
which can then kill cancer cells or other target cells. The researchers studied the squeezed B cells in culture
and found that they could expand antigen-specific T cells at least as well as existing methods using antibody-coated beads.
and antigen-specific T cells into mice, observing that the squeezed B cells could expand T cells in the spleen and in lymph nodes.
The researchers also say that this is the first method that decouples antigen delivery from B-cell activation.
when ingesting its antigen or when encountering a foreign stimulus that forces it to ingest nearby antigen.
This activation causes B cells to carry out very specific functions, which has limited options for B-cell-based vaccine programming.
Using Cellsqueeze circumvents this problem and by being able to separately configure delivery and activation,
researchers have greater control over vaccine design. Gail Bishop, a professor of microbiology at the University of Iowa Carver School of medicine and director of the schools Center for Immunology and Immune-Based Diseases, says that this paper presents a creative new approach with considerable
potential in the development of antigen-presenting cell vaccines. The antigen-presenting capabilities of B cells have often been underestimated,
but they are being appreciated increasingly for their practical advantages in therapies, says Bishop, who was involved not in this research.
This new technical approach permits loading B cells effectively with virtually any antigen and has the additional benefit of targeting the antigens to the CD8 T-cell presentation pathway
thus facilitating the activation of the killer T cells desired in many clinical applications. Main squeeze Armon Sharei, now a visiting scientist at the Koch Institute, developed Cellsqueeze while he was a graduate student in the laboratories of Klavs Jensen, the Warren K. Lewis Professor of Chemical engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering,
and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor and a member of the Koch Institute.
Sharei, Jensen, and Langer are also authors of this paper. In a separate study published last month in the journal PLOS ONE, Sharei and his colleagues first demonstrated that Cellsqueeze can deliver functional macromolecules into immune cells.
While nucleic acids can code a cell for a target antigen, these indirect methods have drawbacks:
They have limited ability in coding for difficult-to-identify antigens, and using nucleic acids bears a risk for accidental genome editing.
These methods are also toxic, and can cause cell damage and death. By delivering proteins directly into cells with minimal toxicity,
Cellsqueeze avoids these shortcomings and, in this new study, demonstrates promise as a versatile platform for creating more effective cell-based vaccines.
Our dream is to spawn out a whole class of therapies which involve taking out your own cells, telling them what to do,
and putting them back into your body to fight your disease, whatever that may be, Sharei says.
After developing Cellsqueeze at MIT, Sharei co-founded SQZ Biotech in 2013 to further develop and commercialize the platform.
Future steps The researchers say they now plan to refine their B-cell-based vaccine to optimize distribution and function of the immune cells in the body.
A b-cell-based approach could also reduce the amount of patient blood required to prepare a vaccine.
patients receiving cell-based vaccines must have drawn blood over several hours each time a new dose must be prepared.
and cost required to engineer cell-based vaccines. We envision a future system, if we can take advantage of its microfluidic nature,
you could do it in your hospital or your doctors office. As the biology and technology become further refined
and less expensive method for developing cell-based therapies for patients. Down the road, you could potentially get enough cells from just a normal syringe-based blood draw,
run it through a bedside device that has the antigen you want to vaccinate against, and then youd have the vaccine,
Szeto says s
#Nanotechnology helps protect patients from bone infection Leading scientists at the University of Sheffield have discovered nanotechnology could hold the key to preventing deep bone infections,
after developing a treatment which prevents bacteria and other harmful microorganisms growing. The pioneering research,
showed applying small quantities of antibiotic to the surface of medical devices, from small dental implants to hip replacements, could protect patients from serious infection.
Scientists used revolutionary nanotechnology to work on small polymer layers inside implants which measure between 1 and 100 nanometers.
Lead researcher Paul Hatton Professor of Biomaterials Sciences at the University of Sheffield, said: icroorganisms can attach themselves to implants
or replacements during surgery and once they grab onto a nonliving surface they are notoriously difficult to treat
which causes a lot of problems and discomfort for the patient. y making the actual surface of the hip replacement or dental implant inhospitable to these harmful microorganisms,
the risk of deep bone infection is reduced substantially. ur research shows that applying small quantities of antibiotic to a surface between the polymer layers
which make up each device could prevent not only the initial infection but secondary infection it is like getting between the layers of an onion skin.
Bone infection affects thousands of patients every year and results in a substantial cost to the NHS.
Treating the surface of medical devices would have a greater impact on patients considered at high risk of infection such as trauma victims from road traffic collisions or combat operations,
and those who have had previous bone infections. Professor Hatton added: eep bone infections associated with medical devices are increasing in number,
especially among the elderly. s well as improving the quality of life, this new application for nanotechnology could save health providers such as the NHS millions of pounds every year.
The study, funded by the European commission and the UK Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council, is published in Acta Biomaterialia("Functionalised nanoscale coatings using layer-by-layer assembly for imparting antibacterial properties to polylactide
Now, two groups of scientists are reporting for the first time that two new nucleotides can do the same thing--raising the possibility that entirely new proteins could be created for medical uses.
A Universal Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Substrate for All Excitation Wavelengths"),the photonics advancement aims to improve our ability to detect trace amounts of molecules in diseases, chemical warfare agents, fraudulent
"The ability to detect even smaller amounts of chemical and biological molecules could be helpful with biosensors that are used to detect cancer, Malaria, HIV and other illnesses."
#Intelligent bacteria for detecting disease Another step forward has just been taken in the area of synthetic biology.
in association with Montpellier Regional University Hospital and Stanford university, have transformed bacteria into"secret agents"that can give warning of a disease based solely on the presence of characteristic molecules in the urine or blood.
The bacteria thus programmed detect the abnormal presence of glucose in the urine of diabetic patients.
published in the journal Science Translational Medicine("Detection of pathological biomarkers in human clinical samples via amplifying genetic switches
and are considered often to be our enemies, causing many diseases such as tuberculosis or cholera. However, they can also be witnessed allies,
Since the advent of biotechnology, researchers have modified bacteria to produce therapeutic drugs or antibiotics. In this novel study
Medical diagnosis is a major challenge for the early detection and subsequent monitoring of diseases.""In vitro"diagnosis is based on the presence in physiological fluids (blood and urine, for example) of molecules characteristic for a particular disease.
Because of its noninvasiveness and ease of use, in vitro diagnosis is of great interest. However, in vitro tests are sometimes complex,
and require sophisticated technologies that are often available only in hospitals. This is where biological systems come into play.
Living cells are real nanomachines that can detect and process many signals and respond to them.
in association with Professor Eric Renard (Montpellier Regional University Hospital) and Drew Endy (Stanford university), applied this new technology to the detection of disease signals in clinical samples.
The authors used the transcriptor's amplification abilities to detect disease markers, even if present in very small amounts.
and detected the abnormal presence of glucose in the urine of diabetic patients.""We have deposited the genetic components used in this work in the public domain to allow their unrestricted reuse by other public
"Our work is focused presently on the engineering of artificial genetic systems that can be modified on demand to detect different molecular disease markers,
In future, this work might also be applied to engineering the microbial flora in order to treat various diseases, especially intestinal diseases
Air pollution is the world largest single environmental health risk, causing one in every eight deaths according to figures released last year by the World health organization.
decades of exposure to only slightly higher levels a level we wouldn even notice can increase the risk of heart and lung diseases,
stroke and cancer. o work out the factors we should be worried about, and how we can intervene,
where detection of toxic gases is needed at the parts-per-million level. Monitoring air quality,
#New composite protects from corrosion at high mechanical stress (Nanowerk News) Material researchers at the INM Leibniz Institute for New Materials will be presenting a composite material
New composite protects from corrosion at high mechanical stress. This patented composite exhibits its action by spray application,
As a result, it can withstand high mechanical stress. The coating passes the falling ball test with a steel hemispherical ball weighing 1. 5 kg from a height of one meter without chipping
or other commonly used wet chemistry processes and cures at 150-200c. It is suitable for steels, metal alloys and metals such as aluminum, magnesium and copper,
New materials for energy application, new concepts for medical surfaces, new surface materials for tribological systems and nano safety and nano bio.
#Team develops transplantable bioengineered forelimb in an animal model (w/video) A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has made the first steps towards development of bioartificial replacement limbs suitable for transplantation.
"explains Harald Ott, MD, of the MGH Department of Surgery and the Center for Regenerative medicine, senior author of the paper."
Over the past two decades a number of patients have received donor hand transplants, and while such procedures can significantly improve quality of life,
they also expose recipients to the risks of lifelong immunosuppressive therapy. While the progenitor cells needed to regenerate all of the tissues that make up a limb could be provided by the potential recipient
the experience of patients who have received hand transplants is promising.""In clinical limb transplantation, nerves do grow back into the graft, enabling both motion and sensation,
The actuators are customizable to accommodate each patient's specific hand size and pathology. Image:
A team of undergraduate students also contributed to an early glove design as part of his ES227 Medical device Design Course.
which could help patients suffering from muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), incomplete spinal cord injury, or other hand impairments to regain some daily independence and control of their environment.
in relation to making it customizable for the specific pathologies of each individual and understanding what control strategies work best
"For patients suffering from muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and incomplete spinal cord injury, the soft robotic glove could allow them to regain some of their daily independence through robotic gloveassisted hand functions.
Walsh and his team have also been aided in their work through key expertise from two other Wyss Core Faculty members George Whitesides, Ph d,
Down the road, the team is interested in developing the glove beyond an assistive device to a rehabilitation tool for various hand pathologies,
. who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical school and Boston Children's Hospital and Professor of Bioengineering AT SEAS."
For the authors of the research, finding a nanothermometer sensitive enough at this scale is a great step forward in the field of nanotechnology, with applications in biology, chemistry, physics and even in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases s
#Injectable nanoelectronics for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases It's a notion that might be pulled from the pages of science-fiction novel-electronic devices that can be injected directly into the brain,
and treat everything from neurodegenerative disorders to paralysis. It sounds unlikely, until you visit Charles Lieber's lab. A team of international researchers, led by Lieber, the Mark Hyman, Jr.
would it be possible to deliver the mesh electronics by syringe needle injection, a process common to delivery of many species in biology and medicine-you could go to the doctor
and you inject this and you're wired up.'"'"Though not the first attempts at implanting electronics into the brain-deep brain stimulation has been used to treat a variety of disorders for decades-the nano-fabricated scaffolds operate on a completely different scale.
and administered like any other injection. After injection, the input/output of the mesh can be connected to standard measurement electronics
so that the integrated devices can be addressed and used to stimulate or record neural activity.""These type of things have never been done before, from both a fundamental neuroscience and medical perspective,
"Lieber said.""It's really exciting-there are a lot of potential applications.""Going forward, Lieber said, researchers hope to better understand how the brain
whose speed and precision make them useful for cataract and other eye surgeries. A femtosecond is one-quadrillionth,
reduce pollution-related health problems and eliminate emissions from the United states. There is very little downside to a conversion, at least based on this science."
such as viral disease markers, which appear when the immune system responds to incurable or hard-to-cure diseases,
including HIV, hepatitis, herpes, and many others. The sensor will enable doctors to identify tumor markers,
whose presence in the body signals the emergence and growth of cancerous tumors. The sensitivity of the new device is characterized best by one key feature:
according to its developers, the sensor can track changes of just a few kilodaltons in the mass of a cantilever in real time.
One Dalton is roughly the mass of a proton or neutron, and several thousand Daltons are the mass of individual proteins and DNA molecules.
So the new optical sensor will allow for diagnosing diseases long before they can be detected by any other method,
If you place antibodies to certain viruses on the cantilever, it'll capture the viral particles in the analyzed environment.
and UV radiation (Nanowerk News) RMIT University researchers have created wearable sensor patches that detect harmful UV radiation and dangerous, toxic gases such as hydrogen and nitrogen dioxide (Small,"Stretchable
stretchy electronic sensors are also capable of detecting harmful levels of UV radiation known to trigger melanoma.
and shortening the time to market of medicines in order to fully exploit them before patents run out.
Researchers then created a prototype BOC to assess the toxicological risk of new candidate compounds
They want to know the drug toxic liability as soon as possible to eliminate failures from their programme,
Understanding the long-term toxicity of drugs Traditionally the potential harmfulness of drugs has been tested on cells grown on plates in a 2d format.
so the tests only reveal results for acute toxicity, i e. drugs that would harm patients almost as soon as they are administered.
allowing for testing of longer-term toxicity effects. The drug being tested passes in a nutrient solution across these various compartmentalised rgansand the plate is connected with analytical methods such as mass spectroscopy to analyse the drug metabolites produced.
but they might also be toxic. This metabolite toxicity can't be detected by classic 2d culture.
Commercial multi-tissue device could be ready in three years A device comprising rat cells,
and more commonly used drugs known to be toxic to the liver such as paracetamol, were passed over these tissues to test the device worked correctly.
representing a liver, tumour, heart muscle and neurological system, and they developed early prototypes with six and eight compartments that the project demonstrated could be extended to human cell cultures. arly-stage backing from the EU has helped really us develop a robust prototype
#Engineers'synthetic immune organ produces antibodies Cornell engineers have created a functional, synthetic immune organ that produces antibodies
and can be controlled in the lab, completely separate from a living organism. The engineered organ has implications for everything from rapid production of immune therapies to new frontiers in cancer or infectious disease research.
The immune organoid was created in the lab of Ankur Singh, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering,
Like a real organ, the organoid converts B cells which make antibodies that respond to infectious invaders into germinal centers,
mature and mutate their antibody genes when the body is under attack. Germinal centers are a sign of infection
and are not present in healthy immune organs. The engineers have demonstrated how they can control this immune response in the organ
get activated and change their antibody types. According to their paper, their 3-D organ outperforms existing 2-D cultures and can produce activated B cells up to 100 times faster.
the organ could be used to study specific infections and how the body produces antibodies to fight those infections from Ebola to HIV. ou can use our system to force the production of immunotherapeutics at much faster rates,
he said. Such a system also could be used to test toxic chemicals and environmental factors that contribute to infections or organ malfunctions.
The process of B cells becoming germinal centers is understood not well, and in fact, when the body makes mistakes in the genetic rearrangement related to this process,
blood cancer can result. n the long run, we anticipate that the ability to drive immune reaction ex vivo at controllable rates grants us the ability to reproduce immunological events with tunable parameters for better mechanistic understanding of B cell development and generation of B cell tumors,
as well as screening and translation of new classes of drugs, Singh said g
#3d potential through laser annihilation (Nanowerk News) Whether in the pages of H g wells, the serial adventures of Flash gordon,
or that epic science fiction saga that is Star wars, the appearance of laser beamsor rays or phasers or blastersultimately meant the imminent disintegration of our hero
used in targeted surgeries, precision manufacturing and in the exploration of materials at the nanoscale.
The relationship between genes and specific traits is complicated more than simple one-to-one relationships between genes and diseases.
but scientists are just beginning to explore how, specifically, genetic variations affect health and disease. Two major statistical challenges to finding these connections involve analysing associations between many different genetic variants and multiple traits,
"But the simple models we use to do this are too simplistic to uncover the complex dependencies between sets of genetic variants and disease phenotypes."
because the materials can assemble in water instead of more toxic organic solutions that are used widely today.
and a favorable fracture behavior including self-healing ability. Key to the success are the supramolecular bonds within the soft polymer matrix.
but at substantial stress levels, the bonds can open up and provide fracture energy dissipation by stick/slip interactions and frictional sliding of the platelets against each other."
"These so-called sacrificial bonds allow full control over the material on different levels, because, depending on their amount,
"He said that makes it ideal for medical applications because the microrobotic tentacles can't damage tissues or even blood vessels.
#Smart insulin patch could replace injections for diabetes Painful insulin injections could become a thing of the past for the millions of Americans who suffer from diabetes, thanks to a new invention from researchers at North carolina State university and the University
painless patch could lower blood glucose in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes for up to nine hours.
More preclinical tests and subsequent clinical trials in humans will be required before the patch can be administered to patients,
A paper describing the work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. e have designed a patch for diabetes that works fast,
and the UNC Diabetes Care Center. he whole system can be personalized to account for a diabetic weight and sensitivity to insulin,
Diabetes affects more than 387 million people worldwide, and that number is expected to grow to 592 million by the year 2035.
Patients with type 1 and advanced type 2 diabetes try to keep their blood sugar levels under control with regular finger pricks and repeated insulin shots, a process that is painful and imprecise.
MD, Phd, co-senior author of the PNAS paper and the director of the UNC Diabetes Care Center, said,
njecting the wrong amount of medication can lead to significant complications like blindness and limb amputations,
or even more disastrous consequences such as diabetic comas and death. Researchers have tried to remove the potential for human error by creating losed-loop systemsthat directly connect the devices that track blood sugar
they had to figure out a way to administer them to patients with diabetes. Rather than rely on the large needles
The researchers tested the ability of this approach to control blood sugar levels in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes.
They gave one set of mice a standard injection of insulin and measured the blood glucose levels,
They also found that the patch did not pose the hazards that insulin injections do.
Injections can send blood sugar plummeting to dangerously low levels when administered too frequently. he hard part of diabetes care is not the insulin shots,
or the blood sugar checks, or the diet but the fact that you have to do them all several times a day every day for the rest of your life,
the director of the North carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC Tracs) Institute and past president of the American Diabetes Association. f we can get these patches to work in people,
bio-inspired process unlike current approaches that rely on high temperatures, pressures, toxic solvents and expensive precursors,
In particular, current chemical synthesis methods use high temperatures and toxic solvents, which make environmental remediation expensive and challenging.
or chemical environment to provide unique functionality in a wide range of applications from energy to medicine.
what may be a major leap forward in the quest for new treatments of the most common form of cardiovascular disease,
known as atherosclerotic vessel disease, is the leading cause of heart attacks and strokes that claim some 2. 6 million lives a year worldwide, according to the World health organization.
and cardiac hypertrophy through biodegradable polymer-encapsulated delivery of glycosphingolipid inhibitor), "builds on recent research by the same team that previously identified a fat-and-sugar molecule called GSL as the chief culprit behind a range of biological glitches that affect the body's ability to properly use, transport
That earlier study showed that animals feasting on high-fat foods remained free of heart disease if pretreated with a man-made compound, D-PDMP,
and clear out D-PDMP was a major hurdle in efforts to test its therapeutic potential in larger animals and humans.
but not potent enough to stop the disease from advancing. Perhaps, most importantly, the team says,
and pumping dysfunction, the hallmarks of advanced disease.""Our experiments illustrate clearly that while content is important,
"says lead investigator Subroto Chatterjee, Ph d.,a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Johns hopkins university School of medicine and a metabolism expert at its Heart and Vascular Institute."
and its ability not merely to prevent disease but to mitigate some of its worst manifestations."
D-PDMP treatment improved heart function in mice with advanced forms of atherosclerotic heart disease, marked by heart muscle thickening
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