Category: Medical Tech

Researchers at the University of California – Riverside (UCR) report their progress with the new implant material in two recently published journal papers. Their aim is to develop a biocompatible “window to the brain” whereby surgeons will be able to direct laser therapy into patients’ brains on demand, without having to perform repeated craniotomies. Such a material could transform a risky, highly invasive operation into a less risky, minimally invasive one. Brain surgeons use laser therapy to treat patients with life-threatening conditions such as brain cancer, traumatic brain injury, stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases.…

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Various brain disorders change the physical nature of synapses in the brain, but this fact has been useless in clinical practice because evaluating these changes could only be done once the patient passes away. Now researchers at Yale University have developed a technique, published on in journal Science Translational Medicine, that relies on PET (positron emission tomography) and a novel tracer to image billions of synapses at the same time. Their radioactive tracer was engineered to grab onto the synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A (SV2A), which after injection can be viewed on a PET scanner.…

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Most people recoil at the thought of ingesting E. coli. But what if the headline-grabbing bacteria could be used to fight disease? Researchers experimenting with harmless strains of E. coli — yes, the majority of E. coli are safe and important to healthy human digestion — are working toward that goal. They have developed an E. coli-based transport capsule designed to help next-generation vaccines do a more efficient and effective job than today’s immunizations. The research, described in a study published today (July 1) in the journalScience Advances, highlights the capsule’s…

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As body-worn and implanted medical devices are continuing to proliferate, the need to utilize power from something other than batteries increases. Researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology developed a wearable flexible device that can produce electricity from body heat.   The device relies on two gel electrolytes, allowing the final device to be flexible and produce as much as 0.7 volts and 0.3 µW. Since the system works using the thermogalvanic effect, the higher the difference between the body temperature and the environment, the greater the voltage. While…

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Research completed through a collaboration with University of Missouri engineers, biologists, and chemists could transform how scientists study molecules and cells at sub-microscopic (nanoscale) levels. Shubra Gangopadhyay, an electrical and computer engineer and her team at MU recently published studies outlining a new, relatively inexpensive imaging platform that enables single molecule imaging. This patented method highlights Gangopadhyay’s more than 30 years of nanoscale research that has proven invaluable in biological research and battling diseases. “Usually, scientists have to use very expensive microscopes to image at the sub-microscopic level,” said Gangopadhyay,…

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By loading magnetic nanoparticles with drugs and dressing them in biochemical camouflage, Houston Methodist researchers say they can destroy blood clots 100 to 1,000 times faster than a commonly used clot-busting technique. The finding, reported in Advanced Functional Materials (early online), is based on experiments in human blood and mouse clotting models. If the drug delivery system performs similarly well in planned human clinical trials, it could mean a major step forward in the prevention of strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, and other dire circumstances where clots — if not quickly busted…

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Microneedle technology has been around for years, and we’ve seen vaccines andmedication administered via the technique, which uses tiny needles to break only the upper layer of the patient’s skin. Now, the pain-free tech is being used for something a little different, with researchers creating a device capable of monitoring patient drug levels – something that usually requires the drawing of blood. The development of the new system was a joint effort between the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland. It consists of a small patch…

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The three-dimensional nature of biological specimens poses a challenge to whole organ imaging, due to the obscuring effects of light scatter. Innovative tissue-clearing techniques, combined with advances in imaging of cleared tissue, have increasingly been under investigation as substitutes for histological methods. Researchers from Ludwig Maximilian University have established a novel tissue-clearing and whole-body imaging technique, named “ultimate DISCO” (uDISCO).   Tissue clearing and shrinkage (up to 65%) were achieved by exposure to a solvent, which eliminated water and fat content over the course of several days. Using this technique,…

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A team of scientists headed by folks at Rice University have developed a way of killing off neoplastic cells that often remain after surgical procedures and end up causing a recurrence of cancers. The investigators managed to produce gold nanoparticles with cancer antibodies attached to them that seek out specific cancer cells. The gold nanoparticles are sensitive to laser light, quickly heating up and producing a so-called plasmonic nanobubble within surrounding liquid. This destroys the cancer cell to which the antibody was attracted, but it also pinpoints the location where the killing occurred.…

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A collaboration between researchers at the University of British Columbia and Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland has developed a microneedle device for drug monitoring. The device is in a form of a patch that’s stuck onto the skin, painlessly pushing microneedles through to sample the interstitial fluid. A number of microneedle patches already exist, but those have been developed for delivering drugs and vaccines, not sampling the body for their presence. The proof-of-concept device reported by the team was used to measure the concentration of vancomycin, an antibiotic that usually requires…

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