Category: Site News

In a first-in-human study, researchers at The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research elicited the sense of touch through a minimally-invasive electrode brain implant. This research, published recently in Brain Stimulation, has the potential to help millions of people who live with paralysis and neuropathy. Many illnesses and injuries, including stroke, diabetes or spinal cord injury, can produce loss of touch, which makes everyday movements difficult and takes an emotional toll…

Researchers have found a way to reduce organ rejection following a transplant by using a special polymer to coat blood vessels on the organ to be transplanted. The polymer, developed by UBC medicine professor Dr. Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu and his team at the Centre for Blood Research and Life Sciences Institute, substantially diminished rejection of transplants in mice when tested by collaborators at SFU and Northwestern University. “We’re hopeful that this breakthrough will…

Scientists have repurposed the genetic modification technology CRISPR to identify antibodies in patient blood samples in a move that could inspire a new class of medical diagnostics in addition to a host of other applications. The technology involves customizable collections of proteins which are attached to a variant of Cas9, the protein at the heart of CRISPR, that will bind to DNA but not cut it as it would when…

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a soft and stretchy ultrasound patch that can be worn on the skin to monitor blood flow through major arteries and veins deep inside a person’s body. Knowing how fast and how much blood flows through a patient’s blood vessels is important because it can help clinicians diagnose various cardiovascular conditions, including blood clots, heart valve problems, poor circulation in…

Results from a TGen-led international study suggest that SARS-CoV-2 takes advantage of genetic changes among patients with pre-existing lung diseases. The results of a study by an international scientific team co-led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that — like pouring water atop a wellhead before pumping — the airway cells of patients with chronic lung diseases are “primed” for infection by…

Instant COVID Sensor to Prevent Outbreaks and Protect Communities RMIT University is collaborating with partners including Australian biomedical start-up Soterius on the biosensor, which can detect the presence of tiny amounts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants. Reliable, accurate and non-invasive, the Soterius Scout sensor can deliver results within a minute to provide the all-clear for someone to enter their work environment or alert them if they need to…

Communities benefit from sharing knowledge and experience among their members. Following a similar principle—called “swarm learning”—an international research team has trained artificial intelligence algorithms to detect blood cancer, lung diseases and COVID-19 in data stored in a decentralized fashion. This approach has advantage over conventional methods since it inherently provides privacy preservation technologies, which facilitates cross-site analysis of scientific data. Swarm learning could thus significantly promote and accelerate collaboration and…

In pharmaceutical research, small tissue spheres are used as mini-organ models for reproducible tests. TU Wien has found a way to develop a reliable standard for these tissue samples. Before drugs are tested in clinical trials, they must be tested either by animal experiments or, more recently, artificially produced tissue samples. For this purpose, cells are cultivated, and tiny spheres with a diameter of less than one millimeter are made….

Artificial living organisms can move material in swarms and record information. Last year, a team of biologists and computer scientists from Tufts University and the University of Vermont (UVM) created novel, tiny self-healing biological machines from frog cells called “Xenobots” that could move around, push a payload, and even exhibit collective behavior in the presence of a swarm of other Xenobots. Get ready for Xenobots 2.0. The same team has…