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Category: bioengineering – Page 63

Circa 2021:3

Surgical management of breast cancer often results in the absence of the breast. However, existing breast reconstruction methods may not meet the need for a replacement tissue. Tissue engineering with the use of emerging materials offers the promise of generating appropriate replacements. Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology has seen a significantly increased interest and application in medically-related fields in the recent years. This has been especially true in complex medical situations particularly when abnormal or complicated anatomical surgical considerations or precise reconstructive procedures are contemplated. In addition, 3D bio-printing which combines cells with bio-material scaffolds offers an exciting technology with significant applications in the field of tissue engineering. The purpose of this manuscript was to review a number of studies in which 3D printing technology has been used in breast reconstructive surgical procedures, and future directions and applications of 3D bio-printing.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed among US women and is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer death among women as of 2019. Because ~268,600 (almost six times than DCIS) new cases prove to be an invasive type of breast cancer (1), many women had to choose the removal of the breast, with immediate consideration for a replacement tissue. Although this was satisfactory in many patients, either saline or gel-filled breast implants (2) do carry real risks of complications such as infection, capsular contracture, implant dislocation, or deformities (3, 4). The option of autologous reconstruction can be more texturally natural aesthetically, but it requires a more complex procedure, significant time and expense, and possible muscle weakness or hernia formation at the tissue donor site (5). Tissue engineering intends to address these limitations by combining the 3D printing technology with synthetic or natural structural elements.

Three-dimensional (3D) printing, also known as computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), was based on digital model files using metal powder or plastic and other adhesive materials to construct objects with a computer guided precision, printing layer upon layer. Simplistically, it uses a computer aided design (CAD) program to convert the virtual model of an object into a printable object using an STL (Standard Tessellation Language or STereoLithography) file. The object then gradually and precisely takes shape as each thin layer is added according to the design file, and composed of the desired material for that object in the form of “ink” using the 3D printer. Not only in cases of intraoperative 3D printed models serving as templates, but this technology has extended to implanted scaffolds that have been used to correct defect-specific sites, clearly enhancing patient treatment (6, 7).

Continue reading “3D Printing in Breast Reconstruction: From Bench to Bed” | >

Researchers believe that synthetic muscle fibers could be used in a wide variety of sustainable and environmentally friendly industrial applications, including textiles, biomedicine, and tissue engineering. In a world where it takes up to 1,800 gallons of water to produce a single pair of jeans, the development of such environmentally safe processes that provide high-strength materials for industrial applications is a great step forward.

How strong can a muscle ever get? Can it have more endurance than metal? Can it be sturdier than Kevlar? While you might be inclined to answer the above in the negative, please pause, for scientists have succeeded in developing synthetic muscle that’s stronger than Kevlar. How about that for a flex?

The science and other stuff to know

The breakthrough was achieved by researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University, and the findings were reported in a study published in Nature Communications in August.

Continue reading “Scientists Created Synthetic Muscle That’s Stronger Than Kevlar” | >

High-Risk, High-Payoff Bio-Research For National Security Challenges — Dr. David A. Markowitz, Ph.D., IARPA

Dr. David A. Markowitz, Ph.D. (https://www.markowitz.bio/) is a Program Manager at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA — https://www.iarpa.gov/) which is an organization that invests in high-risk, high-payoff research programs to tackle some of the most difficult challenges of the agencies and disciplines in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC).

IARPA’s mission is to push the boundaries of science to develop solutions that empower the U.S. IC to do its work better and more efficiently for national security. IARPA does not have an operational mission and does not deploy technologies directly to the field, but instead, they facilitate the transition of research results to IC customers for operational application.

Continue reading “Dr. David Markowitz, PhD — IARPA — High-Risk, High-Payoff Research For National Security Challenges” | >

b Department of Polymer Science and Engineering and Key Laboratory of High Performance Polymer Materials and Technology of MOE, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210,023, China.

c Institute of Chemical and Bioengineering, ETH Zurich, Vladimir Prelog Weg 1, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland.

Received 21st February 2019, Accepted 17th April 2019.

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The fourth discussion of the NEW NOW program, “Transhumanism: Beyond the Human Frontier?”, took place on December 16.

Together with our guest experts, we tried to identify the latest technology that has either already become a reality or is currently in development, focusing on the ethical aspects of the consequences that ensue. We reflected on the question of whether the realization of transhumanist ideas is likely to entail a radical change in the ways people relate to one another. How far are we prepared to go in changing our bodies in order to attain these enhanced capacities? We will attempt to identify the “human frontier”, beyond which the era of posthumanism awaits.

Speakers:

James “J.” Hughes Ph.D. is a bioethicist and sociologist who serves as the Associate Provost for the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), and as Senior Research Fellow at UMB’s Center for Applied Ethics. He holds a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Chicago where he taught bioethics at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Since then Dr. Hughes has taught health policy, bioethics, medical sociology and research methods at Northwestern University, the University of Connecticut, and Trinity College.

Continue reading “NEW NOW. Transhumanism: beyond the human frontier?” | >

A team of researchers from Purdue University claim to have discovered the “chemistry behind the origin of life” on Earth in simple droplets of water, and they’re using strikingly strong language to celebrate the findings.

Graham Cooks, chemistry professor at Purdue and lead author of a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, called it a “dramatic discovery” and the “secret ingredient for building life” in a statement.

“This is essentially the chemistry behind the origin of life,” he added. “This is the first demonstration that primordial molecules, simple amino acids, spontaneously form peptides, the building blocks of life, in droplets of pure water.”

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Bringing together concepts from electrical engineering and bioengineering tools, Technion and MIT scientists collaborated to produce cells engineered to compute sophisticated functions— biocomputers of sorts.

Graduate students and researchers from Technion—Israel Institute of Technology Professor Ramez Daniel’s Laboratory for Synthetic Biology & Bioelectronics worked together with Professor Ron Weiss from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create genetic “devices” designed to perform computations like artificial neural circuits. Their results were recently published in Nature Communications.

The was inserted into the bacterial cell in the form of a plasmid: a relatively short DNA molecule that remains separate from the bacteria’s “natural” genome. Plasmids also exist in nature, and serve various functions. The research group designed the plasmid’s genetic sequence to function as a simple computer, or more specifically, a simple artificial neural network. This was done by means of several genes on the plasmid regulating each other’s activation and deactivation according to outside stimuli.

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Synthetic biology offers a way to engineer cells to perform novel functions, such as glowing with fluorescent light when they detect a certain chemical. Usually, this is done by altering cells so they express genes that can be triggered by a certain input.

However, there is often a long lag time between an event such as detecting a molecule and the resulting output, because of the time required for to transcribe and translate the necessary genes. MIT synthetic biologists have now developed an alternative approach to designing such , which relies exclusively on fast, reversible protein-protein interactions. This means that there’s no waiting for genes to be transcribed or translated into proteins, so circuits can be turned on much faster—within seconds.

“We now have a methodology for designing protein interactions that occur at a very fast timescale, which no one has been able to develop systematically. We’re getting to the point of being able to engineer any function at timescales of a few seconds or less,” says Deepak Mishra, a research associate in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the lead author of the new study.

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Synopsis: In this talk we articulate a positive vision of the future that is both viable given what we know, and also utterly radical in its implications. We introduce two key insights that, when taken together, synergize in powerful ways. Namely, (a) the long-tails of pleasure and pain, and (b) the correlation between wellbeing, productivity, and intelligence. This informs us how to distribute resources if we want to maximize wellbeing. Given the weight of the extremes, it is important to take them into account. But because of the causal significance of more typical hedonic ranges, engineering our baseline is a key consideration. This makes it natural to break down the task of paradise engineering into three components:

Avoid negative extremes.
increase hedonic baseline, and.
achieve new heights of experience.

With regards to : the future of consciousness is anodyne. It lacks extreme suffering in any of its guises. We will see how, if we aim right, a significant proportion of extreme suffering can be prevented with pragmatic technologies already available. Even just applying what we know today would be as significant for the reduction of suffering as the advent of anesthesia was in the context of surgery.

On : the future of consciousness is engaging. From novelty generation to Buddhist annealing, baseline-enhancing interventions will change the way we think of life. It is not only about making everyday fun, but also the economics of it.

Continue reading “The Future of Consciousness — Andrés Gómez Emilsson” | >