Surge in allergic disorders unexplained by the hygiene hypothesis, challenging assumptions about early-life microbial exposure and its role in allergies. | Health And Medicine.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,439
New method tracks how brain cells age
Hospital nurseries routinely place soft bands around the tiny wrists of newborns that hold important identifying information such as name, sex, mother, and birth date. Researchers at Rockefeller University are taking the same approach with newborn brain cells—but these neonates will keep their ID tags for life, so that scientists can track how they grow and mature, as a means for better understanding the brain’s aging process.
As described in a new paper in Cell, the new method developed by Rockefeller geneticist Junyue Cao and his colleagues is called TrackerSci (pronounced “sky”). This low-cost, high-throughput approach has already revealed that while newborn cells continue to be produced through life, the kinds of cells being produced greatly vary in different ages. This groundbreaking work, led by co-first authors Ziyu Lu and Melissa Zhang from Cao’s lab, promises to influence not only the study of the brain but also broader aspects of aging and disease across the human body.
“The cell is the basic functional unit of our body, so changes to the cell essentially underlie virtually every disease and the aging process,” says Cao, head of the Laboratory of Single-Cell Genomics and Population Dynamics. “If we can systematically characterize the different cells and their dynamics using this novel technique, we may get a panoramic view of the mechanisms of many diseases and the enigma of aging.”
One hour of training is all you need to control a third robotic arm
A new study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, Imperial College London and The University of Melbourne has found that people can learn to use supernumerary robotic arms as effectively as working with a partner in just one hour of training.
The study, published in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, investigated the potential of supernumerary robotic arms to help people perform tasks that require more than two hands. The idea of human augmentation with additional artificial limbs has long been featured in science fiction, like in Doctor Octopus in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963).
“Many tasks in daily life, such as opening a door while carrying a big package, require more than two hands,” said Dr. Ekaterina Ivanova, lead author of the study from Queen Mary University of London. “Supernumerary robotic arms have been proposed as a way to allow people to do these tasks more easily, but until now, it was not clear how easy they would be to use.”
Medical Venture’s iPSC-Based Heart Failure Treatment Breaks New Ground
In a groundbreaking clinical trial, two patients suffering from severe heart failure experienced improvements in their symptoms through an innovative procedure. The clinical trial was conducted by Heartseed, a medical venture associated with Keio University in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
The procedure involves the transplantation of “cardiomyocyte spheroids” (CM spheroids), spherical clusters of heart muscle cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). This development represents a significant step forward in the treatment of heart failure using iPSCs, with plans for practical implementation set for around 2025.
Japanese venture Heartseed has found that treating heart failure with iPSC-derived cardiomyocyte spheroids could achieve sustained tissue regeneration.
Stanford Medicine-led study clarifies how ‘junk DNA’ influences gene expression
Changes to short, repetitive sequences in the genome have been linked to diseases like autism and schizophrenia. New revelations about how such changes increase and decrease gene expression may provide insight into these and other disorders.
Optimizing CAR T cell therapy with bridging radiation therapy
For many patients diagnosed with certain types of B-cell lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy offers an effective treatment option. This cellular therapy is created by extracting a patient’s T cells, modifying them in a lab to identify and attack cancer cells, and returning them to the patient.
The process of creating the CAR T cells can take three to four weeks. Radiation therapy can be a tool to help get a patient through this manufacturing period. This is called bridging therapy.
“Bridging therapy can help control the disease so that a patient can get to the CAR T cell infusion,” says radiation oncologist Penny Fang, M.D. Research from Fang and her colleagues examines the role of bridging therapy for B-cell lymphoma patients receiving CAR T cell therapy. Their latest findings will be presented at the 2023 American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting.
Advances in Aquatic Invertebrate Stem Cell Research
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Artificial Intelligence Improves Brain Tumor Diagnosis
Neurosurgeons can leave the operating room more confident today than ever before about their patient’s brain tumor diagnosis, thanks to the integration of a new system that employs optical imaging and artificial intelligence that are making brain tumor diagnosis quicker and more accurate. This technology is allowing them to quickly see diagnostic tissue and tumor margins in near-real time.
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Brain implants, software guide speech-disabled person’s intended words to computer screen
Pat Bennett’s prescription is a bit more complicated than “Take a couple of aspirins and call me in the morning.” But a quartet of baby-aspirin-sized sensors implanted in her brain are aimed at addressing a condition that’s frustrated her and others: the loss of the ability to speak intelligibly. The devices transmit signals from a couple of speech-related regions in Bennett’s brain to state-of-the-art software that decodes her brain activity and converts it to text displayed on a computer screen.
Bennett, now 68, is a former human resources director and onetime equestrian who jogged daily. In 2012, she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that attacks neurons controlling movement, causing physical weakness and eventual paralysis.
Our brains remember how to formulate words even if the muscles responsible for saying them out loud are incapacitated. A brain-computer hookup is making the dream of restoring speech a reality.
