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Category: biotech/medical – Page 16

Hybrid bioprinter creates capillary networks narrower than 10 micrometers

More than 100,000 people are awaiting an organ transplant in the United States, with a new candidate added to the list every 10 minutes. Even if the transplant is carried out successfully, recipients must take immunosuppressive medications, elevating their risk of broader infections, and adhere to a strict lifestyle for the rest of their lives—all while facing the possibility that their body could reject the donated organ at any time.

Scientists have been aiming to bioprint tissues and organs from a patient’s own cells for decades in an attempt to solve this problem. But a major obstacle to realizing lab-grown organs is replicating the scale and complexity of the body’s vascular networks, especially capillaries. These microvessels crisscross each organ to deliver oxygen and other nutrients to every living cell, making them an essential component of any useful bioengineered tissue model.

Animaquina: Controlling Industrial Robots Inside Blender

It started pretty organically. Early on, I was rigging robots and experimenting with Blender’s Python API through lots of small prototypes and little experiments. When I began my Doctor of Design, I unified all of those ideas into a single interactive robotics environment. I emphasize interactive because that’s where Blender really changed the game.

Animaquina has been used across multiple research labs, but it’s also been used on real built projects. The Dancing Columns project with Joseph Choma, exhibited at the Phase Gallery in Miami Beach, was entirely fabricated with Animaquina. More recently, a six-meter-tall column by artist Edouard Duval-Carrié, currently on display at the Venice Biennale, was produced using it for both the robotic 3D printing and robotic milling.

We spoke to Luis Pacheco about the story behind Animaquina, from early experiments rigging robots with Blender’s Python API to its real-world applications and how Geometry Nodes became the technical core of the project.

AI can now edit DNA and create deepfake viruses

The Screening Breakdown: The world’s primary defense against synthetic bioweapons is sequence matching. When a lab orders DNA, automated software checks the order against a “blocklist” of dangerous pathogens (like Smallpox or Anthrax).

AI is moving beyond text, images, and code. Now it’s learning to read and write — shall we say program — DNA.

In this episode of NEXT, John Koetsier talks with Eric Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of Radical Numerics, about the rapidly emerging world of biological AI.

Nguyen and his team helped create Evo and Evo 2, generative foundation models for DNA, and are now working toward what they call “general biological intelligence”: AI systems capable of understanding biology across DNA, gene expression, methylation, proteins, and other biological signals.

The potential upside is enormous.

Continue reading “AI can now edit DNA and create deepfake viruses” | >

Scientists turn sheep’s wool into a material that helps regrow bone

Keratin extracted from sheep’s wool helped damaged bone regenerate in animals, producing tissue that was more organized and structurally similar to healthy bone than tissue grown with conventional collagen scaffolds. The discovery could turn an abundant agricultural byproduct into a promising new material for regenerative medicine.

This Deadly Brain Cancer Hijacks Brain Activity to Fuel Its Growth, Study Reveals

Of all the many forms cancer can take, those that arise in the brain can be among the hardest to treat.

A type of tumor known as glioma is a particularly formidable example. These malignant growths arise from glial cells or their precursors in the brain or spinal cord; the worst form – glioblastoma – has a 5-year survival rate of just 5 to 7 percent.

Part of the reason gliomas are so insidiously difficult to treat is that they actively exploit the brain’s crucial functions to feed their growth.

Crew Works Vein Scans For Health and Suit Checks for Spacewalk

Vein scans and spacesuit checks were the top duties for the Expediton75 crew aboard the International Space Station on Tuesday. The orbital residents also continued their Earth photography sessions, cargo operations, and life support maintenance.

Station commander Jessica Meir kicked off her shift collecting blood samples inside the Columbus laboratory module for the Venous Flow investigation that is exploring how microgravity affects the circulatory system. Afterward, she spun the samples in a centrifuge, analyzed the samples for signs of space-caused blood issues, then stowed the samples in a science freezer for preservation.

NASA flight engineer Jack Hathaway took charge of Tuesday’s first set of vein scans operating the Ultrasound 3 biomedical device to observe Meir’s internal jugular veins then measured her blood pressure. Meir and Hathaway also took part in the second set of vein scans after lunchtime taking turns using the Ultrasound 3 with flight engineers Anil Menon of NASA, Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) and Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina, both from Roscosmos. Doctors on the ground monitored the ultrasound scans in real-time to understand the risk of blood flow anomalies and blood clots during a spaceflight.

Genome study reveals centromeres as one of the fastest-changing regions in human DNA

A centromere is a specific region on a chromosome that ensures that, when a cell divides, the chromosome separates accurately so each new cell receives the correct amount of genetic material. Despite their essential role, centromeres remain one of the last major blind spots in the human genome.

A recent study published in Nature set out to reveal what had been hidden inside human centromeres, using advanced long-read sequencing and custom-built computational tools to piece together 2,110 complete centromeres. The researchers sampled individuals from 28 population groups across five continents, then compared their centromeres with 5,747 assembled by the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium to trace how these regions differ and evolve.

They discovered 226 major centromere haplotypes—distinct genetic patterns—and 1,870 new genetic variants. By studying a four-generation family, they were able to follow centromeres as they changed from parent to child, tracking genetic changes across generations.

The AI Future Is for Everyone

Putting power in people’s hands to pursue their own aspirations is how humanity has made the most progress. Novel ideas and major steps forward rarely originate from established institutions alone. They came from the brothers in a bicycle shop who believed people could fly, the bookbinder’s apprentice with no schooling who figured out how to generate electricity, and the kid in a garage who thought personal computers could be for everyone. We believe this will continue to be true. As everyone gains more powerful tools, each person will become more capable of shaping the future, not less.

Invention, not automation, will be the greatest contribution of superintelligence. Early AI could answer questions and do routine work. Soon it will increasingly help discover new knowledge—from discovering new drugs to cure a family member’s disease to finding new ways to improve your business. While the number of questions you can ask in a day is limited, the number of valuable things superintelligence can invent to help achieve your goals is unlimited.

As intelligence becomes abundant, the most important question will be how we direct it. Some argue that superintelligence itself, or a small set of experts who control it, should decide what is best for humanity. I disagree. The history of democracy and economics has shown that there is no single objective answer to how people define the best life, and therefore the best approach is letting people decide what matters to them.

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