Self healing material is being developed for prosthetic limbs.
This material can help us make self-healing prosthetic limbs in the future.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 1604
Using the Crispr gene-editing technique that won a recent Nobel Prize, Crispr Therapeutics cleared blood cancers in patients with off-the-shelf immune cells. These so-called CAR-T therapies previously required a patient’s own cells.
In a Wednesday morning announcement, Crispr Therapeutics (ticker: CRSP) said that its gene-editing let doctors use cells from healthy donors—opening up prospects for broadly available, less-expensive use of CAR-T treatment.
In the Phase 1 trial, the lymphoma blood cancer in four of 11 patients responded completely to infusions of T cells whose genes were altered to target the cancer and prevent transplant rejection. Standard treatments had failed all participants. In patients that got higher doses, the complete responses have lasted for months.
Our immune system’s capacity to mount a well-regulated defense against foreign substances, including toxins, weakens with age and makes vaccines less effective in people over age 65. At the same time, research has shown that immunotherapy targeting neurotoxic forms of the peptide amyloid beta (oligomeric Aβ) may halt the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common age-related neurodegenerative disease.
A team led by Chuanhai Cao, Ph.D., of the University of South Florida Health (USF Health), has focused on overcoming, in those with impaired immunity, excess inflammation and other complications that interfere with development of a therapeutic Alzheimer’s vaccine.
Now, a preclinical study by Dr. Cao and colleagues indicates that an antigen-presenting dendritic vaccine with a specific antibody response to oligomeric Aβ may be safer and offer clinical benefit in treating Alzheimer’s disease. The vaccine, called E22W42 DC, uses immune cells known as dendritic cells (DC) loaded with a modified Aβ peptide as the antigen.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Drugmaker Purdue Pharma, the company behind the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin that experts say helped touch off an opioid epidemic, will plead guilty to federal criminal charges as part of a settlement of more than $8 billion, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
The deal does not release any of the company’s executives or owners — members of the wealthy Sackler family — from criminal liability, and a criminal investigation is ongoing. Family members said they acted “ethically and lawfully,” but some state attorneys general said the agreement fails to hold the Sacklers accountable.
The company will plead guilty to three counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal anti-kickback laws, the officials said, and the agreement will be detailed in a bankruptcy court filing in federal court.
A teen from Texas has won a national science competition for identifying a molecule that can bind and potentially disable SARS-CoV-2.
An odd lump on Elizabeth Cowles Johnston’s breast prompted a Friday morning call to her primary care physician Rebecca Andrews at UConn Health.
Dr. Andrews quickly fit her in, and upon checking the lump sent her to Dr. Alex Merkulov, Section Head of Women’s Imaging at the Beekley Imaging Center at UConn Health for a mammogram and ultrasound. The following Monday she had a biopsy of her breast and by that Wednesday she had the diagnosis of breast cancer.
“It was all very quick,” says Johnston.
“It seems like they may be onto something,” Dr. Valery Fitzhugh, a Rutgers University pathologist who didn’t work on the study, told the NYT. “If it’s real, it could change the way we look at disease in this region.”
The fourth pair of salivary glands are better hidden than the other three, which are right beneath our skin and can be manipulated through the surface. So unless doctors were explicitly looking for them, it’s feasible to see how the easily-damaged glands went undiscovered all this time.
“The location is not very accessible, and you need very sensitive imaging to detect it,” study author Dr. Wouter Vougel, a radiation oncologist at the Netherlands Cancer Center, told the NYT.
Imagine a mobile phone charger that doesn’t need a wireless or mains power source. Or a pacemaker with inbuilt organic energy sources within the human body.
Australian researchers led by Flinders University are picking up the challenge of “scavenging” invisible power from low-frequency vibrations in the surrounding environment, including wind, air or even contact-separation energy (static electricity).
“These so-called triboelectric nanogenerators (or TENGs) can be made at low cost in different configurations, making them suitable for driving small electronics such as personal electronics (mobile phones), biomechanics devices (pacemakers), sensors (temperature/pressure/chemical sensors), and more,” says Professor Youhong Tang, from Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering.