The futurist argues that advances in AI and medicine will offer us unprecedented freedom.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 173
Nanobots are tiny, ~50–100 nm wide robots that perform a single, highly specialized task. They work incredibly well for administering drugs. Drugs typically act throughout the body before entering the diseased area. The medication can be precisely targeted with nanotechnology, increasing its effectiveness and lowering the possibility of negative side effects. Special sensor nanobots can be inserted into the blood under the skin where microchips, coated with human molecules and designed to emit an electrical impulse signal, monitor the sugar level in the blood.
Year 2023 face_with_colon_three
Current osteoarthritis treatment manages symptoms rather than addressing the underlying disease, but a new University of Adelaide study has shown the condition may be treatable and reversible. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.
Osteoarthritis is the degeneration of cartilage and other tissues in joints and is the most common form of arthritis in Australia, with one in five people over the age of 45 having the condition.
It is a long-term and progressive condition which affects people’s mobility and has historically had no cure. Its treatment cost the Australian health system an estimated $3.9 billion in 2019–20.
Rising antibiotic resistance drives interest in marine actinobacteria for new treatments.
They came across a natural compound that can inhibit the virulence of a dangerous strain of E. coli bacteria.
Innovative Diagnostic Solutions To Enhance Patient Experiences And Health Provider Decisions — Dr. Deborah Sesok-Pizzini, MD, MBA — Chief Medical Officer & Senior Vice President, Labcorp Diagnostics; Global Head of Quality And Discipline Director, Immunohematology.
Dr. Deborah Sesok-Pizzini, MD, MBA, is Chief Medical Officer And Senior Vice President, Labcorp Diagnostics, and Global Head of Quality And Discipline Director, Immunohematology, Labcorp (https://www.labcorp.com/deborah-sesok…), where she is involved in furthering the company’s initiatives to enhance the patient experience, enable health provider decisions and develop innovative testing solutions.
Dr. Sesok-Pizzini joined Labcorp with over two decades of experience in healthcare, holding multiple appointments with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, including Patient Safety Officer, Chief of the Division of Transfusion Medicine and Vice-Chief of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She was also a professor of clinical pathology and laboratory medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA.
It’s not easy making green.
For years, scientists have fabricated small, high-quality lasers that generate red and blue light. However, the method they typically employ — injecting electric current into semiconductors — hasn’t worked as well in building tiny lasers that emit light at yellow and green wavelengths. Researchers refer to the dearth of stable, miniature lasers in this region of the visible-light spectrum as the “green gap.” Filling this gap opens new opportunities in underwater communications, medical treatments and more.
Compact laser diodes can emit infrared, red and blue wavelengths, but are highly inefficient at producing green and yellow wavelengths, a region known as the ‘green gap’. (Image: S. Kelley, NIST)
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have uncovered new insights into the fundamental mechanisms of RNA polymerase II (Pol II), the protein responsible for transcribing DNA into RNA. Their study shows how the protein adds nucleotides to the growing RNA chain. The results, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have potential applications in drug development.
A new study finds that mitochondria in our brain cells frequently fling their DNA into the cells’ nucleus, where the mitochondrial DNA integrates into chromosomes, possibly causing harm.
Innovative research has led to a new treatment for pancreatic cancer that utilizes nanoparticles to stimulate immune responses and improve drug delivery.
This strategy has produced significant results, with eight out of nine mice showing tumor improvements and two seeing their tumors completely eradicated. This approach holds promise for broader applications in oncology.
Innovative Pancreatic Cancer Therapy Development.
How can ultrasonic waves be used to treat chronic pain? This is what a recent study published in the journal Pain hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how a noninvasive treatment known as Diadem, which is a novel biomedical device designed to use ultrasonic waves for combating chronic pain. This study holds the potential to help researchers develop more effective methods at treating chronic pain aside from invasive, surgical treatments.
For the study, the researchers enlisted 20 patients who suffer from chronic pain to participate in trials for the Diadem device or sham stimulations, the latter of which involved auditory masking that has been used in previous research. Each patient received two 40-minute sessions comprised of either the Diadem or sham treatments, followed by being monitored for one week. In the end, the researchers found that 60 percent of patients were received the Diadem treatments reported improved pain management on day 1 and day 7. In contrast, 15 percent and 20 percent of patients who received the sham treatment reported the same for day 1 and day 7, respectively.
“If you or your relatives suffer from chronic pain that does not respond to treatments, please reach out to us; we need to recruit many participants so that these treatments can be approved for the general public,” said Dr. Jan Kubanek, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah and a co-author on the study. “With your help, we think chronic pain can be effectively silenced. And with new pain treatment options, we can tackle the opioid crisis, too.”