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First baby born after uterus transplant in France

A baby has been born following a uterus transplant for the first time ever in France, the hospital treating mother and infant said Wednesday. Such births are extremely rare but not unprecedented, and come after a cutting-edge procedure to transplant a healthy uterus into a woman whose own is damaged or missing. The baby, a girl weighing 1.845 kilogrammes (4.059 pounds), was born on Friday, according to the team at the Foch hospital outside Paris.

Ultrasound-modulated optical glucose sensing using a 1645 nm laser

Circa 2020


Regular and frequent blood glucose monitoring is vital in managing diabetes treatment plans and preventing severe complications. Because current invasive techniques impede patient compliance and are not infection-free, many noninvasive methods have been proposed. Among them, optical methods have drawn much attention for their rich optical contrast, but their resolution is degraded in deep tissue. Here, we present an ultrasound-modulated optical sensing (UOS) technique to noninvasively monitor glucose that uses an infrared laser (1645 nm) and a single-element focused ultrasound transducer. Focused ultrasound waves can acoustically localize diffused photons in scattering media, and thus optical contrast can be represented with much enhanced spatial resolution.

Dr Patrizia Paterlini-Bréchot, Founder, Rarecells — Non-Invasive, Early Detection Of Invasive Cancer

Non-invasive, early detection of invasive cancers — dr. patrizia paterlini-brechot, founder, rarecells diagnostics, ISET technology.


Dr. Patrizia Paterlini-Bréchot is a tenured Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology and Oncology at Paris Descartes University and head of a research team at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM).

Dr. Paterlini-Bréchot studied medicine at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where she specialized in hematology and oncology. In 1988 she turned her focus on research in cell and molecular biology and published over 80 research articles and reviews in national and international scientific journals.

The work of Dr. Paterlini-Bréchot led to the discovery of the ISET test (Isolation by SizE of Tumor cells) permitting the isolation and characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), a type of cell that has shed into the vasculature from a primary tumor, is carried around the body in the blood circulation, and can extravasate and become seeds for the subsequent growth of additional tumors (metastases) in distant organs, a mechanism that is responsible for the vast majority of cancer-related deaths.

The ISET test also has interesting applications for the isolation of fetal cells in a mother’s body for potential use in prenatal diagnoses.

Biotech fit for the Red Planet: New method for growing cyanobacteria under Mars-like conditions

NASA, in collaboration with other leading space agencies, aims to send its first human missions to Mars in the early 2030s, while companies like SpaceX may do so even earlier. Astronauts on Mars will need oxygen, water, food, and other consumables. These will need to be sourced from Mars, because importing them from Earth would be impractical in the long term. In Frontiers in Microbiology, scientists show for the first time that Anabaena cyanobacteria can be grown with only local gases, water, and other nutrients and at low pressure. This makes it much easier to develop sustainable biological life support systems.