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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,532

Scientists from the University of Washington and Microsoft are improving their system for preserving digital data in strands of synthetic DNA — and they’re giving you the chance to participate.

The UW-Microsoft team laid out the method in a research paper published this week in Nature Biotechnology.

For the experiment described in the paper, text files as well audio, images and a high-definition music video featuring the band OK Go were first digitally encoded, and then converted into chemical coding — that is, adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine, which make up the ATCG alphabet for DNA base pairs.

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Australian researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) have developed a 3D printable ‘clip-on’ that can turn any smartphone into a fully functional microscope.

Reported in the research journal Scientific Reports, the smartphone microscope is powerful enough to visualise specimens as small as 1/200th of a millimetre, including microscopic organisms, animal and plant cells, blood cells, cell nuclei and more.

The clip-on technology is unique in that it requires no external power or light source to work yet offers high-powered microscopic performance in a robust and mobile handheld package.

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For many years doctors have been able to get a look inside a person’s body using X-ray scans, or placing a tiny camera inside the body. But those tools provide a limited view and can only reveal so much. A recently developed camera, however, may give doctors the ability to see everything happening in the human body, no matter where it is.

The camera was developed by researchers from the University of Edinburgh, and it’s meant to work while paired with an endoscope — a long, slender piece of equipment that usually has a camera, sensors, and lights at its tip.

Light emitted by the endoscope typically scatters when it comes into contact with structures within the body, such as body tissue, but the new camera is able to pick up on it thanks to the photon detectors inside of it. The camera is able to detect light sources behind as much as 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) of bodily tissue.

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New targeted cancer therapies have emerged to fight tumors, and scientists have much more in the pipeline.

Summary: New targeted cancer therapies have been highlighted this month as emerging technologies to fight tumors, and scientists have much more in the pipeline. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Targeted cancer therapies – the most famous of which are immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapy – are the current focus of excitement in cancer treatment. New therapies and developments in the immunotherapy field prompted the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to update their guidance on targeted cancer therapies a little over a week ago. As the NCI says.

“Many targeted cancer therapies have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat specific types of cancer.”

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Summary: Cancer immunotherapy treatments and other approaches to cure nearly all cancers within 8 years says Dr. Gilliland, a prominent cancer research head. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

Gary Gilliland, M.D., Ph.D. is the President and Director, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and in an opinion piece published at the beginning of this month, writes.

“I’ve gone on record to say that by 2025, cancer researchers will have developed curative therapeutic approaches for most if not all cancers.”

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Team paves the way for cancer immunotherapy demonstrating a novel technique that attacked tumors and inhibited cancers from spreading.

Summary: Team paves the way for cancer immunotherapy with a novel technique that attacked tumors and inhibited cancers from spreading. [This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman. ]

While cancer immunotherapy is a powerful treatment for some types of tumors, up until now, it hasn’t worked well on colon cancer.

However, a team of researchers in Barcelona just showed a new technique that allows the immune system to recognize and begin fighting the tumor in mice. The treatment was so successful that it inhibited the tumors from spreading, or metastasizing to other parts of the body – as cancer is prone to do. Moreover, for those cancers that had already spread, the treatment enabled the immune system to eliminate them quickly.

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