Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,599

A Non-Toxic Thermoelectric Generator for Wearable Tech

A new way to harvest electricity from body heat could inspire new wearable devices that never need to be plugged in. The millivolts of electricity this thermoelectric technology produces mandates slim power usage from any electronics plugged in to its feed. However, the developers say there already are fitness trackers and medical monitors today that could work within their device’s power envelope. The new, wearable thermoelectric generator is also sourced from non-toxic and non-allergenic substances, making it a viable candidate for wearable technology.

Made with cotton, this generator harvests body heat to power wearable electronics.

Mega docking library poised to speed drug discovery

Researchers have launched an ultra-large virtual docking library expected to grow to more than 1 billion molecules by next year. It will expand by 1000-fold the number of such “make-on-demand” compounds readily available to scientists for chemical biology and drug discovery. The larger the library, the better its odds of weeding out inactive “decoy” molecules that could otherwise lead researchers down blind alleys. The project is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

“To improve medications for mental illnesses, we need to screen huge numbers of potentially therapeutic molecules,” explained Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which co-funded the research. “Unbiased computational modeling allows us to do this in a computer, vastly expediting the process of discovering new treatments. It enables researchers to virtually “see” a molecule with its receptor protein—like a ship in its harbor berth or a key in its lock—and predict its pharmacological properties, based on how the are predicted to interact. Only those relatively few candidate molecules that best match the target profile on the computer need to be physically made and tested in a wet lab.”

Bryan Roth, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill, Brian Shoichet, Ph.D., and John Irwin, Ph.D., of the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues, report on their findings Feb. 6, 2019 in the journal Nature. The study was supported, in part, by grants from NIMH, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), the NIH Common Fund, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

Breakthrough device llures aggressive brain tumor cells out of the patient

A biomedical tool that tricks aggressive brain tumors such as glioblastoma into migrating into an external container rather than throughout the brain has been designated a “Breakthrough Device” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Dubbed the Tumor Monorail, the mimics the physical properties of the brain’s to entice to migrate toward the exterior of the brain, where the migrating cells can be collected and removed. The purpose of the device is not to destroy the tumor, but to halt its lethal spread, making the disease more of a condition to manage than a death sentence.

Breakthrough designations from the FDA aim to expedite the development and review of drugs, diagnostics and devices aimed at life-threatening or irreversibly debilitating conditions. While the designation does not mean that the device has been approved for clinical use, it does provide a partnership with the FDA that can speed development, assessment and review.

Ancient Druid Healing ‘Treatment’ Shows Potential For Killing Today’s Superbugs

Faced with the rising threat of drug resistant pathogens, researchers are all but giving up hope that new treatments can be easily cooked up in the lab.

One recent discovery gives us hope that novel antibiotics are easier to find than we think, perhaps in plain sight right under our very feet. And it’s possible their curative properties could have already been recognised centuries in the past.

An international team of researchers based at Swansea University Medical School in South West Wales recently identified a new strain of bacterium in ‘healing soil’ taken from a site associated with ancient druidic rituals in Northern Ireland.

Ebola Vaccinations Expanding in Central Africa

The African country of South Sudan has started vaccinating front-line response staff with the Ebola Zaire vaccine candidate v920.

The vaccine’s producer, Merck, has given 2,160 doses of the vaccine candidate V920 (rVSV-ZEBOV) as part of preparedness measures to fight the spread of the Ebola disease, said the World Health Organization (WHO) in a press release on January 28, 2019.

This preventive effort is in reaction to South Sudan’s neighboring country the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is now experiencing its 10th Ebola outbreak.

Superhuman Skin Senses Sound Waves and Magnetic Fields

Researchers have developed a new kind of sensor designed to let artificial skin sense pressure, vibrations, and even magnetic fields. Developed by engineers, chemists, and biologists at the University of Connecticut and University of Toronto, the technology could help burn victims and amputees “feel” again through their prosthetic skin.

“The type of artificial skin we developed can be called an electronic skin or e-skin,” Islam Mosa, a postdoctoral fellow at UConn, told Digital Trends. “It is a new group of smart wearable electronics that are flexible, stretchable, shapable, and possess unique sensing capabilities that mimic human skin.”

To create the sensor for the artificial skin, Mosa and his team wrapped a silicone tube with a copper wire and filled the tube with an iron oxide nanoparticle fluid. As the nanoparticles move around the tube, they create an electrical current, which is picked up by the copper wire. When the tube experiences pressure, the current changes.

Patient Tested for Ebola in Pennsylvania

A patient in Pennsylvania is being tested for a possible Ebola virus infection, according to news reports.

On Wednesday (Feb. 6), the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) said that it was testing the patient for the deadly virus out of “an abundance of caution,” according to local news outlet NBC 10 Philadelphia. Early test results suggest the patient has another condition that is the cause of their illness, but the hospital is taking precautions until the definitive results are in.

“A patient who met screening criteria for Ebola testing is currently being evaluated at HUP while tests to assess the patient’s condition are completed,” Dr. Patrick J. Brennan, chief medical officer at Penn Medicine, told told NBC 10.

DNA-Functionalized Metal–Organic Framework Nanoparticles for Intracellular Delivery of Proteins

Due to their large size, charged surfaces, and environmental sensitivity, proteins do not naturally cross cell-membranes in intact form and, therefore, are difficult to deliver for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Based upon the observation that clustered oligonucleotides can naturally engage scavenger receptors that facilitate cellular transfection, nucleic acid–metal organic framework nanoparticle (MOF NP) conjugates have been designed and synthesized from NU-1000 and PCN-222/MOF-545, respectively, and phosphate-terminated oligonucleotides. They have been characterized structurally and with respect to their ability to enter mammalian cells. The MOFs act as protein hosts, and their densely functionalized, oligonucleotide-rich surfaces make them colloidally stable and ensure facile cellular entry. With insulin as a model protein, high loading and a 10-fold enhancement of cellular uptake (as compared to that of the native protein) were achieved. Importantly, this approach can be generalized to facilitate the delivery of a variety of proteins as biological probes or potential therapeutics.

Proteins play key roles in living systems, and the ability to deliver active proteins to cells is attractive for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Potential uses involve the evaluation of metabolic pathways, regulation of cellular processes, and treatment of disease involving protein deficiencies. (4−6) During the past decade, a series of techniques have been developed to facilitate protein internalization by live cells, including the use of complementary transfection agents, nanocarriers, (7−9) and protein surface modifications. (10−13) Although each strategy has its own merit, none are perfect solutions; they can cause cytotoxicity, reduce protein activity, and suffer from low delivery payloads. (14) For example, we have made the observation that one can take almost any protein and functionalize its surface with DNA to create entities that will naturally engage the cell-surface receptors involved in spherical nucleic acid (SNA) uptake. (13,15−17) While this method is extremely useful in certain situations, it requires direct modification of the protein and large amounts of nucleic acid, on a per-protein basis, to effect transfection. Ideally, one would like to deliver intact, functional proteins without the need to chemically modify them, and to do so in a nucleic-acid efficient manner.

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as a class of promising materials for the immobilization and storage of functional proteins. (18) Their mesoporous structures allow for exceptionally high protein loadings, and their framework architectures can significantly improve the thermal and chemical stabilities of the encapsulated proteins. (19−24) However, although MOF NPs have been recognized as potentially important intracellular delivery vehicles for proteins, (25−27) their poor colloidal stability and positively charged surfaces, (28,29) inhibit their cellular uptake and have led to unfavorable bioavailabilities. (30−33) Therefore, the development of general approaches for reducing MOF NP aggregation, minimizing positive charge (which can cause cytotoxicity), and facilitating cellular uptake is desirable. (34,35)

New research signals big future for quantum radar

A prototype quantum radar that has the potential to detect objects which are invisible to conventional systems has been developed by an international research team led by a quantum information scientist at the University of York.

The new breed of radar is a hybrid system that uses correlation between microwave and optical beams to detect objects of low reflectivity such as cancer cells or aircraft with a stealth capability. Because the quantum radar operates at much lower energies than conventional systems, it has the long-term potential for a range of applications in biomedicine including non-invasive NMR scans.

The research team led by Dr Stefano Pirandola, of the University’s Department of Computer Science and the York Centre for Quantum Technologies, found that a special converter — a double-cavity device that couples the microwave beam to an optical beam using a nano-mechanical oscillator — was the key to the new system.

Novel experiment validates widely speculated mechanism behind the formation of stars

How have stars and planets developed from the clouds of dust and gas that once filled the cosmos? A novel experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has demonstrated the validity of a widespread theory known as “magnetorotational instability,” or MRI, that seeks to explain the formation of heavenly bodies.

The theory holds that MRI allows , clouds of dust, gas, and plasma that swirl around growing stars and as well as black holes, to collapse into them. According to the theory, this collapse happens because turbulent swirling plasma, technically known as “Keplerian flows,” gradually grows unstable within a disk. The instability causes angular —the process that keeps orbiting planets from being drawn into the sun—to decrease in inner sections of the disk, which then fall into celestial bodies.

Unlike orbiting planets, the matter in dense and crowded accretion disks may experience forces such as friction that cause the disks to lose angular momentum and be drawn into the objects they swirl around. However, such forces cannot fully explain how quickly matter must fall into larger objects for planets and stars to form on a reasonable timescale.

/* */