Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 500

Microgel-based antioxidant system advances biohybrid brain research

Researchers have unveiled a breakthrough technology that could transform the way scientists build and study lab-grown brain tissue models. The innovation, called Cellular RedOx Spreading Shield (CROSS), delivers long-lasting antioxidant protection to stem cells, enabling the reliable production of high-quality extracellular vesicles (EVs) that strengthen neuron-glia networks.

The study, published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, was led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Hyunjoon Kong and chemistry professor Hee Sun Han, and performed by Ryan Miller, currently a post-doctoral fellow at Georgia Tech.

Jonghwi Lee, in the chemical engineering department at Chung-Ang University in South Korea, and Young Jun Kim at the Korean Institute of Science and Technology–Europe, collaborated on the project.

Protein unties tangled DNA linked to hotspots of cancer mutations

New research published in Nature Communications has linked a normal cellular process to an accumulation of DNA mutations in cancer and identified cancer-driving mutations in an underexplored part of the genome.

Led by Dr. Jüri Reimand of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), the study centers around a protein called TOP2B, part of a family of enzymes that serve an important function in cells and are targets of common cancer chemotherapies.

Strands of DNA are long and complex, and they often get looped and tangled. When that happens, TOP2B and other topoisomerase proteins make cuts to DNA strands to help untangle and repair them. But Reimand and colleagues found many genetic mutations present at the sites of these cuts.

Watch: Vine-like robot lifts delicate cargo — including human bodies

Although they’re constantly improving, robots aren’t necessarily known for their gentle touch. A new robotic system from MIT and Stanford takes a unique stab at changing that, with a robot that uses vine-like tendrils to do its lifting.

The system the engineers developed consists of a series of pneumatic tubes that deploy from a pressurized box on one side of a robotic arm, use air pressure to snake under or around a specific object, then rejoin the arm on the other side where they are clamped in place. Once clamped, the arm itself can move, or the tube can be wound up to lift or rotate the object in its grasp. The ability to deploy the tubes and then recapture them is the real breakthrough here, improving on previous vine-based robots by allowing the system to close its own loops.

“People might assume that in order to grab something, you just reach out and grab it,” says study co-author Kentaro Barhydt, from MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “But there are different stages, such as positioning and holding. By transforming between open and closed loops, we can achieve new levels of performance by leveraging the advantages of both forms for their respective stages.”

New AI technology can provide rapid and reliable dementia diagnosis

Researchers at Örebro University have developed two new AI models that can analyse the brain’s electrical activity and accurately distinguish between healthy individuals and patients with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

“Early diagnosis is crucial in order to be able to take proactive measures that slow down the progression of the disease and improve the patient’s quality of life,” says Muhammad Hanif, researcher in informatics at Örebro University.

A Possible Role of Intestinal Microbiota in the Pathogenesis of Ankylosing Spondylitis

Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory disease primarily affecting the sacroiliac joints and the spine, for which the pathogenesis is thought to be a result of the combination of host genetic factors and environmental triggers. However, the precise factors that determine one’s susceptibility to AS remain to be unraveled. With 100 trillion bacteria residing in the mammalian gut having established a symbiotic relation with their host influencing many aspects of host metabolism, physiology, and immunity, a growing body of evidence suggests that intestinal microbiota may play an important role in AS. Several mechanisms have been suggested to explain the potential role of the microbiome in the etiology of AS, such as alterations of intestinal permeability, stimulation of immune responses, and molecular mimicry.

Psilocybin shows greater potential than cannabinoids for obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment

In a review of previous studies, McMaster University researchers observe a stronger signal for psilocybin as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder than cannabinoids.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder involves persistent, intrusive thoughts and repetitive mental or physical behaviors, and requires long-term treatment to alleviate symptoms. The ethology of the disorder appears complex, involving multiple biological pathways. Imbalances in central serotonin, dopamine, and glutamate activities are widely thought to play a causative role, placing neurochemistry at the center of many treatment strategies.

First-line treatment includes selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and cognitive behavioral therapy using exposure and response prevention. Roughly 40–60% of patients remain unresponsive to psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy, alone or combined, placing many people in the category of treatment-resistant OCD.

Vital intertwining: Blood parasite’s chainmail-like DNA structure could inspire next-generation materials

As tough as medieval chainmail armor and as soft as a contact lens. This material is not taken from science fiction, it is a natural structure made of thousands of DNA circles interlinked with each other. Studying it can help us advance our knowledge in many fields, from biophysics and infectious diseases to materials science and biomedical engineering.

This topic is the subject of “Organisation and dynamics of individual DNA segments in topologically complex genomes,” an article that has been published in Nucleic Acid Research.

The study, which also appeared on the front cover of the journal, is the result of a collaboration between the Department of Physics of the University of Trento, with Guglielmo Grillo under the supervision of Luca Tubiana, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Edinburgh, with Saminathan Ramakrishnan and Auro Varat Patnaik, supervised by Davide Michieletto.