Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy has revolutionized biology by visualizing dynamic cellular processes in three dimensions. However, light scattering in thick tissue and photobleaching of fluorescent reporters limit this method to studying thin or…
In the Chinese city of Wuhan, surgeons have successfully transplanted an artificial heart with magnetic levitation weighing only 45 grams to a 7-year-old child.
It is noted that the third-generation magnetic levitation device is designed to treat heart failure in children. Every year, about 40 thousand children with heart failure are hospitalized in China. Of these, 7–10% need an urgent transplant.
However, the country performs less than 100 pediatric transplants a year due to an acute shortage of donors. However, in Wuhan, surgeons have successfully transplanted a tiny artificial heart the size of a coin, which is moved by magnetic levitation, into a 7-year-old boy.
An Arizona man has become the third person in the world to receive Neuralink’s brain implant – letting him ‘speak’ again in his own voice.
Brad Smith has ALS, a progressive disease that makes him unable to move any part of his body, except his eyes and the corners of his mouth.
Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have uncovered a surprising way in which harmful bacteria prepare to attack their hosts. The discovery, led by Ph.D. students Lior Aroeti, Netanel Elbaz under the guidance of Prof. Ilan Rosenshine from the Faculty of Medicine could one day help researchers find new ways to fight infectious diseases.
At the heart of this study, now published in Nature Communications, is a protein called CsrA, which acts like a switchboard operator inside bacterial cells. It helps bacteria decide which of their genes to turn on or off—especially the genes that make them dangerous to humans.
Researchers have long known that CsrA plays a central role in bacterial virulence—the ability of bacteria to cause disease. But the new study shows that CsrA doesn’t work alone. Instead, it gathers in a special, droplet-like structure inside the cell. This structure has no membrane, making it a “membraneless compartment,” which scientists now believe is crucial in regulating how bacteria behave.
While antibiotics given in the first week of life reduce vaccine responses at 15 months, probiotics might counteract these effects.
A ready-made version of a cutting-edge cancer immunotherapy can effectively defeat blood cancers, a new study says.
Researchers have prepared an off-the-shelf version of CAR immune cell treatment that can be administered more easily to patients with blood cancers.
The new treatment, which uses a type of immune cell called natural killer cells, promoted complete remission in several patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), researchers said in a presentation at an American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR) meeting in Chicago.
Scientists at the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation, in collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, have developed a new nanoparticle therapy that tackles obesity through two complementary mechanisms: converting energy-storing white fat into calorie-burning beige fat while simultaneously reducing obesity-related inflammation.
Their findings, published in the Journal of Controlled Release, are detailed in an article titled “Apigenin-loaded nanoparticles for obesity intervention through immunomodulation and adipocyte browning.” This innovative approach addresses key limitations of current obesity treatments by precisely targeting adipose tissue with apigenin-loaded nanoparticles—enhancing therapeutic effects while minimizing potential side effects.
The research team, led by Dr. Alireza Hassani Najafabadi and Dr. Ryan M. Pearson, engineered specialized PLGA nanoparticles to deliver the natural compound apigenin directly to fat tissue. This targeted delivery system ensures optimal therapeutic effects while minimizing potential side effects throughout the body.
Chinese doctors have successfully implanted the world’s smallest and lightest artificial heart that uses magnetic levitation technology into a 7-year-old boy, giving him more time to wait for a heart transplant.
Weighing 45 grams and measuring just 2.9 centimeters in diameter, this tiny device is the size of a regular plastic water bottle cap and is about half the weight of the smallest maglev-powered heart pump designed for adults.
The Union Hospital affiliated to Tongji Medical College at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei province, said on Tuesday that the boy is now in stable condition and awaiting further treatment, following the operation which was carried out on March 30.
Hyperbaric oxygen treatment provides long-term relief for patients suffering from late radiation-induced injuries after treatment of cancer in the lower abdominal area. Five years after hyperbaric oxygen therapy, the positive effects remain. This has been shown in a study conducted at the University of Gothenburg.
Radiation therapy is a component of many cancer treatments in organs such as the prostate, colon, ovaries and cervix. While tumor cells are destroyed, 5%–10% of patients experience severe side effects due to healthy tissue being affected by the radiation therapy.
Symptoms may include urinary incontinence, bleeding and severe pain in the lower abdomen that becomes both physically and socially disabling. These problems can occur several years after radiation therapy and cause chronic and increasing discomfort.
Posted in biotech/medical, neuroscience | Leave a Comment on Limitations of the use of the MP-RAGE to identify neural changes in the brain: recent cigarette smoking alters gray matter indices in the striatum
The magnetization-prepared rapid gradient-echo (MP-RAGE) T1-weighted high resolution structural MRI is a mainstay tool used to identify morphometric biomarkers of disease conditions, progression and treatment effects despite a critical limitation: the relaxation signal on which inferences are based is nearly indistinguishable for gray matter vs. blood flow (Lu et al., 2004; Wright et al., 2008). Thus, apparent reported morphometric findings might be at least partially related to transient changes in blood flow or other physiological signals.
Consistent with this technical limitation, using a standard analysis technique, voxel based morphometry (VBM), we recently reported that a single dose of a medication had “apparent” effects on T1-weighted MRIs (Franklin et al., 2013). Specifically, we observed medication-induced decreases in gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate and other regions that overlapped with changes in brain blood flow (perfusion). Similarly, others have shown effects of medication on T1-weighted scans that are likely transient. For example, acute levodopa administration altered gray matter indices on T1-weighted images in the midbrain (Salgado-Pineda et al., 2006). Further, in a well-controlled longitudinal VBM study of patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Hoekzema et al.