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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,223

“Unexpected” — Scientists Discover an Anti-Aging Mechanism

A multinational team headed by University College London scientists has discovered a new mechanism that slows down and maybe even prevents the normal aging of immune cells, one of the nine “hallmarks of aging.”

The discovery in-vitro (cells) and validated in mice was “unexpected,” according to the researchers, who believe harnessing the mechanism might extend the life of the immune system, enabling people to live healthier and longer lives, and would also have therapeutic use for diseases such as cancer and dementia. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Cell Biology.

Explaining the study, lead author, Dr. Alessio Lanna, Honorary Professor at UCL Division of Medicine, said: Immune cells are on constant high-alert, always ready to fight pathogens. To be effective they also must persist for decades in the body – but the strategies employed to execute this life-long protection are largely unknown.

Optical Frequency Combs Moving into Biomedical Instrumentation?

“It’s like being able to see the mountain all at once—the whole landscape and the individual trees.” That’s how researcher Jun Ye describes direct frequency-comb absorption spectroscopy. Ye and his JILA/National Institute of Standards and Technology colleagues in Boulder, CO, used optical frequency combs to analyze complex gas mixtures for a forthcoming IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science paper on a novel cold-plasma sterilization method.

The system bathes surfaces—agar plates, plastic ID badges (a “major vector for pathogen transmission…currently not subject to any disinfection/sterilization procedures…”), biofilms, and mouse skin (free-radical-rich gases have been shown to disinfect wounds and speed healing)—and mixtures of plasma-derived ozone (O3), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), nitrous oxide (N2O), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). It appears to work well, deactivating most surface bacteria in 15 to 60 seconds.

A further object of the study, however, was to discover exactly which gas proportions provided the most effective sterilization. The mix of gases, each with its own pattern of absorption transitions, made monitoring the flow a challenge for conventional Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) absorption spectroscopy.

Nanoparticles in Medicine—Microbots to Blood Clots

As nanotechology burrows into an increasing number of medical technologies, new developments in nanoparticles point to the ways that treatments can today be nanotechnologically targeted. In one case, would-be end effectors on microrobots are aimed at clearing up cases of bacterial pneumonia. In another, a smart-targeting system may decrease clotting risks in dangerous cases of thrombosis.

Scientists from the University of California, San Diego, demonstrated antibiotic-filled nanoparticles that hitch a ride on microbots made of algae to deliver targeted therapeutics. Their paper was recently published in Nature Materials. As a proof of concept, the researchers administered antibiotic-laden microbots to mice infected with a potentially fatal variety of pneumonia (a strain that is common in human patients who are receiving mechanical ventilation in intensive-care settings). All infections in the treated mice cleared up within a week, while untreated mice died within three days.

The algae–nanoparticle hybrid microbots were effectively distributed to infected tissue through lung fluid and showed negligible toxicity. “Our goal is to do targeted drug delivery into more challenging parts of the body, like the lungs,” said bioengineering professor Liangfang Zhang in a press statement. “And we want to do it in a way that is safe, easy, biocompatible, and long lasting.”

A combination of micro and macro methods sheds new light on how different brain regions are connected

“It is not enough to study brain connectivity with one single method, or even two,” says HBP Scientific Director and author of the Science article Katrin Amunts, who leads the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) at Forschungszentrum Jülich and the C. & O. Vogt Institute of Brain Research at the University Hospital Düsseldorf. “The connectome is nested at multiple levels. To understand its structure, we need to look at several spatial scales at once by combining different experimental methods in a multi-scale approach and by integrating the obtained data into multilevel atlases such as the Julich Brain Atlas that we have developed.”

Markus Axer from Forschungszentrum Jülich and the Physics Department of the University of Wuppertal, who is the first author of the Science article, has together with his team at INM-1 developed a unique method called 3D Polarised Light Imaging (3D-PLI) to visualise nerve fibres at microscopic resolution. They trace the three-dimensional courses of fibres across serial brain sections with the aim of developing a 3D fibre atlas of the entire human brain.

Together with other HBP researchers from Neurospin in France and the University of Florence in Italy, Axer and his team have recently imaged the same tissue block from a human hippocampus using several different methods: anatomical and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (aMRI and dMRI), two-photon fluorescence microscopy (TPFM) and 3D-PLI, respectively.

Paralyzed patients can now connect their iPhones to their brains to type messages using thoughts alone

A novel brain-computer interface developed by a New York-based company called Synchron was just used to help a paralyzed patient send messages using their Apple device for the very first time. It’s a massive step up in an industry that has increasingly reported progress, which suggests that interfacing our minds with consumer devices could happen a lot sooner than some of us bargained for.

Brain-computer devices eavesdrop on brainwaves and convert these into commands. More or less the same neural signals that healthy people use to instruct their muscle fibers to twitch and enact a movement like walking or grasping an object can be used to command a robotic arm or move a cursor on a computer screen. It really is a phenomenal and game-changing piece of technology, with obvious benefits for those who are completely paralyzed and have few if any means of communicating with the outside world.

This type of technology is not exactly new. Scientists have been experimenting with brain-computer interfaces for decades, but it’s been in the last couple of years or so that we’ve actually come to see tremendous progress. Even Elon Musk has jumped on this bandwagon, founding a company called Neuralink with the ultimate goal of developing technology that allows people to transmit and receive information between their brain and a computer wirelessly — essentially connecting the human mind to devices. The idea is for anyone to be able to use this technology, even normal, healthy people, who want to augment their abilities by interfacing with machines. In 2021, Neuralink released a video of a monkey with an implanted Neuralink device playing pong, and the company wants to start clinical trials with humans soon.

A woman survived 12 tumors, at least 5 of them malignant

With inherited gene mutations from both parents, a woman in Spain is battling with 12 tumors in her body.

As stated by the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), the woman first developed a tumor when still a baby and other tumors followed it within five years. 36 year-old-patient has developed twelve tumors, at least five of them malignant in her life. Each one has been of a unique kind and has affected a different area of the body.

“We still don’t understand how this individual could have formed during the embryonic stage, nor could have overcome all these pathologies,” says Marcos Malumbres, director of the Cell Division and Cancer Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO).