Science and biotech

Implantable device propels itself through bloodstream

As implantable medical devices become smaller and less power hungry, they are taking on a variety of new roles. What began as largely stationary objects, such as pacemakers and cochlear implants, are becoming small enough to actually pass through our bodies (i.e. in the form of pills) to deliver drugs and perform diagnostics.

Now, a new class of medical devices is emerging that adds a twist to the traditional implant: the devices are so small that they can travel through our bloodstream, not to mention are powered wirelessly via electromagnetic radio waves, according to Stanford electrical engineer Ada Poon.

By moving through the bloodstream, these tiny implants will be able to perform minor surgeries such as removing blood clots, Poon told an audience at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week.… Read more

Hot nanotubes blast chemo-resistant cancer cells into oblivion

When it comes to cancer cells, a particularly confounding breed called cancer stem cells have proven difficult to kill. Because they divide so slowly, chemo drugs do them little harm, and they appear resistant to heat therapies that are generally good at killing most cells. Some cancer drugs even appear to promote the growth of cancer stem cells.

Now, three years after they found that the heat from 30-second laser blasts can kill kidney cancer stem cells, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center say the same treatment works to kill breast cancer stem cells as well.

Torti's team … Read more

Nifty stem-cell engineering sheds light on Parkinson's disease

Researchers at the University at Buffalo may have taken a significant step toward unraveling the way Parkinson's disease assails the human nervous system--thanks in part to a nifty bit of stem-cell engineering.

Scientists led by physiologist Jian Feng took skin cells from healthy control subjects and people with a particular type of Parkinson's disease and transformed them into a type of primordial cell--technically, an "induced pluripotent stem cell." Such iPS cells, as they're known, can be coaxed into developing as almost any type of cell in the body.

Here, they turned into brain cells. … Read more

Portable device to detect pathogens in 30 minutes

Engineers at Cornell are building a handheld pathogen detector that will help health care workers around the world test for pathogens such as tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and HIV and get results in as little as 30 minutes, instead of waiting days.

Dan Luo, professor of biological and environmental engineering, has been using synthetic DNA to amplify tiny samples of pathogen DNA, RNA, or proteins. Because of $25 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenge to 12 teams developing point-of-care diagnostics, Luo will be combining forces with Edwin Kan, a Cornell professor of electrical and computer engineering, who has built a computer chip that can respond quickly to those amplified samples.

The engineers describe their novel device as something akin to a molecular-level Lego builder.… Read more

3D printer produces new jaw for woman

An elderly woman has received a replacement titanium jaw, an operation participants say demonstrates the potential of patient-specific body implants.

Belgian company LayerWise today said that it produced an entire jaw using additive manufacturing, a technique that allows fabricators to make an item directly from a CAD drawing. The transplant demonstrates that precision 3D printing can be effective for both bones and organ implants, the company said.

The method selectively heats metal powder particles with a laser to construct an object layer by layer. Using this method allows LayerWise to create complex shapes that a custom made for patients and … Read more

Ultrasound one step closer to killing sperm--and the vasectomy

Male birth control hasn't progressed since condoms and vasectomies were devised more than 100 years ago. And while the idea of using therapeutic ultrasound to zap sperm has been kicked around for decades, it has never been sufficiently reliable for contraception.

Until now.

Researchers have now found that a commercially available therapeutic ultrasound generator and transducer can significantly deplete the sperm count of rats. The team, based out of the University of North Carolina, relied on funding from the Parsemus Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The results are notable because they improve on the only promising … Read more

Lifelens malaria app wins Microsoft 'Imagine Cup' grant

After taking second place in the 2011 Imagine Cup finals, Team Lifelens of the U.S. is one of four teams from around the world to win a $75,000 Imagine Cup grant, Microsoft announced today at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

The Lifelens project is run by students at universities across the country who have been working since November 2010 on an app that can image malaria cells for fast diagnosis right there on the phone, sans Internet.

The premise is straightforward. Apply a blood sample to a slide with a dye that only malaria … Read more

Oral HIV test almost as accurate as blood test

New findings that a saliva-based HIV test is only 2 percent less accurate than blood tests could make a case for more widespread self-testing around the world.

Researchers from McGill University in Montreal report in this week's issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases that field research data from five worldwide databases show that in high-risk populations, the saliva test (approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2004) is 98.0 percent accurate, compared to a blood test's 99.68 percent accuracy.

The painless and noninvasive OraQuick HIV-1/2 saliva test, which yields results in just 20 minutes, … Read more

New biochip measures glucose levels in saliva

Glucose levels are 100 times more concentrated in blood than in saliva, which is why in spite of many efforts to use saliva, diabetics are still pricking themselves to get accurate glucose readings.

But now, harnessing the power of nanotechnology, engineers at Brown University say they've designed a biochip that can measure glucose levels in saliva almost as accurately as current devices can measure levels in blood.

To do this, the engineers etched a complicated array of thousands of plasmonic interferometers (no, this is not an episode of Farscape) onto a fingernail-size biochip. This means they were essentially using … Read more