Researchers at Imperial College London and Lund University in Sweden found that by giving heart attack patients two drugs together – statins and ezetimibe, a cholesterol-lowering drug – their risk of another heart attack, stroke or death was reduced.
“This study shows that we could save lives and reduce further heart attacks by giving patients a combination of two low-cost drugs,” said Prof Kausik Ray, of Imperial’s School of Public Health.
But at the moment patients across the world aren’t receiving these drugs together. That is causing unnecessary and avoidable heart attacks and deaths – and also places unnecessary costs on healthcare systems.
Since most cells naturally repel DNA, delivering these nanodevices into cells requires specialized techniques, such as transfection methods and transformation protocols. Once inside, cellular factors such as salt concentration, molecular crowding, and heterogeneous environments influence strand displacement reactions. To overcome the limitations of direct delivery, researchers are also developing transcribable RNA nanodevices encoded into plasmids or chromosomes, allowing cells to express these circuits.
Toward Smart DNA Machines and Biocomputers
DNA strand displacement has been applied to the innovation of computational models. By integrating computational principles with DNA strand displacement, the structured algorithms of traditional computing can be combined with random biochemical processes and chemical reactions in biological systems, enabling biocompatible models of computation. In the future, DNA strand displacement may enable autonomously acting DNA nanomachines to precisely manipulate biological processes, leading to quantum leaps in healthcare and life science research.
When a pregnant woman had her blood sampled back in 1972, doctors discovered it was mysteriously missing a surface molecule found on all other known red blood cells at the time.
After 50 years, this strange molecular absence finally led to researchers from the UK and Israel describing a new blood group system in humans. In 2024, the team published their paper on the discovery.
“It represents a huge achievement, and the culmination of a long team effort, to finally establish this new blood group system and be able to offer the best care to rare, but important, patients,” UK National Health Service hematologist Louise Tilley said last September, after nearly 20 years of personally researching this bloody quirk.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 (HIV-1) latency represents a significant hurdle in finding a cure for HIV-1 infections, despite tireless research efforts. This challenge is partly attributed to the intricate nature of HIV-1 latency, wherein various host and viral factors participate in multiple physiological processes. While substantial progress has been made in discovering therapeutic targets for HIV-1 transcription, targets for the post-transcriptional regulation of HIV-1 infections have received less attention. However, cumulative evidence now suggests the pivotal contribution of post-transcriptional regulation to the viral latency in both in vitro models and infected individuals.
Chinese researchers turned the immune response to organ transplant rejection to cure cancer with a 90% success rate.
“Surgery means extensive recovery time and can significantly impact patient health. Our system doesn’t require surgery because we use a conventional stent, the catheter, as a delivery vehicle,” said W. Hong Yeo, the Harris Saunders Jr. Endowed Professor and an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.
Made from ultra-thin, flexible silicone, these nanosensors can be embedded in almost anything, from pacifiers to catheters. But size was just one element the researchers needed to consider when developing this device; accuracy was just as important.
Hong Yeo holds an in-stent nanomembrane sensor that can detect intracranial pressure.
A car accident, football game, or even a bad fall can lead to a serious or fatal head injury. Annually, traumatic brain injuries (TBI) cause half a million permanent disabilities and 50,000 deaths. Monitoring pressure inside the skull is key to treating TBI and preventing long-lasting complications.
Most of these monitoring devices are large and invasive, requiring surgical emplacement. But Georgia Tech researchers have recently created a sensor smaller than a dime. The miniature size offers huge benefits.