Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 178

Magnetic microrobots remove blood clots from sheep iliac artery

Researchers at the TechMed Center of the University of Twente and Radboud University Medical Center have removed blood clots with wireless magnetic robots. This innovation promises to transform treatment for life-threatening vascular conditions like thrombosis.

Cardiovascular diseases such as thrombosis are a major global health challenge. Each year worldwide, 1 in 4 people die from conditions caused by blood clots. A blood clot blocks a blood vessel, preventing the blood from delivering oxygen to certain areas of the body.

Minimally invasive Traditional treatments struggle with clots in hard-to-reach areas. But magnetic microrobots bring hope to patients with otherwise inoperable clots. The screw-shaped robots can navigate through intricate vascular networks since they are operated wirelessly.

His cancer treatment was failing. A fecal transplant turned it around

In the spring of 2022, Tim Story’s doctor told him that he likely had just months to live. Story, a high school football coach in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, had been diagnosed with Stage 3 small bowel cancer two years earlier, at the age of 49, after mysterious pains in his side turned out to be a tumor in his small intestine. Surgery and several grueling rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy had failed to stop the cancer, which had spread to other organs.

Obesity-Related Kidney Disease: Current Understanding and Future Perspectives

— Kreiner, et al.

In this article, the authors review the current understanding of obesity-related kidney disease and focus on the intertwined cardiometabolic abnormalities, which, in addition to obesity and diabetes, include risk factors such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, and systemic inflammation.

Full text is available

Obesity is a serious chronic disease and an independent risk factor for the new onset and progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD). CKD prevalence is expected to increase, at least partly due to the continuous rise in the prevalence of obesity. The concept of obesity-related kidney disease (OKD) has been introduced to describe the still incompletely understood interplay between obesity, CKD, and other cardiometabolic conditions, including risk factors for OKD and cardiovascular disease, such as diabetes and hypertension. Current therapeutics target obesity and CKD individually. Non-pharmacological interventions play a major part, but the efficacy and clinical applicability of lifestyle changes and metabolic surgery remain debatable, because the strategies do not benefit everyone, and it remains questionable whether lifestyle changes can be sustained in the long term.

CRISPR-Cascade test detects bloodstream infections in minutes without amplification

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a CRISPR-based diagnostic tool capable of detecting bloodstream infections in minutes without the need for nucleic acid amplification. The CRISPR-Cascade assay achieves attomolar sensitivity and incorporates an OR-gated logic function to identify multiple pathogens simultaneously through DNA from pathogens associated with bloodstream infections.

Bloodstream infections require rapid identification to prevent complications, yet standard diagnostic methods rely on (PCR) and isothermal amplification techniques that have built-in processing times. CRISPR-based detection tools such as SHERLOCK and DETECTR have improved specificity but continue to depend on amplification, limiting their turnaround time and practicality in clinical settings.

In the study, “Amplification-free, OR-gated CRISPR-Cascade reaction for pathogen detection in blood samples,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers conducted a laboratory-based investigation to determine whether a CRISPR-driven feedback loop could detect pathogenic DNA at ultra-low concentrations without amplification.

Spinning, twisted light could power next-generation electronics

Researchers have advanced a decades-old challenge in the field of organic semiconductors, opening new possibilities for the future of electronics. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Eindhoven University of Technology, have created an organic semiconductor that forces electrons to move in a spiral pattern, which could improve the efficiency of OLED displays in television and smartphone screens, or power next-generation computing technologies such as spintronics and quantum computing.

The semiconductor they developed emits circularly polarized light—meaning the light carries information about the ‘handedness’ of electrons. The internal structure of most inorganic semiconductors, like silicon, is symmetrical, meaning electrons move through them without any preferred direction.

However, in nature, molecules often have a chiral (left-or right-handed) structure: like human hands, are mirror images of one another. Chirality plays an important role in like DNA formation, but it is a difficult phenomenon to harness and control in electronics.

Spinning Electrons Just Solved a Decades-Old Semiconductor Mystery

A major breakthrough in organic semiconductors.

Semiconductors are materials with electrical conductivity that falls between conductors and insulators, making them essential for modern electronics. They are typically crystalline solids, the most common of which is silicon, used extensively in the production of electronic components such as transistors and diodes. Semiconductors are unique because their conductivity can be altered and controlled through doping—adding impurities to the material to change its electrical properties. This property allows them to serve as the foundation for integrated circuits and microchips, powering everything from computers and smartphones to advanced medical devices and renewable energy technologies. The behavior of semiconductors is also crucial in the development of various electronic, photonic, and quantum devices.

Regaining mobility quickly after a stroke

Twenty-four stroke patients have already used the complete system, consisting of an exoskeleton for the arm and shoulder in combination with FES as part of the ReHyb research project. Half of them were patients at the Schön Klinik Bad Aibling Harthausen, which is leading the study. The researchers also used a computer game that automatically adapts to the individual player’s capabilities. It trains them to grip and move their arms shortly after a stroke by reacting to colored balls flying toward them at varying speeds on a screen. The task is to catch the balls and match them with color-coded boxes.

At the center of TUM Professor Sandra Hirche’s setup is a digital twin that records the individual requirements of each patient and places them in a control loop. Among other things, the researchers have to determine how well each patient can move their arm and hand. In the event of a stroke, for example, paralysis can be caused by damage to the motor area in the brain responsible for movement. However, it is impossible to predict how severely the signals transmitted from the brain to the muscles in the forearm will be impaired after the stroke. “Individual muscle strands in the forearm can be stimulated to the right extent for hands and fingers to move,” says Prof. Hirche, who holds the Chair of Information-Oriented Control at TUM. In addition to information on muscle activity in the forearm, the researchers need to know how strongly the muscles should be stimulated in conjunction with the exoskeleton assistance.