Lifeboat Foundation

Biosensing technology developed by engineers has made it possible to create gene test strips that rival conventional lab-based tests in quality. When the pandemic started, people who felt unwell had to join long queues for lab-based PCR tests and then wait for two days to learn if they had the COVID-19 virus or not.

In addition to significant inconvenience, a major drawback was the substantial and expensive logistics needed for such laboratory tests, while testing delays increased the risk of disease spread.

Now a team of bio]medical engineers at UNSW Sydney have developed a new technology offering test strips which are just as accurate as the lab-based detection. And according to research published today in Nature Communications, it’s not just public health that the technology may benefit.

A groundbreaking nanosurgical tool — about 500 times thinner than a human hair — could be transformative for cancer research and give insights into treatment resistance that no other technology has been able to do, according to a new study.

The high-tech double-barrel nanopipette, developed by University of Leeds scientists, and applied to the global medical challenge of cancer, has — for the first time — enabled researchers to see how individual living cancer cells react to treatment and change over time — providing vital understanding that could help doctors develop more effective cancer medication.

The tool has two nanoscopic needles, meaning it can simultaneously inject and extract a sample from the same cell, expanding its potential uses. And the platform’s high level of semi-automation has sped up the process dramatically, enabling scientists to extract data from many more individual cells, with far greater accuracy and efficiency than previously possible, the study shows.

In the last decade, thanks to advances in AI, the internet of things, machine learning and sensor technologies, the fantasy of digital twins has taken off. BMW has created a digital twin of a production plant in Bavaria. Boeing is using digital twins to design airplanes. The World Economic Forum hailed digital twins as a key technology in the “fourth industrial revolution.” Tech giants like IBM, Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft are just a few of the big players now providing digital twin capabilities to automotive, energy and infrastructure firms.

The inefficiencies of the physical world, so the sales pitch goes, can be ironed out in a virtual one and then reflected back onto reality. Test virtual planes in virtual wind tunnels, virtual tires on virtual roads. “Risk is removed” reads a recent Microsoft advertorial in Wired, and “problems can be solved before they happen.”

All of a sudden, Dirk Helbing and Javier Argota Sánchez-Vaquerizo wrote in a 2022 paper, “it has become an attractive idea to create digital twins of everything.” Cars, trains, ships, buildings, airports, farms, power plants, oil fields and entire supply chains are all being cloned into high-fidelity mirror images made of bits and bytes. Attempts are being undertaken to twin beaches, forests, apple orchards, tomato plants, weapons and war zones. As beaches erode, forests grow and bombs explode, so too will their twins, watched closely by technicians for signals to improve outcomes in the real world.

An early lab-dish study in cancer cells suggests microplastics can persist through cell division and may contribute to cancer spread, when they’re in tumors.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Avian influenza is killing tens of thousands of seals and sea lions in different corners of the world, disrupting ecosystems and flummoxing scientists who don’t see a clear way to slow the devastating virus.

The worldwide bird flu outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths of millions of domesticated birds and spread to wildlife all over the globe. This virus isn’t thought to be a major threat to humans, but its spread in farming operations and wild ecosystems has caused widespread economic turmoil and environmental disruptions.

Seals and sea lions, in places as far apart as Maine and Chile, appear to be especially vulnerable to the disease, scientists said. The virus has been detected in seals on the east and west coasts of the U.S., leading to deaths of more than 300 seals in New England and a handful more in Puget Sound in Washington. The situation is even more dire in South America, where more than 20,000 sea lions have died in Chile and Peru and thousands of elephant seals have died in Argentina.

Modified protein-design tool could make it easier to tackle challenging drug targets — but AI antibodies are still a long way from reaching the clinic.

Giving cells an appetite for cancer could enhance treatments.

By Kate Graham-Shaw

🦠💊🌍 https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240321/Rising-antimicrob…action.asp

Review delves into the rising challenge of antimicrobial resistance in sexually transmitted infections, underscoring the need for innovative treatments and the critical role of global surveillance in managing diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis.

Researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, along with colleagues from Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, have identified remarkably consistent alterations in gene expression within the brains of individuals with schizophrenia and older adults. This discovery points to a shared biological foundation underlying the cognitive difficulties frequently observed in patients with schizophrenia and in aging populations.

In a study published in Nature, the team describes how they analyzed gene expression in more than a million individual cells from postmortem brain tissue from 191 people. They found that in individuals with schizophrenia and in older adults without schizophrenia, two brain cell types called astrocytes and neurons reduced their expression of genes that support the junctions between neurons called synapses, compared to healthy or younger people. They also discovered tightly synchronized gene expression changes in the two cell types: when neurons decreased the expression of certain genes related to synapses, astrocytes similarly changed expression of a distinct set of genes that support synapses.

The team called this coordinated set of changes the Synaptic Neuron and Astrocyte Program (SNAP). Even in healthy, young people, the expression of the SNAP genes always increased or decreased in a coordinated way in their neurons and astrocytes.