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Consistently uniform, easily manufactured microcapsules containing a brain cancer drug may simplify treatment and provide more tightly controlled therapy, according to Penn State researchers.
"Brain tumors are one of the world's deadliest diseases," said Mohammad Reza Abidian, assistant professor of bioengineering, chemical engineering and materials science and engineering. "Typically doctors resect the tumors, do radiation therapy and then chemotherapy."
A "window to the brain" implant which would allow doctors to see through the skull and possibly treat patients has been devised by US researchers.
It uses a see-through version of the same material used for hip implants.
The team at University of California, Riverside, say it could allow lasers to be fired into the brain to treat neurological disorders.
The implant was reported in the journal Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine.
Mayo Clinic restores disrupted heartbeat with regenerative intervention | e! Science NewsMayo Clinic researchers have found a way to resynchronize cardiac motion following a heart attack using stem cells. Scientists implanted engineered stem cells, also known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, into damaged regions of mouse hearts following a heart attack. This regenerative approach successfully targeted the origin of abnormal cardiac motion, preventing heart failure. The findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of Physiology.
"The discovery introduces -- for the first time -- stem cell-based 'biological resynchronization' as a novel means to treat cardiac dyssynchrony," says Andre Terzic, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study. Dr. Terzic is the Michael S. and Mary Sue Shannon Family Director, Center for Regenerative Medicine, and the Marriott Family Professor of Cardiovascular Diseases Research.
Scientists believe they have discovered a new reason why we need to sleep - it replenishes a type of brain cell.
Sleep ramps up the production of cells that go on to make an insulating material known as myelin which protects our brain's circuitry.
The findings, so far in mice, could lead to insights about sleep's role in brain repair and growth as well as the disease MS, says the Wisconsin team.
Experimental compound reverses Down syndrome-like learning deficits in miceResearchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health have identified a compound that dramatically bolsters learning and memory when given to mice with a Down syndrome-like condition on the day of birth. As they report in the Sept. 4 issue of Science Translational Medicine, the single-dose treatment appears to enable the cerebellum of the rodents' brains to grow to a normal size.
Sometime in the next few decades, humans may be able to regrow a finger here, a toe there – and maybe even fresh patches of beating heart tissue.
Human hearts are among the most promising targets: "Fifteen years ago we would have said 50 years, but it could be as soon as 10 years from now," Ken Poss, a cell biologist at Duke University, told NBC News.
Just this month, researchers from the Gladstone Institutes showed that they could turn human scar tissue into electrically conductive tissue in a lab dish by fiddling with just a few key genes.
Laser-guided surgery could improve the odds of removing all of a brain tumour by clearly highlighting its edges, US researchers say.
Surgeons are cautious with brain tumours as removing the surrounding tissue could lead to disability.
A technique, reported in Science Translational Medicine, used a laser to analyse the chemistry of the tissue and show the tumour in a different colour.
Brain tumour researchers said it could be an "exciting development".
Removing a brain tumour is a balancing act - take too little and the cancer could return, take too much and it seriously affects a patient's quality of life.
One pill for all heart problems - The Times of IndiaCHANDIGARH: How often do you forget to pop that pill to control your shooting blood pressure? Or skip the aspirin tablet that could have prevented a stroke at night? Not anymore.
For the first time, doctors and researchers have come up with a single pill for all cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including high blood pressure and vulnerability to stroke, doing away with the pain of popping multiple pills to keep your heart healthy. Trials for this new pill - called the polypill - across Europe and India have proved successful, according to a study published on Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
BBC News - Lung diseases cause one in 10 deaths across EuropeLung conditions are the cause of one in 10 of all deaths in Europe and smoking is a major factor, says a report from European Respiratory Society.
It says deaths from lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) will rise over the next 20 years because of past smoking rates.
But a British lung charity says lung disease kills one in four in the UK.
Pioneering heart attack stem cell trial treats 1st patient - Technology & Science - CBC NewsThe first patient has been treated in a groundbreaking medical trial in Ottawa that could lead to a new way to repair damaged tissues following a heart attack.
Researchers announced Thursday that Harriet Garrow of Cornwall, Ont., who suffered a severe heart attack in July, was their first test subject. Her heart had stopped beating before she was resuscitated, causing major damage to her cardiac muscle.
The hope is that a new form of combined gene and stem cell therapy will be able to better repair her heart and those of potentially millions of other heart attack patients.
The therapy involves injecting a patient's own stem cells into their heart to help fix areas that become damaged in a heart attack. Stem cells are a fertile regenerative tissue that can replicate into millions of new, healthy cells.
Novel therapeutic cancer vaccine reaches human clinical trialsA cross-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and clinicians announced today that they have begun a Phase I clinical trial of an implantable vaccine to treat melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer.
Now, 3D printer to create organs at the touch of a button - The Times of IndiaLONDON: Scientists have created a 3D printing device that could soon be used to make tailor-made transplant organs at the click of a button.
The breakthrough by British experts involves a special print head nozzle that can dispense a wide range of different materials highly accurately.
The nozzle, called the Vista 3D, can print large particles and fluids through improvements in droplet ejection, opening up the possibility of printing products as diverse as toys, medical devices, aircraft parts and even organs.
Read more at: Synthetic mRNA can induce self-repair, regeneration of the infarcted heartA team of scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Harvard University has taken a major step towards treatment for heart attack, by instructing the injured heart in mice to heal by expressing a factor that triggers cardiovascular regeneration driven by native heart stem cells. The study, published in Nature Biotechnology, also shows that there was an effect on driving the formation of a small number of new cardiac muscle cells.
"This is the beginning of using the heart as a factory to produce growth factors for specific families of cardiovascular stem cells, and suggests that it may be possible to generate new heart parts without delivering any new cells to the heart itself ", says Kenneth Chien, a Professor at the medical university Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Harvard University, US, who led the research team behind the new findings.
A team of researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has found a way to self-assemble complex structures out of bricks smaller than a grain of salt. The self-assembly method could help solve one of the major challenges in tissue engineering: regrowing human tissue by injecting tiny components into the body that then self-assemble into larger, intricately structured, biocompatible scaffolds at an injury site. The key to self-assembly was developing the world's first programmable glue. The glue is made of DNA, and it directs specific bricks of a water-filled gel to stick only to each other, the scientists report in the September 9th online issue of Nature Communications.
"By using DNA glue to guide gel bricks to self-assemble, we're creating sophisticated programmable architecture," says Peng Yin, Ph.D., a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and senior coauthor of the study, who is also an Assistant Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. This novel self-assembly method worked for gel bricks from as small as a speck of silt (30 microns diameter) to as large as a grain of sand (1 millimeter diameter), underscoring the method's versatility.
Two years ago, Anthony Atala took to the stage at TED and showed the world that human organs could be 3D printed. Now, a team from eastern China has successfully printed a series of living kidneys. This is a huge step forward in the quest for 3D printed replacement organs.
While Atala's original 3D printed kidneys were made with a bio-ink that perfectly replicated kidney tissue. The problem was that these tissues were not vital (living). Without the ability to create living organs, 3D printed transplants would remain impossible. That's why this new breakthrough is so important.
The degeneration of a small, wishbone-shaped structure deep inside the brain may provide the earliest clues to future cognitive decline, long before healthy older people exhibit clinical symptoms of memory loss or dementia, a study by researchers with the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Center has found.
Intestinal tube prototype aims to become a permanent answer to obesityMetaboShield, is an innovative intestinal sleeve that can be lodged permanently in the small intestine via the throat in an anesthesia-free procedure. Though it is still a prototype, when developed the sleeve could help people shed unwanted pounds and potentially help reverse type 2 diabetes.
UCI-led study creates new memories by directly changing the brain | e! Science NewsBy studying how memories are made, UC Irvine neurobiologists created new, specific memories by direct manipulation of the brain, which could prove key to understanding and potentially resolving learning and memory disorders. Research led by senior author Norman M. Weinberger, a research professor of neurobiology & behavior at UC Irvine, and colleagues has shown that specific memories can be made by directly altering brain cells in the cerebral cortex, which produces the predicted specific memory. The researchers say this is the first evidence that memories can be created by direct cortical manipulation.
Study results appeared in the August 29 issue of Neuroscience.
During the research, Weinberger and colleagues played a specific tone to test rodents then stimulated the nucleus basalis deep within their brains, releasing acetylcholine (ACh), a chemical involved in memory formation. This procedure increased the number of brain cells responding to the specific tone. The following day, the scientists played many sounds to the animals and found that their respiration spiked when they recognized the particular tone, showing that specific memory content was created by brain changes directly induced during the experiment. Created memories have the same features as natural memories including long-term retention.
MELBOURNE: Australian scientists have developed the smallest handheld microscope that fits inside a needle and can even pinpoint those cancer cells that are often missed during operations while removing breast cancer tumours.
University of Western Australia researchers were using what is said to be the world's smallest handheld microscope to capture 3D images using a tiny lens, less than a third of a millimetre wide, which fits inside a needle, according to a report in ABC News.
Researchers start Phase I clinical trial of implantable vaccine for treatment of melanomaDesigned to target skin cancer, the implantable vaccine opens a door to treating many cancers and inflammatory diseases
A cross-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and clinicians announced today that they have begun a Phase I clinical trial of an implantable vaccine to treat melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer.
The effort is the fruit of a new model of translational research being pursued at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University that integrates the latest cancer research with bioinspired technology development. It was led by Wyss Core Faculty member David J. Mooney, Ph.D., who is also the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Wyss Institute Associate Faculty member Glenn Dranoff, M.D., who is co-leader of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Cancer Vaccine Center.
