Biotech – Page 10 – Impact Lab

Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

Scientists grow human retinas and illuminate eye disease targets

October 20, 2018

Retinal organoid at 291 days. Red and green cone cells are green in the photo, while blue cone cells are blue.

Scientists were able to grow human retinas from stem cells for 1 year, allowing them to mimic human fetal development of retinas and closely observe how color-detecting cells form.

Why it matters: The information they gathered could be used to prevent or treat eye diseases and disorders like glaucoma, macular degeneration, color blindness and eye problems from premature births, Johns Hopkins University scientists say in a new study published in Science Thursday.

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Biotech, Healthcare, Inventions, Medicine, Wearables

A stretchy stick-on patch can take blood pressure readings from deep inside your body

October 13, 2018

The flexible stamp can collect data that usually requires bulky, invasive equipment.

The last time you had your blood pressure checked, it was probably at a doctor’s office with a bulky cuff wrapped around your arm. One day soon, perhaps, you will just need a simple stick-on patch on your neck, no bigger than a postage stamp.

That’s the goal of Sheng Xu and his team at the University of California, San Diego, who are working on a patch that can continuously measure someone’s central blood pressure—the pressure of blood coursing beyond your aorta, the artery in your heart that delivers blood to all the different parts of the body. It could make it a lot easier to monitor heart conditions and keep an eye on other vital organs like the liver, lungs, and brain.

Continue reading… “A stretchy stick-on patch can take blood pressure readings from deep inside your body”

Biotech, Breakthrough Thinking, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

The ‘game-changing’ technique to create babies from skin cells just stepped forward

October 6, 2018

Scientists in Japan made progress recently in the quest to combat infertility, creating the precursor to a human egg cell in a dish from nothing but a woman’s blood cells. The research is an important step toward what scientists call a “game-changing” technology that has the potential to transform reproduction.

The primitive reproductive cell the scientists created is not a mature egg, and it cannot be fertilized to create an embryo. But researchers have already created eggs out of mouse tail cells and fertilized them to produce viable pups, so outside scientists said the research is on track to one day achieve human “in vitro gametogenesis” — a method of creating eggs and sperm in a dish.

Continue reading… “The ‘game-changing’ technique to create babies from skin cells just stepped forward”

Biotech, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine

CRISPR gene editing creates cocaine-proof mice, aims to crack addiction puzzle

October 6, 2018

Gene editing has already given us malaria-resistant mosquitoes and heat-resistant cows. Now, researchers from the University of Chicago may have topped both of those feats with their latest creation: Cocaine-resistant mice. Using the CRISPR-based gene-editing platform to modify the DNA of skin cells, researchers Xiaoyang Wu and Ming Xu have been able not only to create mice that are less likely to seek out cocaine than their counterparts, but are also immune to cocaine overdoses that killed mice without the same CRISPR-edited cells.

The process builds on previous work involving a modified enzyme called butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE), which is capable of naturally breaking down cocaine very rapidly. Unfortunately, its short half-life makes it ineffective in a clinical scenario, since it disappears before it has any long-term impact on the body’s response to cocaine. BCHE cannot be administered orally, which makes it ill-suited for use as a potential treatment.

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Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Solar Power, Wearables

Japan’s new solar-powered “Second Skin” device revolutionizes wearable tech

October 2, 2018

It looks more like a band-aid than a watch.

Advances in wearable tech have been pretty impressive lately, but the device described in a new Nature study blows the competition out of the water. While the Apple Watch is now equipped with an FDA-approved EKG sensor and companies like Samsung are going out of their way to make smartwatches look like fashion statements, the device described in the paper, published Wednesday, puts both to shame. This heart-sensing device has no wires, requires no charging, and is so small that it can wrap around a rat’s heart.

Study co-author Kenjiro Fukuda, Ph.D., a research scientist at Japan’s RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science is quick to say that his device represents a big step forward for wearables. It looks more like a band-aid than a watch, and it’s thinner than a piece of cardboard.

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Biotech, Engineering, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

Two people with paralysis walk again using an implanted device

October 1, 2018

‘It was like watching fireworks, but from the inside’

After Kelly Thomas’ truck flipped with her inside of it in 2014, she was told that she probably would never walk again. Now, with help from a spinal cord implant that she’s nicknamed “Junior,” Thomas is able to walk on her own.

Thomas and Jeff Marquis, who was paralyzed after a mountain biking accident, can now independently walk again after participating in a study at the University of Louisville that was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Thomas’ balance is still off and she needs a walker, but she can walk a hundred yards across grass. She also gained muscle and lost the nerve pain in her foot that has persisted since her accident. Another unnamed person with a spinal cord injury can now independently step across the ground with help from a trainer, according to a similar study at the Mayo Clinic that was also published today in the journal Nature Medicine.

Continue reading… “Two people with paralysis walk again using an implanted device”

Biotech, DNA, Genes, Medical Breakthrough

Scientists just made human egg cells from human blood for the first time

September 29, 2018

It’s the first step toward being able to mass produce human eggs using other people’s body tissues or blood.

Scientists in Japan have used human blood to successfully create immature human egg cells in a lab for the first time, according to new research published Thursday in Science. The work is a major breakthrough in stem cell research and may lead the way to babies that can be created in a lab using the body tissues or blood of their relatives.

Mitinori Saitou, a biologist at Kyoto University who contributed to this pioneering research, managed to produce mouse eggs and sperm from stem cells back in 2012 and used them to breed healthy baby mice. It was the first time that eggs were created from embryonic stem cells.

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Biotech, cutting edge, DNA, Medical Breakthrough

Scientists grow full-sized, beating humanity hearts from stem cells

September 25, 2018

It’s the closest we’ve come to growing transplantable hearts in the lab.

Of the 4,000 Americans waiting for heart transplants, only 2,500 will receive new hearts in the next year. Even for those lucky enough to get a transplant, the biggest risk is the their bodies will reject the new heart and launch a massive immune reaction against the foreign cells. To combat the problems of organ shortage and decrease the chance that a patient’s body will reject it, researchers have been working to create synthetic organs from patients’ own cells. Now a team of scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School has gotten one step closer, using adult skin cells to regenerate functional human heart tissue, according to a study published recently in the journal Circulation Research.

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Biotech, DNA, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

CRISPR halted muscular dystrophy in dogs. Are humans next?

September 11, 2018

ABOUT TEN YEARS ago, British veterinarians discovered an unlucky family of King Charles Spaniels whose male pups sometimes came down with a mysterious set of maladies before their first birthday. They grew clumsy and weak, and they often choked on their own tongues. To blame was a mutation on their X chromosomes, in a gene that codes for a shock-absorbing muscle protein called dystrophin. When researchers at the Royal Veterinary College realized the puppers had a canine version of the most common fatal genetic disease in children—Duchenne muscular dystrophy—they began breeding the sick spaniels with beagles to start a canine colony in the hopes of one day finding a cure.

Today, scientists report they’ve halted the progression of the disease in some of those doggy descendants using the gene editing tool known as Crispr.

Continue reading… “CRISPR halted muscular dystrophy in dogs. Are humans next?”

Biotech, Engineering, Medical Breakthrough

Artificial retinas made of this ultra-thin super material could help millions see again

September 10, 2018

TRULY SUPER. There’s a reason researchers call graphene a “super material.” Even though it’s just a single layer of carbon atoms thick, it’s super strong, super flexible, and super light. It also conducts electricity, and is biodegradable. Now an international team of researchers has found a way to use the super material: to create artificial retinas.

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3D Printer, Biotech, Medical Breakthrough

Researchers 3D print prototype “BionicEye”

September 8, 2018

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have 3D printed a light receptive array, consisting of silver particles and semiconducting polymers, on a glass hemispherical surface. The printed material can convert light to electricity, and the researchers hope that it could one day, with more research, end up serving as a bionic eye.

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Biotech, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Medicine

A potential boom is coming in anti-aging drugs

September 5, 2018

As the average age in developed economies rises in the coming years and decades, one of the next big economic disruptions may be in anti-aging medicines, according to a report by Citi.

Why it matters: Already, the anti-aging market is about $200 billion, and the new boom could be in drugs that slow, reverse or prevent age-related disease, Citi says. On the other hand, if people are aging more slowly, and diseases are slowed or prevented, then other drugs, treatments and surgeries, which earn billions of dollars, may not be necessary.

Continue reading… “A potential boom is coming in anti-aging drugs”