Category: Medical Breakthrough

Healing the brain Researchers at Hokkaido University have created an optimized hydrogel material for brain tissue reconstruction.

Scientists have developed a hydrogel that can aid in the growth of new tissue in areas of brain damage, according to a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications. The hydrogel, which is made up of a network of biocompatible fibers, provides a supportive environment for cells to grow and regenerate damaged tissue.

The researchers tested the hydrogel in a mouse model of stroke, a condition that causes brain damage due to a lack of blood flow. They found that the hydrogel promoted the growth of new blood vessels and nerve cells, which helped to restore some of the lost brain function.

Continue reading… “Hydrogel Helps Grow New Tissue in Areas of Brain Damage”

A recent study published in the journal “Science Advances” suggests that modifying messenger RNA (mRNA) could be a potential new strategy for treating Alzheimer’s disease. The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by Professor Tamas Revesz from the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and Dr. Michal Schwartz from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

The researchers focused on a particular protein called tau, which is known to accumulate in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and is thought to contribute to the disease. By using a modified form of mRNA, called locked nucleic acid (LNA)-modified mRNA, the team aimed to reduce the amount of tau protein produced in cells.

“Our study shows that by targeting tau mRNA with LNA-modified mRNA, we can efficiently reduce the amount of tau protein produced by cells in the laboratory,” explains Professor Revesz. “This is an important finding as tau is a key player in the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.”

Continue reading… “Modifying Messenger RNA Could Create a New Target for Alzheimer’s Disease”

by Wiley

Natural and artificial cells are useful for research, with each having different pros and cons. In research published in Advanced Science, investigators recently created a hybrid called Cyborg Cells that have the engineering simplicity of synthetic materials and the complex functionalities of natural cells.

To create Cyborg Cells, scientists assembled a synthetic polymer network inside bacterial cells, rendering them incapable of dividing. Cyborg Cells preserved essential cell functions but also acquired new abilities to resist stressors that otherwise kill natural cells.

Experiments revealed that Cyborg Cells could be modified to invade cancer cells, thereby demonstrating their therapeutic potential.

Continue reading… “Researchers create Cyborg Cells—natural-artificial cell hybrids”

By STACY LIBERATORE

• US laboratory has transformed a pig liver into a human organ that could save hundreds of thousands of lives
• The team washes away animal cells in the livers and replaces them with human cells, which they say tricks the body into thinking it is a human liver
• This method could be tested in human trials next year 

Scientists are in a race against time to perfect a process that transforms pig livers into human organs that could save the 105,000 people waiting for transplants. 

A team at a Miromatrix laboratory in Minneapolis is working on a method that completely washes away the animal cells in the organ, leaving behind a rubbery honeycomb structure.

Human liver cells are then oozed back into the liver, filling in the nooks and crannies to restart the organ’s functions. 

Continue reading… “Pig-turned-humanlike livers will help more than 105,000 people waiting for a transplant: New process replaces animal cells with human’s to regrow the organ”

SYNTHETIC MOLECULES THAT ADHERE CELLS COULD GALVANIZE REGENERATIVE MEDICINE

Molecules that act like “cellular glue” have been developed by researchers, enabling them to control exactly how cells bond with each other. This represents a significant advancement towards the construction of tissues and organs, which has been a key objective in the field of regenerative medicine for a long time.

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have engineered molecules that act like “cellular glue,” allowing them to direct in precise fashion how cells bond with each other. The discovery represents a major step toward building tissues and organs, a long-sought goal of regenerative medicine.

Adhesive molecules are found naturally throughout the body, holding its tens of trillions of cells together in highly organized patterns. They form structures, create neuronal circuits, and guide immune cells to their targets. Adhesion also facilitates communication between cells to keep the body functioning as a self-regulating whole.

In a new study, published in the December 12, 2022, issue of Nature, researchers engineered cells containing customized adhesion molecules that bound with specific partner cells in predictable ways to form complex multicellular ensembles.

“We were able to engineer cells in a manner that allows us to control which cells they interact with, and also to control the nature of that interaction,“ said senior author Wendell Lim, PhD, the Byers Distinguished Professor of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and director of UCSF’s Cell Design Institute. “This opens the door to building novel structures like tissues and organs.”

Continue reading… “Regenerative Medicine Breakthrough: Cellular “Glue” To Regenerate Tissues, Heal Wounds, Regrow Nerves”

Ellen Roche with the soft, implantable ventilator designed by her and her team.

By Brianna Wessling 

Researchers at MIT have designed a soft, robotic implantable ventilator that can augment the diaphragm’s natural contractions. 

The implantable ventilator is made from two soft, balloon-like tubes that would be implanted to lie over the diaphragm. When inflated with an external pump, the tubes act as artificial muscles that push down the diaphragm and help the lungs expand. The tubes can be inflated to match the diaphragm’s natural rhythm. 

The diaphragm lies just below the ribcage. It pushes down to create a vacuum for the lungs to expand into so they can draw air in, and then relaxes to let air out. 

The tubes in the ventilator are similar to McKibben actuators, a kind of pneumatic device. The team attached the tubes to the ribcage at either side of the diaphragm, so that the device was laying across the muscle from front to back. Using a thin external airline, the team connected the tubes to a small pump and control system. 

This soft ventilator was designed by Ellen Roche, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT and her colleagues. The research team created a proof-of-concept design for the ventilator. 

“This is a proof of concept of a new way to ventilate,” Roche told MIT News. “The biomechanics of this design are closer to normal breathing, versus ventilators that push air into the lungs, where you have a mask or tracheostomy. There’s a long road before this will be implanted in a human. But it’s exciting that we could show we could augment ventilation with something implantable.”

According to Roche, the key to maximizing the amount of work the implantable pump does is by giving the diaphragm an extra push downwards when it naturally contracts. This means the team didn’t have to try to mimic exactly how the diaphragm moves, just create a device that is capable of giving that push. 

Continue reading… “MIT researchers create implantable robotic ventilator”

The team’s new “cellular glue” molecules helped these cells assemble into a structure.

By Monisha Ravisetti

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco announced a fascinating innovation on Monday. They call it “cellular glue” and say it could one day open doors to massive medical achievements, like building organs in a lab for transplantation and reconstructing nerves that’ve been damaged beyond the reach of standard surgical repair.

Basically, the team engineered a set of synthetic molecules that can be manipulated to coax cells within the human body to bond with one another. Together, these molecules constitute the so-called “cellular glue” and act like adhesive molecules naturally found in and around cells that involuntarily dictate the way our tissues, nerves and organs are structured and anchored together. 

Only in this case scientists can voluntarily control them. 

“The properties of a tissue, like your skin for example, are determined in large part by how the different cells are organized within it,” Adam Stevens, a researcher at UCSF’s Cell Design Institute and first author of a paper in the journal Nature, said in a statement. “We’re devising ways to control this organization of cells, which is central to being able to synthesize tissues with the properties we want them to have.” 

Doctors could eventually use the sticky material as a viable mechanism to mend patients’ wounds, regrow nerves otherwise deemed destroyed and potentially even work toward regenerating diseased lungs, livers and other vital organs. 

That last bit could lend a hand in alleviating the crisis of donor organs rapidly running out of supply. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, 17 people in the US die each day while on the waitlist for an organ transplant, yet every 10 minutes, another person is added to that list.

“Our work reveals a flexible molecular adhesion code that determines which cells will interact, and in what way,” Stevens said. “Now that we are starting to understand it, we can harness this code to direct how cells assemble into tissues and organs.”

Continue reading… “New ‘Cellular Glue’ Concept Could Heal Wounds, Regrow Nerves”

Microscale model developed by USC researchers Megan Mccain and Megan Rexius that can replicate key aspects of myocardial infarction and might one day serve as a testbed for new personalized heart drugs.

By Joshua Stan

Scientists at the University of Southern California have developed a “heart attack on a chip” microscale model that can replicate key aspects of myocardial infarction. This device has the potential to serve as a testbed for developing new heart drugs and personalized medicines in the future. USC researchers Megan McCain and postdoc Megan Rexius-Hall engineered the “heart attack on a chip” at the University of Southern California’s Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering.

The device, developed by the researchers, can be used to clearly understand how the heart is changing after a heart attack, allowing for the development and testing of drugs that can limit the further degradation of heart tissue that can occur after a heart attack.

The microscale model can replicate some key features of a heart attack in a simple and easy-to-use system. Megan McCain, a cardiac tissue engineer whose work includes co-developing a heart on a chip, and Rexius-Hall have published their findings in the journal Science Advances in an article titled “A Myocardial Infarct Border-Zone-On-A-Chip Demonstrates Distinct Regulation of Cardiac Tissue Function by an Oxygen Gradient.”

Continue reading… “Replicating Myocardial Infarction: Scientists Engineered ‘Heart Attack on a Chip’ Microscale Model for America’s Known Killer”

Scientists identified the specific neurons needed for people to recover the ability to walk after spinal cord injuries. 

By Nicoletta Lanese

Scientists identified specific spinal nerve cells that people likely need to regain the ability to walk after paralyzing injuries.

People with paralyzing spinal cord injuries can walk again with the help of medical devices that zap their nerves with electricity. But the designers of these new implants weren’t completely sure of how they restored motor function over time — now, a new study provides clues. 

The new study of humans and lab mice, published Nov. 9 in the journal Nature, pinpoints a specific population of nerve cells that seems key to recovering the ability to walk after a paralyzing spinal cord injury. With a jolt of electricity, an implant can switch these neurons on and thus jumpstart a cascade of events in which the very architecture of the nervous system changes. This cellular remodel restores the lost lines of communication between the brain and the muscles needed for walking, allowing once-paralyzed people to walk again, the researchers concluded.

Understanding how the nerve-zapping system, called epidural electrical stimulation (EES), “reshapes spinal circuits could help researchers to develop targeted techniques to restore walking, and potentially enable the recovery of more-complex movements,” Eiman Azim, a principal investigator at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and Kee Wui Huang, a postdoctoral fellow in Azim’s lab, wrote in a commentary.

Nine people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries participated in the new study. Six were mostly or completely unable to move their legs but retained some feeling in the limbs; the other three participants had no motor control or sensation from the waist down. 

Continue reading… “Electrical zaps can ‘reawaken’ lost neural connections, helping paralyzed people walk again”

Research out of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom, has developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology that can produce 4D flow images of a heart in less than half the time of a traditional 4D MRI scan, which takes up to 20 minutes. The new scan technology takes only eight minutes and looks to revolutionize the way potential heart failure is diagnosed.

“The best method to diagnose heart failure is by invasive assessment, which is not preferred as it has risks,” says Dr. Pankaj Garg, lead researcher on the study, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust. He adds, while echocardiography is often used to measure peak velocity of blood flow with precision and accuracy, the method is unreliable. “In the 4D flow MRI, we can look at the flow in three directions over time.”

However, the time needed to carry out a 4D flow MRI traditionally takes up to 20 minutes, so, given patients aversions to MRI scans, the research team identified the need to shorten scan times. Working with General Electrics Healthcare in Germany, they investigated the reliability of Kat-ARC, a new fast-scan method. The results provide a precise image of heart valves and blood flow within the heart, which will help doctors better diagnose and decide a course of treatment for patients.

Continue reading… “New 4D Flow MRI Cuts Heart Scan Time in Half”