Category: Medical Breakthrough

Currently, transplanted grafts need to be implanted into a healthy part of the body so that the patient can generate new blood vessels to support it.

By HADAS LABRISCH  

Engineered blood vessels in Technion study. Vascular structures in the scaffold lumen (brown) communicate with vessels located in the surrounding hydrogel (green).(photo credit: Courtesy)AdvertisementSkin flaps, bone grafts, implanted tissue – recent advancements in medicine have changed the face of surgery in terms of autologous – meaning self – transplantations.While extensive damage to organs once meant a nearly sure amputation or need for an external transplant, today’s science focuses on harvesting cells and tissue from a person’s own body to complete the injured pieces of the puzzle, using grafts and flaps to repair skin, vessels, tubes and bones.Yet, ask any surgeon attempting to insert a flap and they would tell you that the most important – and restrictive – component of a graft’s success is ample blood supply.

Every 10 minutes someone is added to the organ transplant waiting list in the US. 

As of May 2021, there were over 100,000 people waiting for replacement organs across the country. 

And countless more people in need of “spare parts” never even make it onto the waiting list. On average, 17 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of US deaths could be prevented or postponed with access to organ replacements. 

That’s why the recent announcement of the first successful human transplant of an artificial heart in a US patient is such a big development. 

The artificial heart used in the transplant was created by medical technology company Carmat, which won FDA approval for human trials just last year. Discussing the latest developments in biotech—using biology as technology—is a key focus of my year-round coaching program Abundance360.

In today’s blog, we’ll discuss how Carmat’s artificial heart works and how it fits into the broader objective of regenerative medicine. 

Let’s dive in… 

By Brandon May

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is an innovative procedure studied in several conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease. Recent animal research reportedin Nature Aging on Monday suggests fecal transplants may actually reverse the signs of brain aging.

The study transplanted gut microbes from the feces of young mice into older mice to reverse age-related declines of the brain. Intestinal bacteria have been shown to play a role in a variety physiological processes and also influence different dimensions of overall health.

In response to emailed questions, Encellin CEO offered an overview of the company’s device that functions like a pouch to help implanted cells survive in the body. 

By STEPHANIE BAUM

Crystal Nyitray, Ph.D., the CEO and Co-founder of Encellin provided an overview of the company’s emerging cell tech to treat chronic endocrine disorders hypoglycemia and hypocalcemia.

Why did you start this company?

Encellin was founded because we have unique opportunity to help millions of patients. The technology developed at UCSF needed a way to move forward, so we created Encellin. Also starting a company gives you the chance a create a specialized team of people dedicated to advancing a therapy forward. We get to create a culture that cares about helping patients, and has the courage to try new ways of thinking.  

In efforts to fight obesity and enhance drug absorption, scientists have extensively studied how gastric juices in the stomach break down ingested food and other substances. However, less is known about how the complex flow patterns and mechanical stresses produced in the stomach contribute to digestion.

Researchers from France, Michigan, and Switzerland built a prototype of an artificial antrum, or lower stomach, to present a deeper understanding of how physical forces influence food digestion based on fluid dynamics. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, they reveal a classifying effect based on the breakup of liquid drops combined with transport phenomena derived from complementary computer simulations.

The relevant parts of the stomach are the corpus, where food is stored; the antrum, where food is ground; and the pylorus, or pyloric sphincter, the tissue valve that connects to the small intestine. Slow-wave muscle contractions begin in the corpus, with wave speed and amplitude increasing to form the antral contraction waves (ACWs) as they propagate toward the pylorus.

The researchers’ antrum device consists of a cylinder, capped at one end to imitate a closed pylorus, and a hollow piston that moves inside the cylinder to replicate ACWs. As verified through computer simulations and experimental measurements, the protype produces the characteristics of retropulsive jet flow that exist in the antrum.

Food disintegration is quantified by determining the breakup of liquid drops in flow fields produced by ACWs. The researchers studied different model fluid systems with various viscosity to account for the broad physical properties of digested food. The drop size and other parameters resemble conditions in a real stomach.

Rice University bioengineers are designing a vascularized, insulin-producing implant for Type 1 diabetes. Graduate student Madison Royse demonstrates a laboratory setup for testing blood flow through 3D-printed hydrogels that can be turned into living tissue.

Rice University bioengineers are using 3D printing and smart biomaterials to create an insulin-producing implant for Type 1 diabetics.

The three-year project is a partnership between the laboratories of Omid Veiseh and Jordan Miller that’s supported by a grant from JDRF, the leading global funder of diabetes research. Veiseh and Miller will use insulin-producing beta cells made from human stem cells to create an implant that senses and regulates blood glucose levels by responding with the correct amount of insulin at a given time.

Veiseh, an assistant professor of bioengineering, has spent more than a decade developing biomaterials that protect implanted cell therapies from the immune system. Miller, an associate professor of bioengineering, has spent more than 15 years researching techniques to 3D print tissues with vasculature, or networks of blood vessels.

“If we really want to recapitulate what the pancreas normally does, we need vasculature,” Veiseh said. “And that’s the purpose of this grant with JDRF. The pancreas naturally has all these blood vessels, and cells are organized in particular ways in the pancreas. Jordan and I want to print in the same orientation that exists in nature.”