Medical Breakthrough – Page 17

AI, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, new technology, Science & Technology News

AI-formulated medicine to be tested on humans for the first time

February 25, 2020

It took less than a year to develop the drug, which is designed to treat OCD.

A drug designed entirely by artificial intelligence is about to enter clinical human trials for the first time. The drug, which is intended to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, was discovered using AI systems from Oxford-based biotech company Exscientia. While it would usually take around four and a half years to get a drug to this stage of development, Exscientia says that by using the AI tools it’s taken less than 12 months.

Continue reading… “AI-formulated medicine to be tested on humans for the first time”

Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, new technology, Science & Technology News

Replacement blood vessels may be woven from bio-yarn

February 19, 2020

Blood vessels made from the yarn should reportedly be tolerated by all patients

When a damaged blood vessel has to be replaced, it’s important that the replacement be well-tolerated by the body. And while bioprinted blood vessels are one possibility, French scientists are now working on weaving the things out of collagen yarn.

Led by researcher Nicolas L’Heureux, a team at the Inserm institute – aka the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research – started by lab-cultivating human cells, which in turn produced extracellular matrix deposits that were high in collagen. The extracellular matrix is the three-dimensional network of macromolecules that surrounds the body’s cells, helping to keep those cells structurally and biochemically supported.

Sheets of the lab-grown matrix deposits were next cut into very thin fiber-like strips, forming the yarn. It can be woven, knitted or braided, and has already been used to create vascular grafts (implantable tubes for redirecting the flow of blood). Those grafts exhibited “burst pressure, suture retention strength and transmural permeability that surpassed clinical requirements.”

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Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Scientists create ‘chemical gardens’ that can be used as bone substitute materials

February 16, 2020

A new way of making bone-replacement materials that allows for cells to grow around and inside them has been developed by researchers at the University of Birmingham.

The team adopted a novel approach called chemobrionics, in which chemical components are controllably driven to react together in specific ways, enabling the self-assembly of intricate bio-inspired structures.

Scientists first observed these life-like ‘chemical gardens’ several hundred years ago, but recent renewed interest in the field of chemobrionics has seen researchers using these techniques to design new materials at the micro- and nanoscale.

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Medical Breakthrough, new technology, Robotics, Science & Technology News, Wearables

Paralyzed man breaks world record for finishing a marathon in an exoskeleton suit

February 5, 2020

Adam Gorlitsky says groups of people kept him going as he finished mile after mile of the 2020 Charleston Marathon.

(CNN)A South Carolina man competing in the 2020 Charleston Marathon has beaten the world record for the fastest time to finish a marathon in an exoskeleton suit.

Adam Gorlitsky, who is paralyzed from the waist down, completed Saturday’s 26.2-mile race with a time of 33 hours, 50 minutes and 23 seconds, Cory Michel, one of the organizers of the Charleston Marathon, told CNN.

The current record holder is British man Simon Kindleysides, who finished the 2018 London Marathon in 36 hours and 46 minutes, according to Guinness World Records.

Guinness has not certified Gorlitsky’s race results, which Gorlitsky said he plans to submit to the organization Monday.

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Cancer, DNA, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Scientists might have accidentally cured cancer

January 26, 2020

Research Into Cancer Conducted At The Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute

New treatment for killing cancer cells may have accidentally been discovered by a group of British scientists, according to reports.

Cardiff University’s research team found a T-Cell that attaches itself onto human cancers, and kills them while ignoring healthy cells. Although in its early stages of development, the treatment successfully destroys bone, lung, breast, colon, prostate, and other cancers, The Telegraph reported. (RELATED: Alex Trebek Announces He Was Diagnosed With Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer)

Originally, researchers were only looking for immune cells that were capable of fighting bacteria, before they discovered the T-Cell virus. Their findings were made available on Monday.

“There’s a chance here to treat every patient,” Professor Andrew Sewell of Cardiff University told the BBC. “Previously nobody believed this could be possible. It raises the prospect of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ cancer treatment, a single type of T-cell that could be capable of destroying many different types of cancers across the population.”

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Augmented Reality, Inventions, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News, Virtual Reality

The making of Mojo, AR contact lenses that give your eyes superpowers

January 18, 2020

Using a display the size of a grain of sand to project images onto the retina, this startup could help everyone from firefighters to people with poor vision.

When I looked into the user interface of Mojo Vision’s augmented reality contact lenses, I didn’t see anything at first except the real world in front of me. Only when I peeked over toward the periphery did a small yellow weather icon appear. When I examined it more closely, I could see the local temperature, the current weather, and some forecast information. I looked over to the 9 o’clock position and saw a traffic icon that gave way to a frontal graphic showing potential driving routes on a simple map. At 12 o’clock, I found my calendar and to-do information. At the bottom of my view was a simple music controller.

Rather than wearing Mojo’s contact lenses—which aren’t yet ready to demo—I was looking at a mock-up of a future, consumer version of their interface through a VR headset. But the point was made. Instead of offering the pretty holograms of the Magic Leap and HoloLens headsets, Mojo aims to place useful data and imagery over your world—and boost your natural vision—using tech that can barely be seen. The startup named the lenses “Mojo” because it wants to build something that’s like getting superpowers for your eyes.

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Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, new technology, Science & Technology News

Scientists have created an artificial retina implant that could restore vision to million

January 18, 2020

Scientists have developed a retinal implant that can restore lost vision in rats, and are planning to trial the procedure in humans later this year.

The implant, which converts light into an electrical signal that stimulates retinal neurons, could give hope to millions who experience retinal degeneration – including retinitis pigmentosa – in which photoreceptor cells in the eye begin to break down, leading to blindness.

The retina is located at the back of the eye, and is made up of millions of these light-sensitive photoreceptors. But mutations in any one of the 240 identified genes can lead to retinal degeneration, where these photoreceptor cells die off, even while the retinal neurons around them are unaffected.

Because the retinal nerves remain intact and functional, previous research has looked at treating retinitis pigmentosa with bionic eye devices that stimulate the neurons with lights, while other scientists have investigated using CRISPR gene editing to repair the mutations that cause blindness.

Now, a team led by the Italian Institute of Technology has developed a new approach, with a prosthesis implanted into the eye that serves as a working replacement for a damaged retina.

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Engineering, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Robots, Science & Technology News

Scientists use stem cells from frogs to build first living robots

January 16, 2020

Researchers foresee myriad benefits for humanity, but also acknowledge ethical issues

Be warned. If the rise of the robots comes to pass, the apocalypse may be a more squelchy affair than science fiction writers have prepared us for.

Researchers in the US have created the first living machines by assembling cells from African clawed frogs into tiny robots that move around under their own steam.

One of the most successful creations has two stumpy legs that propel it along on its “chest”. Another has a hole in the middle that researchers turned into a pouch so it could shimmy around with miniature payloads.

“These are entirely new lifeforms. They have never before existed on Earth,” said Michael Levin, the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “They are living, programmable organisms.”

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Breakthrough Thinking, Medical Breakthrough, new technology, Science & Technology News

Artificial lifeforms designed by supercomputers are fully programmable

January 14, 2020

This living organism was designed by a supercomputer and assembled in the labSam Kriegman, UVM

Robots are made to mimic living creatures, and as smart as they’re becoming, we can still look at them and understand that they aren’t “living” in any real sense. But that line is now beginning to blur. Researchers at the University of Vermont and Tufts University have essentially created new creatures from frog cells, complete with programmable behaviors.

The new living robots are made of skin and heart cells taken from frog embryos, assembled into stable forms designed by a supercomputer and set loose in a Petri dish. The skin cells work to give the little critters their shape – which kind of resembles a blob with four “legs” – while the heart cells push them around with every pump.

“These are novel living machines,” says Joshua Bongard, co-lead researcher on the project. “They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”

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Cancer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Scientists successfully turn breast cancer cells into fat to stop them from spreading

December 26, 2019

Researchers have been able to coax human breast cancer cells to turn into fat cells in a new proof-of-concept study in mice.

To achieve this feat, the team exploited a weird pathway that metastasising cancer cells have; their results are just a first step, but it’s a truly promising approach.

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Cancer, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

Israeli scientists find way to treat pancreatic cancer in 14 days

December 12, 2019

Cancerous cells forming a lump in the pancreatic tissue

The tumor in one mouse that was injected with human cancer cells completely disappeared.

A new treatment developed by Tel Aviv University could induce the destruction of pancreatic cancer cells, eradicating the number of cancerous cells by up to 90% after two weeks of daily injections of a small molecule known as PJ34.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat. Most people who are diagnosed with the disease do not even live five years after being diagnosed.

Continue reading… “Israeli scientists find way to treat pancreatic cancer in 14 days”

Genes, Genetics, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

A new CRISPR technique could fix almost all genetic diseases possible

December 1, 2019

A new method, called “prime editing,” could, in principle, correct around
89 percent of the mutations that cause inherited human disease.

A less error-prone DNA editing method could correct many more harmful mutations than was previously possible.

Andrew Anzalone was restless. It was late fall of 2017. The year was winding down, and so was his MD/PhD program at Columbia. Trying to figure out what was next in his life, he’d taken to long walks in the leaf-strewn West Village. One night as he paced up Hudson Street, his stomach filled with La Colombe coffee and his mind with Crispr gene editing papers, an idea began to bubble through the caffeine brume inside his brain.

Continue reading… “A new CRISPR technique could fix almost all genetic diseases possible”