Medical Breakthrough – Page 23

AI, Analysis, Automation, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Google AI claims 99% accuracy in metastatic breast cancer detection

October 25, 2018

Above: Left: a slide containing lymph nodes. Right: LYNA identifying the tumor region.

Metastatic tumors — cancerous cells which break away from their tissue of origin, travel through the body through the circulatory or lymph systems, and form new tumors in other parts of the body — are notoriously difficult to detect. A 2009 study of 102 breast cancer patients at two Boston health centers found that one in four were affected by the “process of care” failures such as inadequate physical examinations and incomplete diagnostic tests.

That’s one of the reasons that of the half a million deaths worldwide caused by breast cancer, an estimated 90 percent are the result of metastasis. But researchers at the Naval Medical Center San Diego and Google AI, a division within Google dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) research, have developed a promising solution employing cancer-detecting algorithms that autonomously evaluate lymph node biopsies.

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Biotech, DNA, Medical Breakthrough, new technology, Parenting

Same-sex mouse parents give birth via gene editing

October 21, 2018

Scientists delivered pups with genetic material from two moms and two dads. But only pups with two moms survived to have babies themselves.

BIRDS DO IT, bees do it—even laboratory mice do it. But with science in the mix, actually creating new life may not always require a male and a female.

Using gene editing and stem cells, researchers in China have helped mice of the same sex bear pups. While this feat has been accomplished before with mouse moms, the new study marks the first time that pups from pairs of male mice were also carried to full term.

The technology is far from ready for the leap to humans. Though mice pups born from two females appeared healthy and bore their own young, pups with two papas died soon after birth. Of the 12 born, just two survived more than 48 hours.

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Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Science & Technology News

The probiotic that kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria

October 20, 2018

Infection with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus can cause many health problems, including sepsis. Certain strains of this bacterium are resistant to antibiotics, so they are particularly dangerous. However, researchers discover that a probiotic bacterium can destroy this superbug.

Researchers are now investigating the potential of a probiotic bacterium in treating MRSA infections.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is highly resistant to treatment with antibiotics.

These include oxacillin, flucloxacillin, and dicloxacillin.

Continue reading… “The probiotic that kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria”

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, 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”

brains, DNA, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Building a better brain-in-a-dish, faster and cheaper

October 5, 2018

UC San Diego researchers develop new protocol for creating human cortical organoids, mini-brains derived directly from primary cells that can be used to better explore and understand the real thing.

Writing in the current online issue of the journal Stem Cells and Development , researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe development of a rapid, cost-effective method to create human cortical organoids directly from primary cells.

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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.

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Alzheimer's Disease, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Senolytic therapies seem to stop Alzheimer’s disease ‘in its tracks’

September 30, 2018

Scientists at the University of Texas have implicated a type of cellular stress for the first time as a player in Alzheimer’s disease. And their discovery could lead to treatments for more than 20 human brain diseases including Alzheimer’s and traumatic brain injury. One author of the study went as far as to say the treatment that researchers used on mice to rid them of the stressed cells actually stopped Alzheimer’s disease “in its tracks.”

Researchers at the The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, now called UT Health San Antonio® established a link between tau tangles and the stressed or senescent cells they found in Alzheimer’s-diseased tissue. Senescence is the process by which cells irreversibly stop dividing or growing without actually dying. Already proven to be involved in cancer and aging, tau protein accumulation is known to exist in 20 human brain diseases. “Tau protein accumulation is the most common pathology among degenerative brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), traumatic brain injury (TBI) and over twenty others,” the research paper notes.

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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?”