Medical Breakthrough – Page 25

Breakthrough Thinking, Children, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

Inside the controversial new surgery to transplant human wombs

June 22, 2018

Pioneering surgeons have made it possible to transplant a human uterus that can bear children, offering hope to millions of women who never thought they could give birth.

On September 4, 2014, in Gothenburg, Sweden, his 36-year-old expectant mother lay on an operating table, suffering from preeclampsia—a pregnancy complication associated with high blood pressure. The baby’s heartbeat showed signs of stress. Normally the woman’s doctors might have taken a wait-and-see approach, treating her with medication and hoping to give the nearly 32-week-old fetus time to grow to full term of about 40 weeks.

But this was no normal gestation. This was the world’s first human nurtured inside a transplanted uterus. He was the product of more than a decade of research. For years, no one had been sure he could exist in that womb—let alone be born. This was not a wait-and-see situation.

Continue reading… “Inside the controversial new surgery to transplant human wombs”

Cancer, China, Medical Breakthrough

A cancer blockbuster gets approved in China. Will the floodgates now open?

June 21, 2018

Bristol-Myers Squibb announced today that its pioneering cancer immunotherapy drug Opdivo has been approved for sale in China.

Opdivo targets a protein called PD-1, which is effectively a braking signal in the immune system. Cancer cells are incredibly wily when it comes to evading the body’s own natural defenses, and one of the ways they manage this feat is by tricking the immune system into restraining its own attack dogs. So-called “checkpoint inhibitors” like Opdivo—which is often called by its biological name, nivolumab—essentially remove the biological leash, allowing immune cells to freely attack the cancer predator.

Continue reading… “A cancer blockbuster gets approved in China. Will the floodgates now open?”

Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

Gastric bypass “surgery in a pill” points to inspired new treatment for diabetes

June 15, 2018

While gastric-bypass, or bariatric, surgery can be a very successful weight-loss treatment option for those suffering from obesity, it has also been seen to be extraordinarily effective in reversing type 2 diabetes. An exciting new study from a team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital has now demonstrated an oral agent that can potentially mimic the effects of bariatric surgery to reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes.

For some years, researchers have identified a connection between gastric-bypass surgery and the reversal of type 2 diabetes. The exact mechanism at play is still unclear, but it seems to operate independently of the weight loss that comes as a consequence of the procedure. One recent study comprising 20,000 patients found that gastric bypass surgery completely cured 84 percent of patients with type 2 diabetes.

Continue reading… “Gastric bypass “surgery in a pill” points to inspired new treatment for diabetes”

Biotech, Breakthrough Thinking, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

Ultrasound-powered nanorobots clear bacteria and toxins from blood

June 13, 2018

The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency aims to create a broad-spectrum detoxification robotic platform.

MRSA bacterium captured by a hybrid cell membrane-coated nanorobot (colored scanning electron microscope image and black and white image below) (credit: Esteban-Fernández de Ávila/Science Robotics)

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed tiny ultrasound-powered nanorobots that can swim through blood, removing harmful bacteria and the toxins they produce.

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Cancer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, new technology

Magnetic ‘metal seed’ that destroys brain tumours in ten minutes invented by British scientists

June 11, 2018

Deadly brain tumours could be heated up by MRI scanners until they die in groundbreaking treatment

Deadly brain tumours could be removed in just ten minutes with a groundbreaking new treatment which uses MRI scanners to heat up cancer cells until they die.

The new therapy, developed by University College London, involves injecting a tiny magnetic metal ‘seed’ into the bloodstream and directing it to the site of the cancer.

Continue reading… “Magnetic ‘metal seed’ that destroys brain tumours in ten minutes invented by British scientists”

cutting edge, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

A new laser eye surgery fixes your vision without any gnarly eyeball slicing

June 10, 2018

As someone who wears glasses, the idea of corrective laser eye surgery is certainly tempting. But then you start reading about how the invasive surgery is actually performed, along with some of (admittedly rare) risks, and suddenly glasses don’t seem so bad. Things could change, however, thanks to research coming out of Columbia University. Researchers there have developed a new noninvasive laser eye surgery which could permanently correct vision — minus any of the less pleasant-sounding aspects of regular laser surgery.

Continue reading… “A new laser eye surgery fixes your vision without any gnarly eyeball slicing”

3D Printer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

Researchers create the first 3D-printed corneas

June 2, 2018

Researchers at Newcastle University have been able to 3D-print a biocompatible corneal framework using a new gel formulations that “keeps the stem cells alive whilst producing a material which is stiff enough to hold its shape but soft enough to be squeezed out the nozzle of a 3D printer.”

There is a significant shortage of corneas available to transplant, with 10 million people worldwide requiring surgery to prevent corneal blindness as a result of diseases such as trachoma, an infectious eye disorder,” wrote the researchers. “In addition, almost 5 million people suffer total blindness due to corneal scarring caused by burns, lacerations, abrasion or disease.”

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Biotech, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, new technology

How to grow functioning human muscles from stem cells

May 17, 2018

… and microscale robot exoskeleton muscles from graphene and glass.

A cross section of a muscle fiber grown from induced pluripotent stem cells, showing muscle cells (green), cell nuclei (blue), and the surrounding support matrix for the cells (credit: Duke University)

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have grown the first functioning human skeletal muscle from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). (Pluripotent stem cells are important in regenerative medicine because they can generate any type of cell in the body and can propagate indefinitely; the induced version can be generated from adult cells instead of embryos.)

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Biotech, Medical Breakthrough, new technology, Stem cells

Japan approves first trials of stem cell-based heart treatment

May 17, 2018

iPS procedure raises hopes for alternative to donations and artificial organs

TOKYO — Japan is set to host the world’s first clinical trials involving the use of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to treat heart failure.

A special health ministry panel on Wednesday gave Osaka University the green light to carry out the study, pending final authorization from the health minister. This would be the second instance of using iPS-derived cells for disease treatment in Japan, after groundbreaking trials involving retinal cells launched in 2014.

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Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

What Is Bioprinting?

May 11, 2018

Bioprinted materials can be used to repair damaged organs.

Bioprinting, a type of 3D printing, uses cells and other biological materials as “inks” to fabricate 3D biological structures. Bioprinted materials have the potential to repair damaged organs, cells, and tissues in the human body. In the future, bioprinting may be used to build entire organs from scratch, a possibility that could transform the field of bioprinting.

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Bill Gates, Biotech, Genes, Genetics, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Gene editing for good

May 1, 2018

How CRISPR could transform global development.

Today, more people are living healthy, productive lives than ever before. This good news may come as a surprise, but there is plenty of evidence for it. Since the early 1990s, global child mortality has been cut in half. There have been massive reductions in cases of tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. The incidence of polio has decreased by 99 percent, bringing the world to the verge of eradicating a major infectious disease, a feat humanity has accomplished only once before, with smallpox. The proportion of the world’s population in extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as living on less than $1.90 per day, has fallen from 35 percent to about 11 percent.

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Analysis, Biotech, Genes, Medical Breakthrough

End of ageing and cancer? Scientists unveil structure of the ‘immortality’ enzyme telomerase

April 29, 2018

Making a drug is like trying to pick a lock at the molecular level. There are two ways in which you can proceed. You can try thousands of different keys at random, hopefully finding one that fits. The pharmaceutical industry does this all the time – sometimes screening hundreds of thousands of compounds to see if they interact with a certain enzyme or protein. But unfortunately it’s not always efficient – there are more drug molecule shapes than seconds have passed since the beginning of the universe.

Alternatively, like a safe cracker, you can x-ray the lock you want to open and work out the probable shape of the key from the pictures you get. This is much more effective for discovering drugs, as you can use computer models to identify promising compounds before researchers go into the lab to find the best one. Now a study, published in Nature, presents detailed images of a crucial anti-ageing enzyme known as telomerase – raising hopes that we can soon slow ageing and cure cancer.

Continue reading… “End of ageing and cancer? Scientists unveil structure of the ‘immortality’ enzyme telomerase”