Published in April 19th, 2010
This is a great article on organ printing by Cnet. Organovo is working on blood vessels before attempting to print larger organs since oxygen is an issue.
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Published in April 2nd, 2010
From the WSJ: “Scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and others have shown they can keep certain types of cells living forever, including those from the breast, skin, retina and, recently, the colon, by adding telomerase to keep telomeres intact or repair those that became too short. Now researchers are [...]
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Published in March 16th, 2010
“That’s the conclusion of a study, published online this week in Plant Biotechnology Journal, which sought to determine whether seven diverse human therapeutic proteins could be produced in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a green alga used widely in biology laboratories as a genetic model organism, much like the fruit fly Drosophila and the bacterium E. coli. “What [...]
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Published in March 11th, 2010
The NYT has a great story today about how the genome can be used to identify the cause of disease. Read more here.
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Published in March 1st, 2010
From CNET News: “This month, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research (IFAM) in Bremen, Germany, are unveiling a new type of screw that not only biodegrades within two years but actually encourages bone growth into the implant itself so as not to leave gaping holes where the screws used [...]
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Published in February 23rd, 2010
Scientists have been experimenting with “printing” various types of human tissue for years now, often using their own tricked-out devices. The Economist has a great article on a company that is now making printers specifically for this purpose. In addition, over at the Singularity Hub, there is a nice discussion of some of the players [...]
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Published in February 15th, 2010
Great article on the topic from the NYT. This sentence is of interest: Ideally you wouldn’t even need to know anything about DNA to manipulate it, just as a 5-year-old doesn’t need to understand the chemical composition of the plastic in his Legos to build a fortress on the living-room carpet. We will soon be [...]
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Published in January 29th, 2010
This is an excellent video of Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Regenerative Medicine center. Regrowing organs is a therapy that has already been done in test cases and isn’t too far away from becoming mainstream.
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Published in January 27th, 2010
The Personalized Medicine World Conference in Silicon Valley last week showcased huge opportunities for new advances in medicine and personalized health. What remained unclear was who will take the lead, what techniques or products will win, and whether the medical establishment will go along or stand in the way. Folks in Silicon Valley are used [...]
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Published in January 11th, 2010
NewScientist reports that Jon Vogel and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland have come up with a procedure that creates “patches of synthetic skin could deliver gene therapies to patients without the need for injections.” As someone who doesn’t really love needles, this is a good sign for the future. Read [...]
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Published in December 5th, 2009
Using nanotech to target cancer cells is an idea that’s been in the works for a while. A team “led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has just successfully combined an antibody with single-walled nanotubes to create a precision search-and-destroy weapon that targets aggressive forms of breast cancer.” Get the rest of [...]
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Published in December 3rd, 2009
From the NYT: “The National Institutes of Health said Wednesday that it had approved 13 new human embryonic stem cell lines for use by federally financed researchers, with 96 more under review.” and “Researchers’ interest in human embryonic stem cells has abated since the discovery in 2007 by the Japanese biologist Dr. Shinya Yamanaka that [...]
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Published in October 15th, 2009
Story in Science Daily and Science Alert, among others. Hat tip to James Clement to posting this on FB. “A major breakthrough study, published 15 October in Nature, has provided a complete roadmap of the human epigenome and has major implications for the treatment of human diseases and development of stem-cell based regenerative medicine. An [...]
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Published in October 6th, 2009
A press release today says that “IBM Research Aims to Build Nanoscale DNA Sequencer to Help Drive Down Cost of Personalized Genetic Analysis”. The release goes on to say that “This advanced research effort to demonstrate a silicon-based “DNA Transistor” could help pave the way to read human DNA easily and quickly, generating advancements in [...]
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Published in September 10th, 2009
14 genomes were sequenced for about $4000. That’s down from the $250,000 that it used to cost. Pretty cool. From the Mercury news: “Complete Genomics, a Mountain View startup, announced Tuesday that it had deciphered 14 full human genomes for customers that include pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and leading medical research institutes, a significant step for [...]
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Published in September 3rd, 2009
From Science Daily: “When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees. In mice, nanobees [...]
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Published in September 3rd, 2009
From MIT Technology Review: “Lung cancer is a brutal disease, often not caught until it’s too late for treatment to do much good. Now researchers are building an electronic nose that could help physicians detect the disease during its initial stages. Using gold nanoparticles, scientists at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have created [...]
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Published in August 7th, 2009
When this hits the market, it is going to be big. “Applying nanosheets with poly-L-lactide (PLLA) to the incisions of mouse stomachs, the team found that these centimeter-long biodegradable nanosheets healed the incisions without scarring or tissue adhesion.”
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Published in July 7th, 2009
This is a great video on growing human organs and how such procedures will extend life. Oprah’s Dr. Oz does a good job interviewing the experts at Wake Forest University.
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Published in July 2nd, 2009
This is a fantastic step towards healing heart damage. “Doctors at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute announced the completion of the first procedure in which a patient’s own heart tissue was used to grow specialized heart stem cells that were then injected back into the patient’s heart in an effort to repair and re-grow healthy muscle [...]
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