OK, so we can't yet regrow hearts, lungs, or important stuff like that. But what may be coming soon is the ability to regrow teeth. Don't laugh, this is important too, if not of the same order as hearts and lungs.
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Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
Friday, February 02, 2018
Sunday, May 03, 2015
Scientists will soon be able to switch your blood type
UBC Science
“We produced a mutant enzyme that is very efficient at cutting off the sugars in A and B blood, and is much more proficient at removing the subtypes of the A-antigen that the parent enzyme struggles with.”
What do you do when a patient needs a blood transfusion but you don’t have their blood type in the blood bank? It’s a problem that scientists have been trying to solve for years but haven’t been able to find an economic solution – until now.
University of British Columbia chemists and scientists in the Centre for Blood Research have created an enzyme that could potentially solve this problem. The enzyme works by snipping off the sugars, also known as antigens, found in Type A and Type B blood, making it more like Type O. Type O blood is known as the universal donor and can be given to patients of all blood types.
To create this high-powered enzyme capable of snipping off sugars, researchers used a new technology called directed evolution that involves inserting mutations into the gene that codes for the enzyme, and selecting mutants that are more effective at cutting the antigens. In just five generations, the enzyme became 170 times more effective.
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Saturday, May 17, 2014
Will You Get Nanobot Infusions?
IEET - May 6, 2014, by Dick Pelletier
"You enter the wellness center and tell the receptionist avatar that you're here for an annual restoration, and though your real age is 110, you would like to be restored to the age of a 20-something. A nurse then injects billions of genome-specific 'bots non-invasively through the skin; you're now set for another year."
Freitas has designed 'bots smaller than red blood cells that can travel through the human body destroying harmful pathogens and repairing faulty DNA. The tiny machines would be constructed of carbon atoms, and powered by utilizing glucose or natural sugars and oxygen from the body.
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Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Talk about drinking to forget!
Popular Science - 11.25.13 by Virginia Hughes
The idea of scientists manipulating memory does, naturally, sound a bit creepy. But it also points to some possible good: treatment for millions of people tormented by real memories. And that’s something worth remembering.
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| Credit: Sam Kaplan |
Researchers have known for decades that memories are unreliable. They’re particularly adjustable when actively recalled because at that point they’re pulled out of a stable molecular state. Last spring, scientists published a study performed at the University of Washington in which adult volunteers completed a survey about their eating and drinking habits before age 16. A week later, they were given personalized analyses of their answers that stated—falsely—that they had gotten sick from rum or vodka as a teen. One in five not only didn’t notice the lie, but also recalled false memories about it and rated that beverage as less desirable than they had before. Studies like these point to possible treatments for mental health problems. Both PTSD and addiction disorders hinge on memories that can trigger problematic behaviors, such as crippling fear caused by loud noises or cravings brought about by the sight of drug paraphernalia.
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Saturday, April 27, 2013
And the dead shall rise...
BBC News - 4.23.13 by William Kremer
A doctor says people can be revived several hours after they have seemingly died. Should this change the way we think about death?"I know it must have been a Friday around lunchtime, because we'd got back from shopping," the 63-year old says. "I can't remember getting out of the car."
Her husband David has much clearer memories of that day three months ago. He opened the front door of their Wiltshire home and saw Carol lying down, gasping for breath, the colour rapidly draining from her face.
Carol had had a cardiac arrest - her heart had stopped beating. Luckily, an elderly neighbour knew the rudiments of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and quickly began to work on her chest.
Paramedics soon took over, and at a point between 30 and 45 minutes after her collapse - no-one noted the exact time - Carol's heart started beating again.
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Sunday, March 03, 2013
Connecting Computers to your Brain, Wirelessly
Kurzweil News - 3.3.13
“This new wireless system addresses a major need for the next step in providing a practical brain-computer interface."
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| David A Borton et al./J. Neural Eng. |
A team of neuroengineers at Brown University has developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals from up to 100 neurons in freely moving subjects.
Several copies of the novel low-power device, described in the open-access Journal of Neural Engineering, have been performing well in animal models for more than year, a first in the brain-computer interface field.
Brain-computer interfaces could help people with severe paralysis control devices with their thoughts.
Neuroscientists can use such a device to observe, record, and analyze the signals emitted by scores of neurons in particular parts of the animal model’s brain.
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
You're Only As Old As Scientists Say - 72 is the new 30
Financial Times - 2.25.13 by Norma Cohen
Human longevity has improved so rapidly over the past century that 72 is the new 30, scientists say.Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, said progress in lowering the risk of death at all ages has been so rapid since 1900 that life expectancy has risen faster than it did in the previous 200 millennia since modern man began to evolve from hominid species.
The pace of increase in life expectancy has left industrialised economies unprepared for the cost of providing retirement income to so many for so long.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Your Next Surgeon May Not Be Human
CNNMoney - 1.15.13 by Ryan Bradley
Today, four out of five prostatectomies are performed with a robot. The result is an industry at an inflection point. Robots have arrived, and hospitals, doctors, and patients are scrambling to adapt to this new technology.Frank Clement glimpsed the robot only once. After the operating room attendant finished shaving his chest, she asked him if he wanted to be knocked out or if he would like to see the machine that would soon be inside him, navigating the space beneath his rib cage, cutting and cauterizing, and then sewing two of his arteries back into his heart. Clement wanted to see the machine. It was draped in plastic, its four jointed arms folded back toward its body. In a few months Clement would celebrate his 71st birthday, and the idea of submitting to such a device felt futuristic. He was fascinated. Then he felt a warm rush all over -- the anesthesia kicking in -- and he fell into a deep, drug-induced slumber.
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Sunday, December 30, 2012
Amazing Medical Advances Coming On Stream
WSJ - 12.28.12
Surgeons at Boston Children's Hospital have developed a way to help children born with half a heart to essentially grow a whole one—by marshaling the body's natural capacity to heal and develop.In our era of instant gratification, the world of medicine seems like an outlier. The path from a promising discovery to an effective treatment often takes a decade or more.
But from that process—of fits and starts, progress and setbacks and finally more progress—grow the insights and advances that change the course of medicine.
A decade ago, the completion of the Human Genome Project sparked optimism that cures for debilitating diseases were just around the corner. Cures still generally elude us, but now the ability to map human DNA cheaply and quickly is yielding a torrent of data about the genetic drivers of disease—and a steady stream of patients who are benefiting from the knowledge. On other fronts, technology is putting more power in the hands of patients, and researchers are learning to combat disorders by harnessing the body's own ability to heal and grow.
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Saturday, December 15, 2012
We're Living Longer, Dying Differently
The Economist - 12.15.12
“THIRD WORLD” is not a term much used today. Most developing countries, as they were once euphemistically known, really are now developing—and doing so fast. So it is not surprising their disease patterns are changing, too, just as happened in the rich world. Deaths from infectious disease are down. Rates of non-transmissible illness—often chronic and frequently the result of obesity (see special report) are rising. The panjandrums of global health are struggling to keep up.
A series of reports in this week’s Lancet, co-ordinated by Christopher Murray of the University of Washington, eloquently describes what is happening. Dr Murray and his colleagues looked at 291 sorts of disease and injury in almost every country in the world. They used death certificates, interviews, surveys, censuses, and records from hospitals and police stations to calculate life expectancy since 1970 and count the number of deaths by disease from 1990 to 2010. Most crucially, for 1990, 2005 and 2010 they tallied disability-adjusted life years, or DALYs (a measure of the years lost to ill-health, disability or early death).
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Saturday, July 14, 2012
Dating by DNA?
The Telegraph - July 14, 2012
Due to the falling cost of DNA testing Britain is on the cusp of a new era of eugenics, according to a leading British scientist.
Prof Armand Leroi, of Imperial College London, said that within five to ten years it will be common for young people to pay to access their entire genetic code.
He told the Euroscience Open Forum 2012, in Dublin, that a desire to have a healthy baby will lead more to request access to the view the genes of any prospective partner.
Armed with this information, the couple could then use IVF to screen babies with incurable diseases.
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Saturday, November 12, 2011
Are those pig muscles or human?
Wired - 11.9.11 by Katie Drummond
A few pig cells, a single surgery and a rigorous daily workout: They’re the three ingredients that patients will need to re-grow fresh, functional slabs of their own muscle, courtesy of Pentagon-backed science that’s already being used to rebuild parts of people.
The research team behind the project, based out of the University of Pittsburgh, has made remarkably swift progress: Mere months after starting their first-ever clinical trial, they’ve already operated on four soldiers and are now training groups of surgeons from across the country in perfecting the approach. If progress continues at this pace, the trial will wrap in 24 months and the technique will become “a standard of care for orthopedists and trauma surgeons,” according to Dr. Stephen Badylak, head of the initiative.
It isn’t quite salamander territory, but it’s astonishingly close. The Pittsburgh team’s research means that, within this decade, the thousands of soldiers who’ve suffered major muscle loss during this decade’s wars can overcome devastating impairment — a life sentence of chronic pain, disability and no viable treatment short of amputation — and experience at least a 25 percent improvement in physical function. For civilians, the impact would incalculable. The kinds of trauma and health problems that now cause amputation, from car accidents and fires to cancer or diabetic peripheral vascular disease, would no longer cause irreparable damage.
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The research team behind the project, based out of the University of Pittsburgh, has made remarkably swift progress: Mere months after starting their first-ever clinical trial, they’ve already operated on four soldiers and are now training groups of surgeons from across the country in perfecting the approach. If progress continues at this pace, the trial will wrap in 24 months and the technique will become “a standard of care for orthopedists and trauma surgeons,” according to Dr. Stephen Badylak, head of the initiative.
It isn’t quite salamander territory, but it’s astonishingly close. The Pittsburgh team’s research means that, within this decade, the thousands of soldiers who’ve suffered major muscle loss during this decade’s wars can overcome devastating impairment — a life sentence of chronic pain, disability and no viable treatment short of amputation — and experience at least a 25 percent improvement in physical function. For civilians, the impact would incalculable. The kinds of trauma and health problems that now cause amputation, from car accidents and fires to cancer or diabetic peripheral vascular disease, would no longer cause irreparable damage.
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Sunday, April 24, 2011
God Can't Heal Amputees, But Science Can
LA Times - April 19, 2011 by Karen Kaplan
Meet Emily Fennell, the 26-year-old California woman who became the first person in the western United States to receive a hand transplant.
Fennell’s surgery and rehabilitation at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center were detailed in the Los Angeles Times Tuesday by health writer Shari Roan. Now UCLA has posted a video featuring the single mother from Yuba City and her unusual medical journey.
As Roan describes, Emily lost her right hand nearly five years ago in a automobile accident: “Fennell was a passenger in the front seat of a car that was clipped by another vehicle and rolled over. The sunroof was open. Fennell's hand went through the space and was caught between the car and the road. The mangled hand had to be amputated.”
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Fennell’s surgery and rehabilitation at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center were detailed in the Los Angeles Times Tuesday by health writer Shari Roan. Now UCLA has posted a video featuring the single mother from Yuba City and her unusual medical journey.
As Roan describes, Emily lost her right hand nearly five years ago in a automobile accident: “Fennell was a passenger in the front seat of a car that was clipped by another vehicle and rolled over. The sunroof was open. Fennell's hand went through the space and was caught between the car and the road. The mangled hand had to be amputated.”
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Sunday, February 06, 2011
Mostly dead is still partly alive - The future of emergency medicine
Why should a shutdown of oxygen to the brain for more than 4 minutes result in irreversible death? Imagine if when you turned off your car for more than a few minutes, it became irreversibly damaged. Kind of a design flaw, wouldn't you say? What about if removing the battery from your smartphone for 4 minutes ended up killing its CPU? Ridiculous. So why do our brains go bye-bye under analogous circumstances?
As you'll see in this video, it turns out that it's not necessarily the lack of oxygen that destroys our brain cells. It's the reintroduction of oxygen that kills them. Lance Becker shows how "controlled reperfusion" can extend the boundary between life and death and allow patients to be successfully reanimated after longer and longer periods of oxygen deprivation.
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As you'll see in this video, it turns out that it's not necessarily the lack of oxygen that destroys our brain cells. It's the reintroduction of oxygen that kills them. Lance Becker shows how "controlled reperfusion" can extend the boundary between life and death and allow patients to be successfully reanimated after longer and longer periods of oxygen deprivation.
Lance Becker: Modifying the Boundary between Life and Death from Singularity Institute on Vimeo.
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Saturday, July 24, 2010
How to live longer - Get off your a$$
LiveScience - 7.23.10 by LiveScience Staff
Hitting the gym every day might do little to decrease your risk of death if you spend the rest of your time sitting down, a new study suggests.
The results show the time people spend on their derrieres is associated with an increased risk of mortality, regardless of their physical activity level.
The findings suggest public health messages should promote both physical activity and less time on the couch, the researchers say.
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Hitting the gym every day might do little to decrease your risk of death if you spend the rest of your time sitting down, a new study suggests.
The results show the time people spend on their derrieres is associated with an increased risk of mortality, regardless of their physical activity level.
The findings suggest public health messages should promote both physical activity and less time on the couch, the researchers say.
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Saturday, June 05, 2010
Monkey uses thought-controlled robot arm (video)
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
DNA Logic - Computers in your bloodstream
New Scientist - 6.2.10 (by Kate McAlpine)
DNA-based logic gates that could carry out calculations inside the body have been constructed for the first time. The work brings the prospect of injectable biocomputers programmed to target diseases as they arise.
"The biocomputer would sense biomarkers and immediately react by releasing counter-agents for the disease," says Itamar Willner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, who led the work.
The new logic gates are formed from short strands of DNA and their complementary strands, which in conjunction with some simple molecular machinery mimic their electronic equivalent. Two strands act as the input: each represents a 1 when present or a 0 when absent. The response to their presence or absence represents the output, which can also be a 1 or 0.
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"The biocomputer would sense biomarkers and immediately react by releasing counter-agents for the disease," says Itamar Willner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, who led the work.
The new logic gates are formed from short strands of DNA and their complementary strands, which in conjunction with some simple molecular machinery mimic their electronic equivalent. Two strands act as the input: each represents a 1 when present or a 0 when absent. The response to their presence or absence represents the output, which can also be a 1 or 0.
Read more>>
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Monday, May 31, 2010
Fighting obesity with nanofoods - will the public swallow?
New Scientist - 5.27.10 (by Emma Davies)
It's a small food revolution (Image: Hulton Archive/Getty.
NOTHING says summer holidays quite like ice cream. On a hot afternoon by the sea, there's little to beat the simple pleasure of a cooling scoop of your favourite flavour. Can food get much more satisfying than this?
Vic Morris thinks it can, with the help of nanotechnology. He is part of a team tweaking foods to trick the body into feeling pleasantly full long after the final mouthful - and without overeating.
Ice cream that makes you feel full could be just the beginning. Nanotechnology promises even saltier-tasting salt, less fattening fat, and to boost the nutritional value of everyday products. Nanofood supplements could even tackle global malnutrition.
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Read More...
NOTHING says summer holidays quite like ice cream. On a hot afternoon by the sea, there's little to beat the simple pleasure of a cooling scoop of your favourite flavour. Can food get much more satisfying than this?
Vic Morris thinks it can, with the help of nanotechnology. He is part of a team tweaking foods to trick the body into feeling pleasantly full long after the final mouthful - and without overeating.
Ice cream that makes you feel full could be just the beginning. Nanotechnology promises even saltier-tasting salt, less fattening fat, and to boost the nutritional value of everyday products. Nanofood supplements could even tackle global malnutrition.
Read more>>
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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Smart radiation leaves no collateral damage
PhysOrg.com - 5.25.10 by John Messina
Varian's TrueBeam is the latest automated radiation system that can kill tumors with sniper-like precision. Credit: Varian Medical Systems.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Traditional radiation therapy has been used for years to kill cancer cells. The disadvantage of using this method is that healthy cells are also destroyed along with the cancer cells. In the past ten years radiation blasting robotic systems have been introduced that can target and fire with millimeter precision.
These new super-accurate radiation-blasting robotic systems have been used in a wide range of cancer treatment and have proven their effectiveness in killing cancer cells while leaving the healthy cells untouched.
Accuray and TomoTherapy have been the two big names for years in providing state-of-the-art cancer treatment. Now a med-tech giant Varian has just released their automated radiation-blasting system called TrueBeam. This system provides more accurate targeting of cancer cells than the other two.
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Traditional radiation therapy has been used for years to kill cancer cells. The disadvantage of using this method is that healthy cells are also destroyed along with the cancer cells. In the past ten years radiation blasting robotic systems have been introduced that can target and fire with millimeter precision.
These new super-accurate radiation-blasting robotic systems have been used in a wide range of cancer treatment and have proven their effectiveness in killing cancer cells while leaving the healthy cells untouched.
Accuray and TomoTherapy have been the two big names for years in providing state-of-the-art cancer treatment. Now a med-tech giant Varian has just released their automated radiation-blasting system called TrueBeam. This system provides more accurate targeting of cancer cells than the other two.
Read more>>
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Stitching wounds with lasers and nanotech
Wired - 5.5.10 (by Katie Drummond)
Forget stitches and old-school sutures. The Air Force is funding scientists who are using nano-technology and lasers to seal up wounds at a molecular level.
It might sound like Star Trek tech, but it’s actually the latest in a series of ambitious Pentagon efforts to create faster, more effective methods of treating war-zone injuries.
Last year, the military’s research agency, Darpa, requested proposals for instant injury repair using adult stem cells, and Pentagon scientists are already doing human trials of spray-on skin.
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Read More...
Forget stitches and old-school sutures. The Air Force is funding scientists who are using nano-technology and lasers to seal up wounds at a molecular level.
It might sound like Star Trek tech, but it’s actually the latest in a series of ambitious Pentagon efforts to create faster, more effective methods of treating war-zone injuries.
Last year, the military’s research agency, Darpa, requested proposals for instant injury repair using adult stem cells, and Pentagon scientists are already doing human trials of spray-on skin.
Read more>>
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