Engineers and scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and ETH Zurich have developed a temperature detecting artificial skin that could be used for prosthetic limbs in amputees. A team led by Chiara Daraio at Caltech created a material from fabricating synthetic woods in a petri dish; the material has an electrical response to temperature […]
Research & Development
Acuitas touts lipid-nanoparticle delivery of mRNA vaccine for Zika
Acuitas Therapeutics touted preliminary data that evaluated its messenger RNA vaccine for the Zika virus. The company uses a lipid-nanoparticle delivery system to introduce its mRNA vaccine into cells. The team’s work, which was published in Nature, showed that a single low-dose immunization with its vaccine triggered an immune response in animals and protected them from infection at […]
Bob Langer on drug delivery
Robert Langer, a pioneer in drug delivery and the most cited engineer in history, has co-founded 30 companies and treated more than 20 million patients as a result of his innovations. In a conversation with Wired, he spoke about his career, which has spanned for 4 decades and began with his 1976 discovery of a method to delay […]
Cryo tech for microscope samples wins $1.6 million in funding
CryoCapCell (Paris) said Tuesday that it has raised €1.5 Million ($1.6 million) from Seventure Partners’s Quadrivium 1 seed capital fund. The money will go toward CryoCapCell’s technology to freeze living tissue samples through ultra-rapid, high-pressure vitrification (or cryogenisation), preventing the alteration of biological structures. The goal is to initially use the technology for cancer research […]
This 3D bioprinter can make functional human skin
A group of scientists in Spain has created a 3D bioprinter that can 3D print functional human skin, one of the first living human organs created with bioprinting. The bioprinted skin mimics the structure of human skin. It has an external layer—the epidermis with its stratum corneum—that protects against environmental factors and a thicker, deeper […]
Metallic hydrogen could be a reality: Why you should care
Harvard University scientists say they have created metallic hydrogen, a super material that until now has only been theoretical. If the claims pan out, they could open up a host of possibilities, including in the medical device field. That’s because metallic hydrogen theoretically should be superconductive at room temperature. MRIs, for example, would no longer […]
Researchers develop immune cells that infiltrate tumors
Researchers from the Okayama University have developed a group of immune cells that can infiltrate tumors and deliver viral vectors, destroying them from the inside out. The team’s work was published in the journal Scientific Reports. The team developed the tumor-targeting technique using a human T-cell line known as HOZOT, which naturally targets human cancer cells. HOZOT cell […]
Early research shows shark antibodies carrying drugs across blood-brain barrier
Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck made an undisclosed milestone payment to biotech Ossianix Inc., after experiments showed that shark antibodies effectively shuttled potential drugs across the blood-brain barrier in mice. The 2 companies established a research collaboration in 2014, focusing on technology development and the delivery of antibody-based therapies across the blood-brain barrier. Get the full […]
Novo Nordisk puts $145m into U.K. research center
(Reuters) – Novo Nordisk, the world’s top maker of diabetes drugs, is investing 115 million pounds ($145 million) in a new research center in Britain, undeterred by Brexit. The Danish company said on Monday it would invest the money over 10 years in the center based at the University of Oxford, which will employ 100 […]
This AI can spot skin cancer as well as doctors
Stanford University researchers say that they’ve trained a deep learning algorithm to identify skin cancer as well as dermatologists. The researchers pitted the artificial intelligence against 21 board-certified dermatologists when it came to diagnosing skin lesions. The deep convolutional neural network’s performance was on par with the experts when it came to spotting the most […]
Microscopic submarines release drugs depending on acid concentration
Researchers have developed tiny ‘submarines’ that speed through the stomach using gastric acid for fuel. The proton-driven micromotors have a pH-sensitive polymer coating that can be loaded with drugs and released in the stomach. Gastric acid can be destructive for orally-administered, pH-sensitive pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics. Although some coatings can protect substances from gastric acid, they […]