Archive for the ‘cells’ tag
First tissue-engineered whole organ transplant is successful
The transplanted trachea
Surgeons in Spain have carried out the world’s first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant, using a windpipe made from the recipient patients own stem cells.
Scientists from Bristol helped grow the cells for the transplant and the European team believes such tailor-made organs could become the norm.
The recipient patient needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis. The disease had damaged the airways.
Read more on: Bio Tech, cells, stem cells, tissueGenetically-engineered bacteria leads to self-assembling materials
Student Krupa Hirani at work on the biofabricator project
Genetically engineering bacteria to produce self-assembling materials for use in clothing and medical applications, is the aim of a group of Imperial College students taking part in the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition.
The iGEM team from Imperial have been working to develop a method of modifying small harmless soil bacteria called Bacillus subtilis, so that they can produce materials such as cellulose, an organic compound normally found in the cell walls of plants, on command and in a pre-determined pattern. Once the cellouse has been produced by the bacteria, the students expect it to knit together, or ‘self-assemble’ into a required shape, for use in a number of different applications from making three dimensional scaffolds for tissue engineering, to growing biodegradable clothes.
Read more on: bacteria, Bio Tech, cells, cellulose, Imperial College, material, self-assembling, tissueCompound effectively targets cancer cells
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a compound said to be more than 1,200 times more specific in killing certain kinds of cancer cell than currently available drugs.
The new compound puts a novel twist on the common anti-malarial drug artemisinin, which is derived from the sweet wormwood plant (Artemisia annua L). The scientists attached a chemical homing device to artemisinin that targets the drug selectively to cancer cells, sparing healthy cells.
The challenge faced by cancer drug designers is that cancer cells develop from normal cells, this means that most ways of poisoning cancer cells also kill healthy cells. Most available chemotherapies are very toxic, destroying one normal cell for every five to 10 cancer cells killed, which is why the side effects of chemotherapy are so devastating.
The compound developed by Professor Tomikazu Saski and his collegues, kills 12,000 cancer cells for every healthy cell, meaning it could be turned into a drug with minimal side effects. A cancer drug with low side effects would be more effective than currently available drugs, since it could be safely taken in higher amounts.
Read more on: Bio Tech, cells, compound, iron, proteinsResearchers design artificial cells that could power medical implants
Researchers at Yale University have created a blueprint for artificial cells that are more powerful and efficient than the natural cells they mimic and could one day be used to power tiny medical implants.
The scientists began with the question of whether an artificial version of the electrocyte – the energy-generating cells in electric eels – could be designed as a potential power source. “The electric eel is very efficient at generating electricity,” said Jian Xu, a postdoctoral associate in Yale’s Department of Chemical Engineering. “It can generate more electricity than a lot of electrical devices.”
Read more on: Bio Tech, cells, implantLUCAS technique provides medical diagnosis over the phone
UCLA researchers have advanced a novel lens-free high-throughput imaging technique for potential use in diagnosing medical conditions.
The Lensless Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging, or LUCAS technique is used to quickly and accurately count targeted cell types in a homogenous cell solution. Removing the lens from the imaging process allows LUCAS to be scaled down to the point that it can eventually be integrated into a regular wireless mobile phone. Samples could be loaded into a specially equipped phone using a disposable microfluidic chip.
Read more on: Bio Tech, cells, chip, LUCASColorful spy tactics track live cells supporting cancerous tumors
A new advance in cellular imaging is allowing scientists to better understand the movement of cells in the area around tumors, also known as the tumor microenvironment. Zena Werb and colleagues used optimized methods of laser microscopy to track the movement of live cells in a mouse model of breast cancer.
As a tumor grows, it triggers immune responses in the body, and recruits assistance from normal cells in order to “feed” and support the spread of the cancerous growth. The influence of the tumor on nearby cells is dependent on the microenvironment surrounding the tumor. Some immune cells and structural proteins defend the body against the tumor, while others help the tumor grow and spread.
Read more on: Bio Tech, cellsEngineers get to the artificial bones of things
Engineers at Georgia Tech have used skin cells to create artificial bones that mimic the ability of natural bone to blend into other tissues such as tendons or ligaments. The artificial bones display a gradual change from bone to softer tissue rather than the sudden shift of previously developed artificial tissue, providing better integration with the body and allowing them to handle weight more successfully.
Andres Garcia, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said: “One of the biggest challenges in regenerative medicine is to have a graded continuous interface, because anatomically that’s how the majority of tissues appear and there are studies that strongly suggest that the graded interface provides better integration and load transfer.”
In addition to creating artificial bone that melds into softer tissues, Garcia and his colleagues were also able to implant the technology in vivo for several weeks.
The tissue was created by coating a three-dimensional polymer scaffold with a gene delivery vehicle that encodes a transcription factor known as Runx2. A high concentration of Runx2 was generated at one end of the scaffold, the amount was then decreased until there was no transcription factor on the other end, resulting a precisely controlled spatial gradient of Runx2. Skin fibroblasts were then seeded uniformly onto the scaffold. The skin cells on the parts of the scaffold end with no Runx2 turned into soft tissue. The result is an artificial bone that gradually turns into soft tissue such as tendons or ligaments.
Read more on: artificial bones, Bio Tech, cells, Design, skinResearchers discover how to sniff out skin cancer
Odours produced by the skin can be used to identify basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer, researchers have found.
Researchers from the Monell Center, sampled air above basal cell tumors and found a different profile of chemical compounds compared to skin located at the same sites in healthy control subjects.
Human skin produces numerous airborne chemical molecules known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, many of which are odorous. The researchers obtained VOC profiles from basal cell carcinoma sites in 11 patients and compared them to profiles from similar skin sites in 11 healthy controls. Both profiles contained the same array of chemicals; the difference involved the amounts of specific chemicals – some were increased and others decreased in samples from basal cell carcinoma sites.
To identify changes related to cancer, the researchers first needed to identify a normative profile for VOCs and to determine whether this profile varies as a function of age, gender or body site.
Read more on: Bio Tech, cells, chemicals, skinIBM builds ‘world’s smallest’ SRAM memory cell
IBM and its joint development partners, AMD, Freescale, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba and the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), have produced the first working static random access memory (SRAM) for the 22 nanometer (nm) technology node - the world’s first reported working cell built at its 300mm research facility in Albany, New York.
SRAM chips are precursors to more complex devices such as microprocessors. The SRAM cell utilises a conventional six-transistor design and has an area of 0.1um2, breaking the previous SRAM scaling barriers.
Dr TC Chen, vice president of Science and Technology, IBM Research, explained: “We are working at the ultimate edge of what is possible - progressing toward advanced, next-generation semiconductor technologies. This new development is a critical achievement in the pursuit to continually drive miniaturisation in microelectronics.”
22 nm is two generations away in chip manufacturing. The next generation is 32 nm — where IBM and its partners are in development with their 32 nm high-K metal gate technology.
Read more on: AMD, cells, chip, Electronics, IBM, nanometers, SRAM, transistorResearchers correct age-related decline in liver function
As people age, their cells become less efficient at getting rid of damaged protein – resulting in a build-up of toxic material that is especially pronounced in neurodegenerative disorders. Scientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University have prevented this age-related decline in an entire organ – the liver – and shown that, as a result, the livers of older animals functioned as well as they did when the animals were much younger.
The cells of all organisms have several surveillance systems designed to find, digest and recycle damaged proteins. Many studies have documented that these processes become less efficient with age, allowing protein to gradually accumulate inside cells. But researchers continue debating whether this protein buildup actually contributes to the functional losses of aging or instead is merely associated with those losses. The Einstein study was aimed at resolving the controversy.
Read more on: Bio Tech, cellsIntelligent software ‘thinks’ like a biologist
Researchers from Harvard Medical School have developed Little b, a new computer language that can ‘think’ in the same way as cells and molecular mechanisms, offering the potential for researchers to discover particulars of, for example, drug interactions on the computer desktop.
Most computational methods of modelling biological systems are not unlike writing a document with a pen and paper. Each new project starts from scratch; there are no facilities for cutting and pasting, for linking to other texts, for including images, etc – things that come so ‘naturally’ to electronic documents.
Harvard Medical School researcher Jeremy Gunawardena, a trained mathematician, teamed up with cell biologist and computer scientist Aneil Mallavarapu to eliminate these limitations.
Read more on: artificial intelligence, Bio Tech, cells, computer, DesignMuscle stem cell advance could help with MD
Transplanting adult stem cells into mice with an illness like muscular dystrophy (MD) helps rebuild muscle structure and strength, a Harvard University study has shown.
Focussing on adult muscle stem cells, which specialise in generating new muscle cells in response to growth or injury, the Harvard team bred mice with a faulty dystrophin gene – the same problem which causes Dechenne MD in humans.
Adult stem cells were then taken from other mice and injected into the muscles of the diseased mice. Once the stem cells were in place, they spread throughout the muscle, producing new cells and improved the way it worked.
Read more on: Bio Tech, cells, muscleInjectable magnets bring out the colour in MRI scans
Customised microscopic magnets injected into the body could enable Magnetic Resonance imaging (MRI) scans to be viewed in colour.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) believe the micromagnets also have the potential to be used as ‘smart tags’, to identify certain cells and tissues.
Unlike the chemical solutions currently used as image enhancing contrast agents in MRI, the micromagnets rely of a precisely turnable feature – their physical shape – to adjust the radio frequency (RF) signals used to create images. The RF signals can be converted in a range of optical colours by computer, so different magnets designed to appear as different colours, could be coated to attach to different cell types, such as cancerous Versus normal. The cells could then be identified by tag colour.
Read more on: Bio Tech, cells, Design, Magnetic Resonance imaging, magnets, micromagnets, MRI, rf signals, water