Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) of A*STAR have engineered a three-dimensional heart tissue from human stem cells to test the safety and efficacy of new drugs on the heart. "Cardiotoxicity, which can lead to heart failure and even death, is a major cause of drug withdrawal from the market. Antibiotics, anticancer and antidiabetic medications can have unanticipated side effects for the heart".

Researchers in Singapore have artificially generated new mouse blood and immune cells from skin cells. This is a significant first step towards the eventual goal: the engineering of new human blood cells from skin cells or other artificial sources. One of the major challenges of regenerative medicine is to manufacture new blood and immune cells for patients in need.

Performing chemical reactions inside tiny droplets can help manufacturers develop greener processes for coating drugs. A discovery led by Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) could lead to improvements in the way drugs are delivered to the right parts of the body by uncovering the mechanisms that help oil, water, and free radicals mix in tiny droplets.

A laser developed at Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore, can produce infrared beams over an unprecedented range of wavelengths. A*STAR scientists have developed a unique fast-pulsing fiber laser that has the widest wavelength output to date. This type of laser could replace several fixed-wavelength lasers and form the basis of compact devices useful for a range of medical and military applications.

The huge doses of drugs required to combat cancer could be reduced thanks to the work of A*STAR researchers, and the drugs themselves may become more effective. The researchers have developed a polymeric 'scaffold' that helps drugs that often have trouble entering the bloodstream, such as anti-cancer agents, form highly stable nanoparticles with improved bioavailability.

Powerful electronic components can get very hot. When many components are combined into a single semiconductor chip, heating can become a real problem. An overheating electronic component wastes energy and is at risk of behaving unpredictably or failing altogether. Consequently, thermal management is a vital design consideration. This becomes particularly important in devices made from gallium nitride.

Hard materials like chromium nitride are used as wear and corrosion protection coatings in a wide range of applications, including metal cutting. Now, Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) researchers have discovered exactly how such materials behave when used in high-stress situations, paving the way to producing even better coatings. One way to improve a material's resistance to wear is to increase its hardness.

Oceanic oil spills are tough to clean up. They dye feathers a syrupy sepia and tan fish eggs a toxic tint. The more turbulent the waters, the farther the slick spreads, with inky droplets descending into the briny deep. Now technology may be able to succeed where hard-working volunteers have failed in the past. Researchers at the A*STAR IBN are using nanoscience to turn an oil spill into a floating mass of brown jelly that can be scooped up ...

Researchers in Singapore have developed a protein that can alter DNA in living cells with much higher precision than current methods. The ability to alter DNA accurately will open more doors in the development of personalised medicine that could help to tackle human diseases that currently have few treatment options. Examples of diseases that have unmet therapeutic needs include neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington's disease, muscular ...

By fine-tuning the chemical composition of nanoparticles, A*STAR researchers have developed a coating that is promising for fabricating smart windows suitable for tropical countries. Such windows block almost all the infrared heat from sun rays, while admitting most of the visible light. The transparency of glass to visible light makes it the most common way to let light into a building.

Selective ion transport is the foundation of water purification technology, as well as underpinning a range of biological effects—such as the function of nerves—and diagnostic technologies that use ion-sensitive electrodes to detect abnormalities in biological fluids. Now A*STAR researchers have invented a synthetic ion recognition system and found a way to fine-tune the selectivity of the system that will benefit many applications.

A*STAR researchers have created holograms from an array of silicon structures that work throughout the visible spectrum. Many recent advances in hologram technology use reflected light to form an image; however the hologram made by Dong Zhaogang and Joel Yang from the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering uses transmitted light. This means the image is not muddled up with the light source.

Scientists in Singapore have made a big leap on research on the 'mini-brain'. These advanced mini versions of the human midbrain will help researchers develop treatments and conduct other studies into Parkinson's Disease[1] (PD) and ageing-related brain diseases. These mini midbrain versions are 3D miniature tissues that are grown in the laboratory and they have certain properties of specific parts of the human brain. 

Manipulating magnetic and electric dipoles inside nanostructured insulators enables newfound control of light polarisation at any angle. Polarising filters produce richer, less reflective images by limiting vibrating light waves to one specific orientation. However, these filters only work with light that is reflected from a certain angle. An A*STAR-led team report that arrays of silicon nanodisks can polarise light at any angle, and into an...

A scheme to write data into next-gen memory chips has been developed by A*STAR Data Storage Institute researchers. The proposal by Jun Yang and colleagues requires considerably less resources to write data safely into memory—even during a system failure. Non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies are the likely successor to current computer memory devices.

A team of researchers from Singapore has discovered a class of small RNA molecules, known as oncomiRs, which are responsible for fuelling lung cancer. Published in Nature Communications, the findings provide fresh insight into understanding therapy resistance in lung cancer and unveil new avenues to monitor and treat the disease more effectively.

Clusters of circulating cells commonly found in the blood of cancer patients have long been the subject of research on cancer. These clusters have been regarded for more than 50 years as malignant cells that have broken off from the primary tumour, spreading cancer to other parts of the body. 

A*STAR researchers have found a simple way to vary the heat flow in graphene, a breakthrough that will improve attempts to put superfluous heat in electronics to good use. Graphene has an extraordinarily high thermal conductivity. Liu Xiangjun from the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing and co-workers have developed a way to decrease graphene's thermal conductivity, enabling excess heat to be diverted toward components that ...

A simple and inexpensive method to make a range of cyclic monomers has been developed by A*STAR researchers. These monomers were used to make biodegradable polymers with potential applications from drug or gene delivery to environmentally-friendly packaging. There are many established commercially-viable routes to non-degradable synthetic polymers, but making degradable analogs remains time-consuming, difficult and expensive.

Every day, we are exposed to millions of harmful bacteria that can cause infectious diseases, such as the E. coli bacteria. Now, researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) of A*STAR have developed a new material that can kill the E. coli bacteria within 30 seconds. This finding has been published in the peer-reviewed journal Small.