Medical

  A review of the latest research shows that combining a sugar, obtained from crab and shrimp shells, with a variety of nanomaterials could lead to the development of biomedical applications that enhance bone regeneration, wound healing and targeted drug delivery.

A prestigious Innovation Award has been awarded to TTP by the Institute of Physics for its SonicSense technology, which turns inexpensive piezoelectric buzzers used in doorbells or smoke alarms into accurate, stable and low-power gas sensors. The technology is already being used by Philips Healthcare in its market leading oxygen concentrators, which help care for millions of COPD patients worldwide. 

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.

Sufferers of hypersensitivity to common antibiotics like penicillin and amoxicillin will soon find help with a new allergy detector, a low-cost, bio-photonic device that will provide more targeted treatment for millions of patients.

Researchers from MIT, Boston Children's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital have joined forces in an ambitious new project to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate the health of fetuses. Typically, fetal development is monitored with ultrasound imaging, which is cheap and portable and can gauge blood flow through the placenta, the organ in the uterus that delivers nutrients to the fetus.

MIT researchers have developed an imaging technique that, for the first time, enables three-dimensional mapping of serotonin as it’s reabsorbed into neurons, across multiple regions of the living brain. This technique, the researchers say, gives an unprecedented view of serotonin dynamics, and could be a powerful tool for the research and development of antidepressants.

The ultimate goal of cancer diagnostics is to develop sensitive imaging techniques for reliable detection of tumor malignancy in the body. Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology have come close to achieving this goal by developing an injectable imaging probe that can specifically detect solid tumors based on the activity of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) regulated by the ubiquitin-proteasome system.

To pave the way for a future where data and records move seamlessly between different healthcare systems, different patient data management systems have been successfully tested at the OYS TestLab in Oulu, Finland. This included the seamless transition of information between the Oulu University Hospital’s Esko system, Tieto’s Lifecare database and CGI’s OMNI360 healthcare database.

A series of medical-grade AC/DC power supplies offer full performance at elevated ambient temperature levels, for example in enclosures where forced cooling is not possible because of hygiene, safety, contamination or acoustic noise. RECOM’s RACM series contains 40, 65 and 100W modules which offer continuous output power with free air convection cooling. 

Washington State University researchers have developed a low-cost, portable laboratory on a smartphone that can analyse several samples at once to catch a cancer biomarker, producing lab quality results. The research team, led by Lei Li, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, recently published the work in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.