Medical

A novel bio-based scaffold promises significantly better clinical performance in hernia operations. Mesh repair of hernias is now standard in most countries. Typically, a non-degradable polymeric mesh is placed at the site of organ protrusion to act as a scaffold for reinforcing tissue growth. However, customarily used non-degradable polymers are often associated with a high rate of foreign body reaction and hernia recurrence. In addition, curren...

Investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital, together with collaborators from Massachusetts General Hospital, have developed an innovative nanoplatform that allows them to effectively deliver RNA interference (RNAi) agents to the sites of cancer and suppress tumor growth and reduce metastasis in preclinical models of anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC). Their results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Northeastern's Danielle Levac develops video games to make physical therapy more fun, motivating, and rewarding for patients—especially for children with movement impairments, such as those with cerebral palsy. Levac, professor of physical therapy in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences, invited a group of fifth-grade students from Boston's Ellis Mendell Elementary School to visit her lab last week.

KIND Financial, the leader in technology for cannabis compliance, announced the launch of KIND Government Solutions with Microsoft to acquire government-facing contracts for seed to sale tracking. Microsoft selected KIND to participate in its newly created Microsoft Health and Human Services Pod for Managed Service Providers. The goal of this relationship is to leverage each company's resources to provide State, County, and Municipalities with pu...

An exhaustive look at how bacteria hold their ground and avoid getting pushed around by their environment shows how dozens of genes aid the essential job of protecting cells from popping when tensions run high. For centuries, biologists have considered cells the irreducible unit of life, and cells require various types of envelopes to contain the chemical conditions life demands. When cells lose their mechanical properties, they rupture and die, ...

A procedure developed at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) may revolutionise the culturing of adult stem cells. In their report that has been published online prior to its appearance in Cell Stem Cell, the team describes generating and expanding airway stem cells from the sorts of tissue samples collected during routine treatment of lung disorders. The overall approach appears applicable to several other tissue types, including skin and the li...

Researchers at the Texas Analog Center of Excellence (TxACE) at UT Dallas are working to develop an affordable electronic nose that can be used in breath analysis for a wide range of health diagnosis. While devices that can conduct breath analysis using compound semiconductors exist, they are bulky and too costly for commercial use, said Dr. Kenneth O, one of the principal investigators of the effort and director of TxACE. The researchers determi...

Of the millions of sperm that enter the vagina, only about 10 or so make it to the oocyte or egg, demonstrating how rigorous the natural sperm selection process really is. So how is it possible to select only the best sperm for assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation? That's what a researcher at Florida Atlantic University is aiming to do with his microfluidic technology for reproductive medicine.

Scientists from ITMO University, the Federal Research and Clinical Centre of Physical-Chemical Medicine and MIPT have developed a software program that quickly compares sets of DNA of microorganisms living in different environments. Using the algorithm to compare the microflora of a healthy person with the microflora of a patient, specialists could detect previously unknown pathogens and their strains, which can aid the development of personalise...

Certified to the IEC 60601-1 & 60601-1-11 medical standards, a series of 40-65W Class II external power supplies has been unveiled by TDK-Lambda. The DTM65-C8 series have 4,000VAC isolation from input to output and require no ground wire connection. The series is intended to power a range of hospital, dental and home healthcare products for monitoring, imaging and diagnostic applications.