Georgia Tech researchers have engineered one of the world’s first yeast cells able to harness energy from light, expanding our understanding of the evolution of this trait — and paving the way for advancements in biofuel production and cellular aging.
A beating heart makes for a formidable surgical arena, but a new robotic catheter could someday equip surgeons to operate in the cardiac environment with greater ease.
In a study co-led by investigators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, researchers developed a low-cost, ultrasensitive blood test to detect minute levels of a cancer biomarker that is highly specific to multiple common cancers.
Rutgers-led research found that marine heat waves – prolonged periods of unusually warm ocean temperatures – haven’t had a lasting effect on the fish communities that feed most of the world. The finding is in stark contrast to the devastating effects seen on other marine ecosystems cataloged by scientists after similar periods of warming, including widespread coral bleaching and harmful algal blooms.
A study using a synthetic ‘minimal cell’ organism stripped down to the 'bare essentials' for life demonstrates the tenacity of organism's power to evolve and adapt, even in the face of an unnatural genome that would seemingly provide little flexibility.
Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists say they have developed a nanoparticle — an extremely tiny biodegradable container — that has the potential to improve the delivery of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based vaccines for infectious diseases such as COVID-19, and vaccines for treating non-infectious diseases including cancer.
Impairments in the lymphatic system may contribute to brain diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases and stroke. Researchers have found a noninvasive and nonpharmaceutical method to influence glymphatic transport using focused ultrasound, opening the opportunity to use the method to further study brain diseases and brain function.
NIH-funded researchers developed an online tool that can analyze self-collected, at-home videos with a smartphone. When deployed in a nationwide study, the tool could predict physical health and osteoarthritis of the knee or hip.
Using focused-ultrasound-mediated liquid biopsy in a mouse model released more tau proteins and another biomarker into the blood than without the intervention. This noninvasive method could facilitate diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders, according to research from Washington University in St. Louis.
For the first time, researchers at UC San Diego have created an atomic-level computer model of the H1N1 virus that reveals new vulnerabilities, suggesting possible strategies for the design of future vaccines and antivirals against influenza.
Using a new method based upon comparing DNA mutation rates between parents and offspring, evolutionary biologists at Indiana University have for the first time revealed the average age of mothers versus fathers over the past 250,000 years, including the discovery that the age gap is shrinking, with women's average age at conception increasing from 23.2 years to 26.4 years, on average, in the past 5,000 years.
NIBIB-funded researchers are developing a new method to treat pancreatic cancer. In their study, they combined an injectable radioactive gel with systemic chemotherapy in multiple mouse models of the disease. The treatment resulted in tumor regression in all evaluated models, an unprecedented result for this genetically diverse and aggressive type of cancer.
NIBIB-funded researchers are fine-tuning a wearable, cuffless blood pressure monitor. Made of graphene, one of the thinnest materials in the world, the device is worn on the underside of the wrist and can measure blood pressure with comparable accuracy to a standard blood pressure cuff.
Researchers have found that AI models could accurately predict self-reported race in several types of medical images, suggesting that race information could be unknowingly incorporated into image analysis models.
In a new publication, a team of biologists share their process for crafting a manual for field research that prioritizes safety for researchers from marginalized groups.
A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health has shown that commercially available rapid antigen tests can detect past and present variants of concern and has identified potential mutations that may impact test performance in the future.
Two biomedical imaging technologies developed with support from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) have been cleared for clinical use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Both technologies offer advances in computed tomography (CT).
Two common viruses lie dormant in neurons – herpes simplex virus (HSV), and varicella zoster virus (VZV). Lab models of the human brain show that activation or re-infection of VZV can trigger neuroinflammation and wake up HSV, leading to accumulation of Alzheimer’s linked proteins and neural decline.
An interdisciplinary research team has developed a fast, cost-effective method to detect the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 variants. The approach can augment current surveillance methods that use comprehensive next-generation sequencing of virus samples, helping focus sequencing efforts on samples representing unknown and emerging variants.
NIBIB-funded researchers are developing a method to activate natural killer cells using an external magnetic field, which not only enhances their cytotoxicity, but allows them to be tracked using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to verify that they’ve reached their target.
By using a synthetic scaffold, Georgia Tech researchers created a novel way generate breast tumor models faster, more reliably, and with dramatically less immune variability than existing models - making them highly suitable for immunotherapy research.
Scientists have triggered long-term growth of legs in adult frogs, which are naturally unable to regenerate limbs. The frogs regrew a lost leg over months, triggered by just 24 hour exposure to a five-drug cocktail held under a bioreactor. The new legs were functional enough to enable sensation and locomotion.
Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have developed a color-coded test that quickly signals whether newly developed nanoparticles — ultra small compartments designed to ferry medicines, vaccines and other therapies — deliver their cargo into target cells. The new testing tool, engineered specifically to test nanoparticles, could advance the search for next-generation biological medicines.
Bioengineers are using focused ultrasound to modulate motor activity in the brain without surgical device implantation, a first step toward non-invasive brain stimulation therapies.
Published research by Indiana University professor Jay Lennon's lab shows how bacteria can overcome starvation situations and survive for a long time, which has broader implications for chronic infections.
NIH-funded researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated the potential of a neuromodulation approach that uses low-intensity ultrasound energy, called transcranial focused ultrasound—or tFUS.
RNA-based drugs may change the standard of care for many diseases, making personalized medicine a reality. So far these cost-effective, easy-to-manufacture drugs haven’t been very useful in treating brain tumors and other brain disease. But a team of researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University has shown that a combination of ultrasound and RNA-loaded nanoparticles can temporarily open the protective blood-brain barrier, allowing the delivery of potent medicine to brain tumors.
Collaborative research between the University of Kentucky (UK) and University of Southern California (USC) suggests that a noninvasive neuroimaging technique may index early-stage blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction associated with small vessel disease (SVD).
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a soft, stretchy skin patch that can be worn on the neck to continuously track blood pressure and heart rate while measuring the wearer’s levels of glucose as well as lactate, alcohol or caffeine. This one patch performs as well as commercial monitoring devices such as a blood pressure cuff, blood lactate meter, glucometer and breathalyzer.
The COVID-19 Testing Impact Calculator is a free resource that shows how different approaches to testing and other mitigation measures, such as mask use, can curb the spread of the virus in any organization.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have combined synthetic biology with a machine learning algorithm to create human liver organoids with blood and bile handling systems. When implanted into mice with failing livers, the lab-grown replacement livers extended life.
Researchers created a system that uses CRISPR in a new way. Rather than acting on the genome to create permanent change, their system briefly suppresses genes specific to adenovirus antibody production, just long enough for the virus to deliver its gene therapy cargo unimpeded.
A new study published in the journal New Phytologist from a research team led by environmental scientist Bala Chaudhary at DePaul University uncovered previously undiscovered patterns in the dispersal of mycorrhizal fungi that could help ecologists understand how these beneficial fungi travel.
A chemistry professor at Université de Montréal, in Canada, has developed a new test using gold nanoparticles to establish the flavour profile of maple syrup and help producers evaluate its quality.
A team at ClearCam, Inc., with funding from the NIBIB and ties to the University of Texas at Austin, designed a device for wiping a laparoscope lens clean, much the same way that a wiper blade clears a fogged up window.
Bioengineers have created a blood-drawing robot that performed as well or better than technicians. The device could increase blood draw success from difficult- to-find veins and allow healthcare workers more time to treat patients.
Experts believe that tuberculosis, or TB, has been a scourge for humans for some 15,000 years, with the first medical documentation of the disease coming out of India around 1000 B.C.E. Today, the World Health Organization reports that TB is still the leading cause of death worldwide from a single infectious agent, responsible for some 1.5 million fatalities annually. Primary treatment for TB for the past 50 years has remained unchanged and still requires patients to take multiple drugs daily for at least six months. Successful treatment with these anti-TB drugs — taken orally or injected into the bloodstream — depends on the medications “finding their way” into pockets of TB bacteria buried deep within the lungs.
Wayne State University received a two-year, $725,000 R01 grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health for the development of a novel point-of-care 3D neonatal photoacoustic tomography (3D-nPAT) to improve the detection and measurement of hypoxic-ischemic in neonates without the need for sedation, radiation or radionuclides.
If the saying that two heads are better than one is true, then joining two fields of science may be better than one to spur more advances in medicine. With a $6.7 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers will bring together immunologists, oncologists and biomedical engineers in an effort to build new tools to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases.
What factors affect how human touch perceives softness, like the feel of pressing your fingertip against a marshmallow, a piece of clay or a rubber ball? By exploring this question in detail, UC San Diego researchers discovered clever tricks to design materials that replicate different levels of perceived softness.
Bioengineers have developed a 3D printing technique that creates the interacting networks for transport of air, blood, and other bodily fluids—a major step toward 3D printed replacement organs.
NIBIB-funded researchers used photoacoustic imaging for rapid measurement of metabolic rate of individual cells from breast tumors—information that can help guide treatment strategies.
A new technique to rehabilitate lungs that are too damaged to be considered for transplant could benefit an increasing population of patients with end-stage lung disease.
As many as a billion people could be newly exposed to disease-carrying mosquitoes by the end of the century because of global warming, says a new study that examines temperature changes on a monthly basis across the world.
Experimenting with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have successfully used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to calculate in real time how much of an immunotherapy drug reaches a tumor and what parts of a cancer remain unaffected.
Using strong and targeted but noninvasive magnets at specific sites in the brains of people with and without mild learning and memory problems, Johns Hopkins researchers report they were able to detect differences in the concentrations of brain chemicals that transmit messages between neurons. The strength of these magnetic fields allows the researchers to measure tiny amounts and compare multiple brain metabolite levels at the same time. These studies may ultimately help to reveal what initiates memory decline and may, perhaps, even predict dementia risk.
The researchers believe that measuring such data over time will allow them to more accurately detect and describe changes in metabolism in the brain as a person progresses from healthy to mild cognitive impairment and to dementia.
A new Johns Hopkins study offers promise towards someday being able to non-invasively examine changes in cancerous tumors to determine whether they’ll respond to radiation treatment, before treatment even begins.