Category Biology/Biotechnology

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine scientists (WFIRM) have developed a method to bioprint a type of cartilage that could someday help restore knee function damaged by arthritis or injury.

This cartilage, known as fibrocartilage, helps connect tendons or ligaments or bones and is primarily found in the meniscus in the knee. The meniscus is the tough, rubbery cartilage that acts as a shock absorber in the knee joint. Degeneration of the meniscus tissue affects millions of patients and arthroscopic partial meniscectomy is one of the most common orthopedic operations performed. Besides surgery, there is a lack of available treatment options.

In this latest proof-of-concept ...

There are many human problems that scientists and engineers have solved by drawing ideas directly from biomechanisms found in other lifeforms, from Velcro to Japan’s famous bullet trains, the Shinkansen. Thus, it should not come as a surprise to know that many remarkable advances in anti-reflective coating were inspired by the peculiar biostructures found in moth eyes.

As mainly nocturnal animals that wish to stay hidden from predators, moths have evolved to develop eyes that are non-reflective. Their eyes have a periodic nanometric structure that makes the eye surface graded, as opposed to polished...

One of the main natural components of ayahuasca tea is dimethyltryptamine (DMT), which promotes neurogenesis —the formation of new neurons—according to research led by the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).

In addition to neurons, the infusion used for shamanic purposes also induces the formation of other neural cells such as astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.

“This capacity to modulate brain plasticity suggests that it has great therapeutic potential for a wide range of psychiatric and neurological disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases,” explained José Ángel Morales, a researcher in the UCM and CIBERNED Department of Cellular Biology.

The study, published in Translational Psychiatry, a Nature Researc...

Scientists have used gene therapy to regenerate damaged nerve fibres in the eye, in a discovery that could aid the development of new treatments for glaucoma, one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide.

Axons — nerve fibres — in the adult central nervous system (CNS) do not normally regenerate after injury and disease, meaning that damage is often irreversible. However, over the past decade there have been a number of discoveries that suggest it may be possible to stimulate regeneration.

In a study published today in Nature Communications, scientists tested whether the gene responsible for the production of a protein known as Protrudin could stimulate the regeneration of nerve cells and protect them from cell death after an injury.

The team, led by Dr Richard Eva, Profe...