Category Biology/Biotechnology

Blood sample.
Credit: © praisaeng / Fotolia

Cancer scientists led by principal investigator Dr. Daniel De Carvalho at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have combined “liquid biopsy,” epigenetic alterations and machine learning to develop a blood test to detect and classify cancer at its earliest stages. The findings describe not only a way to detect cancer, but hold promise of being able to find it earlier when it is more easily treated and long before symptoms ever appear, says Dr. De Carvalho, Senior Scientist at the cancer centre, University Health Network.

“We are very excited at this stage,” says Dr. De Carvalho. “A major problem in cancer is how to detect it early...

The researcher’s model of a yeast cell (magenta) with semiconductor nanoparticles (purple) attached to its surface (left) corresponds with their SEM analysis of the completed biohybrid system (right). The semiconductors capture electrons from light and hand them over to the cell where they drive the shikimic acid metabolic pathway.
Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

Scientists presents a highly adaptable solution to creating yeast biohybrids with enhanced metabolism driven by light energy. Genetically engineered microbes such as bacteria and yeasts have long been used as living factories to produce drugs and fine chemicals...

Rice University bioengineers use a magnetic field to activate nanoparticle-attached baculoviruses in a tissue. The viruses, which normally infect alfalfa looper moths, are modified to deliver gene-editing DNA code only to cells that are targeted with magnetic field-induced local transduction.
Credit: Laboratory of Biomolecular Engineering and Nanomedicine/Rice University

Experimental therapy could repair mutations that cause genetic diseases. Bioengineers have combined a virus that infects moths with magnetic nanoparticles to create a potential new therapy for inherited genetic diseases like muscular dystrophy, sickle cell, cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and some forms of cancer.

Rice University bioengineer Gang Bao has combined magnetic nanoparticles with a viral container drawn ...

Tractor spraying a wheat field. Credit: © Dusan Kostic / Fotolia

Use of organophosphates has lessened, but risks to early brain development still too high. Public health experts have found there is sufficient evidence that prenatal exposure to widely used insecticides known as organophosphates puts children at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders.

In a scientific review and call to action published in PLOS Medicine, the researchers call for immediate government intervention to phase out all organophosphates...