Category Health/Medical

Nanosurgical Tool could be Key to Cancer Breakthrough

A groundbreaking nanosurgical tool — about 500 times thinner than a human hair — could be transformative for cancer research and give insights into treatment resistance that no other technology has been able to do, according to a new study.

The high-tech double-barrel nanopipette, developed by University of Leeds scientists, and applied to the global medical challenge of cancer, has — for the first time — enabled researchers to see how individual living cancer cells react to treatment and change over time — providing vital understanding that could help doctors develop more effective cancer medication.

The tool has two nanoscopic needles, meaning it can simultaneously inject and extract a sample from the same cell, expanding its potential uses...

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‘Like a Lab in your Pocket’ — new test strips raise game in gene-based diagnostics

The new testing strips will make rapid antigen testing as powerful as PCR testing.
Photo: Getty Images

Biosensing technology developed by engineers has made it possible to create gene test strips that rival conventional lab-based tests in quality. When the pandemic started, people who felt unwell had to join long queues for lab-based PCR tests and then wait for two days to learn if they had the COVID-19 virus or not.

In addition to significant inconvenience, a major drawback was the substantial and expensive logistics needed for such laboratory tests, while testing delays increased the risk of disease spread.

Now a team of bio]medical engineers at UNSW Sydney have developed a new technology offering test strips which are just as accurate as the lab-based detection...

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World-first Trial of Regenerative Hearing Drug is Successfully Completed

World-first trial of regenerative hearing drug is successfully completed
Mean pure-tone air-conduction thresholds in the treated ear of all patients that completed 12 weeks follow-up (N = 42). Presented timepoints are baseline (black), 6 (blue) and 12 (red) weeks, error bars indicate standard deviations. Pure-tone thresholds are displayed in decibel hearing level (dB HL), frequency in kilohertz (kHz). Credit: Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45784-0

Researchers at UCL and UCLH have successfully completed the first trial of a therapy designed to restore hearing loss. The REGAIN trial, the results of which were published in Nature Communications, was the first study of a treatment aimed at restoring lost hearing, focusing on a drug with the technical name gamma-secretase inhibitor LY3056480.

The researchers found that while the t...

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Common Immune Response is found to be Protective Across Many Diseases

Common immune response protective across many diseases
Overview of study design, analytic methods, and dataset multi-omics. (A) Cartoon describing the collected single-cell and bulk multi-omic datasets with paired clinical data from infection, autoimmunity, and cancer contexts. (B) Cartoon depicting experimental and analytic strategies for single-cell and bulk data with a focus on NKG2A/C-expressing cell types. (C) Cartoon demonstrating NKG2A+ and NKG2C+ bias assignment at single-cell and bulk levels. (D) Cartoon displaying the different clinical and biological -omics to be compared between NKG2A+ and patients with an NKG2C+ bias. Credit: Cell Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.113872

Combined, infection, autoimmunity and cancer account for 4 out of every 10 deaths worldwide, and represent major global health challenges...

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