Category Health/Medical

Neuropathic pain – abnormal hypersensitivity to stimuli – is associated with impaired quality of life and is often poorly managed. Estimates suggest that 3 percent to 17 percent of adults suffer from neuropathic pain, including a quarter of people with diabetes and a third of people with HIV.

In a paper published in the journal Neuron, researchers report that a mechanism involving the enzyme Tiam1 in dorsal horn excitatory neurons of the spinal cord both initiates and maintains neuropathic pain. Moreover, they show that targeting spinal Tiam1 with anti-sense oligonucleotides injected into the cerebrospinal fluid effectively alleviated neuropathic pain hypersensitivity.

“Thus, our study has uncovered a pathophysiological mechanism that initiates, ...

DNA archival storage within reach thanks to new PCR technique. Storing data in DNA sounds like science fiction, yet it lies in the near future. Professor Tom de Greef expects the first DNA data center to be up and running within five to ten years. Data won’t be stored as zeros and ones in a hard drive but in the base pairs that make up DNA: AT and CG. Such a data center would take the form of a lab, many times smaller than the ones today. De Greef can already picture it all. In one part of the building, new files will be encoded via DNA synthesis. Another part will contain large fields of capsules, each capsule packed with a file. A robotic arm will remove a capsule, read its contents and place it back.

We’re talking about synthetic DNA...

Delivery technology successfully blocks SARS-CoV-2 infection in mice; adaptable for multiple diseases

Scientists at UMass Chan Medical School have developed a technology to deliver gene therapy directly to lung tissue through intranasal administration, a development that could potentially create a new class of treatments for lung disease.

Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study by a multidisciplinary team of RNA biologists, chemical biologists, immunologists and virologists describes the delivery of siRNA molecules locally to lung tissue...

More effectively measuring tissue stiffness could help treat cancer, sports injuries and more. A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a stretchable ultrasonic array capable of serial, non-invasive, 3D imaging of tissues as deep as four centimeters below the surface of human skin, at a spatial resolution of 0.5 millimeters. This new method provides a non-invasive, longer-term alternative to current methods, with improved penetration depth.

The research emerges from the lab of Sheng Xu, a pro...