Category Health/Medical

This is a photomicrograph of tissue that has grown into the stroke cavity in the stroke-healing gel. The red tubes are blood vessels. They are growing into the site of the stroke in the center of the image. The green filaments are axons. These grow along the blood vessels as they enter the gel and infarct area. The blue ovoids are cell nuclei in the tissue. Credit: UCLA Health

In a first-of-its-kind finding, a new stroke-healing gel helped regrow neurons and blood vessels in mice with stroke-damaged brains, researchers report. “We tested this in laboratory mice to determine if it would repair the brain in a model of stroke, and lead to recovery,” said Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, Professor and Chair of neurology at UCLA...

The 3D bioprinter designed by Khademhosseini has two key components: a custom-built microfluidic chip (pictured) and a digital micromirror. Credit: Amir Miri

Device could help advance regenerative medicine. A UCLA Samueli-led team has developed a specially adapted 3D printer to build therapeutic biomaterials from multiple materials. The advance could be a step toward on-demand printing of complex artificial tissues for use in transplants and other surgeries. “Tissues are wonderfully complex structures, so to engineer artificial versions of them that function properly, we have to recreate their complexity,” said Ali Khademhosseini, who led the study and is UCLA’s Levi James Knight, Jr., Professor of Engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering...

These are reactive microglia (red+green) in irradiated mouse hippocampus. (Blue stain is cell nuclei for anatomical reference.) Credit: Rosi lab / UCSF

Novel drug protects memory function in mice exposed to simulated cosmic radiation. Planning a trip to Mars? You’ll want to remember your anti-radiation pills. NASA and private space companies like SpaceX plan to send humans to the red planet within the next 15 years – but among the major challenges facing future crewed space missions is how to protect astronauts from the dangerous cosmic radiation of deep space.

Now the lab of UCSF neuroscientist Susanna Rosi, PhD, has identified the first potential treatment for the brain damage caused by exposure to cosmic rays – a drug that prevents memory impairment in mice exposed to simulated space ra...

Image reveals Purkinje cells (gray) and their dendrites, as well as an accumulation of protein deposits (red dots). Credit: Ackerman Lab/UC San Diego

Protein ‘proofreading’ errors lead to neurodegenerative disease. UCSD researchers found that the ‘Ankrd16’ gene acts like a failsafe in proofreading and correcting errors to avoid the abnormal production of improper proteins. Usually, the information transfer from gene to protein is carefully controlled – biologically “proofread” and corrected – to avoid the production of improper proteins...