Category Health/Medical

Functional vascularized lung grafts for lung bioengineering. Science Advances, 2017; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1700521

New approach to bioengineering lungs selectively treats epithelium that lines the lung airway, while preserving lung vasculature. A Columbia Engineering team is the first to successfully bioengineer a functional lung with perfusable and healthy vasculature in an ex vivo rodent lung. End-stage lung disease is the third leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 400,000 deaths per year in the US alone...

1. BiliScreen is a new smartphone app that is designed to screen for pancreatic cancer by having users snap a selfie. It’s shown here with a 3-D printed box that helps control lighting conditions to detect signs of jaundice in a person’s eye.Dennis Wise/University of Washington
2. BiliScreen provides estimates of bilirubin levels in a person’s blood. Elevated levels can be an early warning sign for pancreatic cancer, hepatitis and other diseases.Dennis Wise/University of Washington
3.The UW team tested two different accessories for BiliScreen: a 3-D printed box to control lighting conditions and glasses that help the app calibrate colors. The goal is to remove the need for additional accessories, potentially by mining data from facial pictures.Dennis Wise/University of Washington

Pancr...

David Chan, MD, PhD, will present “Elimination of paternal mitochondria in mammalian embryos” as part of the “Moving Mitochondria: Networks and Quality Control” symposium on Monday, August 28, from 10:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., in the U.S. Grant Hotel.

Mammal embryos shed paternal mitochondria within days of fertilization, perhaps to ensure the offspring a healthy life, a new study shows. Researchers from the California Institute of Technology will present their findings today at the American Physiological Society’s Physiological Bioenergetics: Mitochondria from Bench to Bedside conference in San Diego.

Both parents supply mitochondria – the “energy center” of cells – to form an embryo, but previous research has shown that the father’s contributions are short lived...

Antiinflammatory Therapy with Canakinumab for Atherosclerotic Disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 2017; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1707914

Inflammatory hypothesis confirmed: Landmark randomized clinical trial of high-risk patients finds that a drug targeting inflammation reduced risk of major adverse cardiovascular events. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital today announced results of a clinical trial culminating from 25 years of cardiovascular research work. Paul M...