Category Health/Medical

Image shows bone progenitor cells labeled by red glow inside a cleared femur. Credit: A. Greenbaum et al., Science Translational Medicine (2017)

Cells engineered to produce insulin under the command of a smartphone helped keep blood sugar levels within normal limits in diabetic mice. More than 415 million people worldwide are living with diabetes, and frequently need to inject themselves with insulin to manage their blood sugars. Human cells can be genetically engineered into living factories that efficiently manufacture and deliver hormones and signaling molecules, but most synthetic biological circuits don’t offer the same degree of sensitivity and precision as digital sensors.

Combining living tissues and technology, Jiawei Shao et al...

This is an artistic interpretation of how an electronic device in the stomach could be powered wirelessly. Credit: Ella Maru Studio / Giovanni Traverso / Abubakar Abid

Using mid-field wireless powering, investigators can transfer power from outside the body to electronics in the gastrointestinal tract. Imagers, gastric pacemakers and other diagnostic and therapeutic tools could someday transform the way diseases of the gastrointestinal tract are measured and treated. But in order for these electronic devices to work, they need a power source. Traditional power sources, eg. batteries, can be incompatible with the mucosal lining and have a limited lifespan within the body. A more promising possibility is to power electronic devices from outside the body...

A microscopic image of tumor tissue under the influence of TNF (left) and IFN- ? (right). Red blood cells are pictured in a magenta color. TNF bursts the blood vessels and releases large amounts of blood cells, whereas IFN-? lets vessels retreat. Credit: Christian Friese / MDC

Immunotherapy with T-cells offers great hope to people suffering from cancer. Some initial successes have already been made in treating blood cancer, but treating solid tumors remains a major challenge. The signaling molecule interferon gamma, produced by T-cells, plays a key role in the therapy. It cuts off the blood supply to tumors. The immune system is the body’s most powerful weapon against diseases...

High fat Diet + Vitamin A potentiation of Insulin resistance and body weight increase

Vitamin A is an essential nutrient that the human body needs to function properly. But new research presented today at the American Physiological Society (APS) annual meeting at Experimental Biology 2017 in Chicago suggests that normal levels of vitamin A within a high-fat diet can negatively affect expression of liver genes associated with glucose and fat metabolism.

Researchers fed 2 groups of rats a high-fat diet for 8 weeks. One group consumed normal amounts of vitamin A (“sufficient”), while the other group ate food that lacked the nutrient (“deficient”). The research team measured the rats’ body mass (an indicator of concentration of body fat) each week...