When removing pre-cancerous polyps from the colon, physicians typically inject saline into the tissue below the polyps to raise them and make them easier to access. However, saline drains away quickly, requiring precise timing and repeat injections, among other difficulties. Now, scientists at MIT have developed an injectable material that can be used to create these “cushions” below polyps, but that stays in place much longer than plain saline. The nifty aspect of the new material...
Optogenetics is a quickly evolving field that allows scientists to activate specific neurons using bursts of light. The technique may help to uncover the basis of neurological diseases and how to tame them. Using optogenetics to assess how different drugs affect the central nervous system may offer a powerful new scientific tool. To that end, scientists at KAIST, South Korea’s national research university, created a wireless neural implant that can deliver multiple drugs and simultaneously...
Vascular Graft Solutions, a company based in Tel Aviv, Israel, has won the European CE Mark for its FRAME FR device for repair and support of high flow and aneurysmal arteriovenous fistulas. These are created in hemodialysis patients to allow for more blood to flow through a vein and give easy access for dialysis needles. Although a properly performed fistula can work for many years, in many patients they tend to dilate and create all kinds of problems, including increased toxicity for the...
Researchers from Harvard’s Wyss Institute have developed a new biomaterial that can activate T cells to promote vascularization of ischemic tissues. Their work demonstrates that the biomaterial results in local blood vessel development, increased perfusion, and new muscle growth after ischemia. Various compounds have been tested to try to improve angiogenesis in tissues that have undergone ischemia, but they have failed in various ways. New interest has developed in using the body’s own immune...
Although a myriad of robots is already used in a variety of industries, including medicine, they’re almost exclusively rigid devices using conventional mechanics. To best work with the pliability of the human body, it may be advantageous for medical robots to be soft and not include gears, motors, and metal cables. Researchers at North Carolina State University and nearby Elon University have now developed such robots and have recently reported a technique that allows others to build similar...
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