Showing posts with label Biotech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biotech. Show all posts
Sunday, February 12, 2012
NASA's Implantable Biocapsule Can Automatically Diagnose and Treat Disease
Every geek comes with his or her own personal obsession with a particular bit of future technology. Weather it's something born purely of the imagination of a sci-fi writer like a light saber, or some speculative bit of real world technology that's seemingly just around the corner, we all have one. Mine, well... one of mine, is the promise of the manipulation of the human body and immune system, through the use of nanotechnology. And while true nanomachines are admittedly still a distant dream, nanotechnology itself is a very real part of our world, and NASA's newly designed, disease treating Biocapsule implant, is a particularly stunning example of that fact.
Designed by Dr. David Loftus, NASA's new Biocapsule is a tiny device built from carbonnanotubes that would be surgically inserted just beneath the patients skin. These Biocapsules would be filled with cells primed to to detect and cure specific ailments, and would do so automatically, by releasing therapeutic molecules (proteins, peptides), via diffusion across the capsule wall. Though designed to treat astronauts during long-term missions -specifically for radiation exposure- these devices could obviously also be adapted to treat any number of illnesses right here on Earth. They could even be used to administer targeted chemotherapy treatments or perhaps take the place of insulin injections, as explained by Dr. Loftus:
"The capsule would contain pancreatic islet cells (from animals) or would contain engineered cells designed to behave like pancreatic islet cells, with both glucose-sensing and insulin secretion function. Patients with low-insulin requirement might benefit from implantation of a single capsule (containing perhaps a million to 10 million cells); patients with higher insulin requirement might require implantation of more than one capsule."
Though it will still likely be another 15-20 years before we can realistically hope to see these capsules put to use on human patients. Unlike so many other speculative advances in technology and medicine, the implants in question actually already exist, and are set to move on to the animal testing phase sometime in the near future. So while it's tempting for me to dismiss headlines promising these devices to be set to " change the future of medicine", as just another bit of wishful thinking that's just too good to be true. From time to time, some amazing thing comes along that isn't based solely on hopeful speculation, and really could have world changing implications. And this -seems anyway- like it might actually be one of those things.
-CAINE-
Source:Gizmodo
Monday, September 5, 2011
How to Make "Bullet Proof" Skin From Spider Silk
Image credit:Luc ViatourNamed 2.6g 329m/s, after the maximum weight and velocity of a .22 calibre Long Rifle bullet from which a Type 1 bulletproof vest is meant to protect you; the skin was created by first acquiring the protein which makes the spider silk itself -which is several times stronger than steel- from the milk of goats genetically modified to produce the protein in their milk. Once extracted, the protein was then woven into a lattice work of fibers, which was in turn sandwiched between two layers of otherwise normal human skin cells grown on top of the silk matrix.
As for the goats themselves -since I'm sure you're curious- they were created using a method developed by researcher Randy Lewis and his team from Utah State University, in which the gene responsible for producing the silk is extracted from the spiders which would naturally create the substance, and ultimately inserted into a goat's egg.
While Essaidi's final product was ultimately unable to reach the minimum standard for modern bullet proof vests by stopping a .22 cal riffle bullet shot at normal speed, and the notion that we might someday replace the keratin in our skin with this silk using the same methods as those used to create the modified goats, though entirely plausible, is at best, a distant dream. In the short term, Lewis asserts that the most exciting part about Jalila's experiment is that they were able to grow the skin cells on top of the fibers in the first place, and the potential applications for the skin today in skin grafts and other treatments.
-CAINE-
Source: techcocktail.com
Friday, September 2, 2011
"Living Nanowire" Could Lead to Better Batteries
Batteries suck. Sure, like any other technology, batteries have improved vastly over the years. But there's just no getting around the fact that the lingering inefficiencies in the ability of batteries to both generate and store energy remains a major defect in all of our favorite portable devices, as well as would be alternative energy technologies like solar power. So as you might imagine, the quest for better batteries is a popular one, and one with many potential solutions. One such solution, to at least some of our battery woes anyway, could be the merging of biology and technology to create organic super-batteries or biological superconductors, using a newly developed living transistor made from bacteria.
A group of biologists and physicists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, recently teamed up to create what they have dubbed "living nanowire", using a strain of bacteria called Geobacter sulfurreducens, which grows long stringy filaments called pili along its body, which it uses to expel electrons generated as a byproduct of it's digestive process. By running current through a small electrode covered in a thin film of the bacteria, researchers were able to measure the conductivity of these filaments, and found that they could conduct electrons better than some metals.
"These nanowire networks showed the same properties of metal networks," Mark Tuominen, professor of physics at UMass and lead author of the paper detailing the findings of the team's research said, "We didn't think nature could make something similar to metal. This is the first time this has been discovered and this is very exciting for us."
Like any new discovery, the potential application of this research is speculative, and no specific details were given as to how or when it could lead to the development of these biological super-batteries; which would also be environmentally-sustainable, as well as cheaper to produce. But given the need for new developments in the world of power storage and generation, there is at least a hope that this discovery might not join the long list of potentially cool new technologies that we never hear from again.
-CAINE-
Source: Discovery News
You can also view this post on : GGB on Tumblr
Sunday, February 20, 2011
YaaY, Science Gives us Carnivorous Robots, Wait...WHAT?!
Image credit: The MatrixWell, consider this -The machines have already demonstrated their vast superiority in two of our most important geekly endeavors; Chess, with Deep Blue's defeat of Chess titan Gary Kasparov in 1997, and just this week, with IBM's supercomputer Watson's utter destruction of two of our greatest geek champions on Jeopardy. Sure, Kasparov did manage to win one round and draw three others, but Deep Blue still won, and yes, the humans on Jeopardy DID manage to win the final Jeopardy question, but their daily dollar amounts weren't even close.
Now, inventors at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory are building robots powered by Microbial fuel cells, which work by using bacteria to break down the bodies of dead flies and generate electrons which are in turn converted into electricity and used to power the machines. But that's only the beginning, as these scientist ultimately hope to design robots that can turn much larger bits of "biomass", that's us, into electricity, thus ensuring our inevitable demise at the hands of the machines! Okay, so none of these scientists have specifically mentioned feeding human flesh to their robots, but it's CLEARLY implied!!!
All kidding aside, microbial fuel cells are an impressive and unbelievably cool concept. One which could potentially be a real solution to a number of vexing problems, stemming from our ever growing dependence on technology and our need to power it. Besides, even if technology does someday become self-aware, run amok, and ultimately reduce humanity to little more than squishy pink D-cells; I've never really been good with people anyway, so I, for one, welcome our future robot overlords.
-CAINE-
Inspired by carnivorous plants like Pitcher plants and Flytraps, which consume insects to make up for the lack of nitrogen in the soil in which they grow; designer James Auger created the fly-powered clock in the video below.
Posted by Youtube user:Crittersinc
Posted by Youtube user:Crittersinc
Friday, October 29, 2010
Biotech Company Begins First Human Embryonic Stem Cell Trial
Earlier this month the Geron Corporation began the first Human embryonic stem cell trial. This trial, which began October 8th in the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, is expected to involve 10 patients, all of whom must have severe spinal cord injuries and begin treatment within 14 days after sustaining their injuries.
Participants in the trial will receive a single injection containing 2 million of Geron's GRNOPC1 cells and will then be monitored for a year to look for any sign of negative side-effects or regained function or sensation in their lower extremities. Assuming this initial group is found to suffer no ill-effect from the treatment, Geron plans to seek FDA approval to extend the study and increase the dose of GRNOPC1 patients receive, as well as including
"as broad a range of severe spinal cord-injured patients as medically appropriate."
Geron ultimately hopes to be able to inject GRNOPC1 directly into the spinal cord lesions of injured patients prompting the regrowth of damaged nerve cells and restoring function and sensation to patients suffering paralysis.
Trials like this one are long overdue and have been unnecessarily delayed due to what I personally view as the largely manufactured controversy surrounding embryonic stem cells. But if treatments like this prove successful, it will no doubt fuel the public's desire to see such treatments made available to patients with debilitating injuries and will help to remove the unfortunate and - in my opinion - completely unjustified bans and restrictions currently placed on embryonic stem cell research here in the US.
-CAINE-
Source:Discovery News
On a semi-related note, it remains impossible for me to hear the words "embryonic cells" without getting this song stuck in my head, but it's one of my absolute favorites, so I'm okay with that.
Posted by YouTube user:roadrunnerrecords
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