Slow and Steady Drug Delivery Keeps Biomedical Devices Kicking
Researchers from MIT have developed a novel method to locally deliver drugs and prevent immune activity around implanted biomedical devices over several months. The method is based on the formation of crystals of immunosuppressive drugs, which can be included in devices and slowly dissolve over the course of months. While this method substantially increases the length of time tested devices can function, difficulty of crystallizing certain drugs or introducing them into specific devices may prove to be a challenge in adapting this method to other systems. Even so, for many cases, this method will likely substantially reduce the difficulty of maintaining device stability for extended periods of time. Continue reading Slow and Steady Drug Delivery Keeps Biomedical Devices Kicking
Hey, those bacteria are stealing our drugs!
Bacteria in the human gut can modify the ingested drugs rendering them useless. Scientists discovered how the gut bacteria degrade a Parkinson’s disease medicine and found a way to stop them from stealing our drugs. Continue reading Hey, those bacteria are stealing our drugs!
The New Trojan Horse: Using tumor cells to kill tumors
Cancer immunotherapy exploits our immune system to kill cancerous cells. Recently, researchers have discovered a novel way to do this. They engineered cells that are programmed to die and injected them into tumor. They have successfully shown that the dying cells is able to kill tumor cells via recruitment of the immune system. This strategy might be a potential new method to improve the efficacy of current cancer immunotherapy methods. Continue reading The New Trojan Horse: Using tumor cells to kill tumors
How Kelp Naturally Combats Global Climate Change
by Sylvia Hurlimann figures by Hannah Zucker When we think of kelp, we conjure up images of magical underwater forests. Recent research, however, suggests that in addition to creating beautiful habitats, macroalgae such as kelp play a large role reducing the effects of global warming. Kelp has an incredibly fast growth rate (up to two feet per day) and exports a large portion of its … Continue reading How Kelp Naturally Combats Global Climate Change
Genetic tools create new opportunities for decoding protein structures
Proteins are made up of linear sequences of amino acids but understanding how these amino acids fold to form a three-dimensional structure is notoriously difficult. Knowing what a protein looks like in 3D is often necessary for understanding how it functions and how it can be manipulated. For instance, understanding how proteins such as antibodies bind to viruses like the flu would enable scientists to … Continue reading Genetic tools create new opportunities for decoding protein structures
What Scientists Do When Funding Runs Dry
by Melanie Basnak figures by Jovana Andrejevic Doctor Marina Simian won a big money prize playing “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?” last month in Argentina. She’s not using that money to buy a house or go on a fancy vacation. Instead, she’s using it to fund her cancer research at the University of San Martin (Figure 1). “Why does she have to go to a TV … Continue reading What Scientists Do When Funding Runs Dry
Is it Smoky in Here? The importance of the Clean Air Act in the 21st century
by Felix Barber figures by Hannah Zucker We live in exceptional times, with extreme weather events in recent memory including devastating wildfires in California, flooding and polar conditions in the Midwest USA, and extreme rainfall in the wake of hurricane Harvey. Such events are predicted to only become more common with global climate change. In the US, the Clean Air Act (CAA) is a major … Continue reading Is it Smoky in Here? The importance of the Clean Air Act in the 21st century
Human endurance is not limitless
Imagine you’re running a race. But this is no normal race—this is a 140-day trek from Huntington Beach, CA to Washington, D.C. Welcome to Race Across the USA, a seemingly-superhuman feat that provides the perfect laboratory to study human endurance. After all, extreme athletes push their bodies to the proverbial “limit”—but what, exactly, is this limit? That’s what a new study published in Science Advances … Continue reading Human endurance is not limitless
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Applications, implications, and limitations
by Daniel Greenfield figures by Sean Wilson The future of ‘standard’ medical practice might be here sooner than anticipated, where a patient could see a computer before seeing a doctor. Through advances in artificial intelligence (AI), it appears possible for the days of misdiagnosis and treating disease symptoms rather than their root cause to move behind us. Think about how many years of blood pressure measurements … Continue reading Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Applications, implications, and limitations
Can converting methane into CO2 help reduce climate change?
Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, contribute to global warming by slowing the rate at which heat energy escapes into space. Although methane is less abundant than CO2, it is several times more potent, absorbing up to 36 times more energy than CO2 over a century. Last year marked the first time that global methane concentrations reached levels 2.5 times greater than … Continue reading Can converting methane into CO2 help reduce climate change?