3d Printing Could End Animal Testing

One of the less pleasant facets of modern medicine is that it depends in part on animal testing.  In a year apx. 100 million animals are used in labs and classrooms across the U.S.

As harsh as that idea is, the good news is that animal testing's days may be numbered due to Bio-ink and 3D printing of human tissue. 

The plus side is that printed human tissue returns more accurate test results and eliminate  possible harmful side effects that new drugs risk during human testing phases.   Another big plus is that specific samples can be printed of a patient to test their sensitivity to a particular range of  drugs, again lowering reactions from the patient.   This sounds like far future capabilities, but analysts predict that such testing could be available in as little as five years!

The complete Dvice article can be had HERE

Update,  medical 3D will be huge, but  every day printing will mean custom screens as well as curved monitors, custom lit clothing.....the sky is the limit.  Check out the Science Daily article on printing HERE

Meet Larry....Larry, It Seems, Has A Unique Talent

Meet Larry, a robotic head developed by the U.K.'s Health and Safety Laboratory.  Larry was invented to study the norovirus which has sickened more than a million people in the UK alone.

This particular  strain appears to be new which means that people's immune systems do not recognize the infection which equates to a surge of new infections.  

Norovirus causes a great deal of stomach distress.  Symptoms vary however stomach pain and vomiting seem to be the most common, hence the primary reason for the development of Larry the robot head.  

Norovirus, it should be noted, is incredibly robust.   It infects extremely fast and spreads equally as fast.  Plus it can live on an infected surface for an extremely long time. 

So where does robot head Larry fit in?  Well Larry can simulate a human vomiting!  "Why" you might ask?    Well it seems that Norovirus can be spread very easily through micro-particles of vomit, hence Larry the  anatomically correct "humanoid simulated vomiting system" which allows scientist to get a better idea of how far the aerosolized norovirus particles travel.

Check out the Verge artical here 

Plus the youtube video of Larry in action!

A Cure For Many Viral Infections Found?

Rhino/cold virus

From BBC News via IO9 comes the news that a drug to treat a large variety of viral infection has possibly been discovered.

MIT research scientist Todd Rider says he's developed a drug named Draco, which he says has successfully destroyed 15 different viruses in lab trials.

The reason that earlier attempts to develop a successful broad spectrum anti-viral is the fundamental difference between biologic infectious agents (germs if you will) and viral is much in how they reproduce. Microbes and their ilk can reproduce by fission by themselves. If you kill the microbe, you control the spread of infection. Viruses on the other hand invade a cell and hijack the cell's reproductive machinery to make copies of the invading virus in large quantities. So many in fact that the cell burst spreading copies of the virus, that start the process all over again. The virus is only at risk while outside a cell. Once they have invaded a cell they are virtually undetectable.

Rider's drug Draco uses this "behavior" to kill the virus. Draco consists of two proteins. One to detect a viral invader and the other to kill the cell outright so that it can not be used for reproduction. This approach should be effective from everything from a cold virus to HIV. Initial tests have been promising but there is still a long trial schedule ahead for Draco or another anti-viral.

Researchers Bomb Human Disease With Rockets!

Honest! This is exactly how the Gizmodo article read:

• researchers have invented a platinum and peroxide-fueled "nanorocket" that could propel through your blood, saliva, or urine to deliver medicine precisely where disease is happening.

Oh and the one thing you should know..the delivery system has not been safety checked yet either...

But the rocket, now that is another thing all together! Check it...

• scientists created a nanorocket engine with tubes coated on the inside with platinum. Then they placed the tubes in a hydrogen peroxide solution, which initiated decomposition of the peroxide into water and oxygen. As a result, bubbles shot out one end of the tube, creating thrust.

Now come on! If that is not the most far out thing you have heard today?!

Check out the short film

Turbine Charged Man!

Wow, sounds like a super hero don't it? Truth be told a few decades ago and he would have been. Turbines it seems are not the purview of jet aircraft. A pair turbine like pumps make up the centrifugal turbine heart pump developed by doctors at the Texas Heart Institute. That's right, we are talking about a blood pumping device that first off doesn't pump and if it doesn't pump, anyone fitted with just such a device will not have a pulse...weird huh? But the only reason we have a pulse is that the heart is very specialized muscle. Once a muscle contracts, to do more work, it must relax. (and it has to pick up fuel and dump off waste)

According to the Dvice blog article:

• (the device has) been tested for quite a while on animals along with one successful human trial — with no ill effects so far, too.
• The FDA still has to approve this technology, but it's looking like turbine heart replacements might be the next step forward in medical implants.

Check out the Device article which also contains an NPR link as well HERE

Have Scientists found a new state of matter?

According to an article in IO9, possibly. Lets explain.... After many years of research a team of scientists have developed what they are calling "equilibrium gel". Now when we think of a gel...what's the first thing that comes to mind....right, jello. Jello is an example of matter somewhat caught in an in between state. Not liquid, but certainly not a solid either. But even in it's quai-solid state, it is imperfect. Often leaving a certain amount liquid, and even under the best of times - it will return to a liquid state.

From the article:

• The new equilibrium gel is different. It is formed (with) a synthetic clay called Laponite. Scientists suspended Laponite in water and, using x-rays, studied how it formed a gel. At concentrations of less than 1 percent, the Laponite mixture broke down after three years. At concentrations above 1 percent, the gel formed a stable structure.

No big deal huh? But being stable, it could be part of medication, batteries who know..!

An article in Science Now goes so far to suggest that this structure is indeed novel and new

Uhhhhhhhhhh WTF!!!!!!!! They are transplanting WHAT?

Ok, well it's weird medical science...does that count here? Ok for those of you that have been with me long enough know....I just couldn't let this one ride.... soooooooooooo

Poop transplants. (yeah, you read that right.....they are transplanting poop. you know...this is a funny co-incidence, but I used to get my mouth washed out with soap for saying that word and now ......life is kinda weird... so, back to the ummm straight poop...OMG and there is no one here to stop me!!)

Doctors take diluted stool (tell me that you are ever going to read those two words together in an article again...you see?! I enlighten as well as inform!) sample from a person with healthy gut bacteria and inject it into the colon of someone whose bacteria are floundering. The healthy microbes move in and spruce up the place, curing some intestinal diseases.....

(You just got to know this is fake! come on! If a doctor said to you, I have a cure! This is how it works....and you're going to say....you are going to take what and do what to it and put it where? )

(oh and I get to say poop on the radio....)

If i'm lyin I'm dyin here is the link right here!

Lungs, Grown in Lab, Function!

From Science Now via Dvice comes news of a development that has the potential to put the transplant business out of business. Well as far as live donors are concerned. What's all the hullabaloo? Well for the first time, rats are taking breaths and oxygenating their blood with lungs that are not original equipment. Said lungs are not mechanical nor are they organs from another rat, but LAB CULTIVATED!!!

Biomedical engineer Laura Niklason of Yale University are using a technique called decellularization which involves stripping an organ of all its cells leaving a fibrous scaffold on which donor cells can be encouraged to grow. Eventually you have a functioning organ that the patient's own body will accept as his own.

Voodoo Medicine?

When Shaun Saunders posted this to me I thought he had finally cracked. But then I started reading it and the editorial in NewScientist makes a strong case for the mind controlling our health. Not just the placebo effect but shockingly deadly maladies litterally voodooed away.

The article is interesting enough on its own merits, however, knowing Shaun as we do, one can suspect that he suspect that there is another layer beneath the smoke and mirrors. What Saunders point out is:

• What is interesting though, is that it seems that every 2nd or 3rd advert on tv is about bowel, prostate, lung, skin or other cancer, or heart disease and so on...and on....
• Like my story 'H.A.D' - BMU show 113 - suggested - it's all 'down hill after age two...':
• The science behind this is not new - it's generally referred to the branch of psyc known as 'psychoneuroimunology'. Of course, ... as the article points out, it may not work for everyone - you must *believe* it, but then the same case might be made for a professional sports person needing to believe that they can achieve feats that no one else could.

H.A.D. as Shaun alludes to is a story that takes place in the near future. In this future it is the norm to seek-out medical services and be treated for all sorts of maladies beyond anything we would consider normal. To not seek out and treat these ailments is now thought to be a dangerous mental aberration, with all the associated hysterics. The very thing that sets this kind of behavior could very well be traced to TV ads promoting all sorts of cures and treatments for diseases we didn't even know about before the adverts.

This is a prime example of how science fiction takes a trend and the authors weave a projection from the smallest of hints and information.

Man regrows finger with miracle powder!

We hear every day of miracle drugs found in the jungles of the Amazon, or the relative merits of ancient herbal remedies from China, however one does not usually expect to find the answer to regeneration of lost limbs in a hobby store in a strip mall. Lee Spievak it seems is a testimony for just such an amazing cure. Spievak lost most of a finger recently while working on a model airplane. An accident in where the plane's propeller removed everything past the last knuckle of his middle finger. The lost section was never found, so Lee resigned himself to not having a complete digit. Today though, you wouldn't know it. Mr Spievak shows off his finger, and it's all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print. How? Well that's the truly remarkable part. It wasn't a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - provided by his brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine. "The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger" says Spievak. "It took about four weeks before it was sealed." Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement." The powder comes from the University of Pittsburgh, and is composed of all things, Pig's Bladders. As odd as that sounds, there are clinical trials to back up the claim that this material can do the impossible and regrow missing parts of the body...
Click here to read the complete article

Click here for video of Lee Spievak's remarkable recovery

Scientists discover way to reverse loss of memory

Wow, talk about a slam dunk! Shaun Saunders comes up with this fascinating and at the same time unsettling article from "The Independant" dealing with a startling breakthrough in how memory works.

Scientists performing experimental brain surgery on a man aged 50 have stumbled across a mechanism that could unlock how memory works. The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man's appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. Electrodes were pushed into the man's brain and stimulated with an electric current. Instead of losing appetite, the patient instead had an intense experience of déjà vu. He recalled, in intricate detail, a scene from 30 years earlier. More tests showed his ability to learn was dramatically improved when the current was switched on and his brain stimulated.

Now it seems like I remember reading about findings that parallel these findings. As I remember reading, something along this line was first observed by physicians on the battlefield during the revolutionary war. As far as I had read, this was mostly tied to long term memories. As I recall, those experiencing the "stimulation" (we are talking of course of gross battlefield injuries to the head which allowed direct manipulation of the gray matter, nuff said ok?) experience no pain and perfect and total recall of the memories. On thing that was never discussed was the ability to learn. Yes, this could have profound impact on how one remembers, but also how one learns as well!

As Shaun puts it - 'We can remember it for you wholesale' by Phillip K. Dick

click article title or here for complete story

Genetic 'telepathy'? A bizarre new property of DNA

Shaun sends in this article from physorg.com:

Scientists are reporting evidence that intact, double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. And then like friends with similar interests, the bits of genetic material hangout or congregate together. The recognition — of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits — occurs in a way once regarded as impossible. In a recent study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences. Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA. The new findings thus may shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which underpin cancer, aging, and other health problems.

Scientists Created a Living Rat's Heart From Baby Rat Cells

Have you noticed that medical science just took a turn into the twilight zone? Oh yes, Shaun Saunders sent in this story from ABC News online with the following statement - "Of mice and men..and rats! My ficiton has come to life! " here are some excerpts:

Scienctitst took the heart of a dead rat and chemically treated it so that they were left with a clear, translucent shell of a heart. This then became a "scaffold". Then they injected that "scaffold" with heart cells from a baby rat and stimulated the heart electrically. Within a couple days, they saw microscopic movements, which -- in a few weeks' time -- resulted in a beating heart. The goal now is making it work in humans.

Yes Shaun....your fiction is again dead on!

More tell tale heart

graphic abc news

Super' scanner shows key detail

from BBC News

Shaun Saunders makes a great point here.....how many sci-fi movies does this technology relate too? Total Recall; Star Trek...........

and the list goes on.....


A new scanner has been unveiled which can produce 3D body images of unprecedented clarity while reducing radiation by as much as 80%.

amputees can now "feel" with new limbs

From AFP via Boing Boing

I have often said and felt that a subset of science fiction is stories about people with damage due to accident, disease or defect who by one mode or another are "enhanced" to live a normal or above normal lives. like, say Cyborg (better known to tv views as the six million dollar man) Flowers for Algernon, The Ship Who Sang, Mars, The Demolished Man, Kiln People and so on. These stories ring a bit truer for me than others maybe but I really think a blending of the human body with augmentations of one type or another has a very real future. One very real subset of this is advancements in bio augmentation hardware and prosthetics. The closer they get to true "bionics" the hard its going to be to tell where the "original" ends and the "repair" begins.

In the article listed here, advancements in the field of sensing are discussed. Some researchers have developed a technique of rerouting nerves from amputated limbs to regain some sense of touch etc. The scientists doing the research suggest their success in reviving such specific sensation identified with missing limbs could lead to establishing nervous system feedback in prosthetic devices like artificial hands, arms, feet and legs. In a very real sense, this research could lead to people having normal sensations through their replacement limbs. Very science ficiony if I do say so myself.

Nanothreads spun to create living tissue

From the online issue of Scientific American - Shaun Saunders sends in this story with this note:
"reminds me of the scene near the end of 'The empire strikes back' when skywalker is being repaired in a tank..."

Scientists using an electrically charged needle have electrospun nanosize threads of cells encased in plastic polymers to create living microfibers that promote tissue regrowth. Unfortunately, the electrical charge can hurt both the spun cells and the scientists doing the spinning. But now mechanical engineers at the University College in London have invented a way to spin nanothreads using only pressure and, with the help of medical colleagues, shown that they can create such nanothreads of living heart tissue, potentially revealing the way to weave an entirely new, healthy heart or even fresh, new skin. The researchers successfully used this method to spin tissue from smooth muscle cells from rabbit aortas with a special device comprising three concentric needles: an inner needle pushing out the cells, a second needle ejecting an encasing polymer, and a third, surrounding needle that applies pressure. By flowing the cells at a slow rate, the polymer at a slightly faster rate, and applying pressure researchers teased out a microthin, continuous thread. The technique may allow researchers to create living scaffolds of cells to deliver drugs as well as grow or regenerate the heart and other organs.

Now scientists create a sheep that's 15% human

Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.

He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders

Scientists Are Developing Drugs That Could Eliminate Traumatic Events From Our Memories

Much about why painful memories come back to haunt soldiers and those who live through other traumatic experiences remains unknown. Scientists say that is because little is known about how the brain stores and recalls memories.

But in their early efforts to understand the way in which short-term memories become long-term memories, researchers have discovered that certain drugs can interrupt that process. Those same drugs, they believe, can also be applied not just in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event but years later, when an individual is still haunted by memories of event.

The hope is that a post-traumatic stress disorder patient can work with a psychiatrist and focus a traumatic event, take one of these drugs and then slowly forget that event. With that hope, however, comes a series of ethical concerns. What makes up our personalities — the essence of who we are as individuals — if not the collected memories of our experiences?

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders

Particle physics on the cancer ward

Techniques developed by atomic physicists are being used to develop the first of what promises to be a new generation of cancer treatments in place of conventional radiotherapy. One day doctors could even be using anti-matter.

Cancer cells were successfully targeted with anti-matter subatomic particles, causing intense biological damage leading to cell death.

These pilot experiments may have future potential. But applications borrowed from particle physics are already being used in cancer treatment to help avoid the major side effects of radiotherapy.

posted by Shaun A. Saunders

Fantastic Voyage: Departure 2009

A team of scientists is developing what they say will be the world's first -- if not nanobot at least a microrobot -- that can swim through the arteries and digestive system.

The scientists are designing the 250-micron device as -wide as two human hairs - to transmit images and deliver microscopic payloads to parts of the body where conventional surgery can not reach.

Because the device is so small and the procedures that it will perform are equally as minuscule, the researchers hope the device will reduce the risks normally associated with delicate surgical procedures.

Funded by the Australian Research Council, the team is tweaking larger versions of the device, and expects to have a working prototype later this year and a completed version by 2009.

Thanks to Shaun Saunders for the post