The next big step in cancer treatment might be small enough to balance on a grain of salt.
Researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have developed a miniature crawling robot, called ViRob, that can crawl through your lungs, find a tumor, and zap it with drugs. The bot, which is one millimeter long and four millimeters from end to end, can snake its way through the body, slipping into blood vessels and navigating through the respiratory and digestive systems, Innerspace style.
Other mini-robots have been designed to take a voyage into the body. But thanks to tiny arms that help it grip vessel walls , ViRob is the first microbot that can tunnel between different body cavities. It’s controlled by an electromagnetic field outside of the robot that creates a vibration that propels ViRob forward.
(more…)
It turns out Band-Aids have more potential than simply keeping germs out of a cut—and we aren’t even talking about the Neosporin upgrades or the water-resistant kind. A U.K. company, Polymertronics, has figured out how to make Band-Aid-like bandages glow, emitting light that could treat skin cancer.
One way to kill skin cancer is to zap it with light—a method called photodynamic therapy. When a specific wavelength of light hits cancerous cells, oxygen forms around the cells until it kills them. Currently, patients must visit a hospital or clinic to receive photodynamic therapy. But the new glowing bandages, made of plasters embedded with light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), will allow skin cancer patients to treat themselves at home, making treatment faster and more accessible.
Here’s how it works:
(more…)
If researchers can figure out how to replicate hippo sweat, they may bring the quest for the perfect sunscreen—and for magic tricks like sunburn indicators—to an end.
A California-based research team has discovered that hippos produce an oily red secretion that contains microscopic structures that scatter light and protect the hippos from burning. The researchers, who specialize in biomimicry, hope to develop a product inspired by the sweat that will serve as a four-in-one: sunscreen, sunblock, antiseptic, and insect repellent.
The team collected sweat from hippos at a zoo and found that it contained two types of liquid crystalline structures. The banded structure, characterized by concentric rings that are comparable to wavelengths of visible light, makes it effective at scattering light, and the non-banded structure reduces the sweat’s viscosity and allows it to spread more easily over the surface of the animal.
(more…)
These days, fraud is in. The latest example is a biotech executive who forged documents, lied to his lawyers, and pretended to be his own doctor to fake having cancer as a way of wriggling out of a lawsuit.
Howard Richman admitted yesterday that he lied to a federal judge about having stage 3 colorectal cancer in order to avoid a trial being brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for lying about the development of a synthetic blood substitute. In 2003, he stated publicly that the Cambridge, MA-based Biopure Corporation’s development of Hemopure, a synthetic blood made from cow hemoglobin, was progressing smoothly. Too bad it was a big fat lie: In reality, the clinical trials had failed to get FDA approval.
(more…)
Could the next breakthrough in treatment for diseases from cancer to Alzheimer’s to rheumatoid arthritis lie with a four-legged, furry creature with a penchant for spitting and biting? Improbably, the answer is yes.
Scientists have discovered that the llama, a South American relative of the camel, possesses antibodies that are uniquely tiny—around 90 percent smaller, in fact, than the antibodies of humans. With these tiny sentinels guarding their immune systems, the fuzzy creatures are far better at targeting invading bacteria and viruses. Cue the medical researchers, who are pouncing on this newfound revelation to work on new and better treatments for a host of debilitating and/or fatal diseases.
As Popular Science points out, the mini-antibodies could also mean improvements in the delivery of vaccines (we could use inhalers rather than all those painful, messy, and potentially hazardous needles) and could save money in production costs, since the tinier antibodies can be grown using bacteria rather than the more expensive mammalian cells used to produce human antibodies.
Now if we could just find a way to do something about all that spitting…
Related:
Disco: Want More Milk? Then Name Your Cows
Disco: The Curious Case of the Immortal Jellyfish
Disco: Worm Glue May Hold the Key to Fixing Broken Bones
Image: iStockPhoto
Using microwaves to cook food was sooo yesterday. These days, microwaves can do nearly anything. Scientists are using them to kill off marine life, and police might soon use guns that shoot them to stop fleeing suspects. Now, doctors are trying to use microwaves to save lives—by zapping liver cancer.
Due to an increase in hepatitis infections and conditions like cirrhosis, liver cancer has become one of the most common cancers in the world. Normally, patients suffering from liver cancer would have to undergo invasive treatments, ranging from removal of the liver to chemotherapy. It’s often difficult for surgeons to remove bits and pieces of the cancer without removing the whole liver. But not every patient is lucky enough to get a liver transplant when they need one.
As a result, doctors in San Diego are tapping into microwave power as a less invasive and more available means of conquering tumors.
(more…)
It’s no secret that we’re a drug obsessed nation. But not everyone knows that more than half our prescription drugs come from chemicals found in plants. Plus, according to New Scientist, many people around the world, including 80 percent of Africans, rely on medicinal plants for treatment of illnesses as serious as malaria and HIV.
And now, those potentially-life-saving plants are in trouble. The international conservation group Plantlife reports that pollution, over-harvesting, and habitat destruction are threatening the existence of 15,000 (out of a total 50,000) species of medicinal plants.
Plants that have the potential for treating migraines, fever, and even cancer could wind up disappearing in the near future, with countries such as China, India, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania, and Uganda reporting shortages. Some of the plants at risk include:
(more…)
Some cells take the mantra “you are what you eat” quite literally. In a process known as autophagy, cells form internal sacs of digestive enzymes—like extra stomachs—and cannibalize parts of themselves. This usually occurs in times of starvation when a cell needs to recycle bits of itself or get rid of intracellular pathogens. But new research shows that cellular self-cannibalization can also play a role in fighting cancer.
Researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center found that a protein, PEA-15, affects the rate at which ovarian cancer cells self-cannibalize through autophagy. PEA-15 induces cancer cells to form digestive sacs, known as lysosomes, and eat themselves from the inside. That’s not just Hannibal Lecter cannibalism—it’s like Lecter chewing on his own arm.
(more…)
Humans have a habit of using animals to carry things: horses, llamas, sled dogs, messenger pigeons. But the newest “beasts of burden” may be inside our own bodies. Researchers at MIT have strapped tiny “backpacks” to T cells and B cells, which could be used to carry and deliver drugs to targeted tissues like cancer tumors.
The researchers created tiny polymer patches that could latch onto the surface of the immune cells. The patches are synthesized and docked on a holding substrate. They consists of three layers: a temperature-dependent sticky layer that attaches the patches to a holding substrate, a layer that contains the cargo to be delivered, and a binding layer that will attach the patches to the cell surface. Once the system is set up, cells are allowed to flow across the patches and get stuck on them. The temperature of the system is then lowered to release the patches from the substrate, and the cells float away with their “backpacks.”
(more…)
Researchers at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center have completed a new study finding that mice who exercised saw “significantly greater” growth in their prostate tumors than mice who sat on their butts and did nothing. The research team implanted prostate tumors in 50 mice and placed half of them in cages with exercise wheels, while the other half had no wheels. All of the mice were fed the same diet, and those with wheels ran a half a mile a day, on average.
According to Lee Jones, the study’s senior investigator, “among the mice that had the opportunity to voluntarily exercise, tumors grew approximately twice as fast as they did among the mice that did not have the opportunity to exercise.” The reason for the discrepancy, experts speculate, is that exercise could increase blood flow to tumors and thus encourage their growth. (more…)
