Kim Bellard
I often lament that one of us is here, a quarter into 21Yingshi Century, our healthcare system still looks like 20Th Century, not like 22ND century. It's too slow, too reactive, too inaccurate, and uses too much brute force. I want a healthcare system that looks more futuristic and can do things more gracefully.
So here are three examples that make me want to prepare for prime time:
Floss sensor: You know you should floss every day, right? And you know that your oral health has multiple connections to your overall health, right? So some smart people at Tufts University thought, well, maybe we could help connect these points.
“It started with collaboration with various departments of Tufts to study how stress and other cognitive states affect problem solving and learning,” said Sameer Sonkusale, professor of electrical and computer engineering. “We don't want measurements to create additional sources of stress, so we think we can make a sensing device that is part of your daily routine? Cortisol is a stress marker found in saliva, so floss seems like a natural fit to take daily samples.”
The result is: “The saliva-induced floss looks like a common floss pickup with ropes spread all over two pins extending from a flat plastic handle, all about the size of an index finger.”
It uses a technique called electropolymer molecular imprinting polymer (EMIP) to detect cortisol. “The EMIP approach is a game changer,” Professor Sonkusale said. Biosensors are usually developed using antibodies or other receptors that acquire molecules of interest. Once the marker is found, much work must be done, and bioengineering must be done to make the receiving molecules attach to the sensor. EMIP does not rely on a lot of investments to make antibodies or receptors new markers or any other disease or any other disease that you can create.
The sensor is designed to track alternative diagnosis, but scientists are optimistic that the method can be used to track other diseases, such as estrogen used for fertility tracking, glucose used for diabetes monitoring, or glucose used for cancer markers. They also want to have a sensor that can track multiple conditions, “to monitor stress, cardiovascular disease, cancer and other diseases more accurately.”
They believe that their sensors have the same accuracy as the best performance sensors currently available and are launching a commercial approach.
Nanoscale biosensor: Floss is good, but many of us are not diligent about it, so hey, what about the sensors inside our internal ones that do not require us to do anything to do? This is what the Stanford team suggests Biochemical sensor with continuous expansion stability in vivo,,,,, Posted in nature.
Researchers said:
The development of biosensors that can detect specific analytes in real time has proven to be difficult due to biocontamination, probe degradation and signal drift that often occurs in the body. By drawing inspiration from the intestinal mucosa where host cell receptors can be protected in the presence of the intestinal microbiome, we have developed a synthetic biosensor that can continuously detect specific target molecules in the body.
“We need a system of matter that can sense the target while protecting the molecular switch, and that's what I think, wait, how can biology solve this problem?” said Yihang Chen, the first author of the paper. Their modular biosensors, called stable electrochemical nanostructured sensors for blood in situ tracking (Sensbit) systems, can survive in living rats for more than a week and in human serum for one month.
“This work began over a decade ago and we have been steadily developing the technology,” said Tom Soh, senior author of the paper. “This magical order improvement over existing technology is a huge advance for the next generation of biosensors.”
Researchers believe that their approach can lead to a new paradigm of medical care – “We can not only detect diseases earlier, but also tailor them in real time.” Amen about this!
In vivo CAR-T therapy: If you follow cancer treatment, then you are familiar with CAR-T therapy that can make these therapies fight cancer cells. They are very promising, but very expensive and time-consuming. “The whole process, it’s just inefficient,” Saar Gill, a hematologist and oncologist at Perelman Medical School, told Cassandra Willyard nature. “If I have cancer patients, I can prescribe treatments and they will get them tomorrow.”
Ms. Willyard designed the CAR-T cell method in vivo. She reported that the potential is huge: “Treatment that provides genes to CAR proteins in the blood may produce quality and produce on demand and provide as needed – much lower than current CAR-T therapy. Single-dose commercial CAR-T therapy costs about $500,000. A small vial. exist in vivo There may be much less treatment. ”
“If it is effective and safe, it can really challenge the current paradigm,” Joseph McGuirk, a hematologist and oncologist who studies cellular therapy at the University of Kansas Medical Center, told her. and “we need to challenge the current paradigm.”
Obviously, this is not simple. “The stumbling block is, how do you put it in the right cell, the right time, the right time?” said Michel Sadelain, a genetic engineer and director of the Columbia Cell Engineering and Therapy Initiative for Columbia University. Ms Willard describes different ways different companies are trying to achieve this. For example, some companies are using viral vectors, while others use nanoparticles to deliver RNA into T cells. Other companies are skipping T cells and inserting RNA into macrophages and other immune cells.
Human trials are underway, although there are a few participants. “I think 2025 and 2026 will be very busy in this area,” a CEO told Ms Williad, hoping that.
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These are promising and are definitely moving in the right direction. Add them to in vivo 3D printing using sound or programming smart cells, forgive me if I get excited. We see a glimpse of the future.
So next time someone wants to insert a needle on you for a blood test, let you pass a colonoscopy or start a tough chemotherapy regime, ask yourself: I'll be at 22ND century?
Kim is the former emarketing Exec of the main blues program, late editor and regret tinture.ionow regular THCB contributor
