One of my frequent regrets is that we are here, a room on the road to 21stem Century, however, too much of our medical care system still looks at 20Th century, and not enough like 22NORTH DAKOTA Century. It is too slow, too reactive, too imprecise, and uses too much brute force. I want a medical care system that seems more futuristic, to do things with more elegance.
So here there are three examples of the son of things that give me hope, in difficult order of when they could be ready for the star schedule:
Dental thread sensor: You know you are supposed to wear dental thread every day, right? And he knows that his oral health is connected with his general health, in several ways, right? So, some intelligent people at Tufts University Thought, HMM, maybe we can help connect those points.
“It began in a collaboration with several departments in TUFTS, examining how stress and other cognitive states affect the resolution and learning of problems,” said Sameer Sonkusale, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “We did not want the measurement to create an additional source of stress, so we think,
The result: “A dental dental thread that stops saliva resembles a selection of common dental thread, with the string stretched through two tips that extend from a flat plastic handle, all the size of its index finger.”
Use a technology called electropolimerized polymers of molecular printing (EMIP) to detect cortisol. “The Emip approach changes the game,” said Professor Sonkusale. “Biosensors have typically developed on the legs using antibodies or other receptors that collect the molecule of interest. Once a marker is found, a lot of work must go to Biotinging the recidrant molecule attached to the sensor. New marker for stress or any other disease or condition, can create a polymer in a very short period.”
The sensor is designed to trace rather the diagnosis, but scientists are optimistic that the approach can be used to track other conditions, such as estrogen for fertility monitoring, glucose for diabetes monitoring or cancer markers. They also hope to have a sensor that can track multiple conditions, “for more precise stress monitoring, cardiovascular disease, cancer and other conditions.”
They believe that their sensor has a comparable precision to the best performance sensors currently available, and are working on a new company for the commercial size of their approach.
Biosensor to Nano-Escala: The dental thread is very good, but many or we not as diligent as we should be, so, he hears, what about the sensors inside us, the follow -up without having to do anything? That is what a team in Stanford is suggestion in A biochemical sensor with continuous extended stability in vivo” Posted in Nature.
The researchers say:
The development of biosensors that can detect specific analyzes continuously, in vivo, in real time has proven difficult due to bioincringment, probe degradation and drift of the signal that occur in vivo. When inspired by the intestinal mucosa that guest cell receptors can protect in the presence of intestinal microbiome, we develop a synthetic biosensor that can continually detect specific objective molecules in vivo.
“We need a material system that can the goal while protecting the molecular switches, and that was when I thought, wait, how does this problem solve?” Said Yihang Chen, the first author of the newspaper. Its modular biosensor, called a stable electrochemical nanostructured sensor for the blood monitoring system (sensbit), can survive more than a week in living rats and a month in human serum.
“This work began more than a boxes of years and we have constantly advancing this technology,” said Tom Soh, lead author of the document. “This improvement of order of magnitude in the longevity of the full blood sensor in existing technologies is a great advance towards next generation biosensors.”
Researchers believe that their approach can lead to a new medical paradigm: “One can not only detect diseases before, but also the treatments enhanced in real time.” Amen to that!
CAR-T in vivo therapies: If you follow cancer treatments, you are familiar with CAR-T therapies, which engineering immune cells to combat cancer cells. They are very promising, but very expectations, and that require a lot of time. “This whole process is only inefficient,” Willyard Saar Gill, hematologist and oncologist at the Perelman Medical School, told Cassandra. Nature. “If I have a cancer patient, I can prescribe chemotherapy and will receive it tomorrow.”
Mrs. Willyard outlines the engineering approach to the car-t cells. The potential, it reports, is enormous: “The treatments that deliver a gene for car protein to blood cells could be produced in mass and aviaxable to demand, theoretically, at a much lower price than current California therapy. in Alive The treatment can cost an order of magnitude less. ”
“If it is effective and safe, I could really challenge the current paradigm,” said Joseph McGurk, hematologist and oncologist who studies cellular therapies at the Medical Center of the University of Kansas. And “we need to challenge the current paradigm.”
Obviously, this is not simple. “The obstacle is, how is the right cell, the right place, the right time?” Michel Sadelain, a genetic engineer and director of the Columbia initiative in engineering and cell therapy at Columbia University said. Mrs. Willard describes different approaches that different companies are trying to achieve this. Some companies, for example, are using viral vectors, while others use nanoparticles to administer RNA to T cells. Other companies are omitting T cells and inserting RNA in macrofadages and other immune cells.
Human essays are underway, although with small numbers or participants. “I think 2025 and 2026 will be two years old in this area,” a CEO told Mrs. Willyard. Hopefully yes.
Each of these is promising, and certainly in the right direction. Add these A, for example, 3D in vivo printing using the sound or programming of smart cells, and forgive me if I get excited. We are seeing glimpses of the future.
Then, the next time they got into you for a blood analysis, they do it through a colonoscopy or begin in a score of exhausting chemotherapy, ask yourself: would you be doing this in 22?NORTH DAKOTA Century?
Kim is a former emarketing executive in an important blues plan, editor of The Late & larmente Tintura.ioAnd now regular THCB collaborator