Researchers at MIT have developed smart sutures with a hydrogel coating that contains sensing and drug delivery components, and could even be used to implant therapeutic cells. The sutures are made using pig tissues that have been decellularized with detergents to reduce the possibility that they could provoke an immune reaction. The surrounding...

Researchers at UMass Chan Medical School have developed a small interfering RNA (siRNA) technology that is stable enough for inhalation into the lungs, where it can potentially treat diseases as diverse as asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, and viral infections such as COVID-19. siRNA is not typically stable enough to survive for long in the lungs, but the...

Researchers at the Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands have developed a biobank of cancer organoids using tissue samples obtained from head and neck cancer patients. So far, the team used the biobank to validate tumor biomarkers. Excitingly, they also correlated patient treatment responses with organoid treatment responses, suggesting that...

A recent study in Nature Medicine, entitled “An automated histological classification system for precision diagnostics of kidney allografts,” has showcased the efforts of a group of researchers who have developed an automated system that can diagnose kidney transplant rejection. A variety of disparate factors can affect the chances that a transplant...

Researchers at the University of Göttingen in Germany have developed a cell culture chamber that lets them culture tissue samples, mimic the mechanical conditions that tissues experience in various disease states, and closely monitor tissue reactions. The technology could be particularly useful for pre-clinical drug testing, allowing researchers...

Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed a soft robotic electrode, that can be advanced through a small hole in the skull and then opened into a series of spiral arms, to provide electrocorticography measurements from a relatively large area of the brain surface. The technology could prove...