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Category: biotech/medical – Page 125

Sensor identifies sodium nitrite in drinks using laser-modified cork

A team of researchers from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, has developed a sensor that can identify sodium nitrite (NaNO2) in various beverages, including mineral water, orange juice, and wine. This inorganic salt is used as a preservative and fixative to give products such as ham, bacon, and sausages their pink or red color. Depending on the amount, it can cause serious health problems by leading to the formation of nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic compounds.

“This risk motivated us to develop a simple, fast, and accessible way to detect the compound and ensure the quality and safety of liquid consumption,” says Bruno Campos Janegitz, head of the Laboratory of Sensors, Nanomedicine, and Nanostructured Materials (LSNano) at UFSCar. Janegitz coordinated the study, which was published in the journal Microchimica Acta.

“Detection [of NaNO2] in beverages, especially wines, is important for , since its use is not legally permitted in Brazil and most countries,” the authors write in the article.

Transparent wearable monitor gives real-time warnings about overexposure to sunlight

Scientists in South Korea have unveiled a transparent, wearable sensor that monitors a user’s exposure to ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation in real-time. The technology could help prevent sunburn and long-term skin damage that can cause cancer.

Ultraviolet radiation is released naturally by the sun and artificially by tanning beds. The problem with overexposure is that the rays can penetrate deep into the skin and damage DNA, potentially causing cells to grow out of control and leading to cancer. In many countries, the majority of skin cancer cases are linked to this type of overexposure.

While wearing long clothes and hats and applying sunscreen provides valuable protection, the researchers wanted a simple device to alert wearers when exposure reached a certain level. Current sensors often lack the ability to track UVA and are opaque, which makes them uncomfortable and difficult to use in wearable tech like smart glasses.

Developing drugs—with tens of thousands of minuscule droplets on a small glass plate

A glass plate, a delicate tube and an oil bath are all that is required: thanks to a new method, researchers at ETH Zurich can produce tens of thousands of tiny droplets within minutes. This enables them to test enzymes and active ingredients faster, more precisely and in a more resource-efficient manner than previously.

What happens when an enzyme encounters a potential active ingredient that is supposed to inhibit or activate the enzyme? This is precisely what drug development is all about. Analyzing the interaction of an enzyme with an active ingredient molecule, however, is extremely complex.

The group led by Petra Dittrich, Professor of Bioanalytics at ETH Zurich, has developed a method that radically simplifies such tests: their method allows up to 100,000 minuscule droplets containing enzymes and substrates to be produced on a glass plate—in a mere 40 minutes and without involving a pipette.

Deep sleep supports memory via brain fluid and neural rhythms, research finds

Researchers led by Masako Tamaki at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan report a link between deep sleep and cerebrospinal fluid, the clear liquid that surrounds and supports the brain and spinal cord. Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study demonstrates how changes in cerebrospinal fluid signals during sleep—as measured by MRI—are time-locked to slow brain waves and other neural events.

These findings offer a clue as to why stable sleep is important for normal brain function, particularly within the brain network that controls learning and memory.

Why do we sleep? Scientists think that sleep is important for consolidating memories and removing waste from the brain that accumulates as a result of brain activity while we are awake.

Cambridge lab-grown human embryo model produces blood cells

Prof Azim Surani, senior author of the paper, said: “Although it is still in the early stages, the ability to produce human blood cells in the lab marks a significant step towards future regenerative therapies — which use a patient’s own cells to repair and regenerate damaged tissues.”

Human blood stem cells, also known as hematopoietic stem cells, are immature cells that can develop into any type of blood cell.

These include red blood cells that carry oxygen and various types of white blood cells crucial to the immune system.

Surprising gene mutation in brain’s immune cells linked to increased Alzheimer’s risk

In a study published in Neuron, a research team at the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, aimed to understand how immune cells of the brain, called microglia, contribute to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology. It’s known that subtle changes, or mutations, in genes expressed in microglia are associated with an increased risk for developing late-onset AD.

The study focused on one such mutation in the microglial gene TREM2, an essential switch that activates microglia to clean up toxic amyloid plaques (abnormal protein deposits) that build up between in the brain. This mutation, called T96K, is a “gain-of-function” mutation in TREM2, meaning it increases TREM2 activation and allows the gene to remain super active.

The researchers explored how this mutation impacts microglial function to increase risk for AD. The team generated a mutant mouse model carrying the mutation, which was bred with a mouse model of AD to have brain changes consistent with AD. They found that in female AD mice exclusively, the mutation strongly reduced the capability of microglia to respond to toxic amyloid plaques, making these cells less protective against brain aging.

Large language models prioritize helpfulness over accuracy in medical contexts, finds study

Large language models (LLMs) can store and recall vast quantities of medical information, but their ability to process this information in rational ways remains variable. A new study led by investigators from Mass General Brigham demonstrated a vulnerability in that LLMs are designed to be sycophantic, or excessively helpful and agreeable, which leads them to overwhelmingly fail to appropriately challenge illogical medical queries despite possessing the information necessary to do so.

Findings, published in npj Digital Medicine, demonstrate that targeted training and fine-tuning can improve LLMs’ abilities to respond to illogical prompts accurately.

“As a community, we need to work on training both patients and clinicians to be safe users of LLMs, and a key part of that is going to be bringing to the surface the types of errors that these models make,” said corresponding author Danielle Bitterman, MD, a faculty member in the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) Program and Clinical Lead for Data Science/AI at Mass General Brigham.

A pill that prints bio-ink for damaged tissue repair

EPFL researchers have demonstrated the first pill-sized bioprinter that can be swallowed and guided within the gastrointestinal tract, where it directly deposits bio-ink over damaged tissues to support repair.

Soft tissue injuries of the , like ulcers or hemorrhages, can currently be treated only with some form of surgery, which is invasive and may not result in permanent repair. Bioprinting is emerging as an effective treatment that deposits biocompatible “ink”—often made of natural polymers derived from seaweed—directly over the site of tissue damage, creating a scaffold for new cell growth. But like traditional surgical tools, these kinds of bioprinters tend to be bulky and require anesthesia.

At the same time, “untethered” technologies are being developed to perform medical interventions without a physical connection to external equipment. For example, ingestible “smart capsules” can be guided to drug delivery sites using external magnets. But these devices are designed to travel through liquids, and their movements become unpredictable when they touch the tissue wall.

Immortality Without Tumors

face_with_colon_three Year 1998

In ancient Greece, immortality was the province of gods who spun the length of each lifetime. The myth has a kernel of truth, because the ends of chromosomes are protected by specialized stretches of DNA called telomeres. Once these are snipped too much by imperfect copying, a cell goes into senescence and stops dividing. Now two reports show that, with the help of an enzyme called telomerase, human cells can divide forever in the laboratory without turning cancerous. The findings, reported in the January issue of Nature Genetics, could ease the way to new treatments for burn victims, diabetics, and patients with other diseases.

Researchers hoped that adding telomerase would keep cells dividing long enough to replace tissues lost to injury or disease. Normal cells often have proved impractical because they can only divide a limited number of times in culture, and once returned to the body they’re often too old to do much good. The limitation may be that normal cells do not produce active telomerase, which can rebuild the telomeres and keep cells from becoming senescent.

In fact, about a year ago, Jerry Shay and his colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas showed that adding the enzyme to normal connective tissue cells called fibroblasts extends their life-span (Science NOW, 13 January 1998). These cells have now lived three times longer than normal in the lab, and they are still going strong. But because cancer cells contain telomerase and also live forever, scientists worried that the newly immortal cells would become malignant when implanted in humans.

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