Category: New products

  • Safety, Activity Assessed in New Duchenne Drug

    25 January 2016. An early-stage clinical shows an experimental drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy is safe for patients and produces the desired chemical activity in the body. Results of the trial, conducted by Catabasis Pharmaceuticals were released today. The Cambridge, Massachusetts company says it is now extending the study to test the drug against a…

  • Technique Devised to Improve Stem Cell Harvesting

    22 January 2016. Researchers at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin developed a technique making it easier to detect stem cells and keep active longer in a cell culture. The team from the lab of molecular biologist Zsuzsanna Izsvák published its results in the 21 January issue of the journal Nature Protocols.…

  • Ultrasound Healing Studied for Peripheral Nervous System

    20 January 2016. A biomedical engineering lab is investigating ultrasound stimulation of the peripheral nervous system as a therapeutic technique for human organs. The research at Columbia University in New York is funded by a four-year $3.33 million grant from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The peripheral nervous system is the array of neural…

  • Bacterial Bonding Technique Devised to Simplify Vaccines

    20 January 2016. Researchers at Oxford University developed and tested engineered proteins from bacteria that in lab tests make vaccine design simpler and more reliable. The team from the lab of biochemistry professor Mark Howarth published its proof-of-concept results in the 19 January issue of Scientific Reports. Howarth — with immunologists from Oxford’s Jenner Institute…

  • Biodegradable Brain Sensors Developed, Tested

    19 January 2016. Engineers and medical researchers developed tiny, implanted sensors measuring brain functions in lab animals that dissolve and leave the body in a few weeks. The team from University of Illinois in Urbana and Washington University in St. Louis published its findings on 18 January in the journal Nature (paid subscription required). Researchers…

  • Smartphone App Computes Preterm Birth Risk

    18 January 2016. A smartphone app based on recently published research aims to calculate the risk of women giving birth prematurely. The app, called Quipp, was designed at King’s College London in the U.K., and is available free of charge for Apple iPhones. The Women’s Health Clinical Academic Group at Kings College developed Quipp —…

  • Computer Game Being Designed to Combat Domestic Violence

    15 January 2016. Social scientists and designers in the U.K. are developing a computer game to teach empathy and non-violence in family relationships. The game, for use in the Caribbean and the U.K., is funded by a €400,000 ($US 434,000) grant from the European Commission. The funding, from the EU’s delegation to the Eastern Caribbean…

  • Students Design Pad to Collect Urinary Infection Samples

    14 January 2016. A team at Hebrew University in Jerusalem designed a microfiber pad to improve collection of urine samples from people with urinary tract infections. Graduate students from a number of disciplines developed the pad under in the Israeli university’s Biodesign medical innovation program. Infections can occur anywhere in the urinary tract, but happen…

  • Yahoo Releases User Interaction Data for Machine Learning

    14 January 2016. The online company Yahoo is releasing an extensive data set of individual user interactions with some of its popular services to the academic community as raw material for studies of machine learning. The de-identified data sets will be part of Yahoo’s Webscope reference library offered to academic researchers. The data sets cover…

  • Smart Pills Detect, Measure Gases in Gut

    13 January 2016. A team at RMIT University in Australia developed a device, swallowed like a pill, that measures gas concentrations in the intestine and sends its data to an outside receiver. Proof-of-concept results from tests with pigs appear in the January 2016 issue of the journal Gastroenterology. Researchers led by RMIT engineering professor Kourosh…