Tag Archives: technique

New way to use electric fields to deliver cancer treatment

Called iontophoresis, the technique delivers high concentrations of chemotherapy to select areas, reducing the risk of damaging healthy tissue, according to a study this week in Science Translational Medicine. “A big challenge with many drugs is getting them where they need to go,” said Lissett Bickford, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, “This technology basically forces drugs directly to and through the tumor, allowing all cancer cells in the treatment zone to get that exposure.” Bickford, who now directs the Medical Devices and Drug Delivery Lab at the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech, participated in the study during her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she worked with lead author Joseph DeSimone, the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry. Chemotherapy kills cancer cells, but it’s toxic to healthy cells, too. When it’s injected into the bloodstream, only a small amount of the drug actually gets to the tumor. …

Improving breast cancer chemo by testing patient’s tumors in a dish — ScienceDaily

A team of biomedical engineers at Vanderbilt University headed by Assistant Professor Melissa Skala has developed the technique, which uses fluorescence imaging to monitor the response of three-dimensional chunks of tumors removed from patients and exposed to different anti-cancer drugs. In an article published last month by the journal Cancer Research the engineers describe applying the technique to the three major forms of breast cancer. They report that the test can detect significant drops in the metabolic activity levels of all three types of tumors within 72 hours when exposed to an effective drug whereas tumors that were resistant to a drug show no change…

Improving breast cancer chemo by testing patient’s tumors in a dish

A team of biomedical engineers at Vanderbilt University headed by Assistant Professor Melissa Skala has developed the technique, which uses fluorescence imaging to monitor the response of three-dimensional chunks of tumors removed from patients and exposed to different anti-cancer drugs. In an article published last month by the journal Cancer Research the engineers describe applying the technique to the three major forms of breast cancer. …

Real-time tracking system developed to monitor dangerous bacteria inside body

“What we have produced is essentially a system that localizes the epicenter of infection and provides real-time tracking of bacterial activity, giving us rapid feedback on how the bacteria respond to antibiotics,” says principal investigator Sanjay Jain, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and director of the Center for Inflammation Imaging and Research at Johns Hopkins. Describing their work in the Oct. …

New technique enables increasingly accurate PET scan to detect cancer, heart conditions

In the future, the newly developed technique will enable increasingly accurate image acquisition especially during PET scans performed to detect cancers of the chest and upper abdomen, and inflammatory diseases of the heart. PET scanning, or positron emission tomography, is a modern nuclear medicine imaging method, which allows for the detection of cancer and heart conditions. Thanks to enhanced image quality, PET images provide new and increasingly accurate data, potentially improving diagnosis reliability and treatment response monitoring. High-quality image data makes the treatment more efficient both medically and financially. …

New ‘lab-on-a-chip’ could revolutionize early diagnosis of cancer

“Exosomes are minuscule membrane vesicles — or sacs — released from most, if not all, cell types, including cancer cells,” said Yong Zeng, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas. “First described in the mid-’80s, they were once thought to be ‘cell dust,’ or trash bags containing unwanted cellular contents. …

Ovarian tissue, egg freezing should be made widely available to prevent age-related infertility, say leading fertility experts

However, the growing trend in developed countries to delay having children until later in life has resulted in egg freezing being increasingly used by healthy women as insurance against age-related infertility. …

UT Southwestern one of two institutions to offer innovative four-flap microsurgery approach to breast reconstruction

The technique, known as a four-flap breast reconstruction, uses fat and skin from the back of each leg and from two spots on the stomach to reconstruct natural breast materials. “It reaches a new height in breast reconstructive surgery, using your own tissue,” said Dr. Sumeet Teotia, Assistant Professor of Plastic Surgery, who performs the procedure along with Dr. …

Simple method turns human skin cells into immune strengthening white blood cells

The work, as detailed in the journal Stem Cells, shows that only a bit of creative manipulation is needed to turn skin cells into human white blood cells. “The process is quick and safe in mice,” says senior author Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, holder of Salk’s Roger Guillemin Chair. “It circumvents long-standing obstacles that have plagued the reprogramming of human cells for therapeutic and regenerative purposes.” Those problems includes the long time — at least two months — and tedious laboratory work it takes to produce, characterize and differentiate induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, a method commonly used to grow new types of cells. …