Manish Ayushman, a PhD student in bioengineering, has watched more than a thousand hours of microscopic footage of stem cells in the lab. At first, the cells seemed like they weren’t doing much of anything. But when Ayushman looked a little more closely, he noticed they were moving ever so slightly – turning and pulsing to a languid tempo.
When he sped up the footage, the movements became clearer: Each stem cell appeared to be shimmying and shaking with purpose.
In a paper published Nov. 1 in Nature Materials, Ayushman and Stanford Medicine colleagues described this previously unknown type of cell movement, which they’ve named cell tumbling. Unlike known types of cell movement, such as spreading and migration, which take hours to days, cell tumbling is relatively quick, taking seconds to minutes.
Microgravity is known to alter the muscles, bones, the immune system and cognition, but little is known about its specific impact on the brain. To discover how brain cells respond to microgravity, Scripps Research scientists, in collaboration with the New York Stem Cell Foundation, sent tiny clumps of stem-cell derived brain cells called “organoids” to the International Space Station (ISS).
Surprisingly, the organoids were still healthy when they returned from orbit a month later, but the cells had matured faster compared to identical organoids grown on Earth — they were closer to becoming adult neurons and were beginning to show signs of specialization. The results, which could shed light on potential neurological effects of space travel, were published on October 23, 2024, in Stem Cells Translational Medicine.
The recent nationwide alert about E. coli-laced organic carrots is just the latest example that our food safety isn’t guaranteed. Now a research team at UT Dallas is exploring a way that people can do a final check for contaminants—right in their own homes.
From contaminated carrots to harmful hamburger, tainted food has caused sickness and even death for decades—with E. coli-laced organic carrots the latest item to alarm Americans nationwide. Now a research team at the University of Texas at Dallas is developing a tool for consumers to use right in their own homes to add an extra level of food safety.
The researchers—led by Dr. Shalini Prasad, department head of bioengineering at UTD’s Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science—is developing sensors that could make it possible for consumers to detect contaminants in food and water “within minutes,” the university said.
Researchers at the University of Texas and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) say they have created a liquid ink that can be directly printed onto a patient’s scalp to measure brain activity, offering an alternative to traditional electroencephalography (EEG). The new technology, detailed in the journal Cell Biomaterials, is part of ongoing research into electronic tattoos (e-tattoos) and their potential to improve both clinical diagnostics and brain-computer interface applications.
“Our innovations in sensor design, biocompatible ink, and high-speed printing pave the way for future on-body manufacturing of electronic tattoo sensors, with broad applications both within and beyond clinical settings,” said lead researcher Nanshu Lu, PhD, whose lab at the University of Texas at Austin focuses on the development of bio-integrated electronics.
A study from Johns Hopkins University, published in Biophotonics Discovery, examined how skin tone affects the accuracy of photoacoustic imaging (PAI), a technology gaining traction in breast cancer diagnostics, especially in situations where traditional mammography is insufficient. The study shows how image reconstruction methods and laser wavelengths influence the visibility of cancerous targets in patients with diverse skin tones and suggests practical solutions to improve equity in diagnostics.
Photoacoustic imaging is a hybrid imaging technique that combines light and sound. Light pulses are transmitted into the body and absorbed by structures like blood vessels, which then undergo thermal expansion and generate sound waves. Ultrasound detectors capture these waves to create detailed images.
An international team led by researchers at the University of Toronto and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has assembled the first large-scale, publicly available map to show the impact of mutations on where proteins end up in the cell.
The team developed a high-throughput imaging platform to assess the influence of nearly 3,500 mutations on protein location. They found that roughly one in six disease-causing mutations led to proteins ending up in the wrong location in the cell.
University of Florida Distinguished Professor Christine Schmidt has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine. This prestigious honor follows her election earlier this year to the National Academy of Engineering, making her one of the few exceptional individuals to be recognized by both academies.
Election to the National Academy of Medicine recognizes outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service in the fields of health and medicine. The Academy announced the names of its 100 new members today during its annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Schmidt, the Pruitt Family Endowed Chair in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, was selected for her “outstanding leadership, pioneering research, and clinical translation in neural tissue engineering and wound healing.”
Two UC San Francisco faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) this year, one of the highest honors in the field of health and medicine.
NAM recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievements and commitment to service in the medical sciences, health care and public health. The academy elects no more than 100 members a year.
Alicia Fernandez, MD, professor of medicine, was recognized for her work on how language and literacy barriers impact patient care and outcomes; and Nola M. Hylton, PhD, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging was recognized for developing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for breast cancer.
After several years of investigating focused ultrasound as a tool in treating Alzheimer’s, the field took a big leap forward this year.
Elisa Konofagou, PhD, a biomedical engineer who runs the Ultrasound and Elasticity Imaging Laboratory at Columbia University in the City of New York, published the results of her team’s groundbreaking research in July, demonstrating their noninvasive, fully portable system for delivering drugs and immunotherapy to patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
This after West Virginia University researchers established earlier this year how focused ultrasound can be used to sneak medication past the blood-brain barrier, reducing amyloid beta plaques.
People with diabetes take insulin to lower high blood sugar. However, if glucose levels plunge too low—from taking too much insulin or not eating enough sugar—people can experience hypoglycemia, which can lead to dizziness, cognitive impairment, seizures or comas. Emergency treatment with the hormone glucagon (GCG) may be needed. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have now developed a method to encapsulate glucagon in glucose-responsive micelles that only release the hormone when blood glucose levels become too low. Tests in mice confirmed that the injected nanocapsules activated only when blood sugar levels dropped dangerously low, and quickly restored glucose levels.
Research leads Andrea Hevener, PhD, Heather Maynard, PhD, and colleagues reported on their developments in ACS Central Science, in a paper titled “A Glucose-Responsive Glucagon-Micelle for the Prevention of Hypoglycemia.
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham has been named Carnegie Mellon University’s Glen de Vries Dean of the Mellon College of Science (MCS), effective Jan. 1, 2025.
Shinn-Cunningham, who will be the eighth dean to lead MCS, joined Carnegie Mellon in 2018 as the founding director of the Neuroscience Institute and the George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience. She holds courtesy appointments in the departments of Psychology, Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering.
“Dr. Shinn-Cunningham’s appointment as the next dean of MCS marks an exciting next chapter for the college,” said Carnegie Mellon Provost James H. Garrett Jr. “Her distinguished research background and proven leadership skills position her to propel the future of science initiative forward and guide MCS toward even greater heights.
Nearly one third of concussions in professional American football are due to impacts from the facemask, a part of the helmet that has remained mostly unchanged in the last decade. In a new study presented at the International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury conference today, researchers used data collected from instrumented mouthpieces worn by players in the National Football League (NFL) that measured head motion and found that facemasks are the most frequent location of impact on a player’s helmet in a subset of high severity impacts. The study findings suggest that facemask enhancements could help protect players and minimize injury risk.
In recent years, there has been a concerted effort to reduce the number of concussions sustained by professional American football players, with one important strategy involving engineering research to redesign helmets to better protect these athletes.
Columbia team engineers a model of the human heart tissue that demonstrates how autoantibodies directly affect heart disease in lupus patients
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in patients suffering from lupus, an autoimmune disease in which our immune system attacks our own tissues and organs, the heart, blood, lung, joints, brain, and skin. Lupus myocarditis–inflammation of the heart muscle– can be very serious because the inflammation alters the regularity of the rhythm and strength of the heartbeat. However, the mechanisms underlying this complex disease are poorly understood and difficult to study.
A long-standing question about lupus is why some patients develop myocarditis while others remain unaffected. And why the clinical manifestations of affected patients range so dramatically, from no symptoms at all to severe heart failure. Lupus is characterized by a large number of autoantibodies, immune proteins that mistakenly target a person’s own tissues or organs, with different specificities for various molecules. Like our genes, they may explain why different individuals experience different symptoms.
The Journal of Neurosurgery has published online a study by the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison regarding a novel cell transplantation approach being used for delivery of ANPD001, an autologous, dopaminergic neuronal cell replacement under investigation by Aspen Neuroscience as a potential treatment for Parkinson’s Disease.
The study by the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center demonstrated the safety and feasibility of the treatment approach for ANPD001 in non-human primates. Aspen is currently investigating ANPD001 in the ASPIRO trial, a first-in-human, open-label Phase 1/2a clinical trial in people with moderate to severe Parkinson’s disease.
UD research aims to improve the lives of those with limb loss
John Horne lost his right leg to bone cancer when he was a freshman in high school. This intensely personal experience spawned his career and passion for advocating for those with limb loss. The president of Independence Prosthetics-Orthotics on the University of Delaware’s Science, Technology, and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus has seen prosthetics improve significantly since his limb loss and since he was an undergraduate student at UD, interning at Nemours Children’s Health, where he poured prosthetic molds.
Now, Horne is part of pioneering research led by George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering Jill Higginson in the Neuromuscular Biomechanics Laboratory along with co-investigators Elisa Arch, associate professor of kinesiology and applied physiology, and Meg Sions, associate professor of physical therapy, in the College of Health Sciences. The study aims to test the potential of fabric-based sensors in monitoring load in individuals with limb loss, a development that could revolutionize the field of prosthetics and significantly improve the lives of those with limb loss.
Twelve Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED) researchers have been chosen as part of the inaugural group of investigators probing the role of inflammation and the function of the immune system in disease, including one CI MED-based team examining inflammation’s role in female reproductive disorders.
The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago was announced in 2023 to leverage the expertise of researchers from a range of disciplines to develop technologies capable of making precise, molecular-level measurements of biological processes within human tissues. The longer-range goal is understanding and treating the inflammatory states that underlie many diseases.
I am pleased to announce that following a national search, Omolola “Lola” Eniola-Adefeso, PhD, has been named dean of the University of Illinois Chicago College of Engineering, effective Oct. 16, pending approval by the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.
Professor Eniola-Adefeso is a highly respected chemical and biomedical engineer with over 25 years of professional experience. An accomplished scholar, she has published more than 70 peer-reviewed publications and secured millions of dollars in federal research funding. Eniola-Adefeso has a strong track record of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to her work, and her entrepreneurial successes have resulted in three patent filings, with one patent currently being licensed to a biotech company. She also is highly recognized in the scientific community, as demonstrated by numerous national awards and her current leadership positions as the president of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and director of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. She also participates on the National Academies Study Committee: Quadrennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
Implanted stents have saved countless lives. A tiny metal mesh coil, stents keep arteries open for blood to flow that’s crucial to the body to function after a traumatic angioplasty or cardiac event.
That doesn’t mean they’re a perfected technology.
Stents themselves can also develop plaque due to the systemic nature of the same cardiovascular disease they were implanted to counteract. With cardiovascular disease the leading cause of death globally, according to the World Health Organization, the need for more effective stents has never been greater.
From chronic wounds to battlefield triage to heart surgery, this self-sticking bandage is designed to adapt to any body surface, internal or external, creating a bond stronger than current FDA-approved adhesives. The applications of this innovation are detailed in Nature Communications.
“Our patch mimics the skin’s expandability and flexibility, stretching as a person moves,” says principal investigator Juliane Nguyen, professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. “Normal bandages contract in one direction as they expand in another. Ours are designed to expand in both directions, preventing tissue damage and promoting adhesion.”
Alopecia areata (AA) is an autoimmune disease characterized by hair loss, which occurs when T cells of the immune system mistakenly attack hair follicles. To restore control over hyperactive immune cells, investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, and MIT developed a cutting-edge approach to deliver T cell regulators directly to sites of hair loss and halt autoimmune activity. Findings, published in Advanced Materials, demonstrated marked and lasting increases in hair regrowth in models of the disease.
Our immune system evolved to safeguard against the overactivation that occurs when it mistakenly attacks our own tissues, as seen in autoimmune conditions. In conditions like AA, the specialized cells known as Regulatory T cells (Tregs) fall short in protecting hair follicles. Current immunosuppressants used in AA target both T cells and Tregs, failing to address the core issue and increasing the risk of disease recurrence once treatment stops. Moreover, systemic immune therapy suppresses the entire immune system, leaving patients vulnerable to infections and malignancies.
New approach could enable patients to live pain-free without complications of diabetes
Northwestern University researchers have developed a new antioxidant biomaterial that someday could provide much-needed relief to people living with chronic pancreatitis.
The study was published today (June 7) in the journal Science Advances.
Before surgeons remove the pancreas from patients with severe, painful chronic pancreatitis, they first harvest insulin-producing tissue clusters, called islets, and transplant them into the vasculature of the liver. The goal of the transplant is to preserve a patient’s ability to control their own blood-glucose levels without insulin injections.
Scientists used an algorithm to mine ‘the entirety of the microbial diversity’ on Earth, speeding up antibiotic resistance research
A new study used machine learning to predict potential new antibiotics in the global microbiome, which study authors say marks a significant advance in the use of artificial intelligence in antibiotic resistance research.
The report, published Wednesday in the journal Cell, details the findings of scientists who used an algorithm to mine the “entirety of the microbial diversity that we have on earth – or a huge representation of that – and find almost 1m new molecules encoded or hidden within all that microbial dark matter”, said César de la Fuente, an author of the study and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. De la Fuente directs the Machine Biology Group, which aims to use computers to accelerate discoveries in biology and medicine.
New research addresses a gap in understanding how ketamine’s impact on individual neurons leads to pervasive and profound changes in brain network function.
Ketamine, a World Health Organization Essential Medicine, is widely used at varying doses for sedation, pain control, general anesthesia, and as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression. While scientists know its target in brain cells and have observed how it affects brain-wide activity, they haven’t known entirely how the two are connected. A new study by a research team spanning four Boston-area institutions uses computational modeling of previously unappreciated physiological details to fill that gap and offer new insights into how ketamine works.
“This modeling work has helped decipher likely mechanisms through which ketamine produces altered arousal states as well as its therapeutic benefits for treating depression,” says co-senior author Emery N. Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Medical Engineering at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, as well as an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
PET-MRI offers a comprehensive approach to the evaluation and management of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia, providing valuable insights into disease pathology, progression and treatment response. Its multi-modal imaging capabilities can enhance diagnostic accuracy and facilitate personalized patient care.
The recent FDA approvals of anti-amyloid monoclonal antibody therapies demonstrates the importance of PET-MRI to diagnose AD since this technology can simultaneously provide the required brain MRI for baseline safety as well as the required biomarker for beta-amyloid pathology.
The new research published in the journal Bioelectronic Medicine
One of the major functions of the immune system is to – through antibodies – fight infections. New findings from The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research bioelectronic medicine scientists show that neurons that help sense pain and prevent illness, called sensory neurons, play an important role in regulating the production of antibodies.
The study published today in the journal Bioelectronic Medicine — an open-access journal and part of BMC Springer Nature — reveals how activating specific nerves using light stimulation, known as optogenetic activation, results in increased antibody responses, and suggests the potential for neuromodulation to improve antibody responses to fight diseases.
Revolutionary acousto-printing method can be used to circumvent invasive surgery, and has a wide array of potential applications.
A new drug delivery and tissue implantation technique utilizing ultrasound waves as an alternative to surgery has been developed in the Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Lab of Prof. Shulamit Levenberg at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
The technique allows for bioprinting live cells and tissues deep within the body using external soundwave irradiation.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a complex condition that requires individualized care to meet the needs of the patient’s current disease state. With available medications sometimes causing serious side effects or losing their efficacy over time, many researchers have been exploring new, more targeted ways of delivering medications or other beneficial compounds, such as probiotics.
To address pitfalls in IBD treatment and drug delivery, the labs of Juliane Nguyen, PhD, professor and vice chair of pharmacoengineering and molecular pharmaceuticals at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and Janelle Arthur, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the UNC School of Medicine, have developed a genetically engineered probiotic strain of Saccharomyces boulardii.
Newly developed stretchable electronic skin soon might give robots and other devices the same softness and touch sensitivity as human skin. This could prove especially promising for care of the aging, where a soft touch can make a huge difference.
The new stretchable e-skin was developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Much like human skin has to stretch and bend to accommodate our movements, so too does e-skin,” said Nanshu Lu, PhD, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics who led the project. “No matter how much our e-skin stretches, the pressure response doesn’t change, and that is a significant achievement.
In an effort to improve delivery of costly medical treatments, a team of researchers in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has developed a stimulating method that could make the human body more receptive to certain gene therapies.
The researchers exposed liver cells to short electric pulses — and those gentle zaps caused the liver cells to take in more than 40 times the amount of gene therapy material compared to cells that were not exposed to pulsed electric fields. The method could help reduce the dosage needed for these treatments, making them much safer and more affordable. The research appears April 30 in the journal PLOS ONE.
Dr. Melissa Grunlan is developing synthetic plugs for patients suffering from chronic knee pain or disabilities that would avoid total knee replacements.
Osteochondral defects (OCDs) can cause damage to cartilage and underlying bone, leading to chronic pain and loss of joint function. Depending on the extent of damage, individuals must undergo surgical treatment, the most extensive being total knee replacement, which over 800,000 Americans undergo each year.
Dr. Melissa Grunlan, professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, received a grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Disease, a suborganization of the National Institutes of Health, to develop synthetic cartilage-capped regenerative osteochondral plugs (CC-ROPs) — a potential off-the-shelf surgical device to treat OCDs and avoid total knee replacement.
MIT researchers find circadian variations in liver function play an important role in how drugs are broken down in the body.
Giving drugs at different times of day could significantly affect how they are metabolized in the liver, according to a new study from MIT.
Using tiny, engineered livers derived from cells from human donors, the researchers found that many genes involved in drug metabolism are under circadian control. These circadian variations affect how much of a drug is available and how effectively the body can break it down. For example, they found that enzymes that break down Tylenol and other drugs are more abundant at certain times of day.
Researchers have designed a new method for developing immunotherapy drugs using engineered peptides to elicit a natural immune response inside the body. More specifically, they showed, in antigen presenting cells, that “the hydrophobicity, electrostatic charge, and secondary conformation of helical polypeptides can be optimized to stimulate innate immune pathways via endoplasmic reticulum stress.”
In preclinical models of locally advanced and metastatic breast cancer, this method improved tumor control and prolonged survival, both as a monotherapy and in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors.
A deep neural network-based automated detection tool could assist emergency room clinicians in diagnosing COVID-19 effectively using lung ultrasound images.
Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a deep learning-based model to detect COVID-19 infection using lung ultrasound images, according to a study published recently in Communications Medicine.
The automated detection tool uses deep neural networks (DNNs) to identify COVID-19 features in lung ultrasound B-mode images and may help clinicians diagnose emergency department patients more efficiently.
The stretchy, wireless sensor could keep patients with bladder issues informed in real-time.
For people dealing with spina bifida, paralysis, and various bladder diseases, determining when to take a bathroom break can be an issue. To help ease the frequent stress, researchers at Northwestern University have designed a sensor array that attaches to the bladder’s exterior wall, enabling it to detect its fullness in real time. Using embedded Bluetooth technology, the device then transmits its data to a smartphone app, allowing users to monitor their bodily functions without far less discomfort and guesswork.
The new tool, detailed in a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), isn’t only meant to prevent incontinence issues. Lacking an ability to feel bladder fullness extends far beyond the obvious inconveniences—for millions of Americans dealing with bladder dysfunctions, not knowing when to go to the bathroom can cause additional organ damage such as regular infections and kidney damage. To combat these issues, the new medical device mirrors the bladder’s own elasticity.
A superior surgical sealant mimics the structural and mechanical properties of lung tissue to repair air leaks after surgery.
A new sealant meant to mimic lung tissue has been shown to rapidly cork air leaks following surgery. Moreover, the protein-like molecules within the sealant were found to potentially help with wound repair.
“Our lung-mimetic sealant is designed with a structure similar to that of the healthy lung, allowing the sealant to deform in a similar way as the breathing lung,” explained Meghan Pinezich, researcher at Columbia University in the US, and first author on the study, in an email.
In the past, artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare was mostly in the hands of specialists — experts in marrying supercomputers to hefty hospital devices. Now, thanks to a new breed of compact, handheld AI-assisted disease-detection devices, that is changing. Healthcare AI is increasingly in the hands (and the pockets) of non-specialists.
Lightweight, battery-powered handheld healthcare AI devices made a splash in January 2024 with the arrival of a portable device for detecting skin cancer. Approved for marketing by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the brand name DermaSensor, the device looks like an oversized cellphone. It is approved for use solely by physicians, and only in patients over 40 years of age, to help in the evaluation of skin lesions suggestive of three types of skin cancer: melanoma, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.
Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and elsewhere have published a paper in Science Advances that describes a type of nanoparticle for delivering vaccines called a metal organic framework (MOF) that can potentially provoke a strong immune response at lower doses. The paper is titled “Zeolitic Imidazolate Frameworks Activate Endosomal Toll-like Receptors and Potentiate Immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Trimer.”
In the study, which was done in mice, the researchers showed that the MOF successfully encapsulated and delivered part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein while simultaneously acting as an adjuvant once it broke down inside cells. More work is needed to ensure that the particles can be used safely in human vaccines, but these early results are promising.
AI enables precision medicine with early detection of Alzheimer’s disease risk.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) recently developed an AI algorithm that can identify patients at risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease up to seven years in advance, according to a study published last week in Nature Aging.
The researchers reported that their AI models predicted Alzheimer’s disease up to seven years in advance with 72% accuracy.
The predictive capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning are enabling disease prediction and accelerating precision medicine in an effort to improve patient outcomes. Alzheimer’s disease (AD), an incurable neurodegenerative disease, is the most common form of dementia.
Scientists from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and elsewhere have described a method of detecting blood-borne pathogens faster and more accurately than traditional blood cultures. The method, called digital DNA melting analysis, produces results in under six hours, much shorter than traditional cultures which can require 15 hours to several days depending on the pathogen.
Details of the method and results from a clinical pilot using blood samples from pediatric patients are provided in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics in a paper titled, “Universal digital high resolution melt analysis for the diagnosis of bacteremia.” Results from the pilot study showed that their DNA melting approach matched results of blood cultures collected for sepsis testing. They were also able to quantify how much of the pathogen was present in the samples using DNA melting.
The National Academy of Engineering has elected UF Distinguished Professor Christine Schmidt, Ph.D., to the academy for 2024 in recognition of her more than 25 years of work to help advance the fields of neural tissue engineering and wound healing and for her leadership in diversifying bioengineering.
Election to the academy is among the highest professional distinctions bestowed upon an engineer, honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research and private industry. Schmidt, the Pruitt Family Chair in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, is focused on creating novel materials and therapeutic systems aimed at wound healing and rebuilding peripheral and spinal nerves damaged by injuries.
Brown Engineering Dean receives one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer.
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected Brown University Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering Tejal A. Desai to its newest membership class, honoring her distinguished contributions to engineering, “for nanofabricated materials to control biologics delivery, and leadership in the fields of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine.” Membership in the NAE is considered one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer and Desai’s selection brings to six the number of current Brown faculty members in the NAE.
“I am deeply honored by this recognition, and am grateful for all my colleagues and trainees who have supported me over my career,” said Desai.
National Academy of Engineering Elects 114 Members and 21 International Members
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected 114 new members and 21 international members, announced NAE President John L. Anderson today. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,310 and the number of international members to 332.
Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.” Election of new NAE members is the culmination of a yearlong process. The ballot is set in December and the final vote for membership occurs during January.
Individuals in the newly elected class will be formally inducted during the NAE’s annual meeting on Sept. 29, 2024. A list of the new members and international members follows, with their primary affiliations at the time of election and a brief statement of their principal engineering accomplishments.
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Maheshwari, Gargi, vice president, Biologics Development, Bristol Myers Squibb, Blue Bell, Pa. For industrial bioprocessing, leading to licensure of biologics and vaccines for human health.
Nancy Allbritton, the dean of the University of Washington College of Engineering and a UW professor of bioengineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the academy announced Feb. 6.
Allbritton was selected “for innovation and commercialization of single-cell, analytical, and gut-on-chip technologies for drug screening and for engineering education.”
Drawing from the fields of engineering, chemistry, physics and materials science, Allbritton’s research develops technologies and platforms for biomedical research and clinical care, including the study and analysis of single cells for the treatment of a variety of diseases such as cancer, macular degeneration and HIV.
Deaths from breast cancer dropped 58% between 1975 and 2019 due to a combination of screening mammography and improvements in treatment, according to a new multicenter study led by Stanford Medicine clinicians and biomedical data scientists.
Nearly one-third of the decrease (29%) is due to advances in treating metastatic breast cancer —a form that has spread to other areas of in the body and is known as stage 4 breast cancer or recurrent cancer. Although these advanced cancers are not considered curable, women with metastatic disease are living longer than ever.
The analysis helps cancer researchers assess where to focus future efforts and resources.
A breakthrough study led by Dr. Mehdi Razavi at The Texas Heart Institute (THI), in collaboration with a biomedical engineering team of The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) Cockrell School of Engineering led by Dr. Elizabeth Cosgriff-Hernandez, sets the foundation of a ground-breaking treatment regimen for treating ventricular arrhythmia. Their study published in Nature Communications demonstrates the design and feasibility of a new hydrogel-based pacing modality.
The urgent need for an effective therapeutic regimen for ventricular arrhythmia inspired THI’s Electrophysiology Clinical Research & Innovations (EPCRI) team, led by its director, Dr. Razavi, to partner with Dr. Cosgriff-Hernandez and her UT Austin Biomedical Engineering (UT Austin BME) team to co-develop an innovative strategy that addresses the pathophysiology of re-entrant arrhythmia.
The diagnostic, which requires only a simple urine test to read the results, could make lung cancer screening more accessible worldwide.
Using a new technology developed at MIT, diagnosing lung cancer could become as easy as inhaling nanoparticle sensors and then taking a urine test that reveals whether a tumor is present.
The new diagnostic is based on nanosensors that can be delivered by an inhaler or a nebulizer. If the sensors encounter cancer-linked proteins in the lungs, they produce a signal that accumulates in the urine, where it can be detected with a simple paper test strip.
UD engineers are researching and refining innovative nanomaterial-based sensors for human health applications
From keeping us warm and dry during a downpour to showcasing our Blue Hen spirit at Homecoming, clothing is essential for our comfort, protection and self-expression. But what if our clothing could do even more — what if, for example, our clothes could collect real-time data and provide feedback that could aid our recovery after an accident or surgery, or monitor our form or body posture during exercise and sports to prevent injury?
At the University of Delaware, a team of researchers from the College of Engineering has developed nanomaterial sensors that can measure precise changes in human movement while being both comfortable and cost effective. Now, thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) program, the team will continue studying these innovative materials while collaborating with industry partners to explore new commercial opportunities in health-related applications.
University of Connecticut Professor of Biomedical Engineering Liisa Kuhn credits Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper for inspiring her work on designing bone grafts, growth plate repair gel—and most recently—breast prosthetics.
“The Gobstopper candy has all these layers, and each layer lets them experience a different course of a meal,” says Kuhn, who has a dual appointment with the School of Dental Medicine and the College of Engineering. “Similarly, in my own research, I’m working with multilayered structures that provide timed release of multiple factors to improve bone and cartilage healing.”
With his election, Ameer joins a group of fewer than 500 biomaterials scientists worldwide
Northwestern Engineering’s Guillermo A. Ameer has been elected a Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering (FBSE) by the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering (IUSBSE), the highest honor the global biomaterials community can bestow on outstanding scientists. With his election, Ameer joins a group of fewer than 500 biomaterials scientists worldwide who have been named a FBSE.
Ameer will be formally inducted May 27 at the World Biomaterials Congress in Daegu, South Korea. Fellowships recognize those who have gained a status of excellent professional standing and high achievements in the field of biomaterials science and engineering.
Cancer nanomedicine showcased at the White House Demo Day
On November 7, a team from the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine showed a Washington D.C. audience several examples of how nanotechnologies developed at MIT can transform the detection and treatment of cancer and other diseases.
The team was one of 40 innovative groups featured at “American Possibilities: A White House Demo Day.” Technology on view spanning energy, artificial intelligence, climate, and health, highlighting advancements that contribute to building a better future for all Americans.
