Medical And Bio-Inspired Innovations by T Goodman

Results for the very first human embryonic stem cell treatment were announced today in the online first section of The Lancet journal.  The first aim of the study was to determine if the stem cell transplant was a safe treatment for age-related dry macular degeneration (dry AMD), the main cause of blindness in persons over 60.  But, in addition...

A tree that is native to China, the Hovenia dulcis, or Asian raisin tree, has been described to contain a hangover remedy since 659 AD.  If you can fathom how long it's been in use, you may wonder why it's taken so long for modern research to study its potential as a treatment for alcohol addiction.  Well, now a multi-disciplinary team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) are actively studying its impact; first on rats....

Deep brain stimulation, or DBS, is in its early experimental stages; this study, for example, had only 17 subjects. But when you cut into a person's skull and implant electrodes on either side of the brain while people are awake, it's probably not that easy to attract willing subjects. Nevertheless...

In the future, maybe not too distant, diabetics may be able to monitor their glucose levels continuously, rather than at one point in time, thanks to the researchers from North Carolina State University, Sandia National Laboratories, and the University of California, San Diego.  These researchers have incorporated sensors into multiple microneedles, each less than a millimeter long, that may make today's glucose analyzers, the annoying skin prick tests, obsolete.

Surgeons at the New York Presbyterian Hospital at Columbia University performed the very first 'ex vivo' lung transplants yesterday, placing a deceased donor's lungs into a test dome for four hours to get the lungs in shape for their new human recipients.  Organ testing procedures have been available prior to now, but none as sophisticated as the XVIVA Perfusion System employed in these particular transplant surgeries.