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Alloy implants that naturally dissolve after healing

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Implants that naturally dissolve after healing, eliminating the need for follow-up surgeries, are in the sights of Australian researchers working in the growing field of advanced biomaterials.

One recent study, by researchers at Flinders University, involved the development of biodegradable magnesium-based alloys with improved corrosion resistance and strength — an innovation geared towards the next generation of medical implants.

By carefully tuning alloy composition, particularly with elements such as zinc and zirconium, the researchers suggest that materials can be produced that more closely match the mechanical properties of human bone while offering enhanced durability in biological environments.

Dr Reza Hashemi. Source: Flinders University

“These new alloys not only improve mechanical performance but also enhance corrosion resistance, which is critical for implants designed to safely degrade inside the body over time,” said Dr Reza Hashemi, Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering.

“By refining the microstructure of the material, we were able to control how quickly the alloy breaks down, reducing the risks associated with premature degradation or loss of structural integrity,” Hashemi added. “This balance between strength and controlled biodegradability is a key step toward safer, more reliable implant technologies.”

The findings were based on research by Master of Mechanical Engineering graduate Win Ken Look and published open access (doi.org/10.1007/s42247-026-01332-8) in Emergent Materials.

Image credit: iStock.com/Wavebreakmedia

Scientific rigour within a person-centred, biophilic setting

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Designed by HDR for Health Infrastructure in collaboration with the Office of the Chief Scientist & Engineer, NSW RNA Bioscience Alliance, Hindmarsh Construction and industry partner and operator Aurora Biosynthetics, the $96 million, 4,500 square metre RNA Research and Manufacturing Facility has opened within the Macquarie University Innovation Precinct.

Grounded within the surrounding eucalypt landscape, the RNA facility is designed to establish a calm civic entry that balances advanced manufacturing precision with warmth, shadow and a strong sense of place. Credit: HDR

Intended to translate Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) technologies into clinical-grade vaccines, therapies and diagnostics for viruses, cancers, genetic diseases and other health-related issues, the purpose-built facility — designed to support TGA approval pathways and GMP-aligned operations — includes pDNA and mRNA production suites, lipid nanoparticle encapsulation, pilot-scale fill-and-finish capability, and integrated QA/QC laboratories.

Generous daylight, clean planning and mobile laboratory infrastructure are designed to create a calm, adaptable research environment for mRNA, pDNA and LNP production. Credit: HDR

“The facility is designed to evolve alongside emerging scientific technologies, with rapid adaptability and carefully managed visibility into active spaces, maintaining the precision and containment requirements of RNA production,” HDR Project Lead Ady Chen said. “Our approach also grounds the building in its surrounding landscape, creating a humane and restorative environment that supports the wellbeing of the people who work here.”

Minimal detailing and precise signage are designed to give the pDNA upstream suite an architectural clarity that makes complex science visible. Credit: HDR

Setting out to embed scientific rigour within a person-centred, biophilic setting, the facility was conceived as a high-precision pavilion within a grove of mature gum trees. “The building’s horizontal form is articulated with slender vertical elements that reference the surrounding forest and draw natural light deep into the interior,” HDR Design Lead Alan Boswell said. “This creates a calm, grounded environment for complex RNA science, and respects the cultural and ecological character of the site.”

Rooftop plant, gantries and screened equipment are carefully organised against the sky, designed to balance servicing intensity with a disciplined architectural profile. Credit: HDR

HDR Principal of Education and Science Graeme Spencer said: “Purpose-built environments like this are critical to Australia’s ability to develop RNA-based therapeutics at speed. By bringing flexible pilot manufacturing together with collaborative research spaces, the facility strengthens sovereign capability and supports real-world health outcomes.”

Timber-lined collaboration spaces and soft internal daylight are designed to provide a humane counterpoint to the facility’s high-performance laboratory and manufacturing environments. Credit: HDR

Top image caption: Set behind a glade of eucalypts, the facade’s vertical rhythm and tonal palette is designed to allow the RNA facility to sit quietly within Country, using shadow, light and restraint to reduce its presence in the landscape. Credit: HDR

Irregular blood pressure patterns and dementia-associated brain changes

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Greater variability in blood pressure over a 24-hour period is associated with poorer cognition, including planning, problem solving and memory; and higher average blood pressure over 24 hours is also associated with greater evidence of vascular brain injury.

This is according to a Monash University study published in Neurology (doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214935), with findings that are significant given that — according to the university — while high blood pressure, or hypertension, has long been recognised as a risk factor for cognitive decline, the impact of changes in blood pressure throughout the day and night has been less understood.

“Our study shows that blood pressure is associated with subtle brain changes that can occur long before memory or thinking problems become apparent,” said Madeline Gibson, a PhD candidate in Clinical Neuropsychology at Monash and first author on the study. “Even a modest increase in blood pressure variability was linked to lower performance on cognitive tests, equivalent to roughly seven years of additional aging.

“Whether managing blood pressure variability could slow or reverse these brain changes is not yet known. But these findings add to growing evidence that the heart and brain are closely linked,” Gibson said. “This is especially important in midlife, which may be a key window for protecting brain health and reducing later risk of cognitive decline.”

For the study, continuous monitoring devices were used — by researchers from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash’s School of Psychological Sciences — to track the blood pressure of 225 Australians aged between 55 and 80 for 24 hours, the study highlighting several potential mechanisms through which abnormal blood pressure contributes to dementia, including injury to the brain’s white matter tracts and altered function of the blood–brain barrier, the brain’s protective filtering system.

“The research indicates that standard blood pressure readings taken at a doctor’s clinic may not provide the full picture,” Senior Author Professor Matthew Pase said. “Most people think of blood pressure as a single number taken in a doctor’s clinic, but blood pressure is dynamic,” Pase added. “Blood pressure rises and falls across the day and night, and those fluctuations may carry important information about brain health.”

Image credit: iStock.com/miodrag ignjatovic

Sydney's $490m commercial life sciences precinct gets first tenants

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Scientific technologies and services provider Thermo Fisher Scientific, flexible laboratory infrastructure provider SmartLabs, and flexible and hybrid workspace platform IWG (International Workplace Group) are the inaugural partners of Waterloo-based, 27,000 sqm precinct ION, which aims to position Sydney at the forefront of Australia’s next wave of biotech innovation.

External facade. Source: Kurraba Group.

External facade (front). Source: Kurraba Group.

Representing an investment of approximately $490 million, the lab-enabled space across a multi-building precinct of up to 10 levels in Waterloo is described by Australian innovation, life sciences and education real estate firm Kurraba Group as designed to address an historical lack in the Australian market of specialised, scalable lab infrastructure required to support the full lifecycle of life sciences innovation.

Internal incubator. Source: Kurraba Group.

Internal write-up space. Source: Kurraba Group.

With a vision to accelerating the development of a world-class life sciences ecosystem in Australia, ION aims to enable research, clinical translation and commercial growth within a single, integrated precinct. “This project marks the first collaboration between SmartLabs and IWG under our new strategy to expand life sciences research centres globally,” SmartLabs CEO Brian Taylor said.

Internal lobby. Source: Kurraba Group.

External terrace. Source: Kurraba Group.

“By working with Kurraba Group, we are helping to create environments where scientists and innovators can accelerate life sciences research, solve complex challenges and ultimately bring new therapies and diagnostics to market faster,” said Darren Verney, Director – Strategic Partnerships & Precincts, Thermo Fisher Scientific Australia and New Zealand. With Buildcorp appointed as builder, construction is anticipated to commence in the coming months and project delivery anticipated for Q4 2028.

Top image: Internal clean rooms. Source: Kurraba Group.

How an Alzheimer's-linked protein shapes long-term memories

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +1000

A study focused on ‘remote memory’ in mice, which refers to memories recalled days or weeks after an experience, has found that while the Alzheimer’s-linked protein tau is not required for initial learning or short-term recall, it is critical for ensuring memories remain strong over the long term.

Led by Flinders University in collaboration with researchers from Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales, the observations of the study — published open access in Nature Communications (doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73207-9) — in mice do not directly translate to human brain function or dementia; however, the researchers believe the findings offer important insights that could help guide the development of future treatments.

“Why some memories last while others fade has long puzzled scientists and our study shows that tau plays a key role in how the brain forms long-lasting memories. Without it, memories can still form in the moment, but they are weaker,” said Associate Professor Arne Ittner from Flinders’ College of Medicine and Public Health, senior author and neuroscientist.

Associate Professor Arne Ittner. Source: Flinders University

‘Engram cells’ are specialised groups of brain cells and are at the heart of this process, forming the physical trace of a memory. Only a small subset of these cells is recruited to store a given experience during learning, the researchers explain, with the study showing that tau acts during this critical encoding window, helping determine which cells are selected to store a memory.

“Our findings show that tau helps determine which cells are selected to store a memory, shaping how an experience forms a lasting memory trace,” said one of the lead authors, Renée Kosonen, a researcher at Flinders’ Neuroscience and Dementia Research. That tau helps prevent excess or ‘noise’ activity in the brain, allowing only a specific group of cells to become part of the memory trace, was an important finding, the researchers said — resulting in clearer, more stable memories.

Further, it was observed that tau undergoes phosphorylation, a subtle chemical modification, which helps coordinate the activity of engram cells. Although a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease is abnormal tau phosphorylation, controlled, low-level phosphorylation, the study suggests, plays an essential role in normal brain function.

The researchers said that the study also provides insight into how, in dementia, abnormal tau disrupts memory. During learning, when disease-associated forms of tau were present in engram cells, they interfered with the formation of new memories, the researchers said, and when present later, they disrupted the brain’s ability to access existing memories.

“Knowing how tau supports the formation and recall of memory could help us better understand what goes wrong in memory loss,” Ittner said. “Future research will hopefully be able to confirm concepts developed in our study in human memory and show their implication in dementia.”

Top image credit: iStock.com/wildpixel. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

Could 'fusion proteins' reduce errors in a promising gene-editing tool?

Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Though described as versatile, highly efficient and precise, gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 — one of its key uses being to engineer cancer immunotherapies — can sometimes introduce gene mutations to cell products that pose a risk to patients. Now, biotechnology researchers at The University of Queensland (UQ) have developed a protein that, they say, has the potential to help the CRISPR-Cas9 system reduce errors when designing new immunotherapies for lymphoma and leukaemia.

“CRISPR-Cas9 is a highly efficient and precise tool, but it is not perfect,” UQ’s Dr Tahmina Tabassum said. “When it cuts DNA in the wrong place, you run the risk of introducing genomic instability.” Tabassum added: “In ex-vivo therapies such as CAR-T or CAR-NK therapies, this could mean nullifying the effectiveness of the treatment or even activating cancer-causing mutations.”

To combat the tool’s error rate when designing cell therapies, Tabassum together with her supervisors at UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology — Professor Ernst Wolvetang and Dr Giovanni Pietrogrande — turned to ‘fusion proteins’ and their potential use as damage regulators for CRISPR-Cas9; designing and fusing the right protein to the CRISPR-Cas9 enzyme that, Tabassum said, meant it was possible to improve the precision of a DNA cut while stimulating the desired DNA repair.

“There are a lot of great labs that are designing different types of molecules to enhance the gene-editing ability of CRISPR; however, most small molecules are either not clinically translatable or focus on improving only the efficiency but not safety,” Tabassum said. “That’s why we designed CasPER — a gene-editing technology which is clinically translatable and safer to use.”

Dr Tahmina Tabassum from UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. Credit: The University of Queensland

In several types of human cells, early testing showed that CasPER can edit genes more effectively than the CRISPR approach. And when it came to advanced immune therapies, such as CAR‑T and CAR‑NK cancer treatments, in which a patient’s own immune cells are re-engineered to find and destroy cancer cells, the researchers said results are particularly promising. A precision-editing score nearly four times higher than CRISPR-Cas9 was shown in CasPER’s results so far, as well as tenfold reduced off-target gene modifications.

“By reducing the overall mutation burden in edited cells, you are laying the groundwork for cell therapy products that are safer and more efficient,” Tabassum said. “Right now, this could mean better CAR therapies for blood cancers.” Tabassum added: “But it really opens the door to treatment for a number of diseases caused by genetic factors including rare diseases.”

To further develop CasPER, Tabassum said her team was seeking licensing and partnering opportunities that include using the technology in combination with other RNA-guided enzymes and therapies in which genetic material is directly delivered into – or removed from – a patient’s body, in order to treat or prevent blood diseases such as sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia.

Top image: Dr Giovanni Pietrogrande and Dr Tahmina Tabassum developed their new fusion protein at UQ’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. Credit: The University of Queensland

Giant squid found hidden in submarine canyons off Western Australia

Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +1000

On board the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor, a Western Australian Museum-led expedition surveyed the deep Cape Range and Cloates submarine canyons, which are located around 1200 km north of Perth. Collecting more than 1000 samples from depths of up to 4510 m, the scientists — without needing to see or capture them — were able to document what species live in these deep habitats. This was achieved using environmental DNA (eDNA) — genetic material naturally shed by animals into seawater.

Traces of the Architeuthis dux, or giant squid, were among the most striking finds, detected across six separate samples in both the Cape Range and Cloates Canyons. Typically growing 10–13 metres (or longer than a school bus), giant squid have the biggest eyes in the animal kingdom — up to 30 cm in diameter, or the size of a large pizza — and can weigh 150–275 kg. Also found were deep‑diving whales such as the Kogia breviceps, or Pygmy sperm whale, and Ziphius cavirostris, or Cuvier’s beaked whale.

In all, 226 species across 11 major animal groups were detected, with rare deep‑sea fish, cnidarians, echinoderms, squid and marine mammals among them. Dozens of the species detected, the scientists said, had never previously been recorded in Western Australian waters, including the Somniosus sp. or sleeper shark, Typhlonus nasus or faceless cusk eel and the Rhadinesthes decimus or slender snaggletooth.

Conducting the research as part of her PhD studies at Curtin University and now at the Minderoo OceanOmics Centre at The University of Western Australia, Dr Georgia Nester was lead author of the study, published open access (doi.org/10.1002/edn3.70261) in Environmental DNA. “Finding evidence of a giant squid really captures people’s imagination, but it’s just one part of a much bigger picture,” Nester said.

“We found a large number of species that don’t neatly match anything currently recorded, which doesn’t automatically mean they’re new to science, but it strongly suggests there is a vast amount of deep‑sea biodiversity we’re only just beginning to uncover,” Nester added.

Dr Georgia Nester explains the survey. Credit: Curtin University

“This is the first record of a giant squid detected off Western Australia’s coast using eDNA protocols and the northernmost record of A. dux in the eastern Indian Ocean,” said WA Museum Head of Aquatic Zoology and Curator of Molluscs Dr Lisa Kirkendale, who also noted that there were only two other records of giant squid from Western Australia, without a sighting or a specimen for more than 25 years. “The WA Museum contributed expert identification of specimens from the expedition, supporting the development of a local curated genetic reference that strengthened the eDNA analyses.”

Water samples from the surface to more than 4 km deep were collected by Nester, who combined eDNA analysis with genetic reference sequences from physical specimens collected by the remotely operated vehicle SuBastian. Identified by taxonomists, to aid further taxonomic research, the physical specimens are now permanently housed in the WA Museum’s Collection and Research Facility.

“By combining eDNA with conventional deep‑sea survey techniques, we can build a far more complete picture of biodiversity, revealing species, ecosystems and ecological patterns that would otherwise remain hidden,” Nester said. “This kind of information is critical for marine park planning and management, because it gives us a much clearer picture of what species are present and how communities are structured across depth.”

On the potential of eDNA to transform how scientists explore and protect the deep ocean, senior author on the study Associate Professor Zoe Richards from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences said: “Environmental DNA gives us a scalable, non‑invasive way to build baseline knowledge of what lives there, which is essential for informed management and conservation.”

Top image credit: iStock.com/Alexyz3d. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

Potential biological targets for vascular dementia

Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Potential biological targets that could help guide future research into treatments for vascular dementia have been identified in a study by UNSW Sydney’s Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA) that was funded by the Dementia Australia Research Foundation (DARF) Royce Simmons Project Grant and published open access (doi.org/10.1002/trc2.70258) in a journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions.

Vascular dementia is the second most common form of dementia worldwide, accounting for around 15–20% of all cases, and is caused by damage to blood vessels in the brain. Despite its prevalence and impact, currently, the condition has no approved treatments in Australia.

“Vascular dementia is a major and growing public health problem. It affects memory, thinking and function, yet we have no effective treatments to stop or slow its progression. Our study provides an initial step by identifying biologically plausible targets that could inform future research into therapies,” said lead author of the study Dr Matthew Lennon.

Genetic approach Mendelian randomisation was used in the study to analyse more than 12,000 potentially ‘druggable’ genes. Along with the proteins they produce, these genes could be targeted by medications. The team identified genes that may play a causal role in vascular dementia by examining large-scale genetic datasets from hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Four such genes were identified and linked to vascular dementia risk in the study. These were APOE and TOMM40 — well-established genes already known to play roles in brain health and dementia — and ERAP and SAA1-4 — linked to inflammation and immune processes, these are newer, emerging targets.

APOE and TOMM40 were the two strongest signals and associated with brain imaging markers of small vessel disease, a major contributor to both vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers said this strengthens the evidence that these genes are involved in underlying disease processes.

As to the importance of this study, the researchers said that vascular dementia research has lagged behind research into diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, where several treatments exist and many more are in development — something that has left patients with limited options.

“Managing risk factors like blood pressure and cholesterol helps, but it’s not enough,” Lennon said. “Even under ideal conditions, prevention strategies may only reduce dementia risk by less than half. We urgently need new avenues for research into targeted treatments.”

It is believed that this gene identification may help inform future research aimed at drug development targeting pathways relevant to vascular dementia; exploration of whether existing medications acting on these genes could be repurposed; and advancing understanding of how vascular and Alzheimer’s disease processes overlap.

Yet, many potential drug targets do not ultimately lead to successful therapies, the researchers emphasised, and translating genetic findings into safe and effective treatments is a complex and lengthy process.

“At a time when vascular dementia remains a major unmet medical need, this study highlights the potential of genetics-led research to uncover new treatment pathways and bring hope for future therapies,” CHeBA Co-director Professor Perminder Sachdev said.

Laboratory studies, additional genetic analyses and clinical trials are among the further work that is needed, the researchers acknowledge, yet they also believe that the study constitutes an important lead for future drug development. “This is an important first step,” Lennon said. “By identifying potential targets, we can begin to better understand where future research and drug development efforts might be directed.”

Image credit: iStock.com/Tonpor Kasa. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

Can yawning advance the study of neurodegenerative diseases?

Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Scientists from UNSW Sydney and Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) believe yawning may play a subtle but intriguing role in moving fluids in and out of the brain. Admitting that the idea is speculative, they said their work, which used real-time MRI scans, allowed them to see what happens inside the head and neck when people yawn, and to compare it to the effect of normal and deep breathing. They believe the study opens up an interesting avenue for understanding the physiological functions of yawning.

With its results based on a small-scale group of 22 participants, the study was led by Professor Lynne Bilston from UNSW’s School of Biomedical Engineering and published in Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology (doi.org/10.1016/j.resp.2026.104575). What it found was that yawning triggered a specific manoeuvre in which cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and venous blood moved out of the skull together, whereas during deep breathing cerebrospinal fluid flowed into the skull — a finding that surprised the researchers.

A clear liquid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, filling the space around them like water around a floating object, CSF is important because it helps carry nutrients in and waste products out and also cushions and protects the brain and spinal cord from injury. “We observed that yawning is a body movement that can influence the flow of fluids around the brain,” Bilston said.

“There has been speculation that yawning can help clear waste from the brain, but so far there has not been solid proof,” Bilston added. “Our research suggests that yawning can play a role in cleaning brain fluid, which would most likely happen close to bedtime.” The finding could prove important for studies into neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia, the researchers believe — all of which have been potentially linked to the build-up of waste products in and around the brain that can be a result of impaired CSF flows.

In order to trigger so-called ‘contagious yawns’, volunteers were shown videos of people, and even animals, yawning. MRI scans were then taken at the level of their C3 vertebra, a crossroads in the upper neck where blood and CSF pass as they travel to and from the brain. Comparison was then made between the scans of the subjects contagiously yawning with those simply taking a deep breath — as if pretending to yawn. Only where — via those contagious yawns — volunteers were really yawning did venous blood and CSF flow out of the skull together.

The team also said that the evidence suggests yawning is a way for the body to regulate the temperature in and around the brain. “In humans, the brain tissue can be up to one degree Celsius warmer than the rest of the body, and venous blood leaving the brain is typically about 0.2–0.3 degrees warmer than the arterial blood entering it,” said corresponding author of the paper Adam Martinac.

“So when someone yawns we can now see an increase in the cooler arterial blood flow into the skull, compensating for the coupled outflow of CSF and venous blood, and therefore we can surmise there may be a thermoregulatory process happening there,” Martinac said. “We could speculate that perhaps yawning is a way that the brain helps to cool itself down, but again we would need to do more research to state that with certainty.

“We do know that a hot brain is not a good thing because there is a risk of cell damage, seizures and cerebral swelling. And there is actually a very narrow band temperature-wise where the brain is steady and balanced — what is known as homeostasis,” Martinac added. “That’s likely the reason why there are so many mechanisms — such as blood flow, and sweating — that help regulate temperatures in the brain.”

Image credit: iStock.com/zorazhuang. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

Protein build-up in brain blood vessels and dementia risk

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +1000

People with cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), a condition where protein (called amyloid) builds up in the brain, are four times more likely to develop dementia within five years, regardless of whether they have had a stroke. This is according to a preliminary study presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2026, which was held in February.

Some amyloid protein can collect in the brain’s blood vessels as people age and without causing symptoms. When the build-up becomes significant enough to damage the vessels and affect brain function, people receive a clinical diagnosis of CAA — a condition that raises the risk of ischemic stroke (clot-caused stroke) and can lead to haemorrhagic stroke (bleeding stroke).

Often found in people with Alzheimer’s Disease, CAA also contributes to cognitive impairment, and in some severe cases, the protein deposits can cause the walls of blood vessels to crack, which can lead to blood leaking out and damaging the brain — damage that is known as a bleeding or haemorrhagic stroke.

For this study, researchers investigated the risk of developing dementia among adults diagnosed with CAA, the link between CAA and stroke and the risk of dementia. “Many people with CAA develop dementia; however, so far, clinicians haven’t had clear, large-scale estimates on how often and how quickly dementia progresses in these patients,” said Samuel S. Bruce, M.D., M.A., study author and an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.

“Our study calculated estimates from a large sample of Medicare patients whether people with CAA are more likely to be newly diagnosed with dementia and to clarify how CAA and stroke — separately and together — relate to new dementia diagnoses,” Bruce said. “What stood out was that the risk of developing dementia among those with CAA without stroke was similar to those with CAA with stroke, and both conditions had a higher increase in the incidence of dementia when compared to participants with stroke alone.

“This suggests that non-stroke-related mechanisms are instrumental to dementia risk in CAA,” Bruce said. “These results highlight the need to proactively screen for cognitive changes after a diagnosis of CAA and address risk factors to prevent further cognitive decline.” That researchers obtained clinical study information from administrative diagnosis codes used in inpatient and outpatient health insurance claims submitted to Medicare was among the study’s limitations. “These codes are an imperfect proxy for clinical diagnoses, and misclassifications can occur,” Bruce said.

Attempts by the researchers to mitigate the limitation included using codes that have been shown to accurately capture correct diagnoses in administrative data; though access to imaging data — to more rigorously assess the diagnoses of CAA and stroke — was not available. Prospective studies that follow patients forward (instead of looking back in time) are among the further research needed to confirm the results; studies should include standardised approaches for diagnosing CAA and stroke.

Image credit: iStock.com/FG Trade Latin. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

Could this 'virus-tearing' plastic film protect hospital equipment?

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +1000

A flexible acrylic surface textured with ultra‑fine structures called nanopillars — that grab and stretch the outer shell of the virus so much that it ruptures, killing the virus through mechanical force rather than chemical disinfectants — is an innovation that, Australian scientists believe, is not only effective at killing viruses, but also far more practical and scalable than earlier metal and silicon‑based antiviral surfaces.

Human parainfluenza virus 3 (hPIV-3), which causes bronchiolitis and pneumonia, was used in lab tests, which revealed that, within one hour of contact with the surface, about 94% of the virus particles were either ripped apart or damaged to the point where they could no longer replicate to cause infection. The research, published open access in Advanced Science (doi: 10.1002/advs.202521667), shows that, unlike earlier studies on antiviral coatings, stretching rather than skewering viruses is a more effective kill.

(L–R) Associate Professor Natalie Borg, Dr Denver Linklater, Distinguished Professor Elena Ivanova and Samson Mah. Credit: RMIT University

“As nanofabrication tools get better, our results give a clearer guide to which nanopatterns work best to kill viruses,” said Samson Mah, study lead author and RMIT University PhD candidate. “We could one day have surfaces like phone screens, keyboards and hospital tables covered with this film, killing viruses on contact without using harsh chemicals.

“Our mould can be adapted to roll‑to‑roll manufacturing, meaning antiviral plastic films could be produced at scale with existing factory equipment.” Mah said the research revealed how distance between the nanopillars matters far more than their height. “By tweaking the spacing and height of the nanopillars, we discovered how tightly they are packed together is far more important than how tall they are for breaking viruses apart.

“When the nanopillars are closer together, more of them can press on the same virus at once, stretching its outer shell past breaking point,” Mah added. While rigid substrates — such as nanospike silicon — in early experiments showed viruses could be physically disrupted, surfaces textured with not only spike-like nanofeatures, but also with blunt nanopillars were shown in the study to efficiently kill viruses.

Microscope image of a virus cell being ruptured by the nanotextured surface. Credit: RMIT University

The same virus‑killing action is shown in this study on flexible plastic, proposing a simple design rule: the closer together the nanofeatures such as spikes or nanopillars are, the better they work; the strongest effect coming from densely packed nanopillars with about 60 nanometres between them, while widening the gaps to 100 nanometres reduced the antiviral power and 200 nanometres effectively switched it off.

Flexibility demonstration of the antiviral plastic film. Credit: RMIT University

An enveloped virus has a fragile fatty membrane around it that can be more easily disrupted by nanopillars, while a non-enveloped virus lacks this outer layer, making it harder to kill. Having focused on hPIV‑3 — an enveloped virus with a fatty outer membrane — to see how broadly the nanotextured surface works, the team said it now plans to test smaller and non‑enveloped viruses. Also needed is more research on the texturing’s effectiveness on curved surfaces, which affects the nanopillars’ spacing.

Top image: Transparent acrylic samples with engineered nanotextured surfaces, prepared for microscopy analysis, showing how clear plastic can be turned into a texturing that physically tears viruses apart on contact. Credit: RMIT University

'Smart bandage' heals and monitors simultaneously

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +1000

Due to the complexities of continuous and changing care required, chronic wounds cause significant burdens on healthcare systems. Emerging as potential solutions to this burden are smart wound dressings, which work by monitoring infection or delivering healing therapeutics. However, combining both monitoring and healing functions into one dressing has proven complex. Now, researchers at RMIT University believe they have created a simple, scalable platform able to deliver real-time monitoring and healing agents at the same time.

To serve the dual functions of monitoring and treating the wound, RMIT researchers have embedded tiny, multi-functional nanomaterials — known as carbon dots — into hydrogel dressing. The biocompatible carbon-based nanoparticles — carbon dots — can be used to image and sense changes in a wound and combat wound inflammation as therapeutic artificial enzymes (nanozymes), the new type of smart wound patch that will change colour when there is pH change in the wound caused by infection.

A portable smart device can read out the colour change and when these infection signals are detected, to promote healing the system automatically releases therapeutic nanozymes into the wound. By applying gentle pressure to the dressing, the release of these therapeutic nanozymes can also be manually triggered — allowing clinicians or patients to provide additional treatment, if required.

The smart wound patch’s dual function could support more timely and effective intervention from clinicians. Credit: RMIT University

“Being able to address potential infection at the earliest opportunity is critical to chronic wound management, making this real-time system a potential game changer for health care,” said Nan Nan, RMIT PhD candidate and first author of the study. “Our fabrication process using medically ready materials, such as hydrogels, to embed carbon dots for wound dressing is easy and scalable, with strong potential for commercial translation.”

Dr Haiyan Li, collaborator and Senior Lecturer at RMIT’s School of Engineering, called it a promising and adaptive platform that overcame some of the barriers that have stopped smart wound dressings being brought to market. “Many smart wound dressings developed in research laboratories are difficult to translate into real clinical products because they rely on complex designs or expensive sensing systems,” Li said.

“Our approach integrates sensing and dual-mode therapeutic functions into a single dressing with a simple, streamlined design, which helps address some of the key challenges that have previously limited commercial translation,” Li added. “Importantly, this work has defined concise design rules for future smart dressings.”

The research team: Dr Lei Bao, Nan Nan and Dr Haiyan Li. Credit: RMIT University

Initial studies were done at the lab scale, with validation in appropriate in vivo wound models being a key future step — the researchers looking to industry partnerships to refine and scale up the technology and bring smart wound patches to market. “Our next step is to evaluate how this technology performs in more advanced biological models and to work with industry partners to refine the design for real clinical use,” said Dr Lei Bao, study lead and Senior Lecturer at RMIT’s School of Engineering.

“Ultimately, our goal is to translate this research into practical smart wound dressings and integrate this smart platform into a digital health ecosystem, where the data from the patch is collected, analysed, and used to drive clinical decisions to advance chronic wound management,” Bao added. The research was conducted in RMIT’s Micro Nano Research Facility and Microscopy and Microanalysis Facility, with the study published open access (doi.org/10.1016/j.ces.2025.123225) in Chemical Engineering Science.

Top image credit: RMIT University

This AI model judges molecular stability on its own, researchers say

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +1000

A team of Korean researchers led by Professor Woo Youn Kim in the Department of Chemistry in the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed an artificial intelligence model that, they say, understands the physical laws governing molecular stability to predict structures, having published an article on their research in Nature Computational Science (doi.org/10.1038/s43588-025-00919-1).

While existing AI models simply mimic the shape of molecules, the most significant feature of Riemannian DenoisingModel (R-DM) is that it directly considers the ‘energy’ of the molecule, refining the structure by considering the forces acting within the molecule. The molecular structure has been represented by the researchers as a map — where higher energy is depicted as hills and lower energy as valleys, designing the AI to move toward and find the valleys with the lowest energy.

By navigating this energy landscape, avoiding unstable structures to find the most stable state, R-DM completes the molecule. The mathematical theory of Riemannian geometry is applied here, resulting in the AI learning the fundamental law of chemistry: ‘matter prefers the state with the lowest energy’.

Comparison of energy landscapes in Euclidean space and Riemannian space. (Credit: KAIST) [Click on image for a larger view.]

The team says that experimental results have shown R-DM achieved up to 20 times higher accuracy than existing AI models, reducing prediction errors to a level nearly indistinguishable from precise quantum mechanical calculations. This represents, the researchers claim, the world’s highest level of performance among AI-based molecular structure prediction technologies.

“This is the first case where artificial intelligence has understood the basic principles of chemistry and judged molecular stability on its own,” Kim said. “It is a technology that can fundamentally change the way new materials are developed.” High-performance catalyst design, next-generation battery materials and new drug development are among the areas in which this technology can be utilised, the researchers say.

(From top left) Professor Woo Youn Kim (KAIST), Dr Jeheon Woo (KISTI), Dr Seonghwan Kim (KAIST) and Jun Hyeong Kim (PhD candidate). (Credit: KAIST)

The model is expected to serve as an ‘AI simulator’ that will dramatically speed up research and development by significantly shortening the molecular design process. The team also sees significant potential in environmental and safety fields, as it can quickly predict chemical reaction paths in situations where experiments are difficult, such as chemical accidents or the spread of hazardous substances.

Top image: iStock.com/BlackJack3D. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

Could this optical centrifuge demystify exotic, frictionless superfluids?

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +1000

A new optical centrifuge has enabled the first demonstration of controlled spinning inside a superfluid, recent research suggests. It means researchers can now directly set the direction and frequency of the molecule’s rotation, which is vital in studying how molecules interact with the quantum environment at various rotational frequencies — as outlined by researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and colleagues at the University of Freiburg in the journal Physical Review Letters (doi.org/10.1103/5jnj-97vs).

“Controlling the rotation of a molecule dissolved in any fluid is a challenge,” said Dr Valery Milner, author on the paper and Associate Professor with UBC Physics and Astronomy. “Dissolved molecules interact with the atomic or molecular constituents of the fluid, effectively getting bigger and harder to spin up. Imagine making a snowball: it’s very easy to move it when it’s small, but gets harder and harder as more snow gets attached to it.”

Superfluids — like liquid helium — are exotic states of matter that, at near-absolute zero, flow with no viscosity. Yet they actually do act as solvents, despite the lack of friction. “The question of interest in the science of quantum matter, and the one this new approach will help us explore, is what changes from the perspective of the solvated — dissolved — molecule when you make the transition from a normal fluid to this type of quantum superfluid,” Milner said.

Already used to spin and study molecules in gases by shining a rotating laser pulse onto it, with conventional optical centrifuges, molecules in the gas align with the beam’s electric field and rotate with the pulse. But the technique hasn’t worked yet with molecules suspended in a superfluid.

For this study, the molecules were embedded in helium nano-droplets doped with dimers of nitric oxide by Milner and his team and introduced a short time delay between laser pulses. This caused interference that creates a much lower, constant rotation rate that increased the molecule’s ‘spinnability’.

The team will move on to scan the rotation frequency (using the new ‘control knob’ offered by the novel centrifuge) across a critical frequency, beyond which molecular rotation is expected to decay much faster due to the breakdown of superfluidity.

“It is not well understood how and when — for example at what frequency — this transition will happen at such a tiny atomic scale,” Milner said. “That’s the key area we’re investigating at the moment.”

Image: Physicists at UBC sent a laser beam of an optical centrifuge into helium nano-droplets doped with dimers of nitric oxide (Valery Milner, UBC).

Are lab gloves leading scientists to overestimate microplastics?

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +1100

Gloves may unintentionally contaminate lab equipment scientists use to measure microplastics in air, water and other samples with non-plastic particles called stearates, researchers Madeline Clough and Anne McNeil from the University of Michigan have suggested — recommending that cleanroom gloves, which release fewer particulates, should be worn instead.

Manufacturers coat disposable gloves with stearates — which are salts, or soap-like particles — to make them easier to peel from the moulds used to form them. But stearates are also chemically similar to some microplastics, according to the researchers, and can lead to false positives when researchers are looking for microplastic pollution.

Clough led the research, published open access (doi.org/10.1039/D5AY01801C) in Analytical Methods, which began while working on another project. On that other project, while Clough prepared the substrates wearing nitrile gloves — as is recommended by the guidance of literature in the microplastics field — she examined the substrates to estimate how many microplastics she captured, and the results were many thousands of times greater than what she expected to find.

“It led to a wild goose chase of trying to figure out where this contamination could possibly have come from, because we just knew this number was far too high to be correct,” Clough said. “Throughout the process of figuring it out — was it a plastic squirt bottle, was it particles in the atmosphere of the lab where I was preparing the substrates — we finally traced it down to gloves.”

Residue from nitrile or latex gloves may unintentionally contaminate lab equipment scientists use to measure microplastics in air, water and other samples with non-plastic particles called stearates. Stearates, a kind of salt, are chemically similar at the structural level to microplastics. They also look similar visually. Image credit: Madeline Clough/University of Michigan.

To determine how widespread the problem is, the researchers designed an experiment that tested seven different kinds of gloves. These included nitrile, latex and cleanroom gloves, as well as the most common techniques that microplastic researchers are using to identify microplastics. Mimicking the type of contact that would occur in a research environment between a researcher’s gloved hand and a point of contact, this included a filter or a microscope slide — any piece of technology that a researcher might use over the course of investigating microplastics.

What they found was that, on average, the gloves imparted about 2000 false positives per millimetre squared area. “The type of contact we tried to mimic touches upon all varieties of microplastics research,” Clough said. “If you are contacting a sample with a gloved hand, you’re likely imparting these stearates that could overestimate your results.” Cleanroom gloves were found to impart the fewest particles, likely because cleanroom gloves are manufactured without the stearate coating, allowing them to be used in ‘ultrapure’ applications.

The study, the researchers said, highlights the importance of chemistry researchers in the field of microplastics, who might be able to recognise the difference in chemical structure of plastics versus other contaminants. “This field is very challenging to work in because there’s plastic everywhere,” McNeil said. “But that’s why we need chemists and people who understand chemical structure to be working in this field.”

Top image credit: iStock.com/CasarsaGuru

In the face of change: how Antarctic microbes can survive a 95°C temperature span

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +1100

Aerotrophy is the process that explains microbes’ ability to thrive during Antarctica’s dark, freezing winters, but also makes them suited to a future shaped by rising temperatures, a study led by Monash University researchers from Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF) has confirmed. Through this process, microbes live from gases — including hydrogen and carbon monoxide — in the atmosphere, surviving temperatures ranging from –20 to 75°C.

SAEF researchers collecting microbial soil samples in the Bunger Hills. (Toby Travers/Monash University)

“It’s a bit like seeing a penguin thrive in a tropical jungle,” said Dr Ry Holland, Monash microbiology research fellow and co-author of the study published open access (doi.org/10.1093/ismejo/wrag020) in The ISME Journal. “In most surface ecosystems, photosynthesis is the key process that enables life to grow. However, it requires sunlight and water, two things that are in short supply during dark Antarctic winters, when water is locked up as ice.

SAEF researcher collecting microbial soil samples. (Laura Phillips/Monash University)

“By contrast, the air is always there, providing a steady supply of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and other trace gases,” Holland added. The team found that at typical summer temperatures of 4°C and winter temperatures of –20°C, Antarctic microbes continue to consume these gases as an energy source, confirming that aerotrophy occurs year-round.

Trowel for sampling. (Ry Holland/Monash University)

“When we continued to increase the temperature in the lab, we were surprised to find that they continued to consume hydrogen up to 75°C. This shows that while these microbes are adapted to the continent’s cold conditions, they are not limited by them,” said Dr Tess Hutchinson, study lead author, from Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI).

Conducting a gas flux experiment in Dronning Maud Land. (Ry Holland/Monash University)

The SAEF program partnered with national Antarctic programs and business partners to access sites across East Antarctica, with the aim to build a continent-wide understanding of the process of aerotrophy. For the study, soil samples were collected in Dronning Maud Land — with logistics support from White Desert — and from the Bunger Hills and Robinsons Ridge, through the Australian Antarctic Program.

Dr Ry Holland conducting gas flux experiment in Dronning Maud Land. (Photographer Braydon Moloney/©Northern Pictures/Source Monash University)

How quickly microbes consumed atmospheric gases was then measured, both in the lab and in the field. The team also extracted and sequenced the microbes’ DNA to identify which species were present, the genes they carry and the energy sources they are capable of using. What they found was that aerotrophy is a widespread and foundational survival strategy across Antarctica, not an isolated adaptation.

SAEF researcher collecting microbial soil samples. (Laura Phillips/Monash University)

“Aerotrophy is clearly a vital process supporting ecosystems across East Antarctica,” Hutchinson said, describing the study as an important puzzle piece to understandings of Antarctic microbial ecosystems’ resilience to a changing climate. “It can occur in the dark or the light, in extreme cold and at surprisingly high temperatures. It’s good to know that these microbes are resilient to rising temperature, but there are lots of other factors that also determine how microbes will respond to climate change that we are continuing to uncover.”

Top image: Dr Ry Holland and Dr Rachael Lappan conducting gas flux experiment in Dronning Maud Land. (Amy Liu/Monash University)

Sensor's cell-like structure said to overcome key blood-testing barrier

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +1100

Blood quickly clogging most sensors and making accurate instant readings almost impossible over long periods is, according to a team led by La Trobe University, one of the biggest barriers in blood testing. This same team, drawing inspiration from nature, believe they have overcome this with a sensor that can rapidly track tiny molecular changes in blood, paving the way to real-time, personalised medicine. Their findings were published open access (doi.org/10.1021/acssensors.6c00192) in ACS Sensors in March.

To mimic the way real cell surfaces protect themselves and sense molecules, the La Trobe team — in collaboration with CSIRO — combined a natural protective coating called lubricin, fast-responding receptors and an ultra‑sensitive, light‑based detection method known as Surface‑Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS). SERS was used by the team to detect the antibiotic Vancomycin in unprocessed blood samples — without any loss in sensitivity over more than 10 hours of continuous exposure.

Dr Wren Greene. La Trobe University.

“Blood is one of the hardest substances to measure anything in,” said Dr Wren Greene, La Trobe University Associate Professor and research lead. “The secret to our sensor is its cell-like structure which filters the molecules from blood, enabling ultra-sensitive SERS detection.” Greene added: “Our sensor greatly expands the detection range, allowing us to measure hormones, toxins and other biomarkers that appear only at low concentrations. This is critical for early disease detection and monitoring the body’s response to treatments.

“This discovery also advances the scientific field itself, demonstrating a way to overcome the longstanding trade-off between high sensitivity and fast response in molecular testing,” Greene said. On the significance of the sensor, CSIRO’s Dr Mingyu Han, research co-leader, said other sensors had detected Vancomycin but this was 100 million times more sensitive, making it the first practical, real-time SERS sensor capable of working inside a fluid like blood.

Top image credit: iStock.com/Thinkhubstudio. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

Revealed — a common bacterium's role in stubborn wound infections

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +1100

Chronic wound infections are notoriously difficult to manage as some bacteria can actively interfere with the body’s immune defences. Now, a team of international researchers have uncovered how a common bacterium, Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis), can suppress the body’s early warning system in wounds — causing infections to persist and create an environment that allows other bacteria to take hold. E. faecalis is particularly resilient in wounds, being able to survive inside tissues, alter the wound environment and weaken immune signals at the injury site.

This creates conditions where other microbes can easily establish themselves, resulting in multi-species infections that are complex and slow to resolve. Diabetic foot ulcers and post-surgical infections are examples of such persistent wounds, which can sometimes lead to serious complications such as amputations and place a heavy burden on patients and healthcare systems. What the researchers found is that E. faecalis releases lactic acid to acidify its surroundings and suppresses the immune-cell signal needed to start a proper response to infection.

The bacterium can cause persistent and hard-to-treat wound infections by silencing the body’s defences. The team consisted of researchers from Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology’s (SMART) Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) interdisciplinary research group alongside collaborators from SCELSE, at Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore), MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and University of Geneva, who published their findings open access (doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2026.01.002) in Cell Host & Microbe.

Dr Ronni da Silva, Research Scientist at SMART AMR, SCELSE-NTU Visiting Researcher and first author of the paper, explains the findings, alongside Professor Kimberly Kline, Principal Investigator at SMART AMR and corresponding author of the study. (Credit: SCELSE)

“Chronic wound infections often fail not because antibiotics are powerless, but because the immune system has effectively been ‘switched off’ at the infection site. We found that E. faecalis floods the wound with lactic acid, lowering pH and muting the NF‑κB alarm inside macrophages — the very cells that should be calling for help. By pinpointing how acidity rewires immune signalling, we now have clear targets to reactivate the immune response,” said Dr Ronni da Silva, Research Scientist at SMART AMR, SCELSE-NTU Visiting Researcher and first author of the paper.

“This discovery strengthens our understanding of host-pathogen interactions and offers new directions for developing treatments and wound care that target the bacteria’s immunosuppressive strategies,” said Prof Kimberly Kline, Principal Investigator at SMART AMR, SCELSE-NTU Visiting Academic, Professor at UNIGE and corresponding author of the paper. “By revealing how the immune response is shut down, this research may help improve infection management and support better recovery outcomes for patients, especially those with chronic wounds or weakened immunity.”

Image credit: iStock.com/quantic69. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

Depression impacts energy at a cellular level, researchers find

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +1100

Depression symptoms may be rooted in fundamental changes in the way brain and blood cells use energy, a team of researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ), in collaboration with the University of Minnesota, has revealed.

For the study, published open access in Translational Psychiatry (doi.org/10.1038/s41398-026-03904-y), the team analysed levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — known as the ‘energy currency’ molecule — in the brain and blood cells of young people with depression.

Associate Professor Susannah Tye from UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) said it was the first time patterns in these fatigue molecules had been discovered in both the brain and bloodstream of young people with major depressive disorder (MDD). “This suggests that depression symptoms may be rooted in fundamental changes in the way brain and blood cells use energy,” Tye said.

“Fatigue is a common and hard-to-treat symptom of MDD, and it can take years for people to find the right treatment for the illness,” Tye added. “There has been limited progress in developing new treatments because of a lack of research and we hope this important breakthrough could potentially lead to early intervention and more targeted treatments.”

The team at the University of Minnesota collected blood samples and scans from 18 people aged 18–25 years who had been diagnosed with MDD. The QBI team then analysed these and compared them with samples from participants who did not have depression.

They found cells in people with depression produced more energy molecules when resting, but had a reduced ability to increase energy production under stress, QBI researcher Dr Roger Varela said.

“This suggests cells may be overworking early in the illness, which could lead to longer-term problems,” Varela said. “This was surprising, because you might expect energy production in cells would be lower for people with depression.

“It suggests that in the early stages of depression, the mitochondria in the brain and body have a reduced capacity to cope with higher energy demand, which may contribute to low mood, reduced motivation and slower cognitive function.”

Varela said he hopes the research will help de-stigmatise depression. “This shows multiple changes occur in the body, including in the brain and the blood, and that depression impacts energy at a cellular level,” Varela said. “It also proves not all depression is the same; every patient has different biology, and each patient is impacted differently.

“We hope this research will help lead to more specific and effective treatment options,” Varela concluded.

Image credit: iStock.com/e-crow. Stock image used is for illustrative purposes only.

From hospitals into homes — could tiny biosensors transform medical sampling?

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +1100

Laser technology that could lead to tiny, cost-effective biosensors has been developed by a team of researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Integrating lasers and optics together on a centimetre-sized chip, the researchers believe the sensors could free up hospital beds and reduce visits to clinics by moving testing from hospitals to patients’ homes.

Researchers can gain valuable insights by studying how various biomolecules interact with each other, for example antibodies in the immune system and xenobiotic antigens, leading to new medicines and vaccines — or assess whether a sample contains signs of infection. Based on a technique called surface-plasmon resonance, optical biosensors are a tool used for studying these types of interactions.

The sensors direct light onto a gold surface and measure minuscule changes in the light’s reflection when biomolecules are placed on the surface — the laser technology created by the Swedish researchers making it possible, they argue, to create such biosensors in a miniature format.

Opening the door to making optical sensing technology portable and applicable outside the laboratory environment, the laser source and the necessary optics are directly integrated onto a semiconductor chip, allowing for significantly more compact sensors. A study about the project was published open access in ACS Sensors (doi.org/10.1021/acssensors.5c01997).

“With this technology, we want to create an instrument that allows healthcare professionals to take certain samples in the patient’s home,” said the lead author of the study, Erik Strandberg — a doctoral candidate in photonics at Chalmers. “For example, we’re currently evaluating how well our sensor can perform a C-reactive protein (CRP) test.

“Because this technology is very general and can detect a wide range of biomolecular interactions, we see many potential applications for a wide variety of tests. This could allow patients to be discharged from hospital sooner after an operation — thereby freeing up hospital beds — and reduce the number of healthcare visits for sampling,” Strandberg said.

A precise laser beam must strike the gold surface at a steep angle to be able to monitor the interaction of biomolecules using an optical sensor; with extant solutions, the researchers said, requiring bulky optical components, such as prisms, which also make them time-consuming to install and align.

The sensor of the Swedish team consists of a one-centimetre chip fitted with hundreds of microscopic lasers, where the controlling optics to form exactly the right beam are integrated directly into the chip. This allows for a much smaller and lighter light source, the researchers said, which enables the creation of a compact sensor so small that it fits in the palm of your hand.

“By successfully integrating the optics with the laser sources right on the chip, our innovation opens a lot of doors and is a key step towards shrinking the current biotech instruments and creating portable, battery-powered systems,” Strandberg added. “The chips we manufacture are about the size of a thumbtack and contain hundreds of lasers, each measuring 200x250 micrometres — few times thicker than a hair.

“Having both the laser and the optics integrated into the same semiconductor chip also enables cost-effective large-scale production of light sources for this technology,” Strandberg said. Regarding the next steps towards the goal of this research, the team aims to further develop the technology by boosting the sensitivity of the sensor, as well as increasing the number of samples that can be analysed simultaneously.

Erik Strandberg, Chalmers University of Technology. Source: Chalmers University of Technology

Hana Jungová, Chalmers University of Technology. Credit: Chalmers University of Technology / Anna-Lena Lundqvist.

“So far, we haven’t been able to use all the lasers on our chips to analyse samples, but this field offers great opportunities for further development,” said senior researcher in the study Hana Jungová — a researcher in nano and biophysics at Chalmers. “If we succeed, we believe the sensor will eventually make it possible to analyse significantly more samples at once than current technologies allow.

“But first, we plan to create a prototype of a portable sensor that can be used without extensive training. The ultimate goal is for hospitals and clinics to be able to use the sensor outside the lab.”

Top image: A research team at Chalmers University of Technology has developed a new diminutive laser technology that makes it possible to create a miniature biosensor with the laser source and optics integrated onto a one-centimetre semiconductor chip. This enables significantly smaller sensors, paving the way for portable optical technology and for moving certain types of medical sampling from hospitals to the patients’ homes. Illustration credit: Erik Strandberg/Chalmers University of Technology.