20 most recent innovations in pharmaceutical

HemaApp Accurately Estimates Hemoglobin in Blood Using Standard Smartphone

Tue, 27 Sep 2016 00:00:00 Z

Measurement of hemoglobin within blood helps to diagnose and manage a number of conditions, but this requires either blood draws or expensive pulse oximeters.

Researchers of the University of Washington developed an app called HemaApp that uses the phone’s built-in light and camera to detect the color intensity of blood passing through a finger. The user simply places a finger over the camera lens, making a solid contact, and runs the app to do its thing. The app turns on the nearby LED light, which shines light through the finger, and uses the camera to detect specific features that point to the amount of hemoglobin.

Injectable ‘Smart Sponge’

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 00:00:00 Z

Researchers have developed a drug delivery technique for diabetes treatment in which a sponge-like material surrounds an insulin core. The sponge expands and contracts in response to blood sugar levels to release insulin as needed. The technique could also be used for targeted drug delivery to cancer cells.

The sponge-like matrix surrounds a reservoir of insulin or other drugs.

“We wanted to mimic the function of health beta-cells, which produce insulin and control its release in a healthy body,” says Dr. Zhen Gu, lead author of a paper describing the work and an assistant professor in the joint biomedical engineering program at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “But what we’ve found also holds promise for smart drug delivery targeting cancer or other diseases.” The research team includes Daniel Anderson, the senior author and an associate professor of chemical engineering and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and researchers from the Department of Anesthesiology at Boston Children’s Hospital.

The researchers created a spherical, sponge-like matrix out of chitosan, a material found in shrimp and crab shells. Scattered throughout this matrix are smaller nanocapsules made of a porous polymer that contain glucose oxidase or catalase enzymes. The sponge-like matrix surrounds a reservoir that contains insulin. The entire matrix sphere is approximately 250 micrometers in diameter and can be injected into a patient.

"Invisible scalpel" could be used for non-invasive surgery

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:00 Z

First of all, how can non-invasive surgery even be possible? After all, even in the case of minimally-invasive laparoscopic surgery, small incisions are still made in the skin. Nonetheless, that’s just what scientists from the University of Michigan are proposing. They believe that it could be achieved by using a beam of sound, which would be emitted through the skin to a highly-focused point within the body – and they’ve already created such a beam and used it.

Focused sound waves are already used in the field of medicine, for doing things such as non-invasively shattering kidney stones and prostate tumors. These waves can generally only be focused to a point no smaller than several millimeters across, however. This means they wouldn’t work at all well for performing delicate surgery.

By contrast, the U Michigan sound beam can be focused down to a point measuring just 75 by 400 micrometers. At that size, it can manipulate individual cells, and could perhaps avoid coming into contact with nerve fibers – if that were possible, the patient wouldn’t experience any pain during the operation.

To create the beam, the researchers used an optoacoustic lens, that converts pulsed laser light into high-amplitude sound waves. Ordinarily, these waves wouldn’t be powerful enough to be of much use. To amplify them, the scientists coated the lens with a layer of carbon nanotubes and a rubbery material known as polydimethylsiloxane. The nanotubes absorb the laser light, and respond by generating heat. That heat causes the polydimethylsiloxane to rapidly expand, which in turn gives a boost to the sound waves passing through it.

Those waves have a frequency 10,000 times higher than that which humans are able to hear. When focused on a target, they produce shockwaves and micro-bubbles. These create pressure, which can be used to blast or cut away that target. The sound waves currently used for things like kidney stones, by contrast, work by producing heat, not mechanical pressure.

In tests of the technology, the scientists have successfully detached a single ovarian cancer cell, and bored a hole measuring under 150 micrometers into an artificial kidney stone – in less than one minute. Down the road, it is hoped that “micro ultrasonic surgery” could be used to remove items such as tumors or arterial plaque deposits, or even to deliver medication to individual cells.

A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

C-SAFE medical device for safer cesarean sections

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 Z

Brolex LLC is the owner and manufacturer of the C SAFE medical device. C SAFE is a novel medical device clinically tested and designed specifically for performing safer cesarean sections by preventing lacerations to newborns.

Four million (4.0M) babies are born in the US annually. Five and a half million (5.5M) in EU countries total. Cesarean sections are performed in two primary patient populations; 1) emergent situations, and 2) scheduled elective cesarean sections. In the US, cesarean sections account for 25 - 38% of babies born. European rates are higher nearing 44% of births. In Mexico, a 38% rate in the general population, and a 50% rate in wealthier populations. Chile has a 40% c/section rate. China is home to the greatest number of births, 16.4 million annually, with one of the greatest c/section rates of nearly 50%.

Published literature documents there is a 1.5 - 3.0% risk of lacerations or nicks in these c/sections. There is strong evidence to suggest that this rate is actually higher than reported or documented. At a documented risk of 1.5 - 3.0%, this translates to up to 45,000 newborns annually that experience some level of laceration injury related to the c/section surgical procedure. For nonvertex cesarean sections, reports of a 6.0% risk for lacerations nearly double the number of injuries to newborns.

Smart sutures that detect infections

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 Z

Surgical sutures are mindless threads no more. Researchers have now coated them with sensors that could monitor wounds and speed up healing.

The electronic sutures, which contain ultrathin silicon sensors integrated on polymer or silk strips, can be threaded through needles, and in animal tests researchers were able to lace them through skin, pull them tight, and knot them without degrading the devices.

The sutures can precisely measure temperature—elevated temperatures indicate infection—and deliver heat to a wound site, which is known to aid healing. And John Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and inventor of the smart sutures, imagines that they could also be laden with devices that provide electrical stimulation to heal wounds. "Ultimately, the most value would be when you can release drugs from them in a programmed way," he says. The researchers could do that by coating the electronic threads with drug-infused polymers, which would release the chemicals when triggered by heat or an electrical pulse.

The smart sutures, reported online in the journal Small, rely on silicon-based devices that flex and stretch. Rogers and his colleagues make the devices with silicon membranes and gold electrodes and wires that are just a few hundred nanometers thick and patterned in a serpentine shape. The technology, which they have also used in inflatable catheters and medical tattoos (see "Stick-On Electronic Tattoos"), is being commercialized by MC10, a Cambridge, Massachusetts–based startup Rogers cofounded (see "Making Stretchable Electronics").

The researchers first use chemicals to slice off an ultrathin film of silicon from a silicon wafer. With a rubber stamp, they lift off and transfer the nanomembranes to polymer or silk strips. Then they deposit metal electrodes and wires on top and encapsulate the entire device in an epoxy coating.

They have built two types of temperature sensors on the sutures. One is a silicon diode that shifts its current output with temperature; the other, a platinum nanomembrane resistor, changes its resistance with temperature. The micro-heaters, meanwhile, are simply gold filaments that heat up when current passes through them.

All the materials used in the devices are safe for use in the body, and the biggest challenge was to make the sutures flexible, Rogers says. Silicon is brittle, so making the nanomembranes as thin as possible and laying them out in a winding pattern was key for elasticity. Placing the silicon halfway between the top epoxy and bottom polymer surfaces of the suture is also crucial. "When you bend the entire construct, the top surface is in tension and the bottom is in compression, but at midpoint the strains are very small," he says.

The researchers have tested the sutures' mechanical flexibility and toughness on incisions in rat skin, but they haven't tested the temperature sensing and heating capabilities in animals yet. They are also working on making the devices wireless.

Bendy surgical needles go around your organs with ease

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:00:00 Z

You may not want to face this fact if you’re afraid of needles, but it’s a simple truth: In the course of treating the spectrum of human medical conditions, doctors are often forced to stick large needles deep inside your body (they will claim to get no pleasure out of this, surely). The problem is that your body is pretty tightly jam-packed with important items and needles are straight and rigid, which means it can often be hard to avoid piercing other things on the way to your target. But now flexible needles with asymmetric tips can chart arced paths through the body, swerving past organs and dodging dense tissue. This tech could one day expand the reach of minimally invasive surgeries.

The needles are being designed at a Stanford robotics lab headed by Allison Okamura. They’re made of nitinol, a shape memory alloy, and bore through the soft tissue of the body spinning like a drill bit. “They’re very bendy, not squishy,” Okamura clarifies. A needle made of nitinol is hard to touch, but can bend to outrageous angles without breaking or permanently changing shape. “You could wrap it around your finger if you wanted to,” Okamura says.

As the shape of the needle tip is changed, it alters the backward pressure the needle tip faces as it plunges through the body, and so alters the curvature of the path the needle takes. This added dexterity opens up the possibility, Okamura says, for surgeons to one day perform minimally invasive procedures that they otherwise hadn’t considered.

3D printing: Turning your home into a drugstore

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 Z

Researchers based at Glasgow University, UK, have reportedly achieved a breakthrough in three-dimensional printing, making it possible to print items that can initiate chemical reactions — called “reactionware” — using specialized design software and 3D printers ready available on the consumer market.

The reactionware contains polymer gel that houses chemical reactions for “organic and inorganic synthesis”, and within the research this has resulted in commercial 3D printers being able to produce finished vessels in a few hours. The researchers explain:

“This approach constitutes a relatively cheap, automated and reconfigurable chemical discovery platform that makes techniques from chemical engineering accessible to typical synthetic laboratories.”

The printing techniques are in the early stages of development, but the team have already managed to produce anti-cancer drugs using the technology. The scientists hope that eventually the 3D printing methods will be used to produce domestic appliances in the homes of the general public, including medication. The implications of this are wide-ranging, but the technology may be available in the future for personal drug manufacture.

Highly targeted nano-particles to beat drug-resistant bacteria

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 Z

Over the past several decades, scientists have faced challenges in developing new antibiotics even as bacteria have become increasingly resistant to existing drugs. One strategy that might combat such resistance would be to overwhelm bacterial defenses by using highly targeted nanoparticles to deliver large doses of existing antibiotics.

In a step toward that goal, researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a nanoparticle designed to evade the immune system and home in on infection sites, then unleash a focused antibiotic attack.

This approach would mitigate the side effects of some antibiotics and protect the beneficial bacteria that normally live inside our bodies, says Aleks Radovic-Moreno, an MIT graduate student and lead author of a paper describing the particles in the journal ACS Nano.

Crowd-sourcing to diagnose malaria

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 Z

Online crowd-sourcing — in which a task is presented to the public, who respond, for free, with various solutions and suggestions — has been used to evaluate potential consumer products, develop software algorithms and solve vexing research-and-development challenges. But diagnosing infectious diseases?

Working on the assumption that large groups of public non-experts can be trained to recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have created a crowd-sourced online gaming system in which players distinguish malaria-infected red blood cells from healthy ones by viewing digital images obtained from microscopes.

The UCLA team found that a small group of non-experts playing the game (mostly undergraduate student volunteers) was collectively able to diagnosis malaria-infected red blood cells with an accuracy that was within 1.25 percent of the diagnostic decisions made by a trained medical professional.

The game, which can be accessed on cell phones and personal computers, can be played by anyone around the world, including children.

"The idea is, if you carefully combine the decisions of people — even non-experts — they become very competitive," said Aydogan Ozcan, an associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering and the corresponding author of the crowd-sourcing research. "Also, if you just look at one person's response, it may be OK, but that one person will inevitably make some mistakes. But if you combine 10 to 20, maybe 50 non-expert gamers together, you improve your accuracy greatly in terms of analysis."

Human Intestine Becomes Latest Organ to be Put on a Chip

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:00:00 Z

A team of researchers from Harvard University has created a gut on a chip that mimics the gut’s mechanical, structural, absorptive, transport and pathophysiological properties. That goes as far as including peristaltic motion and sustaining a bacterial flora.

The device is composed of two microfluidic channels separated by a porous flexible membrane coated with extracellular matrix and lined by human intestinal epithelial cells. Fluid flows slowly through the channels and the exertion of cyclic strain mimics physiological peristaltic motions. Under these conditions the cells spontaneously grow into folds taking on the structure of intestinal villi. The researchers were able to let a normal intestinal microbe survive in this environment for over one week.

The gut-on-a-chip could in the future be used to develop models for intestinal diseases such as Crohn’s diseases or ulcerative colitis, or could be used for absorption and toxicity studies of new drugs. The article describing the research was published in the latest issue of Lab on a Chip.

Mild Electrocution To Brain May Boost Spatial Memory

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 Z

A mild electrical shock to the brain before learning a new task may enhance memory, researchers reported on Wednesday.

A team of neuroscientists demonstrated that electrical stimulation to a critical junction in the brain appeared to boost memory in a few patients with epilepsy, a surprising finding that have implications for Alzheimer’s disease treatment.

Dr. Itzhak Fried and his team from the University of California Los Angeles were initially researching the source of epileptic seizures in the brains of seven patients with electrodes that were implanted deep in their brain, and discovered that electrical stimulation to the entorhinal cortex with the embedded electrodes improved participants’ scores on a spatial memory task.

Researchers had the patients play a video game where participants had to drive people around in taxis to different shops in a virtual city, and tested whether stimulation of the entorhinal cortex or the hippocampus while participants were learning their way around the city improved their recollection.

“When we stimulated the nerve fibers in the patients’ entorhinal cortex during learning, they later recognized landmarks and navigated the routes more quickly,” said Fried. “They even learned to take shortcuts, reflecting improved spatial memory.

However, direct stimulation of the hippocampus, the area of the brain involved in the consolidation of memory, did not show the same enhancing effect, according to Fried, suggesting that stimulating the brain at the same time memories are forming was key in obtaining the memory boost.

“Critically, it was the stimulation at the gateway into the hippocampus – and not the hippocampus itself – that proved effective,” Fried explained.

The entorhinal cortex is "the golden gate to the brain's memory mainframe," Fried said in a statement. "Every visual and sensory experience that we eventually commit to memory funnels through that doorway to the hippocampus."

Fried said that while more research is needed to confirm their findings, "our preliminary results provide evidence supporting a possible mechanism for enhancing memory, particularly as people age or suffer from early dementia."

Researchers noted that since the study population consisted of only seven participants the findings should be interpreted with “caution”, and they are still unsure on how widely the findings apply.

In an accompanying editorial Dr. Sandra Black of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto said that the “enticing” findings need to be replicated, but they definitely open up a realm of new potential applications like improving memory in those at risk of losing it, like early stage Alzheimer’s patients and stroke or trauma patients with damage to brain regions.

Researchers said none of the participants reported adverse side effects of the stimulation. Fried and his research team will now determine whether deep-brain stimulation can enhance other types of recall, like verbal and autobiographical memories.

The findings are published in the Feb. 9 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

New putty may repair bone fractures in days

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 Z

Researchers at the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense are developing a new “fracture putty” with the aim of significantly shortening the healing time of bone fractures in humans. According to the researchers, complex fractures can often lead to amputations for U.S. service men and women. The lengthy healing time often associated with these injuries can also prove to be a major burden for the patients and providers.

The research team is using adult stem cells to produce proteins involved in bone healing and generation. They incorporate these proteins into a gel which they have dubbed “fracture putty”. To date the team has demonstrated some positive early results by using the putty to repair fractures in lab rats. After two weeks the rats were observed running around and standing on their hind legs with no evidence of injury. The putty is currently being used in large animal trials, but it may be some time before human testing commences.

3D Printed Jaw

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 Z

Believe me, even when you’re 83 years old, you can still have a solid jaw as that of your granddaughter’s. Quite impressively, doctors from the University of Hasselt, Belgium have managed to have an 83-year-old woman’s entire lower jaw replaced with a 3D printed replica, which turns out easy to use while resulting no problems now. Compared with common methods to replace a lower jaw, the 3D printed jaw requires fewer materials and costs less time, usually taking merely several hours to produce a jaw. To make it compatible with bodily tissue, the jaw is coated with ceramic too. Besides, it weighs 3.7oz, just 1oz heavier than a real lower jaw, and hence the users won’t feel uncomfortable or painful when using it.

Inhale Your Vitamins

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 Z

This asthma inhaler way of introducing vitamins to the body was invented by Harvard University biomedical engineer David Edwards. Le Whif introduced by inhaler gets into the bloodstream faster, but most importantly,the vitamins are not degraded as they would be by pill going through the stomach and intestinal track along with the breakdown process of the liver. Thus the breathable delivery system dissolves the vitamins into the highly absorbent tissue contained in your cheeks. Edwards,who also developed inhaler insulin and coffee processed a vitamin mixture into aerosol particulate matter along with a mixture of types of tea to make a more palatable product into an lipstick shaped inhaler. An attachment on top of the inhaler directs the flow of mist upwards away from the throat so that the user does'nt choke.

Smart medication blisters

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 Z

OtCM smart blisters are standard existing medication blisters enhanced with an electronic circuitry. This electronic circuitry is applied as a self-adhesive label.
Removing medication from the blister breaks one of the conductive tracks of the circuitry.

This allows the system to record data about :
o Time and date
o Particular position
o Other clinically relevant information

The electronic circuitry also contains Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. This enables retrieval of the stored data using a mobile phone or a dedicated Near Field Communication (NFC) reader.

Color changing dressing to indicate infections

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:00:00 Z

Wounding yourself can be bad enough, but having to regularly remove the dressing to check for infection can be painful and can also compound things by exposing the wound and giving germs the chance to enter. Now researchers have developed a new material for dressings and plaster that changes color if an infection arises, making it possible to check wounds without changing the dressing.

The scientists at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Modular Solid State Technologies EMFT in Munich have developed an indicator dye that reacts to different pH values, and integrated it into a dressing and a plaster. Healthy skin and healed wounds usually show a pH value of or below 5. If this value increases, shifting from the acid into the alkaline range, it indicates complications in the healing of the wound.

Medical Screws Dissolve In Body

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:00:00 Z

The screws used by doctors to repair broken bones and torn ligaments enable recovery from a wide range of injuries. Unfortunately, they also leave holes in bones, require secondary surgery for removal, and make going through airport security a real pain. But by crafting the screws from a special designed composite of polymer and mineral, researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute have managed to solve all those problems in one fell swoop.The researchers make the screws from a combination of polylactic acid, a biodegradable polymer already used to make surgical implants, and hydroxyapatite, the mineral that forms 50 percent of natural bone.Like existing screws, the polylactic acid dissolves harmlessly in the body, saving patients the second surgery required for the removal of the older, stainless steel screws. Also, unlike regular polylactic acid screws, which leave gaping holes in bone, the hydroyxapatite interacts with the surrounding tissue to promote bone growth that naturally fills in the holes made by the screws.And that's not all! Manufacturing the screws out of the hydroxyapatite composite also simplifies production. Molding a pure polylactic acid screw requires temperatures around 2552 degrees Fahrenheit. By comparison, the mold for the hydroxyapitate composite screw only needs to reach 284 degrees, saving time, money, and energy.Cheaper, healthier, and more energy efficient? Wow, Chalk one up for German engineering.

Second skin

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 Z

Despite advances in treatment regimens and the best efforts of nurses and doctors, about 70% of all people with severe burns die from related infections. But a revolutionary new wound dressing developed at Tel Aviv University could cut that number dramatically.

Prof. Meital Zilberman of TAU's Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a new wound dressing based on fibers she engineered - fibers that can be loaded with drugs like antibiotics to speed up the healing process, and then dissolve when they've done their job

While the concept is simple, the technology is not. Skin, Prof. Zilberman explains, serves a number of vastly different purposes. "Wound dressings must maintain a certain level of moisture while acting as a shield," she says. "Like skin, they must also enable fluids from the wound to leave the infected tissue at a certain rate. It can't be too fast or too slow. If too fast, the wound will dry out and it won't heal properly. If too slow, there's a real risk of increased contamination."

Prof. Zilberman's new wound dressing, which does not yet have a formal name, is designed to mimic skin and the way it protects the body. It combines positive mechanical and physical properties with what medical researchers call "a desired release profile of antibiotics."

GlowCap

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 Z

Healthy is important, but nobody can guarantee that he/ she can live without illness. As one of the most important ways to cure ill, medicine actually has been a routine activity for some people. In other words, somebody needs to take the medicine every other hours or days. How to remind these people to do their routine in time? The GlowCap can help you, if you really need to take the medicine.

It comes with a built-in timer and the customers can easily set the intervals. The cap will glow at the time you should have the medicine and if you do not react to the glow for one hour, it will raise the alarm.

Toothpaste dispenser

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 Z

It is very hard to empty a toothpaste tube. In this special economic environment, being a little penny-pinching is somewhat necessary. Emptying your tube is a good way. This new dispenser from butterfly technology can make the originally hard job much easier.