Cancer
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Most e-cigarettes have chemicals that will hurt your lungs
Electronic cigarettes are ostensibly safer for you than conventional cigs (you're not inhaling tar and other elements of tobacco smoke), but it now looks like they might not be much better at all. Researchers have found that 75 percent of flavored e-cigs contain diacetyl, a flavoring chemical that can produce "popcorn lung" disease when inhaled over the long term. To boot, many of the tested flavors had other related chemicals (like 2,3-pentanedione and acetoin) on top of known risky ingredients, such as formaldehyde.
Researchers use ultrasound to activate cancer-killing drugs
Since your liver is surrounded by delicate blood vessels and bile ducts, cancers are tough to treat with toxic chemotherapy drugs and usually require surgery. However, researchers from the University of Illinois have pioneered a new "triple attack" treatment that kills cancer cells with a standard lymphoma chemo drug. "Nanobubbles" of it are injected into a cancer mass, then "popped" using ultrasound, releasing medicine directly into cancer cells during critical cell formation. "The probability of its undesired systemic release is minimal due to this highly selective activation mechanism, which helps to spare the healthy cells," says lead researcher Dipanjan Pan.
ICYMI: Genetically-based cancer meds, taste's base and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-37143{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-37143, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-37143{width:570px;display:block;}try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-37143").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Scientists managed to turn taste on and off in mice by activating and silencing brain cells, putting to bed the notion that taste is determined by the tongue. University of Toronto cancer researchers used a patient's genetic material to craft a cancerous mass on a long strip of collagen, then wound it up and gave it the same radiation and chemo drugs a patient would get for that type of illness. They can then stretch the roll out to see whether the treatment killed the cancer cells. The team hopes to eventually tailor people's cancer treatments to their own genetics. And the first battle in the private company space race may have gone to Blue Origin over Space X, for landing its reusable rocket first.
Doctors grow tumors that roll up like toilet paper
Modern medicine still takes a decidedly ham-fisted approach to treating cancer -- it attacks with radiation and chemotherapy drugs that are just as toxic to healthy tissues as they are to tumors. What's more the effects of these treatments vary between patients. However, a novel (albeit gag-inducing) new research method from the University of Toronto hold the key to personalizing oncology: 2D tumors grown from the patient's own genetic material.
ICYMI: Pigeon cancer detection, pill stethoscope and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-362475{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-362475, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-362475{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-362475").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Researchers were able to train pigeons to choose whether medical images contain a benign or malignant tumor with 99% accuracy. MIT scientists made a biomonitoring pill that patients can swallow to collect their pulse, breathing rate and internal temperature. And musicians have a new option in the form of the tiny Motus instrument, which recognizes shaking and twirling to create music out of movement.
Stanford scientists get a little closer to a medical tricorder
Being able to identify problems with a person's body without subjecting them to invasive procedures is the fantasy of all Star Trek doctors. There's even a prize offering a fortune to anyone who can effectively recreate the tricorder technology out in the real world. Now, Stanford scientists think that they've developed a system that, in time, could be used to spot cancerous tumors from a foot away.
Doctors treat drug-resistant leukemia with 'gene editing'
Doctors at Britain's Great Ormond Street Hospital believe that they're on the cusp of a breakthrough in how to treat genetic diseases. Researchers have successfully -- so far -- implemented a method of editing genes that can seek out and eliminate conditions without the use of drugs. It's very early days as yet, but the procedure has already been used to save the life of a one-year-old with a terminal case of drug-resistant leukemia.
Scientists map world first 3D image of cancer-spreading protein
Scientists at Griffith University's Institute for Glycomics released the world's first 3-D image of a protein that is linked to the spread of cancer. Where before scientists had to guess what the structure looked like, now they have a clear 3-D model meaning they can see how it works and develop targeted medicines to stop it before the protein can make matters worse. It was mapped using a technique called X-Ray crystallography and the team, lead by the institute's Director Professor Mark von Itzstein, notes that the image is so well defined that it shows both the structure of the overall protein as well as atomic-level details.
ICYMI: Cancer loves supplements, cheap robot claws and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-486891{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-486891, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-486891{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-486891").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: An affordable robotic arm is up on Kickstarter for $350 and promises machine vision, artificial intelligence and all kinds of other great stuff that we can hardly believe is available for that price. A shocking bit of research was just published on the effect some antioxidant supplements had on lab mice with cancer. Turns out it made tumors grow faster than the control group. Meanwhile those happy-go-lucky bike commuters have another new piece of bike tech for signaling to drivers. The Revolights Eclipse Plus syncs with Bluetooth and is being fulfilled through Kickstarter now.
Colorful 3D cancer models show how tumors grow
Cancer is a terrible thing, but a beautiful representation of it might just help health care experts treat the disease more effectively. An international team of researchers has developed a 3D tumor simulation that shows how cancerous cells grow and mutate unevenly over time. Each color you see in a given model represents a different mutation -- the more successful one of these aberrations is at migrating and reproducing, the more its color dominates the tumor. The simulation is also much better than previous models at representing the overall shapes of tumors, illustrating the bulges that come as the cancer rapidly outgrows any nearby healthy cells.
Researchers may have found a cancer cell's 'off' switch
Aside from their abnormal growth rates, cancerous cells aren't that much different from normal healthy tissue. That's why radiation and chemo treatments can't effectively target just tumors. However, a team of researchers from the Mayo Clinic believe they've discovered a mechanism that can rein in cancer's uninhibited growth by retraining these wayward cells to die like they're supposed to.
Big Data VR app allows researchers to 'browse' genomes
Earlier this year, Epic Games (the folks that made the Unreal Engine) held a $20,000 competition that challenged VR companies to create programs that could help users better tackle the valuable, albeit unwieldy, figures in Big Data sets. For its entry into "The Big Data VR Challenge" Hammerhead VR submitted The Genome Browser, a virtualization that will allow researchers to, quite literally, browse through an organism's genome and access a library of data (generated by the Wellcome Sanger Institute) at each gene.
Samsung agrees to compensation for employees that contracted cancer
After admitting that it didn't do enough to prevent illnesses and deaths of workers at its Korean semiconductor plants, Samsung has launched a new fund to put things right. Reuters reports that the company has set aside 100 billion won ($85.8 million) to compensate employees after it was revealed that hazardous working conditions had caused workers to contract leukemia and other incurable diseases.
ICYMI: A thread display, rainbow flamethrower and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-723972{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-723972, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-723972{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-723972").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Today on In Case You Missed It: Forever 21 just unveiled (or unwound) a new kind of billboard that uses mechanical spools of thread to rapidly display Instagram photos. A bionic eye was implanted in a patient for new use with an old disease: Age-related macular degeneration. And your next kiddy birthday party will be the perfect place to unveil your mastery of common household ingredients to make a rainbow flamethrower display. Don't say I didn't warn you if you blow up your house, though.
Antimicrobial silver coatings could be hindering your chemo
Hospitals around the world use a silver coating on their chemotherapy equipment, such as IV catheters, because the noble metal prevents microbial growth. However, it turns out that this germ killing coating could be damaging chemo drugs that flow over it and harming patients. A team of researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department of Physics revealed this effect in a study recently published in the journal 2D Materials. "We wanted to find potential problem sources in the tubes used in intravenous catheters...Chemotherapy drugs are active substances, so it isn't hard to imagine that the medicine could react with the silver," Justin Wells, associate professor of physics at NTNU, said in a statement.
Sony's Folding@Home Android app now fights cancer while you sleep
Want to help cure Alzheimer's or breast cancer? From now on, you don't have to do much more than charge your phone. Sony has released a big upgrade to its Folding@Home app for Android that can use your phone's processor for medical research on a continuous basis -- so long as you're on WiFi and charging, you can doze off knowing that you're contributing to a good cause. It also ties into your Google account to both accumulate time on multiple devices as well as earn game-like achievements. The refresh is available now, so give it a shot if you'd like your phone to do more in its idle time than fetch your email.
Swimming nanobots target cancer cells inside your body
Scientists keep saying they'll put tiny robots into our bodies to cure disease, perhaps not realizing we may not be down with that. But the field is progressing rapidly, and researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) have now found an artful way to propel such 'bots. They created a "nanoswimmer" the width of a silk fiber, made of several links of polymer and magnetic nanowires. After introducing it into a blood-like fluid, they applied an external oscillating magnetic field, propelling the nanobot the length of its body in a second.
Stanford scientists make leukemia 'grow up' and eat itself
A team at Stanford's School of Medicine has reportedly uncovered a potent new treatment method for combating one of leukemia's most aggressive forms -- and they did it pretty much by accident. While survival rates for B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a particularly nasty form of white blood cell cancer, have risen to about 85 percent over the past decade thanks to the advent of stem cell therapies, the prognosis for this disease in the presence of a Philadelphia chromosome mutation remains quite poor. But thanks to a chance observation by Dr. Scott McClellan, the Stanford team believes it's figured out way to neutralize the disease using its own cancerous cells against it.
Light therapy now treats even the deepest cancer
Light therapy is a safe, easy way to kill cancer and treat other diseases, but it's normally limited by its nature to illnesses that are skin-deep. Washington University researchers aren't daunted, however. They've developed a phototherapy method that brings light directly to tumor cells, no matter how deep they are. The technique has you ingesting sugar combined with radioactive fluorine and light-sensitive, cancer-fighting nanoparticles. When you go through a PET scan, the sugar lights up and promptly kicks the nanoparticles into high gear. Effectively, this is a Trojan horse -- since tumors eagerly absorb sugar, they're sowing the seeds of their own demise.
Microscopic gold tubes can both detect and destroy cancer cells
There's no doubt that doctors would prefer to treat cancer as soon as they spot it, and it looks like nanotechnology might give them that chance. Researchers at the University of Leeds have successfully tested gold nanotubes that are useful for both imaging and destroying cancer cells. Since the tubes absorb near-infrared light frequencies, which both generate heat and render human skin transparent, you only need to zap them with lasers of varying brightness to achieve multiple ends. You can use a relatively low brightness to reveal tumors, while high brightness will heat the tubes enough to kill nearby tumorous cells. The shape also has room for drugs, so you can deliver medicine at the same time.
