Pancreatic cancer is a particularly devastating disease. At least 94 percent of patients will die within five years, and in 2013 it was ranked as one of the top 10 deadliest cancers.
This prototype of a microfluidic device has both curved and straight channels for transporting tissue biopsies. The silicon material is lightweight, flexible and transparent.
Routine screenings for breast, colon and lung cancers have improved treatment and outcomes for patients with these diseases, largely because the cancer can be detected early. But because little is known about how pancreatic cancer behaves, patients often receive a diagnosis when it

An oral capsule that vibrates as it moves through the digestive tract has shown notable promise as a non-pharmacological treatment for constipation, according to new research presented today at Digestive Disease Week (DDW). In the pilot study, the vibrating capsule was found to nearly double the weekly bowel movements of patients suffering from chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) and constipation predominant irritable bowel syndrome (C-IBS).

‘Despite the widespread use of medication to treat constipation, nearly 50 percent of patients are unsatisfied with the treatment either because of side effects, safety concerns about long-term use, or the fact that it simply doesn

Scientists from The University of Manchester

A new methodology for rapidly measuring the level of antibiotic drug molecules in human blood serum has been developed, paving the way to applications within drug development and personalised medicine.
The study, describes the exploitation of a sensor for measuring the concentration of effective antibiotics in blood, giving an indication of their efficiency against disease causing pathogens, for instance multidrug resistant hospital ‘superbugs’.
This development could potentially give a far greater understanding of the effectiveness of drug dosages required for different individuals, reducing potential toxic effects, allowing personalised treatment for patients and leading to new insights into optimal clinical regimes, such as combination therapies.
When effective, antibiotic molecules impose cellular stress on a pathogen’s cell wall target, such as a bacterium, which contributes to its breakdown. However, competing molecules in solution, for example serum proteins, can affect the binding of the antibiotic to the bacterium, reducing the efficacy of the drug. Serum proteins bind to drugs in blood and, in doing so, reduce the amount of a drug present and its penetration into cell tissues.
As the amount of antibiotics that bind to serum proteins will vary between individuals, it is extremely valuable to be able to determine the precise amount of the drug that is bound to serum proteins, and how much is free in the blood, in order to be able to accurately calculate the optimum dosage.
Existing biosensors on the market do not measure cellular stress, however, the nanomechanical sensor exploited by a group of researchers from the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) at UCL, the University of Cambridge, the University of Queensland and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, can accurately measure this important information even when antibiotic drug molecules are only present at very low concentrations.
The researchers coated the surface of a nanomechanical cantilever array with a model bacterial membrane and used this as a surface stress sensor. The sensor is extremely sensitive to tiny bending signals caused by its interactions with the antibiotics, in this case, the FDA-approved vancomycin and the yet to be approved oritavancin, which appears to deal with certain vancomycin-resistant bacteria, in the blood serum.
This investigation has yielded the first experimental evidence that drug-serum complexes (the antibiotics bound to the competing serum proteins) do not induce stress on the bacteria and so could provide realistic in-vitro susceptibility tests for drugs and to define effective doses which are effective enough but less toxic to patients.
In the future, the researchers believe that with a suitably engineered surface probe, this sensor could be paired with customised drug delivery for anaesthetics, anti-cancer, anti-HIV and antibacterial therapies.
The lead author of the study, Dr. Joseph W. Ndieyira of the LCN, said ‘This discovery represents a major advance in our fundamental understanding of the pathways between chemical and mechanical signals in a complex media, such as blood serum, and how this information can be used to tune the efficacy of drugs and to minimise the potential toxic side effects.’ EurekAlert

MIT chemical engineers have devised a new implantable tissue scaffold coated with bone growth factors that are released slowly over a few weeks. When applied to bone injuries or defects, this coated scaffold induces the body to rapidly form new bone that looks and behaves just like the original tissue.

This type of coated scaffold could offer a dramatic improvement over the current standard for treating bone injuries, which involves transplanting bone from another part of the patient