The technology for creating new tissues from stem cells has taken a giant leap forward. Two tablespoons of blood are all that is needed to grow a brand new blood vessel in just seven days. This is shown in a new study from Sahlgrenska Acadedmy and Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Just three years ago, a patient at Sahlgrenska University Hospital received a blood vessel transplant grown from her own stem cells.
Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, Professor of Transplantation Biology at Sahlgrenska Academy, and Michael Olausson, Surgeon/Medical Director of the Transplant Center and Professor at Sahlgrenska Academy, came up with the idea, planned and carried out the procedure. Professors Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson have published a new study based on two other transplants that were performed in 2012 at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The patients, two young children, had the same condition as in the first case

Patients with liver cancer can be cured with a liver transplant. But because of the shortage of donated organs, these patients often die waiting for a liver. That

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a new therapeutic approach that, while still preliminary, could promote the development of new bone-forming cells in patients suffering from bone loss.

The study focused on a protein called PPARy (known as the master regulator of fat) and its impact on the fate of stem cells derived from bone marrow (

A telecommunications engineer of the NUP/UPNA-Public University of Navarre, has designed optical resonance-based biosensors for use in medical applications like, for example, the detecting of celiac disease. Besides achieving greater resolution and sensitivity, the materials used in these devices are much cheaper and more versatile than the ones used in current technologies (mainly gold and noble metals) so they could offer a potential alternative in the design of biomedical sensors.

A biosensor is an instrument that uses biological molecules (bioreceptors) to detect other biological or chemical substances. In this thesis the bioreceptors have been antibodies, biological molecules that the body produces specifically to fight off antigens. An antigen is a substance foreign to the human body; our immune system recognises it as a threat and in the presence of it the body reacts by producing antibodies to identify and neutralise it. What is more, the biosensor is made up of a substrate (where the physical phenomenon that translates the biological reactions into intelligible information takes place) and the immobilisation layer which causes the antibodies to become attached to the substrate.

‘One of the unique features,’ says the author, ‘is that for the substrate we use silicon waveguides on which we generate a specific type of resonance.’ The biosensors designed are based on the movement of the wavelength of the resonances generated on the basis of the quantity of antigens detected. ‘When the antibodies come together with the antigens, there is a minimum change in the wavelength that our biosensors are capable of picking up.’ This is possible thanks to the resolution achieved by these biosensors and their sensitivity, ‘which enables us to see how much resonances shift on the wavelength as the antibody-antigen links increase.’

The work carried out by Abi