Duke University biomedical engineers have grown three-dimensional human heart muscle that acts just like natural tissue. This advancement could be important in treating heart attack patients or in serving as a platform for testing new heart disease medicines.

The ‘heart patch’ grown in the laboratory from human cells overcomes two major obstacles facing cell-based therapies

Researchers in the Milwaukee area have developed a new automated test to identify most leading causes of bacterial bloodstream infections 42 hours faster than conventional methods, potentially reducing medical bills by about $21,000 for patients suffering from sepsis.
The automated nucleic acid test, developed by researchers at Froedtert Hospital & The Medical College of Wisconsin and a company called Nanosphere, identifies genetic information of bacteria and antibiotic resistance for 12 of the most common bacteria that cause sepsis.
Sepsis caused by bacterial bloodstream infections results in up to 500,000 hospitalisations each year and accounts for 11% of intensive care unit admissions in the United States, according to a study released Tuesday evaluating the effectiveness of the new test. It has a mortality rate of 25% to 80% in critically-ill patients. Gram-positive bacteria

New research suggests that restricting calories for a defined period of time may improve the success of cancer treatment, offering valuable new data on how caloric intake may play a role in programmed cancer cell death and efficacy of targeted cancer therapies.
While previous studies suggest a connection between caloric intake and the development of cancer, scientific evidence about the effect of caloric intake on the efficacy of cancer treatment has been rather limited to date. When humans and animals consume calories, the body metabolises food to produce energy and assist in the building of proteins. When fewer calories are consumed, the amount of nutrients available to the body

Waterproof fabrics that whisk away sweat could be the latest application of microfluidic technology developed by bioengineers at the University of California, Davis.

The new fabric works like human skin, forming excess sweat into droplets that drain away by themselves, said inventor Tingrui Pan, professor of biomedical engineering. One area of research in Pan’s Micro-Nano Innovations Laboratory at UC Davis is a field known as microfluidics, which focuses on making ‘lab on a chip’ devices that use tiny channels to manipulate fluids. Pan and his colleagues are developing such systems for applications like medical diagnostic tests.

Graduate students Siyuan Xing and Jia Jiang developed a new textile microfluidic platform using hydrophilic (water-attracting) threads stitched into a highly water-repellent fabric. They were able to create patterns of threads that suck droplets of water from one side of the fabric, propel them along the threads and expel them from the other side.

‘We intentionally did not use any fancy microfabrication techniques so it is compatible with the textile manufacturing process and very easy to scale up,’ said Xing, lead graduate student on the project.

It’s not just that the threads conduct water through capillary action. The water-repellent properties of the surrounding fabric also help drive water down the channels. Unlike conventional fabrics, the water-pumping effect keeps working even when the water-conducting fibres are completely saturated, because of the sustaining pressure gradient generated by the surface tension of droplets.

The rest of the fabric stays completely dry and breathable. By adjusting the pattern of water-conducting fibres and how they are stitched on each side of the fabric, the researchers can control where sweat is collected and where it drains away on the outside.

Workout enthusiasts, athletes and clothing manufacturers are all interested in fabrics that remove sweat and let the skin breathe. Cotton fibres, for example, wick away sweat