Advanced Neuromodulation Systems, a division of St. Jude Medical, is reporting initiation of the US trial of its Genesis® Neurostimulation System. The trial will study the effectiveness of the system to alleviate symptoms of treatment-resistant angina. The company’s spinal cord stimulator was just implanted into a 53-year-old Massachusetts woman at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Mass. The device is thought to help patients, described as otherwise untreatable, that are suffering from disabling angina because they are not candidates for revascularization procedures such as bypass surgery or cardiac arterial stenting.
To learn more about the trial…
Press release…
Archives: 2/2007
With the help of the Advanced Photon Source, a synchrotron X-ray at the Argonne National Laboratory, scientists were able to visualize peculiar changes involving copper ion redistribution in neoplastic angiogenesis:
“We found that cells undergoing angiogenesis exhibit a distribution of their cellular copper that is distinctly different from other cells,” said Argonne biologist and lead author Lydia Finney. “This discovery may help explain how copper-reducing cancer therapy works.” The findings are reported in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS.
“We began our study,” Finney explained, ” by examining a model of angiogenesis that uses human microvascular endothelial cells to form capillary-like structures within about eight hours of being stimulated with specific growth factors. We then examined the distribution of elements in these structures by using imaging resources.”
The APS played a key role in the research. The particular APS beamline Finney and her colleagues used employs specialized optics to focus coherent X-rays to sub-micrometer spot sizes, through which the sample is raster scanned (scanning from side to side, top to bottom). By collecting emitted fluorescence spectra at each point using an energy-dispersive detector, the researchers obtained images displaying the concentration and spatial distribution of many elements, including phosphorous, sulfur, iron, copper and zinc. Overlaying these elemental maps onto optical images of the cells, Finney and her colleagues then correlated elemental content with cellular structures.
“Our findings were very clear,” said Finney. “We observed a dramatic relocalization of between 80 and 90 percent of cellular copper to the tips of the tendril-like projections angiogenic cells send out between one another and across the cellular membrane within the first two hours.” Copper did, indeed, appear to play a special role in angiogenesis, at least on the basis of this observation.
To extend these studies to a living organism, Finney and her colleagues then examined sections of breast tumor tissue that were rich in newly formed blood vessels. “Once again,” said Finney, “we found that in contrast to both non-vascularized areas and areas of mature blood vessels, in areas of tissue where blood vessels were newly invading surrounding tissue, the cells showed copper localized at the periphery of the cells and in areas immediately outside of any apparent cellular structures…”
According to Finney, “These findings improve our understanding of how removing copper from the body can help stop angiogenesis. If a drug can be used to intercept vital copper being translocated outside of the cell during angiogenesis, the process stops, preventing growth of the tumor.”
The implications of the research do not end with the effect on angiogenesis. The dynamics of cellular copper this study revealed also have broad implications on the regulation of the metal ion content in metal-binding proteins. If such dramatic changes in where cellular copper is stored and used can happen so rapidly during angiogenesis, then the interactions of metal ions, such as copper, with the proteins and macromolecules that bind them in the cell must have very fluid dynamics themselves.
Link..
Advanced Photon Source flashbacks: Plumbism: The Cause of Beethoven’s Illness; Bacterial Nanoprocessing of Uranium; A Better Tool to Study Role of Iron in Neurodegeneration
Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media and the honorary professor of everyone who learned to program computers on their own, is seeing lots of excitement amongst developers to work on medical technology problems.
One of the interesting tidbits I took away from the Adobe Engage summit was how the medical technology market is becoming a key area of focus. Two of the nine companies that Adobe brought in to show off the power of their new tools were involved in the medical area. Acesis is building tools for point-of-care data capture; B-Line Medical is building tools for medical simulation and training. (James Governor has a good post about the Acesis presentation.)
The shift of developer attention to the medical industry seems to be in the water these days. I was talking to Peter Bloom, managing partner at General Atlantic Partners and former CTO of Salomon Brothers, about Web 2.0 in the financial industry, but what made him really excited was his volunteer work with the Cancer Research Institute and his brother’s work with remote robotic surgery.
Read on. . .
Helma van Rijn, a student at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has developed an electronic toy, called LINKX, for autistic children. The idea is to advance language development by playing with speech-o-grams. Ms. van Rijn explains on her website:
My project resulted in the concept design LINKX. LINKX aims to learn autistic children the words of objects in their own environment. This helps them learn the meaning of words. This is done by means of speech-o-grams (pictograms with sound added to it). Parents record words inside them and attach them to objects before play starts.
Children can link blocks to these speech-o-gram. Each link results in lights that go on and a sound that is played. The sound moves into the block. You can link blocks and speech-o-grams over and over and this will eventually make them remember the word.
You can also link blocks together. When one block owns a sound, it will move to the other block. Again doing this again and again will stimulate language learning.
Delft University of Technology press release…
Project page…
Video (.mov)…
Here’s how nano research might pave the way to the development of artificial retinas based on photosensitive nanoparticles:
The world’s first direct electrical link between nerve cells and photovoltaic nanoparticle films has been achieved by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and the University of Michigan. The development opens the door to applying the unique properties of nanoparticles to a wide variety of light-stimulated nerve-signaling devices — including the possible development of a nanoparticle-based artificial retina.
Nanoparticles are artificially created bits of matter not much bigger than individual atoms. Their behavior is controlled by the same forces that shape molecules; they also exhibit the bizarre effects associated with quantum mechanics. Scientists can exploit these characteristics to custom-build new materials “from the bottom up” with characteristics such as compatibility with living cells and the ability to turn light into tiny electrical currents that can produce responses in nerves.
That’s what the UTMB and Michigan researchers did, using a process devised by Michigan chemical engineering professor Nicholas Kotov, one of the authors of a paper on the research appearing in the current issue of Nano Letters. The process starts with a glass plate and then builds a layer-by-layer sandwich of two kinds of ultra-thin films, one made of mercury-tellurium nanoparticles and another of a positively charged polymer called PDDA. The scientists then added a layer of ordinary clay and a cell-friendly coating of amino acid, and placed cultured neurons on the very top.
When light shines on them, the mercury-tellurium nanoparticle film layers produce electrons, which then move up into the PDDA film layers and produce an upward-moving electrical current. “As you build up the layers of this, you get better capabilities to absorb photons and generate voltage,” said UTMB research scientist Todd Pappas, lead author on the Nano Letters paper. “When the current reaches the neuron membrane, it depolarizes the cell to the point where it fires, and you get a signal in the nerve.”
Although light signals have previously been transmitted to nerve cells using silicon (whose ability to turn light into electricity is employed in solar cells and in the imaging sensors of video cameras), nanoengineered materials promise far greater efficiency and versatility.
“It should be possible for us to tune the electrical characteristics of these nanoparticle films to get properties like color sensitivity and differential stimulation, the sort of things you want if you’re trying to make an artificial retina, which is one of the ultimate goals of this project,” Pappas said. “You can’t do that with silicon. Plus, silicon is a bulk material — silicon devices are much less size-compatible with cells.”
The researchers caution that despite the great potential of a light-sensitive nanoparticle-neuron interface, creating an actual implantable artificial retina is a long-range project. But they’re equally hopeful about a variety of other, less complex applications made possible by a tiny, versatile light-activated interface with nerve cells — such things as new ways to connect with artificial limbs and other prostheses, and revolutionary new tools for imaging, diagnosis and therapy.
Source…
Interfacing Neurons and Photoactivatible Materials site @ Dr. Pappas lab
Flashback: Nanotubes Used for First Time to Stimulate Nerve Cells
Japan’s Hospital for Charged Particle Therapy at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) has installed a new security system for its medical records. Anyone who dares to penetrate into charged particle therapy grounds of the hospital and gains access into the bowels of the still classified medical facility, will be greeted by PalmSecure™ biometric palm vein authentication system from Fujitsu:
To log into operating electronic medical record system, the user inserts an integrated circuit (IC) smartcard in which the user’s pre-registered palm vein pattern data has been registered, and holds his or her hand over the palm vein authentication sensor. The palm vein pattern obtained from the palm vein authentication sensor is then compared with the data read from the smartcard: if the patterns match, the user is granted access to the electronic medical record system. Compared with the conventional ID and password input systems, this convenient and user-friendly yet secure log-on procedure restricts unauthorized access, reinforcing the security that protects the hospital’s confidential data.
Link…
Flashback: Contactless Palm Vein Authentication Technology by Fujitsu
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Though historically, it would seem like the practice of abandoning children to various people and institutions tends to lead to adults of perpetual greatness, it is nevertheless disconcerting that Italy’s Family Affairs Minister Rosy Bindi believes that all hospitals in the country should install modern foundling wheels.
From Australia’s Herald Sun:
Over the weekend, a baby was abandoned in a high-tech hatch installed recently in a hospital in a poorer neighbourhood on Rome’s southern outskirts.
The person who left the child entered a room accessible only from the outside, pushed open a glass hatch, and deposited the baby in a heated crib in a room on the inside.
Electronic sensors detected movement in the crib and set off an alarm for doctors at the Casilino hospital, who arrived in 40 seconds and cared for the baby boy, whom they named Stefano.
Have you ever wondered how illegal street drugs affect the neurochemistry of rats? If so you’re either a pharmaceutical researcher or a little weird. Either way, we think you’ll enjoy this interactive cartoon developed by the Learning Center at the University of Utah, which lets you learn about the ‘physiology of a high’ in mice!
Mouse Party . . .
The Science of Addiction . . .
(hat tip: Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge)
