Thanks to good intentions government regulation, one can sometimes feel jealous of the lives of domesticated animals. At least in the field of veterinary medicine, one can release a product without too much intervention, leading to therapies being available to animals years before they are to humans. MIT Technology Review profiles the latest work from University of California, Davis, VetCell (Cambridge, England), and Vet-Stem (Poway, California) in using stem cell therapies to help injured horses recover from soft tissue damage.
A snippet:

A handful of studies in animals have shown that these stem-cell therapies are effective, allowing more animals to return to racing, reducing reinjury rates, and cutting healing times. VetCell, a company based in the United Kingdom that derives stem cells from bone marrow, has used its therapy on approximately 1,700 horses to date. In a study of 170 jumping horses tracked through both treatment and rehabilitation, researchers found that nearly 80 percent of them could return to racing, compared with previously published data showing that about 30 percent of horses given traditional therapies could return to racing. After three years, the reinjury rate was much lower in stem-cell-treated animals–about 23 percent compared with the published average of 56 percent, says David Mountford, a veterinary surgeon and chief operating officer at VetCell.
While scientists still don’t know exactly how the cells aid repair of the different types of injuries, for tendon tears, initial studies show that stem cells appear to help the tissue regenerate without forming scar tissue.

Read on at MIT Technology Review…
Image: Ultrasound images show the tendon in a horse’s front leg. An area of damage (circle in yellow, top) has healed (bottom) after the injection of stem cells derived from the animal’s fat. Credit: Vet-Stem
Links: Vet-Stem equine applications, VetCell Bioscience…

Nemoslab Project is an EU-funded initiative to create a new lab-on-a-chip device that can detect the presence of certain chemicals, and may serve as a diagnostic modality for all sorts of disease markers. Currently the NEMOSLAB device is being tested to detect fertility hormones, as well the BRCA1 gene that has a role in breast and ovarian cancers.

NEMOSLAB uses an optical technique to recognise the presence of selected biological molecules. Light passes down a silicon nitride waveguide – a flat rectangular pipe about 8 micrometres wide and 0.15 micrometres thick – to a detector which turns it into an electrical signal.
The waveguide is coated with a probe molecule that can recognise target molecules by binding to them. This could be an antibody, which will bind with a specific protein, or a strand of DNA that will bind with a complementary strand in the sample fluid.
“We chose the probes to be very selective for the molecules we want to detect,” says Dr Sotiris Kakabakos who is working with Misiakos. “They have been tested right on the chip but also with conventional methods which select those probes to be very specific for the analyte to be determined.”
A microfluidics system within the chip passes the sample – normally blood serum – over the waveguide. When a target molecule in the sample binds to the surface of the waveguide the optical properties are changed and the amount of light arriving at the detector also changes. The step in the signal is distinctive.
Each NEMOSLAB chip contains nine waveguides which are exposed to the sample at the same time and can be primed to detect different molecules. The entire chip is fabricated as a single unit.
An electronics package collects the signals from the waveguides and produces the results within a few minutes of the sample being introduced.

More from ICT Results…
Project page: NEMOSLAB…
Top image: Three dimensional representation of the optocoupler device. The recognition biomolecules are immobilized on the exposed waveguide surface. Shown are (1) the emmiting avalance junction, (2) the waveguide, (3) the photodetector p/n junction, (4) the silicon dioxide spaceres, (5) the cladding layer.

We rarely report on veterinary stories on these pages, but enough cuteness combined with interesting medicine and compassion can lead to a fun post. Above is a photo of a baby goose that had a custom brace installed at Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital in Buckinghamshire, UK after it was found with a broken leg. According to the Telegraph, this is the first “bionic” goose in the world. Of course calling a leg with a brace bionic might be overemphasizing the achievement, regardless of how adorable the whole story is.
More at the Telegraph…
(hat tip: Engadget)

Modern running shoes have been a subject of intense engineering attention to help people run faster, safer, and more comfortably. All this has led to the heel being higher and shock absorbers embedded into the sole. Although immensely popular among athletes the world over, some people question the purpose of running shoes altogether. The core of the argument seems to be that modern shoes force the foot to land on its heal rather than naturally on the outside edge. Now a new product has been designed for those that would prefer to run barefoot, but fear injury from things like broken glass on the ground. The FiveFingers from Vibram (Concord, MA) is a stripped down version of a shoe, incorporating a narrow sole featuring individual toe pockets, and minimal top fabric to hold the foot in place.
Here’s a Wired review of the Vibram FiveFingers: