The hype around blockchain — even in healthcare — is steadily increasing. A new survey from Black Book examined how the industry is approaching, investing in and deploying the technology. The Q3 survey included 88 payers and 276 provider technology executives, managers and IT specialists. The results make it clear that the healthcare field sees the value in blockchain. Ninety-three percent of [...]
Researchers from Tomsk Polytechnic University jointly with their colleagues from St. Petersburg, Hamburg and London have conducted a study in the course of which it was found out that polymer and hybrid silica-coated microcapsules are more efficient in genome-editing when applying CRISPR-Cas9 system. In the future, this joint development will significantly simplify and increase the [...]
A powerful screening strategy devised by RIKEN researchers will make it easier for scientists to assign likely biological functions to different molecules, facilitating the development of safe and effective drugs (Nature Chemical Biology, "Functional annotation of chemical libraries across diverse biological processes"). The scientific community is sitting atop vast mountains of genetic data as well [...]
With research headed by University of Queensland bioscience experts and funding provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the efforts to rid the world of polio have indeed taken another major step. A new study of the Nanopatch – a microscopic vaccine delivery platform initially developed by UQ Researchers - has demonstrated that the device [...]
Foresight Institute and the Transformative Technology Conference: Technical abilities have greatly accelerated in the last few decades, but the processes to become energized, mentally focused, emotionally connected, aware and internally aligned haven’t followed the same exponential curve. It’s time to accelerate. Global crises are calling upon us to unlock the solutions we have within. It’s [...]
From an article written by Akshat Rathi: Jeffrey Hall, a retired professor at Brandeis University, shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries elucidating how our internal body clock works. He was honored along with Michael Young and his close collaborator Michael Roshbash. Hall said in an interview from his home in rural Maine [...]
A powerful new way of analysing how drugs interact with molecules in the body could aid the design of better treatments with fewer side-effects. Most pharmaceuticals work by binding to a small site on the large proteins they target, causing the protein to change shape and so also its activity. To find drugs that act [...]
UAlberta researchers have created two new imaging agents that could help physicians visualize the formation of tumour-associated blood vessels, keep track of tumour growth and possibly generate new therapies (Nanoscale, "Viral nanoparticles decorated with novel EGFL7 ligands enable intravital imaging of tumor neovasculature"). "Blood vessel growth is critical to tumour growth," said John Lewis, the [...]
Scientists have found a way of mimicking our body's natural healing process, using cell derived nano-sized particles called vesicles, to repair damaged tissue. The paper, published in Scientific Reports ("Annexin-enriched osteoblast-derived vesicles act as an extracellular site of mineral nucleation within developing stem cell cultures"), describes a new approach to bone regeneration; stimulating cells to [...]
Seeing is believing when it comes to nanoparticle self-assembly. A team of University of Illinois engineers is observing the interactions of colloidal gold nanoparticles inside tiny aquariumlike sample containers to gain more control over the self-assembly process of engineered materials. Self-assembling colloidal nanoparticles are one of the things that make stuff like LED displays, solar [...]
