| Tools that detect cancer in its early stages can increase patient survival and quality of life. However, cancer screening approaches often call for expensive equipment and trips to the clinic, which may not be feasible in rural or developing areas with little medical infrastructure. | |
| The emerging field of point-of-care diagnostics is therefore working on cheaper, faster, and easier-to-use tests. An international pair of engineering labs are championing this approach and have developed a tool that changes the colour of mouse urine when colon cancer, also known as bowel cancer, is present. | |
| The findings are published in Nature Nanotechnology (“Renal clearable catalytic gold nanoclusters for in vivo disease monitoring”). |
| The early stage technology, developed by teams led by Imperial’s Professor Molly Stevens and MIT’s Professor Sangeeta Bhatia, works by injecting nanosensors into mice, which are cut up by enzymes released by tumours known as proteases. | |
| When the nanosensors are broken up by proteases, they pass through the kidney, and can be seen with the naked eye after a urine test that produces a blue colour change. | |
| The researchers applied this technology to mice with colon cancer, and found that urine from tumour-bearing mice becomes bright blue, relative to test samples taken from healthy mice. | |
| Professor Stevens, of Imperial’s Departments of Materials and Bioengineering, said: “By taking advantage of this chemical reaction that produces a colour change, this test can be administered without the need for expensive and hard-to-use lab instruments. | |
| “The simple readout could potentially be captured by a smartphone picture and transmitted to remote caregivers to connect patients to treatment.” |
Image Credit: Imperial College London
News This Week
A Daily Pill to Treat COVID Could Be Just Months Away, Scientists Say
Within a day of testing positive for covid-19 in June, Miranda Kelly was sick enough to be scared. At 44, with diabetes and high blood pressure, Kelly, a certified nursing assistant, was having trouble [...]
‘Ultra-potent’ antibody against COVID-19 variants
A technology developed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has led to the discovery of an "ultra-potent" monoclonal antibody against multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, including the delta variant. The antibody [...]
Waning immunity and COVID-19 vaccines: How worried should we be?
Research has found a significant fall in levels of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, 6 months after the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Clinical evidence also suggests that the risk [...]
Are the COVID Vaccines Unusually Ineffective?
Are the COVID vaccines substantially different from/inferior to other vaccines in terms of their effectiveness? The issue raised, and I'm mostly paraphrasing here, is this: Most vaccines (e.g. measles, smallpox) have efficacy defined such [...]
Growing and treating virtual tumors using AI-designed nanoparticles
The EVONANO platform allows scientists to grow virtual tumors and use artificial intelligence to automatically optimize the design of nanoparticles to treat them. The ability to grow and treat virtual tumors is an [...]
The Struggle to Define Long COVID
One morning in March, 2020, Diana Berrent, a photographer and a mother of two from Long Island, woke up with a fever. She had chills, diarrhea, and a heaviness in her chest, and grew [...]
Frank Boehm contributes to ‘Modern Approaches to Augmentation of Brain Function’
Modern Approaches to Augmentation of Brain Function Available from Springer Press This book covers recent advances in neural technology that provide for enhancements for brain function. It addresses a broad range of neural phenomena [...]
COVID-19: Experimental vaccine lasts 1 month at room temperature
Although the currently available COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective, limited manufacturing capacity and the need for cold-chain storage hinder their global distribution. A recent study tested the efficacy of a new adeno-associated virus (AAV) [...]
COVID vaccines hold up against severe Delta: US data
Fully vaccinated people were 11 times less likely to die of COVID and 10 times less likely to be hospitalized compared to the unvaccinated since highly contagious Delta became the most common variant, US [...]
How much protection COVID-19 vaccines give you against the Delta variant – best available data
The highly-infectious Delta coronavirus variant has spread to at least 174 countries worldwide, from the US to Australia, causing a surge in COVID-19 cases. The variant has mutations that help it partially escape the immune response produced by [...]
Without these lipid shells, there would be no mRNA vaccines for COVID-19
Fragile mRNA molecules used in COVID-19 vaccines can’t get into cells on their own. They owe their success to lipid nanoparticles that took decades to refine. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is having a moment. This [...]
COVID-19 Has Revealed Critical Knowledge Gaps on the Transmission of Respiratory Viruses
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed critical knowledge gaps and assumptions concerning how respiratory viruses spread between hosts. Traditionally thought to be spread mainly through large respiratory droplets produced by the coughs and sneezes of sick individuals, [...]
Beyond coronavirus: the virus discoveries transforming biology
SARS-CoV-2 is just one of nonillions of viruses on our planet, and scientists are rapidly identifying legions of new species. Mya Breitbart has hunted novel viruses in African termite mounds, Antarctic seals and water [...]
COVID Vaccines Compared
There are three COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the U.S. The Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are all highly effective in protecting you from the virus that causes COVID-19. The Pfizer [...]
Covid Long-Haulers are Fighting for their Future
Many people with long COVID feel that science is failing them. Neglecting them could make the pandemic even worse. While watching the scientific community grapple with long COVID, I have thought a lot about a [...]
Experts Identify New COVID Variation in South Africa – What’s Known So Far
As a team of South African researchers we have identified a new lineage of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19. A lineage represents a genetically distinct virus population with a common ancestor. This virus may be designated as a variant [...]
