| A team of neuroscientists and engineers has developed a tiny, implantable device that has potential to help people with bladder problems bypass the need for medication or electronic stimulators. | |
| The team — from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago — created a soft, implantable device that can detect overactivity in the bladder and then use light from tiny, biointegrated LEDs to tamp down the urge to urinate. | |
| The device works in laboratory rats and one day may help people who suffer incontinence or frequently feel the need to urinate. | |
| The new strategy is outlined in an article published in the journal Nature (“A wireless closed-loop system for optogenetic peripheral neuromodulation”). |
| Overactive bladder, pain, burning and a frequent need to urinate are common and distressing problems. For about 30 years, many with severe bladder problems have been treated with stimulators that send an electric current to the nerve that controls the bladder. Such implants improve incontinence and overactive bladder, but they also can disrupt normal nerve signaling to other organs. | |
| “There definitely is benefit to that sort of nerve stimulation,” said Robert W. Gereau IV, PhD, the Dr. Seymour and Rose T. Brown Professor of Anesthesiology at Washington University School of Medicine, and one of the study’s senior investigators. “But there also are some off-target side effects that result from a lack of specificity with those older devices.” | |
| Gereau and his colleagues developed the new device in hopes of preventing such side effects. |
Image Credit: Gereau Lab, Washington University
News This Week
How AI Could Help Cardiologists Detect Heart Defects Without Skipping a Beat
Nearly a third of physicians will be sued at least once in their careers — most commonly for an error in diagnosis. Medical errors are also the third-leading cause of death in the United [...]
Nano-bot can probe inside human cells
University of Toronto Engineering researchers have built a set of magnetic 'tweezers' that can position a nano-scale bead inside a human cell in three dimensions with unprecedented precision. The nano-bot has already been used [...]
Graphene Shows Promise for Repairing Broken Bones
When you were a kid, did you ever sign a classmate’s cast after they broke an arm or a leg? Your name would be on display there for the rest of the semester. Broken [...]
What Are Nanobots? What Are Their Future Implications?
Inventors and scientists have been continuously working towards reducing the size of technological components. Room-sized computers to laptops that are slimmer than a pane of glass? It’s done. Huge bulky telephones to smartphones that [...]
Robotics These Nano-Robots Are Super-Tiny And Can Walk Inside Your Body
You have witnessed a variety of nano-devices that were designed for tasks including delivering medicines within the body. All of them used to move in a variety of ways. However, the latest nano-device is [...]
Nanosponges sop up toxins and help repair tissues
To take his fledgling lab to new heights, Liangfang Zhang hatched a plan that he considered brilliant in its simplicity. It involved procedures that many of his peers found a little out there. But [...]
U of T Engineering Science student investigating the use of nanomedicine in cancer research
Netra Rajesh is an undergraduate Engineering Science student specializing in Biomedical Systems Engineering. She is currently on her Professional Experience Year (PEY) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where her research lies at the [...]
40% of A.I. start-ups in Europe have almost nothing to do with A.I.
Nearly half of the companies in Europe that call themselves AI start-ups don't in fact use artificial intelligence, a new report found. The research, published Tuesday by London-based venture capital firm MMC Ventures, found [...]
New quantum sensor could improve cancer treatment
A new quantum sensor developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) has proven it can outperform existing technologies and promises significant advancements in long-range 3D imaging and monitoring [...]
Researchers look toward nature to beat cancer
Every year, more than 18 million people around the world are told, "You have cancer." In the U.S., nearly half of all men and more than one-third of women will develop some kind of [...]
Nanotech Makes it Possible for Mice to See In Infrared
Summary: Researchers use nanotech to enhance vision in mice, enabling them to see infrared light as well as visible light. Source: Cell Press. Mice with vision enhanced by nanotechnology were able to see infrared [...]
Other published works by Frank Boehm, NA Founder
Immune Aspects of Biopharmaceuticals and Nanomedicines Available from CRC Press 1st Edition Raj Bawa, Janos Szebeni, Thomas J Webster, Gerald F. Audette The enormous advances in the immunology of biotherapeutics and nanomedicines in the [...]
Artificial Intelligence – Ethics, Governance and Policy Challenges – the report by CEPS released
Artificial Intelligence - Ethics, Governance and Policy Challenges by Andrea Renda and CEPS Think Tank released. About the report: CEPS is launching a Task Force to try to bring back the AI debate to [...]
Nanofacturing project accelerates development of innovative medicines
The Nanofacturing consortium has worked on a pan-European nanopharmaceutical project to develop new manufacturing methods and improve supply chain co-ordination to advance treatments for rare cancers, autoimmune diseases and viral infections. The Nanofacturing collaboration [...]
Tiny Robots Swimming in Your Eye Could Provide Radical New Treatments
You know those little motes or floaters you that you sometimes see moving in your vision? Well, someday very soon, those could be robots. An international team of medical researchers has unveiled a new [...]
Everything at a glance – new 3D method visualizes nanoparticles in the lung
Scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, a partner in the German Center for Lung Research, have presented a new imaging method in the scientific journal ACS Nano ("Three-Dimensional Quantitative Co-Mapping of Pulmonary Morphology and [...]
Leave A Comment