Medical Weekly: Top trends for 5/14-5/18

Here’s your weekly roundup of exciting medical news.

Paralyzed people control robotic arms directly with brain activity

A new study in Nature reports that two paralyzed people were able to grasp objects using robotic arms that they controlled with a brain-computer interface. On April 12, 2011, nearly 15 years after she became paralyzed and unable to speak, one of the subjects controlled a robotic arm by thinking about moving her arm and hand to lift a bottle of coffee to her mouth and take a drink. Check out this amazing video of the achievement.

 

Microchips, lollipops and echolocation: New ways to help the blind see

Two men in the United Kingdom, who had lost their vision after birth due to a genetic condition in which light-sensitive cells in the eye stop working, just received the gift of sight due to a new microchip implant. This is just one of the innovative methods that researchers are using to allow the blind to see.

 

 

 

Seeing the light: Light-based approaches to control genes

Gene expression is a complex process that we are just beginning to understand. It has been the focus of a variety of recent research because disease is not always the result of a malfunctioning protein; genetic diseases can arise from too much or too little of a protein. This means that controlling gene expression and, thus, the amount of a protein being made, is just as important as the state of the protein itself. In a surprising twist, a handful of research groups have created light-sensitive methods for controlling gene expression and protein production.

 

Google goes cancer: Using the search engine’s algorithm to find cancer biomarkers

The strategy Google uses to decide which pages are relevant to a search is being used to determine which proteins in cancer control the progression of the disease. Researchers from Dresden University of Technology used a modified version of Google's PageRank algorithm to rank 20,000 proteins by their genetic relevance to the progression of pancreatic cancer. They found seven proteins help assess the aggressiveness of a patient's tumor. The Google strategy takes into account the content of pages and how they are connected by links. With this as a model, the authors made use of the fact that proteins in a cell are connected through a network of physical and regulatory interactions.

 

Artificial organ bioreactor stops out-of-control inflammation

Inflammation brought on by an influx of white blood cells and proteins helps the body heal when it’s faced with an acute infection or injury. But, at the same time, that inflammatory process can cause cellular damage, leading to a potential cascade of inflammation and damage that's tough to stop once it takes hold. To counter this inflammatory cascade, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are experimenting with what they call a small, external bioreactor -- in essence, an artificial external organ -- containing cells that help to control inflammation by making and dispensing an anti-inflammatory protein.