Showing Spotlights 41 - 48 of 509 in category All (newest first):
When experimental biomedical research results using only one sex are extrapolated to both sexes, unintended harmful consequences to the neglected sex can be the result. Nevertheless, it is still the case that only a small number of published articles report the sex of biosystems used in their study. Many researchers are still using only one sex of biosystems - e.g., cells, tissues, or animals - and apply the results to both males and females. And with the emergence of nanomedicine, the importance of sex in biomedical research has become even more obvious.
May 20th, 2021
Inspired by the silk spinning of spiders, researchers have developed a facile strategy to artificially create natural, silk-like hierarchical fibers. They demonstrate the creation of biomimetic and highly bioactive materials by artificially manipulating the self-assembly of silk protein molecules. This work contributes to the understanding of the natural silk spinning process of spiders and provides a strategy for the design and development of advanced fibrous biomaterials for various applications.
May 3rd, 2021
Researchers demonstrate label-free chiral detection of metabolic molecules at picomolar level through microbubble-induced rapid accumulation of biomolecules on plasmonic chiral sensors, which shows a 10-million times enhancement in sensitivity comparing to state-of-the-art plasmonic chiral sensors. The researchers achieved their ultrahigh sensitivity in chiral sensing of biomolecules by utilizing two enhancement mechanisms: the microbubble-induced accumulation of biomolecules onto the chiral plasmonic substrates; and the subsequent plasmon-enhanced chiral sensing.
Mar 30th, 2021
Researchers achieved a milestone in exploring biology using nanotechnology utilizing single-particle tracking to investigate the interaction between human T cells and individual fluorescent nanoparticles of semiconductor quantum dots (QDs). The researchers were able to deliver QDs into the cytosol of live T cells by decorating the nanoparticles with a unique cell-penetrating peptide. The study paves the way for improving drug delivery and immunotherapy using novel nanocarriers.
Mar 12th, 2021
In another step towards engineered living materials, researchers combined living bacteria and 3D-printed materials to grow bionic mineralized composites with ordered microstructures. It provides an example of harnessing living bacteria to design self-growing materials and opens the door for a new class of engineering materials that can self-grow like living creatures. This manufacturing strategy can be easily extended by selectively controlling the activity of living organisms to synthesize unprecedented structural composites with ordered, hierarchical, and gradient microstructures.
Feb 23rd, 2021
A major challenge in the development of implantable and ingestible biomedical electronic devices is the limited lifetime of their power sources. The energy requirements of these devices are highly dependent on their application and the complexity of the required electrical systems. The power unit, which is composed of one or more energy sources - batteries, energy-harvesting, and energy transfer - as well as power management circuits, supplies electrical energy to the whole system.
Feb 16th, 2021
Rather than growing vaccines in bioreactors, a new generation of biotechnology companies designs instructions that the body then can use to produce its own therapy. These novel vaccines exploit the process by which cells build proteins from the information encoded in a single-stranded molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA). They are enabled by the revolutionary nature of new industrialized biotechnology platforms that exploit breakthroughs in biological engineering and artificial intelligence.
Jan 28th, 2021
Scientists developed a new method to better understand how nanomedicines interact with patients' biomolecules. When nanoparticles enter human blood, they come into immediate contact with various biomolecules. These biomolecules form a coating layer on the nanoparticle surface - the so-called biomolecular corona - thereby imparting a unique biological identity to the nanoparticle, which could be very different from the pristine nanoparticle surface.
Jan 25th, 2021
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