Category: Conference

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Cancer Conference Sensors

DNA sensor detects cervical, bladder, kidney cancer

University of Twente MESA+ professor Wilfred van der Wiel is developing an electrode to detect cervical, bladder and kidney cancer in DNA.

NanoGap is a 100 nanometer wide gap in a metal electrode with receptors that provide notifications when urine DNA is degraded.  Hypermethylated DNA is bound to the receptors.  By covering the DNA with metal particles, a live wire on a nanoscale is created, resulting in a short circuit and detectable signal.

According to van der Wiel, “In the current situation we only detect cancer at an advanced stage, when the patient already has symptoms, for example associated with a tumor.  In this study we look for DNA where something has changed, i.e. DNA that is covered by the body with methyl groups. In many cancers excessive methylation of the DNA occurs; this is referred to as hypermethylation. Although medical science does not yet know whether hypermethylation always signifies cancer and in what form, a clear link has been shown.”

Wearable Tech + Digital Health NYC 2015 – June 30 @ New York Academy of Sciences

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Conference fitness Sensors

Google Fit platform aggregates health data

Using a single set of APIs, Google Fit collects and aggregates data from fitness apps and sensors to manage a user’s fitness stream.

The platform will work with wearables and other peripherals.  To protect privacy, permission is required and data can be deleted.  Initally, Adidas,  Nike , Intel, LG and Motorola will participate.  Nike will add its Fuel number to the Fit stream for other apps to utilize.

Apple announced a similar fitness data aggregation platform, Healthkit,  earlier this month. (See ApplySci, June 5 2014.)  Both platforms are expected to go live this fall.

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Babies Conference Sensors Sleep

Baby onesie tracks breathing, sleep, movement, temperature

http://mimobaby.com/

Sensor based baby monitoring is receiving a lot of exposure at CES.  One such monitor, by Mimo baby, includes three parts: the Kimono, the Turtle and the Lilypad station. The Kimono is a cotton onesie, with machine washable sensors, worn by a baby when sleeping. It houses the Turtle, which tracks a baby’s respiration, skin temperature, body position and activity levels. The Turtle conveys the information via Bluetooth to the base station, called Lilypad, in the baby’s sleep room. The Lilypad is connected to the home Wi-Fi network.  It processes the information and transmits it to a smartphone app.

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Conference

Digital Health. Wearable Tech. Quantified Self. Curated.

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Wearable tech.  Digital health.  Quantified self.  mHealth.  Connected home.  Internet of things.  However described, the phenomenon of using sensor technology to monitor, adapt, diagnose, gamify, and improve our health is in full swing at the Consumer Electronics Show.  As sensors become better and cheaper, signal processing becomes more sophisticated, and mobile technology becomes ubiquitous, the revolution in health and fitness will continue.  With this revolution comes the need for knowledge.  The knowledge to understand which technology can save one’s life; which gadgets are fun to have; and what is purely hype.  In the next days we will hear a lot about what’s happening in Las Vegas.  About brainwave headbands , heartbeat detecting watches, sleep monitoring gadgets, measuring babies’ vital signs, helping seniors age in place, and even ways to correct our posture, mood, and eating habits, through technology.  This intersection of science + technology + digital health is ApplySci’s raison d’etre. Our scientific committee leads our focus on the brain and neuro-technology, assistive technologies, and advances in monitoring the lungs, heart, diabetes, sleep, seniors, babies, and, of course, fitness – the key to wellness.   It is our pleasure, through our blog, conferences, and our soon to emerge from beta crowdfunding platform, to curate this movement.  To  apply science to change our world.

Lisa Weiner Intrator, January 2014.

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Conference

“Nanosponge vaccine” induces immune response to fight MRSA toxins

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Dec/01/vaccine-nanoparticles-ucsd-efficient/

UCSD professor Liangfang Zhang has developed a  “nanosponge vaccine” which has enabled the immune systems of mice to block the adverse effects of the alpha-haemolysin toxin from MRSA—both within the bloodstream and on the skin.

The nanosponges in the “toxoid vaccine” platform are bio-compatible particles made of a polymer core wrapped in a red-blood-cell membrane. Each nanosponge’s red-blood-cell membrane seizes and detains the Staphylococcus aureus toxin alpha-haemolysin without compromising the toxin’s structural integrity through heating or chemical processing. These toxin-studded nanosponges served as vaccines capable of triggering neutralizing antibodies and fighting off otherwise lethal doses of the toxin in mice.

The nanosponge vaccine approach could be used to create vaccines that protect against a wide range of toxins, including those produced by E. coli and H. pylori.

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Conference Respiratory

Stem cells converted to functional lung cells; could impact modeling, drug screening, transplantation

http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nbt.2754.html

Columbia professor Hans-Willem Snoeck and colleagues have transformed human stem cells into functional lung and airway cells.  This has significant potential for modeling lung disease, screening drugs, studying human lung development, and, ultimately, generating lung tissue for transplantation.

The research builds on Dr. Snoeck’s 2011 discovery of a set of chemical factors that can turn human embryonic stem  cells or human induced pluripotent stem cells into anterior foregut endoderm—precursors of lung and airway cells. Human iPS cells closely resemble human ES cells but are generated from skin cells, by coaxing them into taking a developmental step backwards. Human iPS cells can then be stimulated to differentiate into specialized cells—offering researchers an alternative to human ES cells.

The team have found new factors that can complete the transformation of human ES or iPS cells into functional lung epithelial cells. The resultant cells were found to express markers of at least six types of lung and airway epithelial cells, particularly markers of type 2 alveolar epithelial cells. Type 2 cells are important because they produce surfactant, a substance critical to maintain the lung alveoli, where gas exchange takes place; they also participate in repair of the lung after injury and damage.

The findings have implications for the study of several lung diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, in which type 2 alveolar epithelial cells are thought to play a central role.

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Conference

“Passive sensor” home health monitoring platform launches

http://www.irc-sphere.ac.uk/

The Universities of Bristol, Southhampton and Reading have launched their long anticipated continuous monitoring Sensor Platform for Healthcare in a Residential Environment (SPHERE). The system will detect overnight or mini-strokes by noticing small changes in behavior or expression. It can be used to identify the early stages of heart disease, dementia, diabetes, depression and obesity, or to prevent falls in seniors.  A key part of the project will be producing “passive sensors” embedded in clothing or jewelry.

The goal is not to develop new sensor technologies for individual health conditions, but to impact these healthcare needs simultaneously through data fusion and pattern recognition from a common platform. The platform will be low-cost and accessible.

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Conference

Orthopedic surgeons “draw” regenerating bone material on body with “BioPen” prototype

http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW162803

Researchers from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the University of Wollongong unveiled a prototype of an orthopedic surgery aid they call “BioPen”.  They claim that it enables customized implants to be created at the time of surgery, eliminating the need to harvest cartilage and grow it for weeks in a lab as a replacement for damaged or diseased material.

Professor Peter Choong is leading the effort to optimize cell material for clinical trials, which is ejected from the pen in a method similar to 3D printing.  

The device has two reservoirs filled with ”hydrogels”. The gel provides embedded cells with a hydrated environment and protection from the build-up of pressure as they are pushed towards the nozzle tip. An ultraviolet light is cast over the material as it emerges, causing the gel to form a hard, protective layer over the embedded cells, which multiply and differentiate into nerve, muscle or bone cells. The implantable materials are non-toxic and will biodegrade as the cells fill in the injured bone area.

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Conference

Noninvasive nanoparticle diagnostic detects blood clots early

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/nn403550c

Current blood clot tests are very indirect.  MIT’s Sangeeta Bhatia has developed a diagnostic based on technology first reported to detect colorectal cancer.

The system consists of iron oxide nanoparticles, FDA approved for human use, coated with specialized peptides that interact with thrombin. After being injected into mice, the nanoparticles travel throughout the body. When the particles encounter thrombin, the thrombin cleaves the peptides at a specific location, releasing fragments that are then excreted in the animals’ urine. The protein fragments can be identified in collected urine by treating the sample with antibodies specific to peptide tags included in the fragments. The amount of these tags found in the urine is directly proportional to the level of blood clotting in the mice’s lungs.

Other applications for the nanoparticle system could include monitoring and diagnosing cancer and tracking liver, pulmonary, and kidney fibrosis.

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Conference

Real-time detector for intravenously delivered drugs

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-real-time-detector-iv-drugs-life-threatening.html

A University of Illinois developed optical device can identify fluid in an IV line in real-time, improving the safety of delivery.  Professor Brian T. Cunningham and his team used Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) technology, a powerful analytical tool prized for its extreme sensitivity in obtaining molecular signals that can be used to identify chemicals. To determine the identity of a particular IV medication, researchers shine laser light onto a nanostructured gold surface that contains millions of tiny “nano-domes” that are separated from each other by as little as 10 nanometers.  The nano-domes are incorporated into the inner surface of IV tubing, where they are exposed to drugs that are dispersed in liquid. They capture the light scattered from drug molecules that are in contact with the nano-domes and use SERS to determine the drug’s molecular signature. Finally, they match the signature to known signatures for the drug in order to confirm the presence of a specific medication in the IV line.

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Conference

Collaborative robots work alongside humans

http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21584455-robotics-new-breed-robots-being-designed-collaborate-humans

The Economist’s Technology Quarterly describes several examples of “collaborative robots” with qualities that allow them to team with people in factories, at home, or in the classroom.

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Assistive Technologies BCI Brain Conference Seniors Wearables

Data glasses controlled by eye movement — an alternative to brain machine interface

http://www.domain-b.com/technology/20130912_movements.html

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have developed bidirectional OLED microdisplay eye-controlled data glasses.  Users can view the real world while browsing a large amount of virtual information and turn pages with their eyes.

Integrated camera sensors register the direction of the wearer’s eye movements and an image processing program calculates the exact position of their pupils in real time.  An infrared light source in the glass frame produces accurate positioning results even in low light.

The glasses can enable elderly and disabled people to attract attention in emergencies using nothing but their eyes – or simply provide a way to change the TV channel using specific eye movements.