Bioengineering News
August 15, 2007
Nanotechnology is offering up new methods to unravel the workings of
the tiny human cell—the basic building block of our body’s tissues.
Did you know?
Think of poking a hole in a cell and sticking in a flashlight. Tuan
Vo-Dinh
A unique nanobiosensor developed by Duke biomedical engineering
Professor Tuan Vo-Dinh represents a significant advance for systems
biology—the ability to study the molecular and biochemical activities
of a single cell in real time, without destroying the cell itself. ...
August 15, 2007
In 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first human
vaccine to offer protection against the H5N1 influenza virus, commonly
known as avian or bird flu. Yet, in the event that a viral strain began
spreading from human to human, the vaccine is expected to provide only
limited protection until a tailored vaccine could be developed and
produced.
Did you know?
The freedom to synthesize the precise DNA sequences you want would
change the way ...
August 15, 2007
An estimated 12,000 people contract the AIDS virus each day, including
a disproportionate number of women. Microbicides might help protect
at-risk women by serving as "molecular condoms"--physical barriers or
filters with HIV-neutralizing ingredients that slow viral passage from
semen into body tissues.
Human Need
In many cases, women lack the control needed to protect themselves
against the virus. Microbicide development is a response to the
demonstrated need for new female-controlled methods for HIV
prophylaxis. David Katz
A team ...
August 15, 2007
Anti-cancer drugs are hazardous to cancers, but they are only slightly
less so to healthy tissue. For example, the drug doxorubicin may
efficiently jam the genetic machinery of rapidly dividing cancer cells,
but it is also highly toxic to heart tissue. Such cardiac toxicity
limits how much of the drug can be administered to patients.
Benefit
"The unprecedented rapid release of such large amounts of drug directly
into the cancers' blood vessels--triggered only by mild focused
heating--seems ...
August 15, 2007
Osteoarthritis--a degenerative joint disease that affects 21 million
people in the U.S. and is the nation's leading cause of disability--had
been attributed primarily to the gradual wear and tear of joint
surfaces. More recently, scientists have discovered that inflammation
sparked by the immune system also plays an important role in the
worsening of the disease. However, trials of a drug aimed at blocking
that joint inflammation have had limited success, primarily because the
medication clears ...
August 15, 2007
Chemotherapy often falls short of achieving its full impact because the
drugs diffuse in and out of tumors too rapidly. That's because the
small size of current chemotherapy drugs – which typically have a
molecular weight in the 300 to 600 range – allow them to be readily
excreted through the kidneys before their anti-cancer effects are fully
achieved.
Did you know?
If you balance the ability of drug to penetrate tumors with its staying
power once ...
August 15, 2007
Gene therapy is a promising approach for treating many genetic
disorders, particularly those such as hemophilia and some metabolic
diseases, in which a missing or dysfunctional gene fails to provide a
protein required for normal bodily functions. However, the therapeutic
potential of gene therapy has been limited by the lack of safe and
efficient delivery systems.
Did you know?
About one in every 5,000 males has hemophilia A, in which a deficiency
for a single blood clotting ...
August 15, 2007
Lithotripsy, the shock wave therapy currently used to pulverize kidney
stones, is stimulating new thinking about how to non-invasively combat
tumors. What’s more, sound waves may also lessen the likelihood that
tumor cells will metastasize--spreading to other parts of the body.
Did you know?
High Intensity Focused Ultrasound is currently being used in clinical
trials in the United States for FDA approval of cancer therapy.
Mechanical engineering Associate Professor Pei Zhong, a world leader in
lithotripsy, is working ...
November 1, 2006
Packard Fellow Lingchong You
Lingchong You, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the
Pratt School of Engineering, has won a fellowship from the David &
Lucile Packard Foundation for his research into the information
processing speed of bacteria that have been “reprogrammed” to perform
new, and potentially useful, tasks.
The Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering aims to provide
support for “unusually creative researchers” within their first three
years as faculty, according to the foundation’s web site. ...
October 16, 2006
Researchers at Duke University have devised a new way to significantly
prolong the effects of an anti-inflammatory drug, potentially making it
useful for providing longer-lasting treatment for osteoarthritis, the
most common form of arthritis.The modified drug, which would be
injected directly into arthritic joints, could last for several weeks
rather than just the few hours the unmodified drug would last, the
researchers said.
In their study, the researchers modified a drug called interleukin-1
receptor antagonist (IL1RA). ...
April 12, 2006
Two research teams led by Duke faculty have been granted $75,000 each
from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative in support of
interdisciplinary research on genomics and infectious disease. Duke won
two grants out of a total of 14 awarded.
Debra Schwinn, professor of anesthesiology, pharmacology/cancer biology
and surgery at the School of Medicine, leads a team developing an
inexpensive diagnostic for malaria using combined nanotechnology and
genomic approaches. With this project, the researchers will develop ...
April 4, 2006
A novel growth factor significantly improves the ability of specialized
stem cells derived from human fat to be transformed into cartilage
cells, according to Duke University Medical Center and Pratt School of
Engineering researchers.
Such growth factors are crucial to the bioengineering of tissues for
clinical use in humans, the researchers said, because cells would need
to be grown quickly and in large numbers in order to be practical. For
the current study, as well as ...
March 2, 2006
Scientists have devised a blueprint for boosting anti-cancer drugs'
effectiveness and lowering their toxicity by attaching the equivalent
of a lead sinker onto the drugs. This extra weight makes the drugs
penetrate and accumulate inside tumors more effectively.
Chemotherapy drugs often fall short of achieving their full impact
because the drugs diffuse in and out of the tumor too rapidly, said the
scientists from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering and Duke University
Medical Center.
The scientists increased ...
March 1, 2006
Kam Leong
Kam Leong, a national leader in drug and gene delivery at Johns Hopkins
University, has joined the department of biomedical engineering at Duke
University’s Pratt School of Engineering, where he will serve as
director of the school’s Bioengineering Initiative.
Leong said he plans to focus on the emerging field of
“nanotherapeutics,” the application of devices on the scale of
nanometers -– one billionth of a meter -- for treating disease via
drug, gene and immunization ...
November 19, 2005
Note to editors: A high-resolution digital photo of Fan Yuan posed with
visual evidence for his findings can be accessed at
http://www.dukephoto.duke.edu/pages/Duke_News_Service/Yuan114205029.jpg.
The evidence shows glowing viruses concentrated in the liver of a
"control" animal not receiving the poloxamer mixture. In contrast, the
viruses stayed in the tumor of an animal injected with the polymer.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University biomedical engineers have devised a
potentially patentable method to arrest toxic leakages of genetically
engineered viruses ...
November 5, 2005
Durham, N.C. -- Duke University engineers are developing technology
that may enable physicians to someday use high frequency ultrasound
waves both to visualize the heart's interior in three dimensions and
then selectively destroy heart tissue with heat to correct arrhythmias.
"No one else has developed a way for ultrasound to combine therapy and
imaging in a catheter, let alone 3-D imaging," said Stephen Smith, the
biomedical engineering professor who heads the project at Duke's Pratt
School ...
September 17, 2005
Durham, N.C. -- Lingchong You's Duke University research team makes and
programs circuits, although not the kind that work in electronics
devices. His are "synthetic gene circuits" that can regulate cell
populations with molecular signaling and intentional extermination.
Such biocircuits have great potential for applications in
biotechnology, computation, environmental engineering and medicine. For
example, a "suicide" biocircuit could potentially be programmed into
bacteria used to clean up pollution, making the microbes die off once
their job ...
June 17, 2005
DURHAM, N.C. – Researchers from Duke University's Medical Center and
Pratt School of Engineering have demonstrated that they can grow new
human blood vessels from cells taken from patients who especially need
such assistance – older adults with cardiovascular disease.
The researchers said the results of their latest experiments represent
a "proof of principle" for an approach that could be clinically
applicable within five to ten years. The first to benefit from such
bio-engineered arteries, according ...
February 1, 2005
Fan Yuan
Duke University biomedical engineers have devised a potentially
patentable method to arrest toxic leakages of genetically engineered
viruses that have plagued attempts to use gene therapy against
cancerous tumors. The problem has been that viruses carrying anti-tumor
genes have tended to leak from tumors, proving toxic to other body
tissues.
The researchers have developed a biocompatible polymer that briefly
changes from a liquid at 39 degrees Fahrenheit to a gel at body
temperatures to block ...
December 1, 2004
Lingchong You's research team at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering
makes and programs circuits, although not the kind that work in
electronics devices. His are "synthetic gene circuits" that can
regulate cell populations with molecular signaling and intentional
extermination.
Such biocircuits have great potential for applications in
biotechnology, computation, environmental engineering and medicine. For
example, a "suicide" biocircuit could potentially be programmed into
bacteria used to clean up pollution, making the microbes die off once
their ...
April 1, 2004
Duke biomedical engineers have developed a technique to use a natural
polymer to fill in and protect cartilage wounds within joints, and to
provide supportive scaffolding for new cartilage growth. Their advance
offers a potential solution for a central problem in generating new
cartilage -- providing a support for cartilage cells as they regenerate
cartilage tissue.
In tests on rabbits, Lori Setton, associate professor of biomedical
engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, and her research ...
March 9, 2004
DURHAM, N.C. – Duke biomedical engineers have developed a technique to
use a natural polymer to fill in and protect cartilage wounds within
joints, and to provide supportive scaffolding for new cartilage growth.
Their advance offers a potential solution for a central problem in
generating new cartilage -- providing a support for cartilage cells as
they regenerate cartilage tissue.
In tests on rabbits, Lori Setton, associate professor of biomedical
engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, ...
September 1, 2003
By Dennis Meredith, for DukeMed Magazine
A cloud of gelatinous capsules swirls into the bloodstream from the tip
of a comparatively colossal hypodermic needle. At a thousandth of the
diameter of a human hair, the capsules spreading through the
circulation are nearly a hundred times smaller than the blood cells
that stream alongside them. Yet tiny as they are, these submicroscopic
capsules bear the stamp of human design—their surfaces are a waxy
patchwork not found in ...
February 1, 2003
Engineers and life scientists at Duke University believe that by
combining the strengths and insights of their specialties, they can
train researchers uniquely qualified to manipulate molecules, cells and
tissues to treat human diseases and disorders.
"In recent years, there has been a surge in the application of
biotechnology to clinical medicine through such fields as tissue
engineering, drug delivery, biomaterials, biosenors, genomics and
proteomics," said Professor Farshid Guilak. "At Duke, we have created a
formal, ...
December 1, 2002
A Duke research collaboration has identified a likely route for
"leakage" of therapeutic gene-bearing viruses out of tumors in
experimental anti-cancer gene therapy experiments in laboratory
animals. The group also found this toxic leakage can be avoided by
using a chemical extracted from common brown algae.
Their work was described in a presentation Sept. 11 at the American
Chemical Society's national meeting in New York, as well as in a
research paper accepted for publication in ...
