'IVF chip' helps capture images of sperm fusing with egg

Every mammal on this planet starts in the same way: a sperm encounters an egg and fuses with it. This process is familiar to every eighth grade biology student, and pictures of the event can be found in every biology text book. However, despite this ubiquity, the detailed mechanics of the process itself is still somewhat of a mystery

Now, new techniques - featuring an "IVF chip" - presented recently at the Biophysical Society's 60th annual meeting in Los Angeles, CA, promise to reveal new insights into how a single sperm cell fuses with an egg cell.

The researchers hope the new techniques will help us better understand the causes of infertility and improve treatments.

At the meeting, Benjamin Ravaux, a physics graduate student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris in France, described how, using the "completely new approach," he and his colleagues captured high-resolution images of the events that unfold at the membrane of the egg cell during mammalian fertilization.

Ravaux says the "IVF chip" is a "unique tool to observe the cascade of molecular and membrane events occurring during the fertilization process," under conditions that mimic what happens in nature.

The idea and design of the device are the product of expertise in biophysics and fertilization and assisted reproduction technologies (ART) - including in vitro fertilization (IVF).

At the heart of the new approach is an "IVF chip" - a microfluidic device made from an electronic chip comprising several layers of silicon polymer sealed on a glass slide.

The design of the chip allows a sperm cell to be held in the bottom layer with an egg cell held above it, inside an "egg cup." At the bottom of the egg cup is a tiny opening, with a width of about 30 microns (roughly half the width of human hair).

Images of fertilization 'as it occurs'

When inserted in the lower layer of the chip, a sperm cell swims through the opening and fuses with the egg held in the egg cup.

The chip is compatible with confocal microscopy and other imaging systems, allowing the researchers to capture high-resolution images and movies of the fertilization process as it occurs.

The images show what happens to the sperm cell when it encounters the membrane of the egg cell. They show the two cells merging their membranes over time and the sperm cell gradually sinking into the egg cell.

The scientists also saw how the DNA in the sperm was assimilated into the egg's cytoplasm - the fluid surrounding the nucleus of the egg cell.

Ravaux explains that the new technique offers scientists the chance to investigate an area of reproductive biology that has remained largely unexplored due to lack of tools.

The IVF chip is different to what has been tried before because it allows scientists to observe what happens when just one sperm cell fuses with an egg. Other attempts to do this have had to settle with observing multiple sperm cells coming into contact with the membrane of the egg cell.

Ravaux says the technique could be combined with other approaches - such as fluorescent antibodies or genetically modified animals - to offer new insights into the membrane events of the sperm-meets-egg process. He concludes:

"An enhanced understanding of the molecular and physical mechanisms responsible for fertilization could ultimately lead to better methods to diagnose the causes of infertility, and improved personalized medicine treatments."

From a study published recently, Medical News Today learned how scientists in China have created functioning sperm from stem cells, raising hope that the approach may one day be used to treat male infertility.

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Easy to Use Navik 3D Cardiac Mapping System Cleared in U.S.

APN Health, a firm based in Wisconsin, got hold of an FDA clearance to introduce its Navik 3D cardiac mapping system in the U.S. The system provides live tracking of catheters in 3D gathered from fluoroscopic 2D images, and combines that with the electrical cardiac signals to create volumetric maps of the heart.

The system uses existing fluoroscopes and ECG that are available in cath labs already, and so is the only cardiac mapping system on the market that does not rely on specialty equipment to interface with the patient.

The Navik 3D comes with its own display interface plus an iPad that can be carried around the cath lab that also displays the same available imagery including anatomical maps, cardiac electrical activation maps, and cardiac voltage maps.



http://www.medgadget.com

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New Flexible Electronic Films for Body-Worn Medical Devices

At the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland researchers have created a new method for making stretchable electronics that may end up being integrated into wearables and medical devices. The prototype films can stretch up to four times their original shape and relax back without suffering any degradation in its electrical properties.

The researchers’ main achievement was achieving in making very narrow wires out of liquid metal (gold/gallium alloy) that bend along with the rest of the film but do not break down into individual pieces.. They’re only a few nanometers in width, and so can be used to connect multiple components within a single larger flexible device.

Here’s more about the new stretchable electronic films:



http://www.medgadget.com

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Medtronic’s CRT-Ds Now Approved for 3 Tesla Scanning in Europe

Medtronic won European CE Mark approval for a number of its cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (CRT-Ds) to be safe for use under MRI imaging of up to 3 Tesla. The approved devices include the Claria MRI Quad CRT-D SureScan, Amplia MRI Quad CRT-D SureScan, and Compia MRI Quad CRT-D SureScan pacers. Additionally, all previously approved MRI-conditional cardiac implants now have a green light to be used in 3T magnetic resonance scanners in Europe.

All three devices use the firm’s Attain Perfoma MRI SureScan Quadripolar leads that come in three shapes to fit different patients, include steroid on the electrodes, and have short bipolar spacing that helps ameliorate phrenic nerve stimulation

Source: http://newsroom.medtronic.com

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FDA Approves New ScandiDos System That Measures XRT Dose

When radiation treatment is delivered by a medical accelerator, the amount of exposure that is actually absorbed by the patient has been estimated based on dosage administered and other parameters. The Delta4 Discover, a product from ScandiDos, a Swedish firm, has received FDA clearance to be used to accurately measure the amount of radiation that moves past the patient and calculate the amount that’s actually absorbed.

The system allows for immediate verification of dosage delivered in a fairly non-intrusive way, letting techs go about the procedures pretty much as they normally would while knowing that the required therapy is being absorbed.

The detector simply sits on the receiving end of the radiation beam, past the patient, and counts the number of particles that strike it.

Here’s a promo video for the Delta4 Discover:


Source: http://www.medgadget.com

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Automatic Suturing by Robotic Surgical System

At Case Western Reserve University engineers are working on integrating autonomous suturing abilities into the da Vinci robotically-assisted surgical system from Intuitive Surgical. The team managed to purchase a used da Vinci on eBay and are now developing autonomous algorithms to control the device while doing routine suturing. Here’s a couple of the team members presenting their project:


Source: http://www.medgadget.com

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Top 5 Medical Technology Innovations

Against the backdrop of health care reform and a controversial medical device tax, medical technology companies are focusing more than ever on products that deliver cheaper, faster, more efficient patient care. They are also making inroads with U.S. Food & Drug Administration regulators to re-engineer the complex review and approval process for new medical devices.

Many in the industry have long felt overly burdened by what they consider to be an unnecessarily complex approval process. Critics claim it impedes innovation and delays the availability of better health care. To change that perception, the FDA last year announced a new Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC) charged with simplifying the process of designing and testing new technologies. With input from industry, government, and other nonprofit organizations, public-private MDIC will prioritize the regulatory science needs of the medical device community and fund projects to streamline the process.

"By sharing and leveraging resources, MDIC may help industry to be better equipped to bring safe and effective medical devices to market more quickly and at a lower cost," says Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D., director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

As the regulators, politicians, and corporate executives hash out these details, industry engineers and scientists continue to push through new ideas for improving and managing human health. Every year, industry observers like the Cleveland Clinic and the medical device trade press single out their favorite technology trends. These thought leaders agree that today's best technologies strike a balance between reducing the overall cost of medical care and increasing safety and survival rates—and isn't that what health care reform is all about?

Here are five emerging technologies to watch in the year ahead.

1. Cutting Back on Melanoma Biopsies

With the most deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma, a huge number of dangerous-looking moles are actually harmless, but has always been impossible to know for sure without an invasive surgical biopsy. Today dermatologists have new help in making the right call — a handheld tool approved by the FDA for multispectral analysis of tissue morphology. The MelaFind optical scanner is not for definitive diagnosis but rather to provide additional information a doctor can use in determining whether or not to order a biopsy. The goal is to reduce the number of patients left with unnecessary biopsy scars, with the added benefit of eliminating the cost of unnecessary procedures. The MelaFind technology (MELA Sciences, Irvington, NY) uses missile navigation technologies originally paid for the Department of Defense to optically scan the surface of a suspicious lesion at 10 electromagnetic wavelengths. The collected signals are processed using heavy-duty algorithms and matched against a registry of 10,000 digital images of melanoma and skin disease.

2. Electronic Aspirin

For people who suffer from migraines, cluster headaches, and other causes of chronic, excruciating head or facial pain, the "take two aspirins and call me in the morning" method is useless. Doctors have long associated the most severe, chronic forms of headache with the sphenopalatine ganglion (SPG), a facial nerve bundle, but haven't yet found a treatment that works on the SPG long-term. A technology under clinical investigation at Autonomic Technologies, Inc., (Redwood City, CA) is a patient-powered tool for blocking SPG signals at the first sign of a headache. The system involves the permanent implant of a small nerve stimulating device in the upper gum on the side of the head normally affected by headache. The lead tip of the implant connects with the SPG bundle, and when a patient senses the onset of a headache, he or she places a handheld remote controller on the cheek nearest the implant. The resulting signals stimulate the SPG nerves and block the pain-causing neurotransmitters.

3. Needle-Free Diabetes Care

Diabetes self-care is a pain—literally. It brings the constant need to draw blood for glucose testing, the need for daily insulin shots and the heightened risk of infection from all that poking. Continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps are today's best options for automating most of the complicated daily process of blood sugar management – but they don't completely remove the need for skin pricks and shots. But there's new skin in this game. Echo Therapeutics (Philadelphia, PA) is developing technologies that would replace the poke with a patch. The company is working on a transdermal biosensor that reads blood analytes through the skin without drawing blood. The technology involves a handheld electric-toothbrush-like device that removes just enough top-layer skin cells to put the patient's blood chemistry within signal range of a patch-borne biosensor. The sensor collects one reading per minute and sends the data wirelessly to a remote monitor, triggering audible alarms when levels go out of the patient's optimal range and tracking glucose levels over time.

4. Robotic Check-Ups

A pillar of health reform is improving access to the best health care for more people. Technology is a cost-effective and increasingly potent means to connect clinics in the vast and medically underserved rural regions of the United States with big city medical centers and their specialists. Telemedicine is well established as a tool for triage and assessment in emergencies, but new medical robots go one step further—they can now patrol hospital hallways on more routine rounds, checking on patients in different rooms and managing their individual charts and vital signs without direct human intervention. The RP-VITA Remote Presence Robot produced jointly by iRobot Corp. and InTouch Health is the first such autonomous navigation remote-presence robot to receive FDA clearance for hospital use. The device is a mobile cart with a two-way video screen and medical monitoring equipment, programmed to maneuver through the busy halls of a hospital.

5. A Valve Job with Heart

The Sapien transcatheter aortic valve is a life-saving alternative to open-heart surgery for patients who need new a new valve but can't endure the rigors of the operation. Manufactured by Edwards Life Sciences (Irvine, CA), the Sapien has been available in Europe for some time but is only now finding its first use in U.S. heart centers—where it is limited only to the frailest patients thus far. The Sapien valve is guided through the femoral artery by catheter from a small incision near the grown or rib cage. The valve material is made of bovine tissue attached to a stainless-steel stent, which is expanded by inflating a small balloon when correctly placed in the valve space. A simpler procedure that promises dramatically shorter hospitalizations is bound to have a positive effect on the cost of care.

Source: https://www.asme.org

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Scientists improve DNA technology for detecting, treating disease

One of the drawbacks of DNA aptamers - synthetic small molecules that show promise for detecting and treating cancer and other diseases - is they do not bind readily to their targets and are easily digested by enzymes in the body. Now, scientists have found a way to produce DNA aptamers without these disadvantages.

The team - from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) at Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore - describes how they developed and tested the improved DNA technology in the journal Scientific Reports.

IBN Executive Director Prof. Jackie Y. Ying says the team created "a DNA aptamer with strong binding ability and stability with superior efficacy," and:

"We hope to use our DNA aptamers as the platform technology for diagnostics and new drug development."

Aptamers are a special class of synthetic ribonucleic acid (RNA) or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules that are showing promise for clinical use.

These small molecules could be ideal for drug applications because they can be made for highly specific targets - such as proteins, viruses, bacteria and cells.

Drawbacks of current DNA aptamers

Once aptamers are engineered for a specific target, they bind to it and block its activity.

They are the chemical equivalent of antibodies, except, unlike the antibodies currently used in drug development, they do not cause undesirable immune responses and could be easier to mass produce at high quality.

The first aptamer-based drug - an RNA aptamer for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) - was approved in the US in 2004, and several other aptamers are currently being evaluated in clinical trials.

However, no DNA aptamer has yet been approved for clinical use because the ones currently developed do not bind well to molecular targets and are easily digested in the bloodstream by enzymes called nucleases.

In their paper, lead author Dr. Ichiro Hirao, a principal research scientist at IBN, and colleagues describe how they overcame these two problems.

'Unnatural base' and 'mini-hairpin' remove DNA aptamer disadvantages

To overcome the problem of weak binding, the team added a new artificial component - called an "unnatural base" - to a standard DNA aptamer, which typically has four components.

The paper describes how the addition of a fifth unnatural base component to the DNA aptamer strengthened its binding ability by 100 times.

To prevent the aptamer from being easily digested by enzymes, the team added a small piece of DNA that they call a "mini-hairpin DNA."

Dr. Hirao says mini-hairpin DNAs are made of small DNA fragments that form a compact, stem-loop structure, like a hairpin, and this is what makes them stable.

Typically, DNA aptamers do not last longer than an hour in blood at room temperature because they are broken down by nucleases. But the team found the addition of the mini-hairpin DNA could help DNA aptamers survive for days - making them more appealing for drug development.

In their paper, the scientists describe how their modifications improved a DNA aptamer that targets a cell-signaling protein called interferon gamma.

Lab tests showed the improved aptamer survived in human blood at 37 °C after 3 days and "sustainably inhibited the biological activity" of interferon gamma, note the authors.

Dr. Hirao says their modifications show it is possible to generate DNA aptamers with great promise for clinical use: they are potentially more effective in their action, cheaper to produce and have fewer adverse side effects than conventional methods. He concludes:

"The next step of our research is to use the aptamers to detect and deactivate target molecules and cells that cause infectious diseases, such as dengue, malaria and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), as well as cancer."

In December 2015, Medical News Today learned how researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington are developing a way to detect cancer cells using electronic chips coated with RNA aptamers. The team hopes it will lead to a tabletop tool that offers doctors cheaper and faster tests for disease prediction. Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com

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Heart Disease Detection Goes High Tech

Experts review the latest techniques that reveal whether you have heart disease

When former President Bill Clinton was diagnosed with heart disease and underwent a quadruple bypass operation to clear his blocked heart arteries in 2004, some Americans panicked and opted to undergo all sorts of tests to find out if they, too, had heart disease.

This hysteria -- and call to arms -- has been dubbed the "Bill Clinton Effect." More than two years after he underwent surgery, cardiologists now have even better high-tech tests enabling them to diagnose heart disease earlier -- with pinpoint precision. And more tests are being investigated.

"Ten to 15 years ago, industry and academia alike identified cardiovascular disease [CVD] as a disease to be tackled," says Stanley l. Hazen, MD, PhD. Hazen is section head of preventive cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation at The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. "The boon of this research has yet to be materialized, but there are an extensive number of compounds and screening methods in the pike that look promising and attractive."

From blood tests to advances in imaging, here are a few highlights in heart disease detection.

Blood Markers

When you ask your doctor if you have heart disease, he assesses the likelihood based on risk factors. Some key risk factors are age, smoking, diabetes, being male, high blood pressure, and cholesterol. But studies have shown that almost half of the people who suffer coronary events have only two risk factors: being male and over 65. So it is very exciting when new tests come along that can help identify people before they have an event such as a heart attack.

In terms of blood markers, Hazen says that "the mainstay for assessing heart disease risk is low density lipoprotein ['bad'] cholesterol testing". But while we know that LDL plays a major role in determining heart disease, the relationship between severity and the timing of the disease is "incredibly poor. There is much room for improvement," says Hazen.

Checking for C-Reactive Protein

In terms of blood-based screening tests, doctors are increasingly looking at levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), which is an inflammatory marker found in the blood. Several studies have shown that increased concentrations of CRP appear to be associated with increased risk for coronary heart disease, sudden death, and peripheral arterial disease. Inflammation is increasingly being viewed as a major risk factor for heart disease.

"This test is recommended by the American Heart Association and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," Hazen says. "If it's used as a routine screen in intermediate-risk subjects, it's an even stronger predictor of cardiovascular disease risk than LDL," he tells WebMD. While CRP levels are not specific to the heart, "in terms of risk prediction, it's equal to or better than cholesterol," he says. "More and more we will be seeing an increase in the use of CRP as an adjunct to risk stratification."

CT Scanning

And these are some of the reasons that there is so much enthusiasm for the 64-slice computerized tomography (CT) scan. With this test, doctors can determine if there is calcium buildup in the heart arteries. While older multislice CT scans only allowed visualization of smaller parts of the heart, the 64-slice CT lets doctors visualize more. And computer processing yields a three-dimensional image of the arteries. This procedure eliminates the risk and discomfort associated with traditional angiograms, but there are the usual risks associated with exposure to X-radiation.

Magnetic Imaging

Another test for which both White and Fletcher see a bigger role in the future is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the heart. According to Fletcher, MRI is more accurate than CT scanning. Although MRI is more difficult to perform and more expensive than CT scanning, he predicts that it will have an even bigger role in the future in detecting heart disease.

Other tests available to doctors include intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), a catheter-based technique, which provides real-time, high-resolution images of the heart and its arteries. "The images are in four distinct colors to tell what kind of plaque is there," Diethrich says. "We think that it is going to be very important because plaques differ a great deal. Some cause trouble and other plaques do not."

IVUS "is very good and accurate," says Fletcher. He also envisions a growing role for magnetic resonance angiogram (MRA). MRA is a noninvasive imaging test that uses a powerful magnet and radio waves to provide detailed images of the coronary arteries in less than one hour. "It's less invasive than catheterization," he tells WebMD.

Source: http://www.webmd.com

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Brain Cell Mutations Make Us All Unique

It seems there are trees in the brain, and they help make each of us unique. In fact, we are all basically mutants, and according to a new study by Michael Lodato and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School, mutated genes in brain cells proliferate throughout the brain’s development.

Genes directly or indirectly make the brain’s chemicals, as well as the locks that these chemical keys fit. They also help assemble the brain to begin with.

Small genetic differences help explain why each of us humans thinks, acts and feels like nobody else. Connections are forming and unforming when we memorize or forget a tune, fall in love or divorce, and write or read these paragraphs.

The brains of identical twins are a lot more similar than those of nonidentical ones, even aside from experience. Yet each identical twin also has a unique brain; in fact, twins’ brains are different halfway through pregnancy. Why?

One reason is experience. The twins had different positions in the womb and different supplies of hormones and nutrients. And when mom went to that loud rock concert—fetuses do react to and even remember sound—one of the twins may have had her ear closer to the abdominal wall. They have also competed with and influenced each other. The second reason is subtler: chaos. Not the kind in your teenager’s bedroom, the scientific kind—sensitivity to initial conditions—according to which a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan famously causes a storm weeks later in Mexico.

It’s the same in an embryo’s brain. Tiny differences in an early cell division—say, one cell gets slightly different contents—will amplify as cells divide again and again, form nerve cells and arrange themselves in circuits. Chance and chaos limit genetic control. Yet another way twin brains diverge: mutations after the egg and sperm unite. Every time a cell divides, errors occur; radiation and chemicals, even at very low levels, change DNA. And there are “jumping genes”—ones that duplicate themselves in different parts of the genome.

Dr. Lodato and his colleagues reported in Science last October that there are a lot more mutations than we thought. The researchers isolated hundreds of nerve cells from three donated postmortem brains, from unrelated adults.

New techniques make it possible to track the mutation history of a given cell line. Furthermore, most nerve cells stop dividing early—without which experience would not endure. Our brain cells carry their prenatal genetic signatures permanently, which means researchers can study those signatures. The scientists can map an individual nerve cell’s genetic code and see where it differs from its forebears in the brain. So the researchers were able to trace the mutated cells’ ancestry within each of the three people, a kind of family tree of cells inside each brain—as individual as a fingerprint, but far more important.

Since theoretically every cell in our brains (and bodies, except for eggs and sperm) should have identical genes, any differences must have resulted from mutation after the start of pregnancy. In fact, each cell on average had around 1,500 mutations. That’s a minimum. Only some of these affect nerve-cell structure and function, but they guarantee the uniqueness of each brain.

So identical twins begin with identical genes, but soon gain some changed ones. And so do we all, each minuscule mutant planting a family tree of cells within our brains, before we even meet our moms and dads. Upon which they—along with siblings, friends, teachers and lovers—proceed to make each of us even more singular.

Source: http://www.msn.com

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Hospital paid 17K ransom to hackers of its computer network

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The chief executive of a Los Angeles hospital says it paid a ransom in bitcoins equivalent to about $17,000 to hackers who infiltrated and disabled its computer network.

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center CEO Allen Stefanek said in a statement Wednesday that paying the ransom of 40 bitcoins was "the quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems and administrative functions." He says the hospital did it in the interest of restoring normal operations.

Stefanek says the hospital first noticed the malware in its computer system on Feb. 5, and normal operations were restored on Monday, 10 days later.

He said patient care was not affected, and there's no evidence patient data was compromised.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller says the agency is investigating the extortion plot, often called "ransomware," but she couldn't immediately provide further details.

Source: http://www.msn.com

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