AIMBE
Fellowbook News
AIMBE Fellowbook collects news stories highlighting the members of the AIMBE College of Fellows. Read the latest stories, jump to the College Directory, or search below to find the newest research, awards, announcements and more for the leaders of the medical and biological engineering community.
Hybrid Microscope Creates Digital Biopsies
Rohit Bhargava | Via Lab Manager | April 7, 2020Bioengineers at the University of Illinois funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) have combined standard microscopy, infrared light, and artificial intelligence (AI) to assemble digital biopsies that identify important molecular characteristics of cancer biopsy samples without dyes or labels. The standard for cancer biopsies is treating the tissue to be […]
UArizona professor submits designs for 3 low-cost ventilator prototypes to DOD
Marvin Slepian | Via KGUN9 | April 6, 2020The University of Arizona continues to contribute to the fight against COVID-19 with low-cost ventilator prototypes. The team submitted three designs to the Department of Defense one using something nearly everyone has lying around, a basketball. Director Uarizona center accelerated biomedical innovation Marvin Slepian, MD said “For the more seriously ill patient we needed to… […]
‘Smart toilet’ monitors for signs of disease
Sam Gambhir | Via Stanford University | April 6, 2020A disease-detecting “precision health” toilet can sense multiple signs of illness through automated urine and stool analysis, a new Stanford study reports. There’s a new disease-detecting technology in the lab of Sanjiv “Sam” Gambhir, MD PhD, and its No. 1 source of data is number one. And number two. It’s a smart toilet. But not […]
The heartbeats from space
Jonathan Himmelfarb | Via University of Washington | April 6, 2020Heart tissues returned to UW researchers after a month at the International Space Station Engineered heart muscle tissues, contained inside a chip smaller than a cellphone, took a “splashdown” near Long Beach, California, on April 6 after its launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in a SpaceX CRS-20 rocket a month prior. Mechanical engineering […]
Racial Profiling Is a Public Health and Health Disparities Issue
Cato Laurencin | Via Springer Link | April 6, 2020Racial profiling is a public health and health disparities issue through its disparate and adverse health impact on those targeted by this practice, as well as members of their communities. We discuss six ways police profiling and racial discrimination adversely impact Black American health. We identify four direct and two indirect ways. Four direct ways […]
Spectrally Combined Encoding for Profiling Heterogeneous Circulating Tumor Cells Using a Multifunctional Nanosphere-Mediated Microfluidic Platform
Dai-Wen Pang | Via Wiley Online Library | April 4, 2020A spectrally combined encoding strategy was proposed for multiplex biomarker profiling of heterogeneous circulating tumor cells (CTCs) using a multifunctional nanosphere-mediated microfluidic platform. Different cellular biomarkers simultaneously encoded with both magnetic tags and distinct optical signatures, enabled efficient isolation and in situ on-chip spectrally combined encoding of heterogeneous CTCs at single-cell resolution… Continue reading.
Cell-free Biotechnology Could Help Accelerate COVID-19 Therapeutics
Michael Jewett | Via Northwestern University | April 2, 2020When it comes to fighting a fast-spreading pandemic, speed is critical. Researchers at Northwestern Engineering and Cornell University have developed a new platform that could produce new therapies more than 10 times faster than current methods. The secret behind the platform’s unmatched speed is an unlikely tool: bacteria. After taking the molecular machinery out of […]
MIT initiates mass manufacture of disposable face shields for Covid-19 response
Elazer Edelman | Via MIT | April 1, 2020The shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) available to health care professionals has become increasingly problematic as Covid-19 cases continue to surge. The sheer volume of PPE needed to keep doctors, nurses, and their patients safe in this crisis is daunting — for example, tens of millions of disposable face shields will be needed nationwide […]
New sensors could offer early detection of lung tumors
Sangeeta Bhatia | Via MIT | April 1, 2020Study shows that a simple urine test can reveal the presence of lung cancer in mice. People who are at high risk of developing lung cancer, such as heavy smokers, are routinely screened with computed tomography (CT), which can detect tumors in the lungs. However, this test has an extremely high rate of false positives, […]
Solving the Ventilator Shortage with Windshield Wiper Parts
Thomas Milner | Via The University of Texas at Austin | April 1, 2020Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin are building a new type of ventilator made of cheap, widely available materials to help fill the demand created by the spread of COVID-19 for these critical devices that help patients breathe. Ventilators become necessary when patients can’t breathe on their own, physically pumping oxygen into their […]
Artificial intelligence helps researchers find new antibiotics
James Collins | Via Science Board | March 31, 2020To address antibiotic resistance, researchers have developed a machine-learning approach that can search millions of known chemicals to find potential new antimicrobial compounds. This research, published in Cell on February 20, uncovered several promising antibiotic candidates that will move into clinical testing. After training a deep neural network to identify potential antibiotics that kill bacteria […]
How cancer cells stiff-arm normal environmental cues to consume energy
Gaudenz Danuse | Via Science Daily | March 31, 2020Using human lung cancer cells, UT Southwestern researchers have uncovered how cells in general modulate their energy consumption based on their surroundings and, furthermore, how cancer cells override those cues to maximize energy use. The findings, published this week in Nature, extend a report from last year in which the same group discovered that the […]
FDA Grants De Novo Clearance to Bluegrass Vascular Technologies for the Surfacer® Inside-Out® Access Catheter System
Gabriele Niederauer | Via Bluegrass Vascular Technologies | March 31, 2020Bluegrass Vascular Technologies (Bluegrass Vascular), a private medical technology company focused on innovating lifesaving devices and methods for vascular access procedures, announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted a De Novo classification order for its Surfacer® Inside-Out® Access Catheter System. The Surfacer System is intended to obtain central venous access […]
Automated CT biomarkers predict cardiovascular events and mortality better than current practice
Ronald Summers | Via NIH | March 31, 2020Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the University of Wisconsin have demonstrated that using artificial intelligence to analyze CT scans can produce more accurate risk assessment for major cardiovascular events than current, standard methods such as the Framingham risk score (FRS) and body-mass index (BMI). More than 80 million body CT scans are […]
Here’s How Nanoparticles Could Help Us Get Closer to a Treatment for COVID-19
Thomas Webster | Via Northeastern University | March 31, 2020There is no vaccine or specific treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. Since the outbreak began in late 2019, researchers have been racing to learn more about SARS-CoV-2, which is a strain from a family of viruses known as coronavirus for their crown-like shape. Northeastern […]
New Imaging Technique Enables the Study of 3D Printed Brain Tumors
Xavier Intes | Via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | March 31, 2020Glioblastomas are complex, fast-growing malignant brain tumors that are made up of various types of cells. Even with aggressive treatment — which often includes surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy — glioblastomas are difficult to treat, leading to an average survival of 11-15 months. In research published today in Science Advances, Xavier Intes, a professor of biomedical […]
Clean Water Should Be a Right, Not a Privilege. These Entrepreneurs Are Working to Make It So.
Dean Kamen | Via Singularity Hub | March 31, 2020Today, 785 million people lack access to clean drinking water. Waterborne diseases are the number one killer on Earth, claiming 3.4 million lives a year, most of them children. And by 2025, according to the UN, half the globe will be water stressed. Yet climate change, our rapidly ballooning population, and consistently poor resource management […]
CHOP Study Demonstrates How to Collect True Impact Incidents from Head Impact Sensors in Youth Sports
Kristy Arbogast | Via WFMZ-TV 69 News | March 31, 2020An increased awareness of concussion risks in young athletes has prompted researchers to use a variety of head impact sensors to measure frequency and severity of impacts during sports. A new study from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) shows these head sensors can record a large number of false positive impacts during real game play. […]