It really is amazing how far 3D printing has come. We’ve seen it used to 3D records that actually work and the technology is being considered for printing our first lunar base. In this newest development, the team from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland are working on a way to 3D print cluters of human embryonic cells in a number of different sizes.

Embryonic cell cultures are inherently very fragile, so it is naturally a very delicate process. By being able to print them in three dimensions, these scientists are opening up a whole world of medical possibilities. The stem cells can be cultured for organ transplants, for example. I still think organ donors will continue to be used for the foreseeable future, but further development in this technology could certainly supplement that supply. These manufactured stem cells can also be used to treat a variety of diseases and conditions, all without that pesky ethical controversy.

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Technology is great isn’t it? While most of us don’t think much about the medical innovations around us, luckily many great scientists around the world do. One of the biggest potential life-savers in modern times could come from the research at University of Cape Town in South Africa.

The team has come up with a pill that can wipe out malaria with a single does. While this might not affect many of us in the first world, it is a major killer and could save millions of lives in Africa and other parts of the world. Is this miracle pill ready for the prime time, though? Not yet, unfortunately it still needs to complete a very crucial next step- human testing. According to National Geographic, early tests have been great, but testing on humans could yield very different results. Though animal testing and human testing usually yield similar results, it’s still an important step and process that could take a while.

Unlike conventional malaria treatments, which rely on multiple drugs that malaria can become resistant to, Professor Kelly Chibale and his team created this new pill after eighteen months of trial research. The animal testing has gone great, with no adverse side affects at all.

Hopefully human testing will go as smoothly, with clinical tests expected to start at the end of 2013. The bad news is that any new “miracle drug” often takes years of testing, research and debate before it makes it into the hands of those that desperately need it now. For now all we can do is hope that the drug testing goes smooth, and perhaps within a few years it will be readily available. A cure for malaria would be a major win for the medical world, and one worth celebrating.

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The brain is without a doubt the most complex organ in the human body, and that is why creating a synthetic natural brain is a very difficult task. But it appears like scientists are getting closer and closer to completing the task of making a machine that behaves like a natural brain. Scientists involved in the BrainScaleS project, a collaboration between 15 research institutions, are trying to create hardware which emulates parts of a natural brain.

According to senior researcher Dr. Johannes Schemmel, “Our goal is to create a working system that will be located in Heidelberg, but accessible online to scientists all over the world”.

Their aim is to construct “neuromorphic hardware” or electronic systems that will rely on transistors and microchips to recreate the behavior of synapses. Their first prototype is an 8 inch large wafer consisting of 51 million artificial synapses. Although that sounds big, it represents just a tiny fraction of a working brain.

The completed hardware is expected to be capable of re-creating neurological processes 10,000 times faster than those in a natural biological system. Schemmel says, “That means that if we want to study a behaviour [in the nervous system] that would take a few minutes in the real biology, it will only take us split seconds”.

But the only problem is that hardware is not as flexible as biology. As Schemmel said, “Come new fundamental findings from biologists, we might just have to change our hardware from scratch”. That’s where software is useful as it can be easily re-programmed. But Schemmel says, “Modeling is essential for neuroscience. If we don’t have models to reconstruct the performance of neurones and synapses, we will never understand how the brain works. We can’t just stuff all this into equations, the behaviour of each individual cell is far too complex for that”.

If the project is a success, we could see great developments in the field of robotics, medicine and neurology. And just in case you are wondering, there is less chance for synthetic brain equipped robots to take over the world.

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Science is amazing, it’s always interesting to see the latest advances in the medical field that can benefit our way of life. One such innovation is a special all-in-one catheter used to treat arrhythmia.

Normally, a procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat involves two catheters. One is insert to map the heart tissue, determining the cells that are causing the arrythmia. A second, thinner tube is then inserted and directed toward the aberrant cells, killing them through ablation.

The new single catheter, though, does both jobs. It makes use of stretchable electronics and it fills up, not unlike a balloon, until it reaches the inner walls of the blood vessels. When it makes contact, its sensors read a series of data to determine the irregularly-beating cells. The electrodes next to those sites then blast the cells and ablate them.

“It’s all in one, so it maps and zaps,” said project leader John A. Rogers. The fewer steps involved, the better. They’ve still got some challenges ahead, but the “stretchable” combo-catheter was demonstrated successfully on live animal models.

[GizMag via Nature]

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