A wonderful achievement in the treatment of diabetes. Researchers have discovered a transparent gel that contains genetically modified light-sensitive cells, that could one day be used to treat disease and monitor toxins in people.
 |
| Cyborg gel |
"Light is a great tool to interface with biological systems, but there is a fundamental problem. Its gets scattered when it hits tissue, and at depths much thinner than our skin," says lead author Myunghwan Choi of Harvard Medical School in Boston. Choi and his colleagues designed an implantable gel that could get around this, by guiding light under the mouse's skin. To control diabetes, the team shown light into mouse and at the implanted gel using a fibre optic cable attached to its head. The light triggered cells in the gel produced a compound that stimulated the secretion of insulin and stabilised blood glucose levels. The team also proved they can monitor cadmium poisoning. Polymer hydrogels are widely used use a cell scafflods for biomedical applications. Even though the biochemical and biophysical properties of hydrogels have been investigated extensively, little attention has been paid to their potential functionalities until now.
 |
| Schematic of a lighting guiding hydro-gel encapsulating cells for in vivo sensing and therapy |
No comments:
Post a Comment
If anyone has any other questions or requests for future posts,how to posts, you can ask me in comments or email me. Please don't feel shy at all!
I'm certainly not an expert, but I'll try my hardest to explain what I do know and research what I don't know. I would love to hear your thoughts! Be sure to check back again. I would certainly reply to your comments :)