Biomedical Engineering News » Bio News

Tekmira to Develop RNAi Therapeutic Against Ebola Virus

Nima Heydarian — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:00:49 +0000

Tekmira pharmaceutical specializes in the advancement of therapeutic agents in the field of gene silencing, known as RNA interference (RNAi).

Tekmira has received a $150 million contract to develop RNAi Therapeutic against Ebula virus. Out of this money $34.7 million of it is disbursed during the initial phase over the next three years. “This work builds on our recently published research, where we reported that Ebola SNALP could confer complete protection to nonhuman primates from a lethal dose of Ebola virus,” Mark J. Murray, Ph.D., Tekmira’s president and CEO.

This whole contract is funded by Transformational Medical Technologies (TMT) program. This program was designed by The Department of Defense in 2006 to better prepare and protect the warfighter and the nation from emerging, genetically engineered, and unknown biothreat agents.

You can read more about this story on GenEngNews.

Littman Electronic Stethoscopes

Nima Heydarian — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 02:52:56 +0000

Stethoscopes have been used by doctors since long ago to diagnose different ailments and body disorders. Until recently, doctors used acoustic stethoscopes to examine patients.

A Littman electronic stethoscope is bundled with a lot of advanced features. This electronic stethoscope receives acoustic waves from the body, and converts them into electrical signals.

Read the whole article here.

Drug Delivery Companies

Nima Heydarian — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:44:23 +0000

Drug delivery is the method or process of administering a pharmaceutical compound to achieve a therapeutic effect in humans or animals. Here are some of the largest drug delivery companies:

Apotex
Meliorum Technologies, Inc.
Epigenesis Pharmaceuticals
Incara Pharmaceuticals

In future posts I will go more in depth about each of the above four companies.

The Equipment Review

Nima Heydarian — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:49:02 +0000

Today I was browsing biomedical news and resources around the web and came across a website that I thought is worth letting you guys know about.

The website (ebme.co.uk) is a forum for medical and clinical biomedical equipment reviews. The reviews are made by members and users. It is a great website to bookmark.

GE Healthcare To Facilitate Cardiovascular Imaging

Nima Heydarian — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:22:01 +0000

GE Healthcare and LightLab Imaging Inc.(Westford, MA), a market leader in optical imaging, have announced a collaboration that enables improved workflow between GE Healthcare’s Innova cardiovascular X-ray system and LightLab’s C7-XR optical coherence tomography (OCT) system. Both the C7-XR and Innova systems were featured last week at the annual meeting of EuroPCR, the official congress of the European Association for Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI) in Barcelona, Spain.

Read the entire story here.

Instant Immunity With New Vaccine

Nima Heydarian — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:11:30 +0000

A new method of vaccination has been developed by US researchers that provides instant immunity. Currently vaccines can take days or weeks to take effect. The new method can deliver protection against the disease almost instantly by targeting the active part of the virus.

Currently this method has only been tested on mice affected by melanoma or colon cancer.

You can read the full story here.

Transistors Used To Detect STDs

Nima Heydarian — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:47:13 +0000

Researchers at Universidad Rovira i Virgili have created a biosensor, an electrical and biological device, which is able to selectively detect the Candida albicans yeast in very small quantities.

Candida albicans is a diploid fungus (a form of yeast), which is capable of sexual reproduction but not of meiosis, and a causal agent of opportunistic oral and genital infections in humans.

“The technique uses field-effect transistors (electronic devices that contain an electrode source and a draining electrode connected to a transducer) based on carbon nanotubes and with Candida albicans-specific antibodies”, Raquel A. Villamizar, lead author of the study says.

Read the entire story here.

Autonomous Breast Biopsy Robot

Nima Heydarian — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:55:26 +0000

Researchers at Duke University biomedical engineering department have developed a laboratory robot that can locate the earliest traces of a mass in simulated breast tissue and reach that mass with a biopsy needle.

The robot can move in three axis right now. Their next goal is developing a robot that can move in 6 axis.

To read the entire story click here.

Breast biopsy is a surgical procedure which all or part of lump is removed and tested for maligancy.

Best Biomedical Engineering School

Nima Heydarian — Sun, 03 May 2009 04:57:12 +0000

U.S News publishes rankings for universities and their different programs. Following are the top 10 ranked biomedical engineering schools:

Johns Hopkins
Georgia Tech
University of California – San Diego
Duke University
MIT
University of Washington
Rice University
University of Pennsylvania
Boston University
Stanford University

You can read more about the rankings here.

New Imaging Process Will Reduce Breast Cancer Resurgery Rates

Nima Heydarian — Sat, 02 May 2009 12:57:18 +0000

Currently surgeons have to operate multiple times for removing breast cancer tumors about 40% of the time. Researchers at Duke University have invented a unique optical imaging technique that enables surgeons to review tumor-margin status during surgery and reduce the current re-surgery rates.

Read the entire story here.