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Researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas are using nanoparticles and MRI to image angiogenesis live in animal models. The new nanoparticles are made of fluorescent superparamagnetic polymeric micelles (FSPPM) with a αvβ3 peptide which, when injected into a tumor and then MRI imaged, light up the vessels on the video screen. Together, the research team relied on nanotechnology and established super paramagnetic micellar nanoprobes (50–70 nm in diameter) with greatly improved MRI sensitivity over conventional small molecular agents. The nanoprobe surface was functionalized with a cyclic peptide that can specifically bind to αvβ3 integrins that are overexpressed on the tumor endothelial cells. The nanoprobes also had a fluorescent moiety used for the validation of targeted delivery to the tumor endothelial cells. Studies in cancer cells validated the increased uptake of nanoprobes compared with non-targeted nanoparticles. In collaboration with Dr Masaya Takahashi and co-workers in the Advanced Imaging Research Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center, the research team employed a three-dimensional high-resolution acquisition method to visualize the accumulation of the micelle nanoprobes in tumors. In preclinical animal tumor models, MR imaging of the targeted contrast probes yielded vascularized network structures in 3D tumor images. The enhanced visualization allowed for a more accurate quantification of tumor angiogenesis. The results showed significant increase of contrast specificity of angiogenic vessels by the targeted nanoprobes over non-targeted micelles. These targeted nanoprobes may provide a useful contrast probe design for the clinical diagnosis of tumor angiogenesis. Link: Noninvasive MR imaging of blood vessel growth in tumors using nanosized contrast agents... Abstract in Experimental Biology and Medicine: In vivo angiogenesis imaging of solid tumors by αvβ3-targeted, dual-modality micellar nanoprobes Image: Wellcome Images...... Michael

Calibra Medical out of Redwood City, CA has received FDA approval to market its Finesse insulin patch-pen. Earlier this year, Bernard Farrell over at his Diabetes Technology Blog had a chance to get a closer look at the fully mechanical device. A snippet: The design itself is slim enough that it should be invisible under most clothing. It contains a reservoir that holds 200 units of insulin. To dispense insulin you simply squeeze the two small buttons on both sides of the Finesse, the unit clicks with each press so you can count the number of units delivered. There's an interlocking mechanism, so both buttons must be pressed before any insulin is bolused, this is designed to avoid accidental dispensing of insulin. It's a bolus-only device, so users will still need shots of long-acting insulin. Read on at Diabetes Technology Blog... Press release: Calibra Gains FDA Clearance to Market Finesse™ Insulin Patch-Pen for Three-Day Use With Novolog®...... Michael

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is an unpleasant condition that usually requires frequent visits with a therapist or a crazy ride on a specialty body spinning system. A cheaper at-home solution is the DizzyFIX device from Clearwater Clinical, which has been shown to achieve very positive results in a new University of Western Ontario study. The DizzyFIX is kind of a magnified simulator of what's going on in the inner ear. You attach it to the tip of a baseball hat, load in a small marble, and guide the marble through the tubes by tilting your head. From the study abstract: Results Patients using the home treatment device had no evidence of nystagmus in posttreatment Dix-Hallpike maneuvers at 1 week in 88% of cases (n = 40). This rate was comparable to standard treatment. There were no significant complications. Conclusion The use of this device enables patients with an established diagnosis of posterior canal BPPV to safely conduct an effective particle repositioning maneuver and achieve success rates similar to those found with the standard Epley maneuver. Abstract in Archives in Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery: Efficacy of a New Home Treatment Device for Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo Product page: DizzyFIX... Michael

BrainLAB has announced the availability of its ExacTrac Infrared Monitoring device, which can be added to radiotherapy setups to track patients' position during treatment. The system can then be used to compensate for patient motion, including periodic movement due to breathing. This motion correction technology will allow doctors to minimize damage to healthy tissue by administering a more precisely targeted dose of radiation. From the press release: Cone Beam CT (CBCT) is a common tool used by many cancer care centers for patient setup; however, it does not track patient position changes that can occur during treatment. The ExacTrac Infrared Monitoring ceiling-mounted device tracks the patient position throughout treatment delivery, giving clinicians more confidence for targeted radiation treatment. A small shift from the initial patient setup can result in damage to normal tissue surrounding the tumor. The Brainlab technology uses infrared tracking to continually monitor the patient's position and check the reference position. ExacTrac Infrared Monitoring can be used during treatment of a wide range of indications, including cranial, head & neck, prostate, lung, liver and spine. Press release: Brainlab Offers Real-Time Monitoring for IGRT... Product page: IGRT for Tumor Motion Management...... Smit

FDA researchers have published a study in Pediatrics that analyzed patient records from child and teen ER visits in 2004 and 2005. The investigators are reporting that 70,000 kids each year go to the ER because of issues caused by medical devices. About a quarter of those injuries were from contact lenses, while the other major contributors were needles, wheelchairs, braces, and obstetric exam tools. The study also looked at the devices most likely to cause hospitalization, and they were found to be mostly invasive devices like ostomy appliances and implanted defibrillators. From the study abstract: Results The total estimated number of pediatric medical device associated adverse events (MDAEs) during the 24-month period was 144799 (95% confidence interval: 113051–183903), involving devices from 13 medical specialties. Contact lenses accounted for most MDAEs (23%), followed by hypodermic needles (8%). The distribution of MDAEs according to medical specialty varied according to age subgroup. The most-prevalent types of injuries included contusions/abrasions, foreign-body intrusions, punctures, lacerations, and infections. The most-frequently affected body parts were the eyeball, pubic region, finger, face, and ear. The majority of pediatric MDAEs involved class II (moderate-risk) devices. The incidence of pediatric MDAEs decreased with increasing age from early to late childhood and then spiked after 10 years of age. More girls than boys were affected at older ages (16–21 years) and more boys than girls at younger ages (≤10 years). Hospitalizations were more likely to involve invasive or implanted devices. Article in Pediatrics: Emergency Department Visits for Medical Device-Associated Adverse Events Among Children Image credit...... Dan Buckland

BBC News Magazine has an interesting interactive article that attempts to demonstrate how chance can make or break a reputation of a hospital or a surgeon in respect to their morbidity and mortality outcomes. In a special calculator, simply by selecting the percentage chance of someone dying, and clicking repeatedly, you can get a recalculated variance in outcome results between hospitals. We get the point, but it's not clear what the practical or political use this story is serving. BBC News Mag: Can chance make you a killer?... Michael

Wolfram|Alpha, the popular data search engine, has recently upgraded its medical capabilities even further with a drug guide that can help patients find out pharmaceutical options for various conditions. Simply by searching for something like "diabetes drug treatment", you will get the categories of drugs prescribed, and related pharma data. More at Wolfram|Alpha blog: Ask Wolfram|Alpha about Medical Drug Treatments... Link: Wolfram|Alpha Flashbacks: WolframAlpha Imports WHO Numbers; Wolfram|Alpha Beefs Up Its Medical Capabilities; Wolfram Alpha and Its Medical Powers... Michael

Berci Meskó over at ScienceRoll points out QuizMD, a service developed by med students for med students to prepare for exams. There are question answer sections, case reviews, links to further information online and a lot more. Berci uses it to stay fresh on his medical knowledge since graduating with an MD himself, and that's a pretty good endorsement as far as we're concerned. It was created to help students help each other succeed, to collectively scratch each others' backs. Education doesn't need to be difficult. Take control and make it yours. It is an entirely student developed and supported venture, independent of association with any university or post-secondary institution. Thank you for your continued contributions and support. Link: QuizMD ScienceRoll: Medical school e-learning... Michael

A team from Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School has been analyzing words used in tweets by American users in an attempt to gauge the public mood around the country. What they discovered was that users on the West Coast seem to be quite a bit jollier than those on the East Coast. It is not clear whether the data was collected during the summer or winter months and accordingly adjusted, for that surely would affect the readings. Researchers were able to infer the mood of each tweet using a psychological word-rating system developed by the National Institute of Mental Health’s Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention. The system ranks words based on how they make people feel. Tweets containing words such as “love,” or triumph,” for example, received high mood scores, whereas messages with words such as “hell,” or “death” earned low marks. Researchers then calculated an hour-by-hour average mood score for users in each state, and geographically represented the data using a density-equalizing map in which each region is scaled to represent its number of tweets as opposed to its land area. Here's a day's worth of tweets and how our mood changes throughout the day: Press release: What's in a tweet?... Michael

HealCam, our free no registration video chat service for people with medical conditions, continues to generate excitement among bloggers, journalists, twitterers, and other people. The site has now been profiled on a Dutch medical magazine Zorgvisie, a popular Croatian blog tehnoklik, as well as on Shiny Shiny. We also thank individual bloggers like Zara Rabinowicz for spreading the word around. The site is also creating a constant buzz on Twitter. In other news, we signed up for a service at GetSatisfaction, to help us manage software bugs. So if you notice a bug, there is a link on the bottom of HealCam to report it. So please help us spread the word around! Think of yourself, your elderly relatives and others, and tell them to visit HealCam.com. Thanks!... Michael

Kevin Stone is an orthopedic surgeon who's been working on developing non-artificial, biological tissue replacement material for joint conditions. Here's his talk from TED 2010: Link @ TED: The bio-future of joint replacement...... Michael

Cambridge Consultants (Cambridge, MA) and XenBio Fluidics (San Diego, CA) just announced a new platform that may bring rapid diagnostic testing to the bedside. Some details from the press release: The new immunoassay platform is based on a novel time-resolved florescence (TRF) label and low-cost portable detection technology, providing the precision, accuracy and sub-pM sensitivity expected of a clinical laboratory in a cost effective near-patient setting, better enabling earlier diagnosis and the detection of a wider range of biomarkers. Cambridge Consultants' platform is based on the combination of a TRF reader and label that achieve high sensitivity by using a temporal, rather than spectral separation of excitation and detection light. At the core of the new platform is an innovative TRF label that offers far greater levels of sensitivity compared to existing gold labels. The new label, when integrated with Cambridge Consultants' sophisticated detection unit, can deliver over four orders of magnitude improved sensitivity compared to gold labels. Using an NT-proBNP assay, Cambridge Consultants has demonstrated that the new platform is capable of detecting the biomarker in concentrations of less than 1pM and under certain conditions as low as 0.01pM. Cambridge Consultants and XenBio's new platform can be applied to a number of substrates, arrays and planar surfaces as well as being capable of being retrofitted to a range of existing lateral flow assays. As a result new tests can quickly be brought to market. Press release: Development opens potential for earlier detection and treatment of major diseases...... Michael

Tan Le, co-founder and president of Emotiv Systems, a company that's bringing novel EEG technology to the consumer market, recently gave a TED talk that included a demonstration of the company's headset. Emotiv is working on bringing its technology to video games and, hopefully, to disabled people for direct interaction with computers and assistive devices. Link @ TED: Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves... Flashback: Telekinetic Video Games...... Michael

Researchers from the University of Buffalo have created a hybrid method of monitoring apoptosis. The technique should help us to understand the programmed cell death process and to perhaps aid in the development of techniques that will allow clinicians to program self annihilation of cancer cells. More from U. of Buffalo press statement: To capture the cellular images, the interdisciplinary UB team of biologists, chemists and physicists, led by Prasad [Paras N. Prasad, PhD, executive director of the UB Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics (ILPB) and SUNY Distinguished Professor in the departments of Chemistry, Physics, Electrical Engineering and Medicine], utilized an advanced biophotonic approach that combines three techniques: a nonlinear, optical imaging system (CARS or Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering), TPEF (two-photon excited fluorescence), which images living tissue and cells at deep penetration and Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching to measure dynamics of proteins. The resulting composite image integrates in one picture the information on all four types of biomolecules, with each type of molecule represented by a different color: proteins in red, RNA in green, DNA in blue and lipids in grey, as shown on the PNAS cover. Multiplex imaging provided new information on the rate at which proteins diffuse through the cell nucleus, the UB scientists say. Before apoptosis was induced, the distribution of proteins was relatively uniform, but once apoptosis develops, nuclear structures disintegrate, the proteins become irregularly distributed and their diffusion rate slows down, says Artem Pliss, PhD, research assistant professor at the ILPB and co-author on the paper. Press release: How Do Cells Die? Biophotonic Tools Reveal Real-Time Dynamics in Living Color... Abstract in PNAS: Biophotonic probing of macromolecular transformations during apoptosis...... Michael

A team of researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center announced yesterday that they have improved the targeting of laser-induced thermal therapy (LITT), an experimental cancer treatment. In LITT, nanoparticles are introduced to the area around a tumor, and then laser treatment is used to heat up the nanoparticles and destroy the cancerous tissue. The Wake Forest researchers improved the treatment by using iron-containing multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), which can be tracked within the patient's body through the use of MRI, thereby allowing more precise delivery of laser treatment and better targeting of neoplastic tissue. From the Wake Forest press release: LITT works by virtue of the fact that certain nanoparticles like MWCNTs can absorb the energy of a laser and then convert it into heat. If the nanoparticles are zapped while within a tumor, they will boil off the energy as heat and kill the cancerous cells. The problem with LITT, however, is that while a tumor may be clearly visible in a medical scan, the particles are not. They cannot be tracked once injected, which could put a patient in danger if the nanoparticles were zapped away from the tumor because the aberrant heating could destroy healthy tissue. Now the team from Wake Forest Baptist has shown for the first time that it is possible to make the particles visible in the MRI scanner to allow imaging and heating at the same time. By loading the MWCNT particles with iron, they become visible in an MRI scanner. Using tissue containing mouse tumors, they showed that these iron-containing MWCNT particles could destroy the tumors when hit with a laser. Link: Researchers Use Nanoparticles as Destructive Beacons to Zap Tumors...... Smit

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will soon begin testing thought-controlled prosthetic arms on human subjects. Although this isn't the first mind-controlled arm we have seen, this is the first one that will directly interface with the brain instead of relying on peripheral nerves to transmit signals from the brain. Micro-arrays will be implanted into the brain that will capture neuronal signals and transmit them to the device. Over the next two years, the device will be tested in five patients while development will continue to focus on adding haptic pressure and touch capabilities and improving the implant lifespan. Wired: Human Trials Next for Darpa's Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm...... Wouter Stomp

The Today Show on NBC highlighted the story of Michael Waldron, a recent high school graduate born with a thumb but no fingers on his right hand. He was one of the first in the US to receive a ProDigits prosthesis and the video below shows him acclimating to it and using it to shake hands at his high school graduation. The ProDigits was approved for use in the US in December, when we wrote about it originally. Product page: Touch Bionics ProDigits... Flashback: ProDigits, World's First Powered Bionic Fingers, Coming to Market... Dan Buckland

Following FDA approval for the SoftView technology from Riverain Medical (Miamisburg, Ohio), Siemens has annouced that it will offer the product on their Yiso platform, or as an upgrade on their other products. SoftView enables the physician to acquire a soft tissue image faster and without any additional radiation dose for the patient. "Patient positioning, radiation dose and inspiration can make the interpretation of a chest X-ray challenging. SoftView suppresses the ribs and clavicles on a chest X-ray to improve the clarity of the image, even when image quality is low," explains Dr. Stefan Palmers, Ghent Hospital, Belgium, who is already working with the technology. Siemens: SoftView technology from Riverain Medical extends digital radiography systems from Siemens... Riverain: SoftView... Flashback: Riverain Medical Receives FDA Clearance for SoftView Enhanced Chest Imaging...... Dan Buckland

Chinese scientists at Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics have shown that graphene, a material which is a sheet of carbon exactly one atom thick, does not allow the growth of bacteria on its surface. This is in contrast to mammalian cells which seem to do just fine when in contact with the graphene. From the article abstract in ACS NANO: In this work, we report the antibacterial activity of two water-dispersible graphene derivatives, graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets. Such graphene-based nanomaterials can effectively inhibit the growth of E. coli bacteria while showing minimal cytotoxicity. We have also demonstrated that macroscopic freestanding GO and rGO paper can be conveniently fabricated from their suspension via simple vacuum filtration. Given the superior antibacterial effect of GO and the fact that GO can be mass-produced and easily processed to make freestanding and flexible paper with low cost, we expect this new carbon nanomaterial may find important environmental and clinical applications. Abstract in ACS NANO: Graphene-Based Antibacterial Paper Press statement by the American Chemical Society: New antibacterial material for bandages, food packaging, shoes ...... Michael

In a press release filed today, a company called PositiveID claims it has developed a breath-based glucometer technology that should be ready for clinical testing by the end of the year. The portable Easy Check Breath Glucose Detection Device would be based on single use cartridges featuring the firm's own reagents. Paint us skeptical, but one day this technology might, just might, shake up the blood prick market for diabetics. The Company believes this device could eliminate a patient's need to prick his or her finger multiple times per day in order to get a blood sugar reading. The Company plans to begin conducting side-by-side comparisons of the handheld device versus the standard "finger stick" earlier than originally anticipated. The compact, portable, battery operated and easy to use design includes an advanced laser optical sensor, a state-of-the-art microprocessor and the Company's patent pending chemical sensors. By loading the reagent capsule into the cartridge chamber and exhaling into the device, the Company hopes that a user will be able to test blood sugar levels without the drop of blood presently required by existing glucose measuring devices. Press release: PositiveID Corporation Completes Design and Launches Development of Handheld, Non-Invasive Easy Check Breath Glucose Detection Device ... Link: PositiveID Corp.... Michael