Artificial Retinas Made Of This Ultra-Thin Super Material Could Help Millions See Again

There’s a reason researchers call graphene a " super material.” Even though it’s just a single layer of carbon atoms thick, it’s super strong, super flexible, and super light. It also conducts electricity, and is biodegradable. Now an international team of researchers has found a way to use the super material: to create artificial retinas.

ARTIFICIAL RETINAS. The retina is the layer of light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye responsible for converting images into impulses that the brain can interpret. And without a functional one, a person simply can’t see.

Currently, millions of people suffer from retinal diseases that strip them of their vision. To help them see again, researchers have developed artificial retinas. What we’ve got now, though, isn’t exactly ideal — because the implants are rigid and flat, the images they produce are often blurry or distorted. And even though the implants are fragile, they can also somehow damage nearby eye tissue.

Graphene, with all its unique attributes, might be the key to creating a better artificial retina.

GRAPHENE TO THE RESCUE. Using a combination of graphene, molybdenum disulfide (another 2D material), gold, alumina, and silicon nitrate, researchers constructed an artificial retina  better than existing models.

Based on studies in the lab and in animal subjects, the researchers determined that their artificial retina is both bio-compatible and capable of mimicking human eye features. And it better matches the dimensions of a natural retina to boot.

“This is the first demonstration that you can use few-layer graphene and molybdenum disulfide to successfully fabricate an artificial retina,” said the researcher. “Although this research is still in its infancy, it is a very exciting starting point for the use of these materials to restore vision.”

If further studies on the graphene-containing artificial retina goes as the researchers hope, we could eventually add another super power to the super material’s resume: restoring sight to the visually impaired.

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Cancer 'pen' developed that can detect a tumour within ten seconds

A cancer 'pen' that can detect a tumour within ten seconds has been developed - bringing immediate diagnosis to a surgeon's fingertips.

The handheld scanner is more than 96% accurate in distinguishing diseased from healthy tissue in real-time while the patient lies on the operating table.

It will enable the removal all traces of malignant masses, reducing the risk of relapses because cancerous cells were left behind.

The technology is expected to start being tested during actual cancer surgeries as soon as next year.
Most pathology labs require several days to evaluate if tumour cells remain in samples taken during surgery.


Study leader, a chemist, said: "If you talk to cancer patients after surgery one of the first things many will say is 'I hope the surgeon got all the cancer out.

"It's just heartbreaking when that's not the case. But our technology could vastly improve the odds that surgeons really do remove every last trace of cancer during surgery."

The revolutionary MasSpec Pen precisely identifies cancer simply by touch - and is more than 150 times quicker than existing technology.

Co-researcher and head of endocrine surgery  said: "Any time we can offer the patient a more precise surgery, a quicker surgery or a safer surgery, that's something we want to do.

"This technology does all three. It allows us to be much more precise in what tissue we remove and what we leave behind."

Tiny amounts of water - 10 microliters or one-fifth the size of a single drop - extract small molecules called metabolites from a patient's tissue during surgery.

This is then drawn through a flexible tube into a mass spectrometer scanner which anlayses the chemical's looking for cancer.

The disposable device described is easy to operate.

It requires simply holding the pen against the patient's tissue, triggering the automated analysis using a foot pedal and waiting a few seconds for a result.

It means surgeons know at once which tissue to cut out and which to leave alone, making the procedure much safer and effective.


After analysing samples from lung, ovary, thyroid and breast tumours from 253 patients, as well as healthy tissues, the scientists developed a 'molecular profile' that could identify cancers with 96.4% sensitivity, 96.2% specificity and 96.3% accuracy.

The pen was even able to detect cancer in marginal regions between normal and cancerous tissues that presented mixed cellular composition.

Experiments also reliably identified tumours in living mice. Importantly it did not cause any damage to healthy tissues.

Maximising cancer removal is critical to improve patient survival but removing too much healthy tissue can also have profound negative consequences.

For example, breast cancer patients could experience higher risk of painful side effects and nerve damage, in addition to aesthetic impacts.

 Thyroid cancer patients could lose speech ability or the ability to regulate the body's calcium levels in ways that are important for muscle and nerve function.

Other mass spectrometry tools require harsh solvents, pressurised gasses or high voltages.

The MasSpec Pen gathers molecules for analysis using only water. Additionally its tip was 3D printed with a safe and biocompatible material called PDMS.

Each type of cancer produces a unique set of metabolites and other biomarkers that act as fingerprints.
Prof. explained: "Cancer cells have disregulated metabolism as they're growing out of control.

"Because the metabolites in cancer and normal cells are so different we extract and analyse them with the MasSpec Pen to obtain a molecular fingerprint of the tissue.

"What is incredible is that through this simple and gentle chemical process, the MasSpec Pen rapidly provides diagnostic molecular information without causing tissue damage."

When the pen completes the analysis the words "Normal" or "Cancer" automatically appear on a computer screen. For certain cancers, such as lung cancer, the name of a subtype might also appear.

Dr. who led the experiments in the lab, said: "When designing the MasSpec Pen we made sure the tissue remains intact by coming into contact only with water and the plastic tip of the MasSpec Pen during the procedure.
 
"The result is a bio-compatible and automated medical device that we are so excited to translate to the clinic very soon."

The current state-of-the-art method for diagnosing cancers during surgery, called Frozen Section 
Analysis, is slow and sometimes inaccurate.
 
Each sample can take 30 minutes or more to prepare and interpret by a pathologist which increases the risk to the patient of infection and reactions to anaesthesia.

And for some types of cancers, frozen section interpretation can be difficult, yielding unreliable results in as many as 10 to 20% of cases.

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Tiny ear implants spun by silkworms help restore hearing

In a first, scientists have used silkworms to create a tiny silk implant that can enable a person's damaged eardrum to heal and help restore their hearing.     

Chronic Middle Ear Disease and the ensuing perforated eardrums – commonly known as "burst eardrums" – impact millions around the world, reducing hearing and causing complications, including infections, which take the lives of nearly 30,000 people every year.     
The infection can be difficult to contain, resulting in damage to the eardrum and mastoid bone with hearing loss and pain occurring within the ear. Scientists are now closer to restoring hearing to patients with painful damaged eardrums by combining science and silkworms to create a tiny device known as ClearDrum which is similar in appearance and size to a contact lens.     

The technique is the result of exhaustive design, manufacturing, testing and analysis, researchers said.  

The team, led by Marcus Atlas from Ear Science Institute Australia, has created a tiny bio-compatible silk implant on which the patient's own cells grow and flourish resulting in a healed eardrum. Tested over numerous years, the implant shows the ability to perform even better than a person's original eardrum.   

Atlas said that the bio-compatibility, strength and transparency of the implant provides an advantage for the patient that has never been seen before. The reduced complexity and time within surgery provides an even greater advantage and will allow the implant to be used in more cases and by more surgeons in more countries than current solutions.     

The current surgical procedures used for repairing perforated eardrums involves making grafts from the patient's own tissues and using specialised and delicate microsurgery techniques and applying them to the eardrum to close the hole.     

The patient is quite often required to return to surgery for further procedures due to limitations of the current methods. The new process is expected to be less expensive, less invasive and promising quicker healing of the ear drum. 

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Newly-developed spongy polymer can help repair spine

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  A team of researchers has come up with a new treatment to repair the damaged spines using a biodegradable spongy polymer.

When surgically placed in the damaged vertebrae, the polymer graft grows up to be just the right size and shape to fix the spinal column.

Researcher Lichun Lu from Mayo Clinic said that the overall goal of this research is to find ways to treat people with metastatic spinal tumors. The spine is the most common site of skeletal metastases in cancer patients, but unlike current treatments, their approach is less invasive and is inexpensive.

To develop it, Lu and her postdoctoral fellow, Xifeng Liu, sought a material that could be dehydrated down to a size compatible with posterior spinal surgery, and then, once implanted, absorb fluids from the body, expanding to replace the missing vertebrae.

This information is key for determining the optimal size of a spinal implant for use in restorative surgery. The team identified a combination of materials that are bio-compatible in animals and that they believe will work in humans.

Indian researchers develop nanosystem to kill cancer cells

Work by a team of Indian researchers, who have developed a 

novel multi-component magnetic nano system that could image

 and kill cancer cells.




The design of nano system is bridged on grapheme - a carbon 

allotrope, which could specifically target cancer cells, and 

deliver cargo of anti-cancer drugs and imaging agent.

The challenge was to design a multicomponent nano system 

and simultaneously which would be bio-compatible for cancer 

cells.

This multicomponent nano system acts as a stronger cellular 

probe in imaging cancer cells, which is a powerful diagnostic 

tool. It can also be directed to target cancer cells and cancer 

tumour using external magnetic field.