Medicine - Page 2

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) have designed a soft robotic "hand" made from liquid crystals (LCs) and graphene, that could be used to design future surgical robots. 

One of the issues that need to be addressed before such robots can be used in operating rooms is to figure out how to precisely control and move these deformable robots. Also, many current soft robots contain metals, which means that their use in water-rich environments—like the human body—is rather limited.

iGii, formerly Integrated Graphene, has announced it has raised £8.8 million (over USD$11.7 million) in new funding to accelerate growth. iGii will use the funds to accelerate customer projects, increase its manufacturing capacity, and deepen its research and development to explore further applications of its patented Gii material. iGii plans to expand its facilities and continue creating highly skilled local jobs.

The funding round was led by a £4 million injection from the Scottish National Investment Bank, with a further £4.8 million coming from existing iGii shareholders Archangel Investors and Par Equity, both of which first invested in the business in 2020.

Archer Materials, a semiconductor company advancing the quantum technology and medical diagnostics industries, has fabricated one of its Biochip graphene field effect transistor (gFET) designs through a six-inch whole wafer run by its foundry partner in Spain, Graphenea.

Archer had sent the Biochip gFET design to Graphenea for fabrication through a whole wafer run in Dec 20231. The gFETs are designed with structures suitable for liquid multiplexing, with advances in chip design features, including in gating design and materials, to address technological challenges in maintaining graphene device stability from chip-to-chip.

Researchers at Spain's IMDEA Materials Institute, Rey Juan Carlos University and Valladolid University have developed a new spray coating to improve the antiviral efficacy of personal protective equipment, notably face masks.   

The team's system is based on nanoplatelets of graphene oxide (GO) spray coated via a simple one-step procedure over a poly(lactic acid) textile fabric, allowing a homogeneous coating. The incorporation of GO does not affect the textile structure nor its air permeability, while it increases its water contact angle, potentially preventing droplet trespassing. 

Tachmed, a UK-based developer of at-home digital healthcare solutions, has teamed up with experts in infection control at St George’s, University of London, to help accelerate the development of a new diagnostic platform for a range of health conditions, using graphene biosensor technology. 

During the four-month collaboration, funded by an Innovate UK Accelerated Knowledge Transfer grant, Dr. Henry Staines, senior lecturer in global health at the Institute for Infection & Immunity at St George’s, will provide critical knowledge exchange. This is expected to boost development of the technology by optimizing Tachmed’s biosensor, which is required to confirm if a pathogen is present or not within a patient sample.

A team from the National Hospital for Paraplegics (SESCAM), in collaboration with the Materials Science Institute of Madrid (ICMM-CSIC), has shown how new cell culture devices based on graphene oxide maintain the anti-inflammatory function of myeloid suppressor cells (MDSCs) once isolated from the donor's body. This function could be crucial for advancing cellular therapy beneficial to people with multiple sclerosis. 

"To exert their inflammation-controlling function in diseases such as multiple sclerosis, myeloid suppressor cells must maintain a very immature state. However, when extracted from the bone marrow and cultured in the laboratory, they begin to mature, losing their immunosuppressive activity, rendering them unsuitable for potential cellular therapy for patients with this type of neurodegenerative disease," explains Diego Clemente, a researcher at the National Hospital for Paraplegics and one of the lead authors of the study.

Graphene Trace, a UK-based startup that aims to use sensors to eradicate the problem of pressure ulcers, has been awarded a £300,000 grant by Innovate UK.

The startup believes its proprietary sensor technology for wheelchair users and hospital inpatients could reduce pressure ulcer onset by up to 95%. CEO Scott Dean said the grant will fund the creation of a prototype for its pressure ulcer prevention technology and bring it a step closer to going to market.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have successfully built a tissue-like bioelectronic mesh system integrated with an array of graphene sensors that can simultaneously measure both the electrical signal and the physical movement of cells in lab-grown human cardiac tissue.

A bioelectronic mesh, studded with graphene sensors (red), can measure the electrical signal and movement of cardiac tissue (purple and green) at the same time. Image credit: UMass Amherst
 

The tissue-like mesh can grow along with the cardiac cells, allowing researchers to observe how the heart’s mechanical and electrical functions change during the developmental process. The new device can be extremely useful for those studying cardiac disease as well as those studying the potentially toxic side-effects of many common drug therapies.

Archer Materials has designed a miniaturized version of its Biochip graphene field effect transistor ("gFET") chip for fabrication at a commercial foundry.

The Archer Biochip contains a sensing region of which the gFET is the core component. Each gFET chip contains multiple gFETs, each of which is a transistor, which acts as a sensor. Archer has miniaturized the total chip size by redesigning the layout of the circuits creating these gFET transistors. The new miniaturized design has been sent to a foundry partner for a whole-wafer fabrication of reduced size gFET chips, which Archer intends to integrate with other parts of the Biochip technology.

Researchers at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) will collaborate with ProMake, a material science and diagnostic company, as part of Innovate UK's Accelerated Knowledge Transfer Scheme. The new project will investigate how graphene technology could be utilized to rapidly detect infection and act as the basis for new medical diagnostics.

ProMake has developed a novel device prototype, the 'BioPod', a hand-held point-of-care diagnostic containing the graphene lab-on-a-chip (LOC) electrode. The LOC uses functionalized graphene, a super-strong and thin material laced with specific receptors, to detect a wide range of pathogens. The aim is to use the BioPod in the same way as lateral flow tests (LFTs), to test for COVID-19 and other pathogens. However, unlike LFTs, which provide quick results but with less accuracy than tests processed in the lab, the BioPod's advanced technology has the potential to be more accurate and easier to interpret.