05 Sci-Tech

Printed nanoparticle sensors could enable personalised healthcare – Professional Engineering
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Personalised healthcare could transform medicine. By tracking and measuring patients’ conditions, doctors could deliver the precise combination of nutrients and medications they need, stabilising and improving conditions.

To make that possible, healthcare professionals need a way to continuously monitor certain biomarkers. Wearable and implantable sensors offer a way to do that – but until now, scaling up production has been a challenge.

A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology hope to change that with a new technique for inkjet printing arrays of special nanoparticles, which could be used in mass production of long-lasting wearable sweat sensors. These could monitor biomarkers such as vitamins, hormones and medications in real time, allowing patients and physicians to track changes.

Wearable biosensors that incorporate the new nanoparticles have already been used to monitor metabolites in patients suffering from long Covid, and the levels of chemotherapy drugs in cancer patients.

“These are just two examples of what is possible,” said Professor Wei Gao, corresponding author of a paper describing the new technique. “There are many chronic conditions… that these sensors now give us the possibility to monitor continuously and non-invasively.”

Battery breakthrough: Liquid to solid electrolyte to boost cell output – Interesting Engineering
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Battery breakthrough: Liquid to solid electrolyte to boost cell output  Interesting Engineering

Scientists identify neurons in mice that, once activated, can change body’s metabolic rate, induce hibernation-like state– www.sciencedaily.com
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A team led by researchers at Georgia State University has identified a novel group of neurons controlling the brain-heart-gut axis which can be activated to induce a hypometabolic state that resembles hibernation. The discovery could have wide-ranging impacts for scientific fields ranging from obesity to cardiometabolic health, and even space travel.

The new study is published in the journal Nature Metabolism.

Lead author Eric Krause is a professor of neuroscience, a Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Distinguished Investigator at Georgia State University and a core member of the Center for Neuroinflammation and Cardiometabolic Disease (CNCD). Krause worked with researchers from the University of Florida and the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

“We identified this population of neurons located near the base of the skull that relay the sensation of mechanical stretch exerted on the gut and heart to the brain. When these neurons are activated, they seem to recreate the sensation of feeling full or having increased blood pressure,” Krause said. “We found that activating these neurons suppresses eating and lowers blood pressure, heart rate and whole-body metabolism.”

During the research, the team discovered that simultaneous, recurrent firing of these neurons in mice produces a torpor-like state, similar to that of animals in hibernation, characterized by reductions in cardiac output, body temperature and energy expenditure.

“We found that repeated excitation of the neurons decreased body mass and produced a hypometabolic state without inducing anxiety-like behaviors that are often observed with chronic stress,” Krause said. “This is changing what we know about body-to-brain communication and how profoundly it affects physiology and behavior.”