Top TechTop Tech #140: Genetically Engineered Sepsis Treatment, Artificial Pancreas, 3D Hearts
Important innovations in science and technology
By Paul Worthington
Monday’s Top Tech:
• Genetically engineered spleen-like device treats sepsis
• Artificial pancreas monitors insulin
• MRI heart scans quickly made into physical models
Genetically engineered spleen-like device treats sepsis
A genetically engineered pathogen-capturing protein enables a portable blood-cleansing device.
Scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute developed the device to treat sepsis, and say it mimics our spleen to cleanse pathogens and toxins from blood.
Sepsis can be caused by a wide-ranging variety of pathogens that are not susceptible to antibiotics, including viruses, fungi and parasites. Even when antibiotics are effective at killing invading bacteria, the dead pathogens fragment and release toxins into the patient’s bloodstream.
The blood-cleansing approach can be administered quickly, even without identifying the infectious agent, Harvard says. “The proprietary pathogen-capturing agent FcMBL binds all types of live and dead infectious microbes, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, as well as toxins they release.”
Artificial pancreas monitors insulin
An artificial pancreas provides real-time monitoring of insulin.
UPI reports the system “can vastly improve glucose control in people with type 1 diabetes.”
Researchers at the Study of Diabetes in Sweden say the “artificial beta cell, or closed-loop insulin-delivery system, expands on the concept of sensor-responsive insulin delivery… to autonomously and continually increase and decrease the subcutaneous delivery of insulin on the basis of real-time sensor glucose levels.”
MRI heart scans quickly made into physical models
MRI scans of a patient’s heart can yield tangible, physical model in a matter of hours.
MIT News reports researchers at CSAIL and Boston Children’s Hospital developed the system to “provide a more intuitive way for surgeons to assess and prepare for the anatomical idiosyncrasies of individual patients.”
The cross-section scans are run through an image-segmentation algorithm augmented with a model of the object to be segmented. Then further segmentation by human experts further speeds the development of a useful model for 3D printing, which takes a couple of hours.
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