Technabob » cancer

Crab-like Robot Removes Stomach Cancer, Doesn’t Crawl Sideways

Conner Flynn — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:00:04 +0000

Researchers from Singapore have created a small robot designed to remove stomach cancer in its early stages. Ironically, this tiny robot looks like a crab, since it uses a pincer and a hook to do the job. A robot that fights cancer, that looks like a crab, which is the zodiac sign of Cancer. This is some weird and wonderful stuff.

The robot is mounted on an endoscope which gets to the stomach via the patient’s mouth. The pincer grabs the tissue to be removed, and the hook can cut the tissue and cauterize it to stop the bleeding. That doesn’t sound like fun at all, but at least the robot doesn’t leave an external scar, so that’s a plus. Your surgeon would be watching through the little camera in the endoscope, while he controls the robot inside you.

This is a stomach crab gnawing away at your cancer. Inside of you. The future is (almost) here people. It will be at least three years until it is commercially in use.

[via medgadget]

Docs Successfully Transplant Synthetic Trachea Made with Patient’s Stem Cells

Shane McGlaun — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:53:47 +0000

Unless you have good reason to know what a trachea is, it might be new word for you. The trachea is the part of the human body most often referred to as the windpipe. A 36-year-old man has become the first person to successfully have a trachea transplant using a synthetic trachea grown from a synthetic scaffold seeded with his own stem cells.

The patient had late stage cancer in his trachea with a tumor that continued to grow. There was no suitable donor trachea available so the docs at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Stockholm, by Professor Paolo Macchiarini, of Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet, and colleagues grew and implanted the world’s first artificial trachea for the patient. The cool part is that since the artificial trachea was made from his own cells there was no rejection and no immunosuppressive drugs were needed.

The synthetic scaffold was seeded with the donor stem cells and then grown inside a bio-reactor for two days before being implanted into the patient. So far, there have been no complications after the surgery. The team also thinks that this procedure would be particularly important in the care of children since donor tracheas for kids are rare.

[via ScienceDaily]

Experiment Reveals Gray Hair Means Damaged Dna – So Baldness Means Lack of Dna?

Lambert Varias — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:30:42 +0000

Can mental or emotional stress damage our DNA? An experiment has shown that the presence of gray hair means that the melanocyte stem cells in hair follicles – that ones that become melanocytes that give color to hair - have badly damaged DNA. In response, our body forces these DNA damaged stem cells into early maturity. No melanocyte stem cells means no melanoctyes, and no melanocytes means gray hair.

The experiment was conducted by dermatologist Emi Nishimura in 2004. She exposed mice (their hair also grays with age) to genotoxic stressors – things that can damage our DNA – such as chemotherapy drugs and x-rays. The hair of the mice turned gray, and as Nishimura said, “the stressed mice’s gray hairs and the cell populations in their follicles were indistinguishable from those of elderly mice, suggesting that genotoxic stress might drive natural graying as well.”

So what does all of this mean? Oncologist David Fisher says that while it’s very strong evidence that the things we encounter everyday – radiation from the sun, household chemicals, perhaps even the medicine we take – can all damage us at a genetic level, the experiment doesn’t prove that emotional stress can damage our DNA or induce premature maturation of our cells.

More importantly, the experiment shows that to some extent our body is capable of protecting itself from DNA-damaged cells by accelerating their aging. Fisher thinks that the experiment is a good starting point to find ways for our body to do the same to cancer cells – which are also DNA-damaged cells.

[via Science]