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Replies to post #197326 on Avid Bioservices Inc (CDMO)
11/19/14 11:25 AM
11/19/14 11:30 AM
Cheap is a relative term, but with the BOD controlled by investment bankers, it certainly possible, and perhaps even predictable, that their cash out number is lower than the expectation of many longs.
Cheap is a relative term, but with the BOD controlled by investment bankers, it certainly possible, and perhaps even predictable, that their cash out number is lower than the expectation of many longs.
World’s smallest blood monitoring implant tells your smartphone when you’re about to have a heart attack
March 21, 2013
A team of scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed the world’s smallest medical implant to monitor critical chemicals in the blood. The 14mm device measures up to five indicators, including proteins like troponin, that show if and when a heart attack has occurred. Using Bluetooth, the device can then transmit the data to a smartphone for tracking. The device can also track levels of glucose, lactate, and ATP, providing valuable data for physiologic monitoring during activity, or in possible disease conditions like diabetes. As far as tricorders go, this device may be the one you have been waiting for, provided you are on board for the implant.
Outside the body, a battery patch provides the 100 milliwatts of power that the device requires by wireless inductive charging through the skin.(See: How wireless charging works.) Each sensor is coated with an enzyme that reacts with blood-borne chemicals to generate a detectable signal. For patient monitoring, a device like this would quickly become indispensable once introduced. In cancer treatment for example, exact dosing is critical. Numerous blood tests are often required to calibrate the treatment according the to the patient’s particular ability to break down and excrete the drug. Often these parameters change when the disease, or the therapy, directly affects the organs involved in these processes — typically this would mean the liver and the kidneys.
Often in the hours before a heart attack, fatigued or oxygen-starved muscle begins to break down, and fragments of a heart-specific smooth muscle protein, the troponin mentioned above, are dumped into the blood. If this can be detected before disruption of the heart rhythm, or the actual attack, lifesaving preemptive treatment can be initiated sooner. To be fail-safe, this depends on the patient having access to their data. Dependence on the integrity of multiple weak links to the cloud, to the doctor, and back again — as is often the prescribed future care scenario — are unacceptable, particularly when heart attacks might be counted on to occur precisely at those times when those links may not be there. Assuming the battles for patient rights will be won sooner rather than later, the next important choice would be getting the proper ringtone when that fateful troponin call comes. A standard ringtone with universal appeal would let bystanders know what was going on and assistance could, at least in theory, be had.
At the moment the device has a limited number of sensors, but there is no theoretical ceiling on this. Nor is there a limit to the kinds of enzymatic reactions or other detectors that could be used with those sensor channels. In the muscle breakdown scenario, for example, multiple products are in fact continuously generated in a tissue-specific manner which can give valuable information to athletes, and weekend enthusiasts alike. Ions and respiratory gases in the blood at different body locations can also be mapped. When coupled with powerful analysis packages, a device like this could help make the patient the customer once again. For now, the device is limited to the lifetime of the enzymes — typically after a month or two they can be considered expired. For all the patent trolls out there, this may be a good time to pen your imaginary device that includes provisions for rapid, and hopefully painless, deimplantation.
As a final note, it should be observed that the EPFL device is not the only one on the horizon. Tricorder-style blood scanners are just beginning to gain a foothold in the medical community. A new $100 million research fund has just been announced by Blackberry mastermind Mike Lazaridis. The new fund is called Quantum Valley Investments, and is emphasizing all things quantum. Based at the Lazaridis Quantum-Nano headquarters in Ontario, the focus will also include quantum sensors, quantum computing, and perhaps one new tantalization for our collective tricorder imagination — acoustic cell sorting.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/151134-worlds-smallest-blood-monitoring-implant-talks-to-a-smartphone-but-whose
Google is developing cancer and heart attack detector
Oct 28, 2014
Google is aiming to diagnose cancers, impending heart attacks or strokes and other diseases, at a much earlier stage than is currently possible.
The company is working on technology that combines disease-detecting nanoparticles, which would enter a patient's bloodstream via a swallowed pill, with a wrist-worn sensor.
The idea is to identify slight changes in the person's biochemistry that could act as an early warning system.
The work is still at an early stage.
Early diagnosis is the key to treating disease. Many cancers, such as pancreatic, are detected only after they have become untreatable and fatal.
There are marked differences between cancerous and healthy tissues.
Google's ambition is to constantly monitor the blood for the unique traces of cancer, allowing diagnosis long before any physical symptoms appear.
The project is being conducted by the search company's research unit, Google X, which is dedicated to investigating potentially revolutionary innovations.
It marks the firm's latest shift into the medical sector following its work on glucose-measuring contact lenses for patients with diabetes and the acquisition of a start-up that developed a spoon to counteract the tremors caused by Parkinson's disease.
Google has also bought stakes in Calico, an anti-ageing research company, and 23andMe, which offers personal genetic-testing kits.
Nanoparticles
The diagnostic project is being led by Dr Andrew Conrad, a molecular biologist who previously developed a cheap HIV test that has become widely used.
"What we are trying to do is change medicine from reactive and transactional to proactive and preventative," he told the BBC.
"Nanoparticles... give you the ability to explore the body at a molecular and cellular level."
Google is designing a suite of nanoparticles which are intended to match markers for different conditions.
They could be tailored to stick to a cancerous cell or a fragment of cancerous DNA.
Or they could find evidence of fatty plaques about to break free from the lining of blood vessels. These can cause a heart attack or stroke if they stop the flow of blood.
Another set would constantly monitor chemicals in the blood.
High levels of potassium are linked to kidney disease. Google believes it will be possible to construct porous nanoparticles that alter colour as potassium passes through.
"Then [you can] recall those nanoparticles to a single location - because they are magnetic - and that location is the superficial vasculature of the wrist, [where] you can ask them what they saw," said Dr Conrad.
Unattached nanoparticles would move differently in a magnetic field from those clumped around a cancer cell.
In theory, software could then provide a diagnosis by studying their movements.
As part of the project, the researchers have also explored ways of using magnetism to concentrate the nanoparticles temporarily in a single area.
The tech company's ambition is ultimately to create a wristband that would take readings of the nanoparticles via light and radio waves one or more times a day.
Prof Paul Workman, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, told the BBC News website: "In principle this is great. Any newcomers with new ideas are welcome in the field.
"There is an urgent need for this. If we can detect cancer or other diseases earlier, then we can intervene with either lifestyle changes or treatment.
"How much of this proposal is dream versus reality is impossible to tell because it is a fascinating concept that now needs to be converted to practice."
His team at the institute is investigating cancer cells and cancer DNA in the blood as new methods of diagnosis and planning treatment.
He did warn Google that a diagnosis could increase anxiety and lead to unnecessary treatment, so there needed to be "very careful and rigorous analysis" before this type of blood monitoring could be used widely.
The scheme is being made public because Google is now seeking to establish partnerships.
But Dr Conrad sought to play down the idea that his firm wanted to run a search tool for the human body, alongside the one it already offers for the internet.
"We are the inventors of the technology but we have no intentions of commercialising it or monetising it in that way," he said.
"We will license it out and the partners will take it forward to doctors and patients.
"These are not consumer devices. They are prescriptive medical devices, and you know that doctor-patient relationships are pretty privileged and would not involve Google in any way."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29802581
