/ News
Jellyfish-inspired tentacles capture canser
Tiny strands of DNA that float like jellyfish tentacles can grab and hold tumor cells in the bloodstream in a device inspired by nature that may help cancer patients fight the dreaded disease.
The device can be used to both count and sort cancer cells, which is an important indicator of how well chemotherapy or other treatments are working. Doctors need to know whether cancer cells are being knocked out or developing immunity.
"The key is to know which drugs the remaining cells would be most susceptible to," said Jeffrey Karp, an author on the paper published today in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science (PNAS) and co-director of the Center for Regenerative Therapeutics at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "Often these cells in the blood stream are at very low concentrations and it's difficult to isolate them. What you really want to do is collect them and study the biology of the cells and subject them to different kinds of chemo so you know which one is best to use."
Karp said he's been stung by jellyfish before while swimming with his son: "It doesn't do much damage, but it really hurts." The idea for the microchip came one day in the lab while brainstorming with one of his colleagues.
"We became inspired by jellyfish that have these long tentacles that extend far away from their main body," Karp told Discovery News. "Regardless where the food lands, they can capture it."
They took short strands of DNA called aptamers that bind with the targeted cancer cell surface, then copied them hundreds of times using something called rolling circle amplification. By connecting these aptamers, they came up with strands of material tens of microns long, much longer than the cell itself.
One end of the strand is connected to the microchip and the other floats free in the bloodstream. As the cancer cells drift by, the aptamers bind to them no matter where they touch, just like a jellyfish grabbing food, Karp explained.
During experiments, Karp and his team were able to capture 60 percent of the cancer cells floating by, a figure higher than an existing method that uses a tiny magnet that binds to the cancer cell and is then picked up by a magnetized micro-sorter.
In other projects, Karp has used the stickiness of gecko feet, the delicateness of spider webs and the spines of a porcupine to come up with new kinds of human medical devices.
"Often in technology we encounter barriers that appear to be insurmountable," Karp said. "Turning to nature, we can get ideas to think about and help us to think out of the box to new solutions far removed from standard approaches."
Jeffrey Chalmers, professor of bioengineering at Ohio State University, likes the idea.
"The jellyfish approach is interesting and the initial data looks promising," said Chalmers, an expert in cell-sorting technologies. "They did a decent job of selling me on it. I like the approach."
Chalmers said one of the challenges in any kind of cell-sorting is determining the identity of cancer cells. That's because cancer cells are often hard to distinguish from non-cancerous ones since they are both produced in the body. Karp says the next step is to use the device to check for cancer cells in actual human patients.
Source: http://news.discovery.com/tech/jellyfish-tentacles-cancer-121112.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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