Patiënten met longkanker hebben een grotere overlevingskans door geïndividualiseerde therapie. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van Joline Lind van het VUmc.
Recent onderzoek heeft geleid tot het ontwikkelen van nieuwe doelgerichte therapieën. De belangrijkste voor longkanker zijn de epidermale groeifactorreceptor (EGFR) remmers en de angiogeneseremmers.
De therapieën bleken effectief, maar niet bij alle patiënten. Lind zocht daarom ook naar patiënt- of tumoreigenschappen die voorspellen welke patiënten geholpen kunnen worden met welke middelen.
Source: http://www.nu.nl/gezondheid/2769641/grotere-overlevingskans-longkanker.html
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Can you build a human body?
Will we ever grow replacement hands?
It might seem unbelievable, but researchers can grow organs in the laboratory. There are patients walking around with body parts which have been designed and built by doctors out of a patient's own cells. Dr Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, US, has made breakthroughs in building bladders and urethras.
He breaks tissue-building into four levels of complexity.
Of course growing a hand is even more challenging than anything being tried in laboratories so far. Will it ever be possible? "You never say never, but certainly it's something I will most likely not see in my lifetime," Dr Atala concluded.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16679010
Date: 13-03-2012
Is the Six-Million-Dollar Man possible?
Science fiction is littered with the theme of upgrading the human body with machinery like in the 1970s classic TV series The Six Million Dollar Man.
Meanwhile, as we have been discovering in the Bionic Bodies series, bionics are having a transformative role in the real world. Artificial hearts implanted into the chest can keep patients alive until a transplant becomes available. Cochlear implants have restored hearing to people who were once deaf. Bionic eyes are giving sight to the blind and a range of hands, arms and legs are restoring lost movement.
Timescales
Current bionic body part replacements can imitate human function, but considerable technological developments will be necessary before entering an era of enhancement. Dr Anders Sandberg, from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, told the BBC: "I do think it is possible to reconstruct a body quite easily and get into a six-million-dollar man situation." For the next 10 years, he thinks the field will be at the level of "pretty nice prosthetics", but would then start to be "significantly better" than the real thing. He said: "I think mid-century, I would be rather surprised if there wasn't a lot of implants and enhancements around."
The Japanese company Cyberdyne has already developed a suit called Hal. It can help people who are no longer able to walk to regain their mobility by picking up electrical signals from the nerves which used to tell limbs to move and converting them into instructions for the suit. The other option for Prof Sharkey is devices which can be controlled by thought, but which are not part of the human body.
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16632764
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17153052
Date: 05-Mar-2012
Can you build a human body?
Technology has always strived to match the incredible sophistication of the human body. Now electronics and hi-tech materials are replacing whole limbs and organs in a merger of machine and man.
Later this year a team of researchers will try out the first bionic eye implant in the UK hoping to help a blind patient see for the first time. It is one of the extraordinary medical breakthroughs in the field, which are extending life by years and providing near-natural movement for those who have lost limbs.
Over the coming weeks, BBC news will explore the field of bionics in a series of features. We start with a selection of the latest scientific developments.
The Bionic Bodies series on the BBC News website will be looking at how bionics can transform people's lives. We will meet a woman deciding whether to have her hand cut off for a bionic replacement and analyse the potential to take the technology even further, enhancing the body to superhuman levels. The series continues on Wednesday with a look at some of the earliest prosthetics from ancient Egypt.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17235058
He breaks tissue-building into four levels of complexity.
- Flat structures, such as the skin, are the simplest to engineer as they are generally made up of just the one type of cell.
- Tubes, such as blood vessels and urethras, which have two types of cells and act as a conduit.
- Hollow non-tubular organs like the bladder and the stomach, which have more complex structures and functions.
- Solid organs, such as the kidney, heart and liver, are the most complex to engineer. They are exponentially more complex, have many different cell types, and more challenges in the blood supply.
Of course growing a hand is even more challenging than anything being tried in laboratories so far. Will it ever be possible? "You never say never, but certainly it's something I will most likely not see in my lifetime," Dr Atala concluded.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16679010
Date: 13-03-2012
Is the Six-Million-Dollar Man possible?
Science fiction is littered with the theme of upgrading the human body with machinery like in the 1970s classic TV series The Six Million Dollar Man.
Timescales
Current bionic body part replacements can imitate human function, but considerable technological developments will be necessary before entering an era of enhancement. Dr Anders Sandberg, from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, told the BBC: "I do think it is possible to reconstruct a body quite easily and get into a six-million-dollar man situation." For the next 10 years, he thinks the field will be at the level of "pretty nice prosthetics", but would then start to be "significantly better" than the real thing. He said: "I think mid-century, I would be rather surprised if there wasn't a lot of implants and enhancements around."
Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16632764
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17153052
Date: 05-Mar-2012
Can you build a human body?
Technology has always strived to match the incredible sophistication of the human body. Now electronics and hi-tech materials are replacing whole limbs and organs in a merger of machine and man.
Later this year a team of researchers will try out the first bionic eye implant in the UK hoping to help a blind patient see for the first time. It is one of the extraordinary medical breakthroughs in the field, which are extending life by years and providing near-natural movement for those who have lost limbs.
Over the coming weeks, BBC news will explore the field of bionics in a series of features. We start with a selection of the latest scientific developments.
The Bionic Bodies series on the BBC News website will be looking at how bionics can transform people's lives. We will meet a woman deciding whether to have her hand cut off for a bionic replacement and analyse the potential to take the technology even further, enhancing the body to superhuman levels. The series continues on Wednesday with a look at some of the earliest prosthetics from ancient Egypt.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17235058
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Daily aspirin 'prevents and possibly treats cancer'
Prof Peter Rothwell, from Oxford University, and colleagues, who carried out the latest work, had already linked aspirin with a lower risk of certain cancers, particularly bowel cancer.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17443454
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