Tissue Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
Thursday, 31 March 2011 16:55
ETES post
For 1st Woman With Bionic Arm, a New Life Is Within Reach
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
The first time Claudia Mitchell peeled a banana one-handed, she cried.
It was several months after she lost her left arm at the shoulder in a motorcycle accident. She used her feet to hold the banana and peeled it with her right hand. She felt like a monkey.
"It was not a good day," Mitchell, 26, recalled this week. "Although I accomplished the mission, emotionally it was something to be reckoned with."
Now, Mitchell can peel a banana in a less simian posture. All she has to do is place her prosthetic left arm next to the banana and think about grabbing it. The mechanical hand closes around the fruit and she's ready to peel.
Mitchell, who lives in Ellicott City, is the fourth person -- and first woman -- to receive a "bionic" arm, which allows her to control parts of the device by her thoughts alone. The device, designed by physicians and engineers at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, works by detecting the movements of a chest muscle that has been rewired to the stumps of nerves that once went to her now-missing limb.
Mitchell and the first person to get a bionic arm -- a power-line technician who lost both arms to a severe electric shock -- will demonstrate their prostheses today at a news event in Washington. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago is part of a multi-lab effort, funded with nearly $50 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to create more useful and natural artificial limbs for amputees.
As of July, 411 members of the military serving in Iraq, and 37 in Afghanistan, have suffered wounds requiring amputation of at least one limb. (How many involved losing arms could not be immediately learned.) Mitchell spent four years in the Marine Corps but did not lose her arm during military service.
Someday she hopes to upgrade to a prosthesis, still under development, that will allow her also to "feel" with an artificial hand. She is ready for it now.
Last summer, surgeons took the first step by rewiring the skin above her left breast so that when the area is stimulated by impulses from the bionic arm, the skin sends a message to the region of her brain that feels "hand."
Future arms will also be able to perform more complicated motions. She recently spent time at the Chicago hospital trying out a prototype with six motors, not just the three of her current prosthesis. It will theoretically allow her to reach for things over her head.
But even the first-generation device "has changed my life dramatically," she said. "I use it to help with cooking, for holding a laundry basket, for folding clothes -- all kinds of daily tasks."
For Todd A. Kuiken, 46, a physician and biomedical engineer, this is the latest step in his 20-year effort to make a better artificial arm. Over that time, his laboratory has spent about $3 million on research and development, with more than $2 million provided by the National Institutes of Health.
The particular achievement with Mitchell is that her prosthesis works with her breast intact. With previous versions, surgeons removed some chest tissue so that electrodes in the arm could better detect twitches in the rewired chest muscles. But that would have been particularly disfiguring.
Nevertheless, Kuiken said: "This is very much a prototype device. We have a lot of smoke in this lab. We fry a lot of transistors."
The bionic arm makes use of several features of the human body that would be impossible to create from scratch. Luckily, a person still has them even after suffering an injury as grievous as the loss of an arm at the shoulder.
One feature is the "motor cortex" of the brain, where cells that control voluntary muscles reside. The millions of nerve cells that "drive" the arm and hand remain after amputation. When an amputee pretends to move his missing hand, those cells fire and send impulses down the spinal cord and out to nerves that terminate at the stump.
Those nerves are huge electrical conduits filled with tens of thousands of fibers carrying a wide assortment of information. Some are motor nerves telling muscles to move. Some are sensory nerves, carrying impulses back from the hand to the brain, where the information will be interpreted as touch, temperature, pressure and pain.
In preparation for the bionic arm, Kuiken and his surgical colleagues first re-create a biological control panel for a hand on the amputee's chest. They use muscle and skin that can be sacrificed -- or, more precisely, hijacked -- for that purpose.
They cut the nerves to two chest muscles, the pectoralis and serratus, at a point where those nerves have branched to go to different parts of the muscles, but far "upstream" from the point where the nerves divide into tiny fibers that attach to individual bundles of muscle fiber.
They then sew the stumps of the large nerves that once went to the arm and hand to the cut ends of the chest-muscle nerves. In the same operation, the nerves carrying sensation from the skin over the pectoral muscle are also sewn into the arm nerves.
Over several months, the arm nerves grow down the sheaths of the motor fibers and attach to the muscles. (Interestingly, the amputee assists this process by mentally "exercising" the missing hand, which helps promote a firm nerve-muscle connection.) Simultaneously, the sensory nerves grow down the sensory sheaths and into the skin.
If all goes well, a person is left with chest muscles that twitch in different places in response to such thoughts as "bend the wrist back," "move the thumb" and "clench the fingers." The person also ends up with a patch of skin about the width of a baseball that, when stroked, warmed or pricked, feels like a hand rather than part of the chest.
The bionic arm makes use of this feat of anatomical alchemy.
The prosthesis is strapped onto the shoulder stump and torso in a way that positions electrodes over the regions of the chest muscles that are responding to different "hand instructions." Those electrodes, in turn, are wired to a computer and then on to motors in the forearm and hand of the device.
When the amputee tells the fingers to close, the designated part of the pectoral or serratus muscle twitches and the electrode over it detects the signal, activating the appropriate motor.
In the future, electrodes in the hand will send touch signals up the arm to the chest skin, which will send them on to the brain, where they will be perceived as sensation.
Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
For more information, please read at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091302271_pf.html
To conintue on the subject of Biomedical Engineering with Dr. Todd A. Kuiken, we found more related articles below:
Dr. Todd A. Kuiken: Bionic Sensation
The visionary MD's training in engineering and medicine helps him build some of the best robotic limbs
Dr. Todd A. Kuiken pulls up a video clip on his computer. A department director at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and an associate professor at Northwestern University's medical school, Kuiken is sitting in his 11th-floor office. On the screen, the mini-movie shows a man in a white T-shirt putting on a bright-yellow trucker's cap. "Yo," he says and bows after snuggling the cap on his head.
Big deal, huh? Well, yes, it is. The man, a former power-company worker named Jesse Sullivan, has no arms. His limbs were destroyed to the shoulder when he accidentally touched a high-voltage line in 2001, so he must now maneuver a computerized arm wired to nerve stumps in his chest and controlled, down to each fingertip, entirely by electrochemical impulses. In other words, by thought. Kuiken swivels at his desk, as if to take a bow himself. And a bow would be well-deserved: Sullivan's custom-made prosthesis -- the world's first brain-powered arm -- is Kuiken's brainchild.
Bionic humans have long been the stuff of science fiction. Kuiken, 45, remembers watching The Six Million Dollar Man on TV as a teenager before heading off to the University of Idaho in 1978 to study mechanical engineering. Even now, despite advances in robotics and neurology, most people who have had at-the-shoulder amputations use a mechanical device made of straps and cables that dates to the Civil War.
Kuiken set out to better meld man and machine 25 years ago while simultaneously pursuing his medical degree and a PhD in biomedical engineering at Northwestern University. His dual interests turned out to be critical, allowing him to succeed where a narrowly focused engineer or doctor would have come up short. Previously, researchers had shown that nerves could be hard-wired to electronic devices. But myoelectric impulses -- the stop-and-go signals of the body's muscle system -- are often too faint for computers to interpret accurately. Kuiken, a lifelong tinkerer who built treehouses and his own Soap Box Derby racer as a boy, found a way to amplify those charges, working with lab rats in the 1980s.
Although this research took years, it turned out to be a snap compared with what followed. Collaborating with Allen Taflove, a Northwestern professor of electrical and computer engineering, Kuiken had to decode the muscular signals to differentiate between one telling the forearm to move, for example, and another ordering the fingers to close. They attached 115 electrodes to nerves that had been rerouted in Sullivan's chest. Then they asked him to perform 26 different motions so they could learn the exact combination of impulses for each move. Kuiken also needed a semiconductor-packed arm that could follow these directions in real time. For that, he turned to Liberating Technologies Inc., a prosthetic-device maker in Holliston, Mass. Finally, in 2002, Kuiken was ready to test a bionic arm on a person -- and there was Sullivan, already in the Rehabilitation Institute after his double amputation.
Today, Sullivan can do many of the things he did before, though not as naturally: He dresses and feeds himself, shaves, uses scissors, vacuums, and works in the garden. He can even toss a ball. Unexpectedly, he can also feel: The re-innervated nerves in his pectoral muscles can receive signals, so he can sense whether an object he has picked up in his mechanical hand is hard or soft, hot or cold.
Kuiken imagines that one day people might become bionic beings like TV's Colonel Steve Austin. But he says that's probably decades away. "The reality is that this," he says, extending his right arm, "is the most incredible machine in the world. We cannot match this." What he's likely to do, though, is improve the lives of civilians and soldiers who lose their arms and legs by the thousands every year.
By Michael Arndt
For more information, please read on http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_02/b3966025.htm
It could be a good spot to study Tissue Engineering as well. Here are study opportunities at Northwestern University Biomedical Engineering Department offered:
Biomedical Engineering is an exciting and fast-moving field with ever-changing boundaries. Here at Northwestern we are pushing those boundaries in a number of overlapping and interrelated areas:
Rehabilitation Engineering and Movement Biomechanics
Much of this work takes place in the renowned Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Biomechanics and Transport/Cardiopulmonary and Vascular Engineering
Fluid mechanics, vascular and pulmonary cell and tissue mechanics, and mass transport in tissue.
Biotechnology/Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials
Antibody and DNA binding reactions, polymers and drug delivery, structure of macromolecules, and novel methods for detection for substances in blood.
Imaging/Signal Analysis
Cardiovascular MRI, fMRI applications to neuroscience, Optical Coherence Tomography, Light Scattering Spectroscopy, and Polarization Imaging.
Medical Devices and Instrumentation
Biosensors, laser interactions with tissue, prosthetics and artificial organs.
Neural Engineering
The restoration of human function via direct interactions between the nervous system and artificial devices.
Eye Research
The development and progression of eye diseases. Transport in the eye. Image Processing.
Dr. Kuiken is working with the department as affiliated faculty. For more information, please read on http://www.bme.northwestern.edu/faculty/fac_affiliated.shtml
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Nanotechnology for Tissue Engineering
Thursday, 31 March 2011 16:52
ETES post
By Davos Switzerland
Technology Focus
Historically, synthetic materials have not served as sufficient implants.For example, the current average lifetime of an orthopedic implant, such as hip, knee, ankle, etc., is only 15 years. Similarly, for the vascular community, small diameter vascular grafts are only functional 25% of time past 5 years of use. The same limited lifetimes for a number of failing organs could be stated for cartilage, bladder, and the peripheral and central nervous systems. Clearly, conventional materials, or those materials with constituent dimensions greater than 1 micron have not invoked proper cellular responses to regenerate tissue that allows for these devices to be successful for long periods of times.
In contrast, due to their ability to mimic the dimensions of constituent components of natural tissues, like proteins, nanophase materials may be an exciting successful alternative. Nanophase materials are defined as materials with constituent dimension less than 100 nm in at least one direction. Materials investigated to date include nanophase ceramics, metals, polymers, and composites. Nanophase materials have revolutionized many traditional engineering fields such as those involving catalysis, electronics, optics, magnetics, etc. For example, in the catalytic field, higher surface reactivity of nanophase materials allows for faster reaction times.
To date,there has also been the emergence of data that nanophase materials may be optimal materials for tissue engineering applications. This is not only due to their ability to simulate dimensions of proteins that comprise tissues, but also because of their higher reactivity for interactions of proteins that control cell adhesion and, thus, the ability to regenerate tissues.
There are numerous reasons to consider using nanophase materials as better tissue engineering materials.While most of the promise is conjecture, limited scientific evidence does exist and is generating wide support.
For additional information, please read more at
http://www.nsti.org/courses/584.html
More related helpful archive from Azom.com --
Nanotechnology Application in Tissue Areas
The application of nanotechnology will result in artificial skin, reconstructed tissue and wound treatments that are better, longer lasting and more acceptable. Nanotechnology will aid in the regeneration of tissues and even whole organs will be able to be grown to replace organs that have failed through disease or old age. Nanotechnology also makes it possible to impregnate substances into regenerating tissues to stimulate healing and counteract infection. Tissue engineering at the nanoscale level is leading to the development of viable substitutes which can restore, maintain or improve the function of human tissues. Regenerating tissue can be achieved in several ways e.g. by using biomaterials to convey signals to surrounding tissues to recruit cells that promote inherent regeneration or by using cells and a biomaterial scaffold to act as a framework for developing tissues. As an example, selected cells can be harvested from a patient and can be modified at the cellular level to prepare it for later transportation and small biopsies from uninfected sites are used to isolate tissue specific cells which can then be encouraged to multiply. The cells can then be re-transplanted directly or are combined with an appropriate matrix for transplanting.
International Scientific and Technological Development Report
Thursday, 31 March 2011 16:44
ETES post
In the post-genome era, genetic research is not only scientific research activities. Moreover, the market and offers enormous business opportunities. To seize the high ground in the 21st century, life science, countries are already drawing up plans and measures determined to fight this battle in post-genome research.
(1) The United States continues to the lead in post-genome research
The Human Genome Project was initially proposed by the United States. Moreover, 54% of the work is undertaken by the United States, it can be said that The United States has been far ahead in human genome research position.With the human genome project, the United States has started to pay attention to the post-genome research.
United States Department of Energy in 2002 announced in the next five years to five major "genome" research projects with a total funding of 103 million U.S. dollars, The move signaled that the U.S. government "genome" research strategies begun in full swing.
Participate in the new batch of "genome" research projects of a total of six national laboratories. four private universities and 16 research institutes.Oak Ridge National Laboratory lead the research team, emphasis will be on the identification and analysis of multi-protein complexes microbial cell technologies; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is responsible for the research group to describe and predict the development of the microbial gene regulatory network model; Sandia National Laboratories leadership of the group will focus on developing a deeper understanding of protein. Protein-protein interaction and gene regulatory networks control the calculation method; University of Massachusetts research team is responsible for the electronic transmission through the electrode to the "power" of microorganisms, These goals can predict the development of a natural microbial activities in the calculation model; composed of the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, another group Research will play an important role in the Earth's carbon cycle and the two wide diversity of microbial metabolism. the level of understanding of these systems and the development of microbiology in the calculation.
In addition to the Department of Energy, for life science research, the National Institute of Health (of its annual budget of the federal government accounted for 60% of civilian R & D) in 2004 formulated the "National Institutes of Health road map," also stressed the importance of the post-genome research. In its road map for the 28 missions, and the science of proteomics and related metabolic alone three. indirectly involved in bioinformatics, chemical informatics, etc. There are also 2.
Apart from the government. American big post-genome research companies have recognized the tremendous economic value and medicinal value, have to invest a lot of money for research. Selailagongsi adding a large number of protein identification and analysis of this equipment 1 million on a daily basis is protein fragment identification and classification of a protein Task final draw. In addition, Sailailagongsi to protein research, several companies are already one step ahead. The United States, "a large-scale biological companies" have a kind of human protein database includes 115,000. Another American company cytogen (Cytogen) has drawn more than 70 ethnic tribe's human protein interaction map.
In addition, bio-terrorism strategy, the new emerging diseases, If Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), avian flu, mad cow disease and other biological research has become a hot spot. Immunization and Infectious Diseases Institute of the United States in March 2004 announced twice in the progress of the SARS vaccine. One body found mice can produce antibodies to prevent the SARS virus replication. Mouse model can be used as a means of animal vaccines and antiviral drugs to assess the effect of SARS prevention and treatment, in order to accelerate the development of SARS vaccine; Second, the surface of a SARS virus coat protein coding DNA fragment basis for the development of a vaccine In the experiments to be effective against the virus in rats in vivo replication. In addition, the United States first synthetic prion protein, the mice infected with cerebral damage. The research results will help new Keyazhizheng spongiform encephalopathy, including mad cow disease and human genes Early diagnosis of mad cow disease and find ways.
(2) Japan will strive to win the battle after the genome
As early as the end of 2000. Japan Science and Technology Policy Committee announced the "post-genome research strategy report," (hereinafter referred to as the "report"). Japan's post-genome research projects fall into three broad categories. ???The first category is the study of protein structure and genetic information. The immediate plans to promote the "genetic structure of the state project," in the middle third of the next five years to complete proteome map mapping and electronics, materials, information and other fields of cooperation. technologies to the market as soon as possible. The second category is deciphering the human genome diversity and genetic diseases. Report reduce cost on an important strategic position, the move to reduce the cost of the current study tenth of the following; Japan's aging society to break the threat of dementia, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, five major diseases such as asthma deciphering the genetic study.The third category is mainly applied technology research and development. ???First, we must focus on brain science and applied technology, five major diseases, regenerative medicine, organ transplants and other fields; Second, we should pay attention to new products health food products, the development of functional foods special; three to biological research on the application of gene technology in environmental protection.
Japan's "post-genome research strategy," the objective is to highlight the achievements of rapid transformation Biotechnology patent and seize new technologies and products in the market share. The use of gene technology in the cause of environmental protection, environmental management, reduce environmental pollution; The use of revolutionary advances in medical technology and pharmaceuticals, to improve the people's health, thereby improving people's quality of life.
To ensure the realization of the strategic goals, the "Report" proposed a series of measures : ensure that research funding. 2000 Japan started the "New Century Project" for the post-genome research has invested 64 billion yen. Second, and more channels to solve the shortage of manpower. The "report" proposes to increase the number of universities set up bio-technology, and expanding enrollment, using a broad range of seminars, personnel training and other training methods. Meanwhile, the introduction of foreign talents, with a choice of study abroad. ensure animal resources, the development of advanced research tools. The "report", in Japan, DNA chips, protein biopsy and revolutionary advances in the field of nano-technology. research management system reform. Past the central and local governments, enterprises and the government separately decentralized approach, The national key projects in post-genome research, establishment, the National Manpower, Comprehensive scientific and technological conferences unified command. enterprise participation, stress transformation. study social ethics, and formulate relevant laws. reform of the patent system to speed up the patent approval, and maintain aging research results published in harmony with the franchise.
2002, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology began to carry out the "Protein 3000" plan, strive to five years, 10,000 kinds of proteins associated with the development of new drugs to identify 3,000 types of structure and function.
2004, the Japanese into the field of life sciences budget for the 81.416 billion yen. One of the new projects focus on strategically advancing gene network; In the continued implementation of the project, After the genome research accounted for a large share of which include : promoting innovative new medicines, such as medical research and development projects. including protein 3000; Based on the personality of an individual's genetic information for medical items; regeneration projects.
Japan's major pharmaceutical companies excel and take "centralized" and "joint" and accelerate the research and development of gene therapy and drugs. Japanese pharmaceutical sector in recent years a substantial increase in funding for research and development in the related fields. 2001 totaled more than 600 billion yen. In addition, manufacturers in competition with the United States and Europe with a large-scale, Japanese pharmaceutical companies under the government department in charge of the organization "Wuyue ride," step up to tackle technical problems. For example, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in the lead, more than 70 pharmaceutical, biotechnology and high-tech companies formed a "Community of biological information." prepared to work together in the analysis of protein structure and function; In addition, 43 joint pharmaceutical enterprises. Analysis of the Japanese plan "gene single nucleotide polymorphism," prepare for individualized treatment; 22 pharmaceutical companies have formed a "Community of protein structure analysis." use of large-scale radiation-ray facilities, "SPring," Analysis and Determination of receptor proteins, to speed up the research and development of gene therapy and drugs.
(3) continue to regard the British as a priority in post-genome research
Assessment from the government in 2002, After the British government as a key area of genome research, put the funds allocated 54.3 million pounds for the British Medical Research Council in post-genome research and protein research.
Britain's post-genomic and proteomic research is divided into three main parts : The first part is biological and genetic information, including the use of GMOs (mainly rodents) to simulate human disease research and molecular structure research. The second part is for major clinical studies, including mental health, cardiovascular disease, cancer population. new medical technologies, as well as innovative technology and other aspects of health. The third component is a functional proteome projects. It includes the interactions between proteins and modified proteins (glycosylation, acetylation. phosphorylation) and the biological protein localization.
In October 2004, the British Minister for Science and Technology announced The funds will be used to build more than one hundred million pounds "diamond source." This will be Taiwan accelerator built in 2007, would provide an unprecedented research into bright infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray beam. This beam can allow scientists to better understand the structure of proteins that promote the development of post-genome research.
(4) China to increase investment in post-genome research
In the international human genome project, the Chinese scientists for only 1% of the sequencing of the tasks. In the post-genome era, through sustained efforts, finally got the international proteomics projects -- the main international human liver proteome project leadership.
The Chinese government attaches great importance to proteomics research and development, and constantly increase input, have initiated a number of major research projects are closely related and proteomics. In support of these projects are financed and departments, some proteome centers or key laboratories have been established. establish appropriate technology platform and trained a good quality, professional academic support personnel.
April 2004. Ministry of Science and Technology "functional genome and biological chips" on the special 12 major state science and technology, to invest 600 billion. It focuses on major diseases, it is important physiological functions related to functional genomics, development and application of single nucleotide polymorphism of the Chinese nation. , as well as major human diseases and important physiological function of proteins, important pathogenic fungi such as functional genomics research and development.
In addition, CAS "hematopoietic stem cells and blood diseases related genomic studies of protein structure," significant progress has been made. As of April 2004, which completed the 1306 gene cloning, 57 Determination of the three-dimensional structures of proteins and their complexes. including determination of a number of important physiological functions associated with major diseases, and the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Determination to clarify the mechanism of these elements and create conditions for screening and drug design innovation. In addition, a number of the three-dimensional structure of proteins with pharmaceutical value has been determined, laid the foundation for the further use of these proteins.
In addition to these countries, many states also have invested heavily in the post-genome research. The German government decided in May 2004. of the human genome in 2007 will be the follow-up study Supplementary Appropriation 135 million euros. The focus will shift and cardiovascular diseases, cancer, infectious diseases, from diseases caused by environmental factors related to the nervous system diseases and genome research. Teaching and Research Department in February 2004 by the Federal Republic of Germany, launched an "animal organisms functional gene analysis program." Human Reproduction of livestock production aimed at a better understanding, reduce animal species genetic defects improve the quality of animal milk and meat products for human health, nutrition and benefit the environment. In March 2004, the Canadian agency financed 15 million Canadian dollars genome. participation in the British-Canadian structure of the Commonwealth of the genome science research activities, in order to understand human cancer, nervous disorders. 350 malaria related to the three-dimensional structure of a variety of proteins. Norway in the 2001 national plan for a functional genomics, decided in 2001, At least NOK 300 million a year funding research into functional genomics.
We believe that with the advance, States make huge investment in post-genome research will continue to have a major breakthrough, International cooperation in the post-genome project will surely make great progress in functional genomics, proteomics, The study proteins and other drugs will be further expansion of bioinformatics tools will be further perfected, These will human health, the prevention and treatment of diseases brought the Gospel, bringing huge benefits to society.
Last Updated on Thursday, 31 March 2011 16:46
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