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A viscoelastic adhesive cardiac patch with optimal mechanical behaviour, determined using a computational model, restores heart function and slows down pathological remodelling following myocardial infarction in rodents.
Needle-sized photonic devices that slowly dissolve in the body can spectroscopically characterize cerebral temperature, blood oxygenation and neural activity for weeks in unconstrained mice.
A rapidly gelling, biocompatible co-polymer, tested in rabbit and non-human-primate models of retinal detachment, makes for an effective replacement of the damaged vitreous.
Smartphone-controlled optofluidic neural implants with replaceable and replenishable plug-like drug cartridges enable the selective wireless manipulation of brain circuits in rodents via chronic pharmacology and photostimulation.
In mouse models of cancer, the inhibition of a set of regulatory proteins improves checkpoint-blockade therapy by causing regulatory T cells to produce the cytokine interferon-γ.
Targeting antigens to the liver by glycosylation promotes antigen-specific immune tolerance via the expansion of regulatory T cells and prevents autoimmunity in a mouse model of type-1 diabetes.
The localization of target proteins, at subcellular resolution, in fixed patient-derived tissues can now be achieved via antibodies conjugated with tetrahedral DNA nanostructures self-assembled in situ.
Retinoic acid induces the rapid osteogenic differentiation of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells, enabling the in vitro recapitulation of an osteogenesis imperfecta phenotype.
An osteoarthritis model in a cartilage-on-a-chip, enabled by hyperphysiological compression, recapitulates the progression of the disease and its response to drugs.
A microfluidic chip incorporating oxygen gradients, a diverse human microbiota and patient-derived cells, mimics interactions between microorganisms and host tissue in the human gut.
Plasmids coding for a toxin gene that is only expressed in the presence of a virulence-associated transcription factor lead to the killing of only the virulent form of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae in a mixed bacterial population.
A microfluidic assay that quantifies the abundance and degree of proliferation of migratory cells predicts the metastatic potential of breast-cancer cell lines and patient-derived cells.
Early-stage ovarian cancer can be detected in few-microlitre plasma samples via a microfluidic chip, patterned with nanoporous herringbone structures so as to enhance the capture of extracellular vesicles from the samples.
An electrical biosensor that relies on the binding of target nucleic acid sequences to Cas9 immobilized on a graphene field-effect transistor enables the rapid detection of mutations in purified samples without the need for nucleic acid amplification.
The biodistribution of the components of a messenger RNA vaccine following its administration in non-human primates can be non-invasively monitored by labelling the vaccine with a dual radionuclide–near-infrared probe.
High-speed optoacoustic tomography can monitor the neural activity of a whole mouse brain, by using a genetically encoded calcium sensor originally developed for fluorescence microscopy.
The oxygen consumption rates of single tumour cells can be measured via photoacoustic microscopy, by leveraging haemoglobin as both an oxygen supplier and an oxygen sensor.
Inactivation of the major histocompatibility complex and overexpression of the transmembrane protein CD47 renders induced pluripotent stem cells invisible to the immune system of the host.
This Perspective discusses opportunities and challenges, and proposes a roadmap, for the clinical implementation of optical-imaging biomarkers and technologies for the early detection of cancer.
