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Tumors under fire

Oncologists have a dream: they want to use highly energetic ion beams in good quality and accurately defined dose for a pin-sharp and cost-effective radiation treatment of tumors. Modern techniques based on intense laser pulses may in the future replace expensive conventional particle accelerators. A team of physicists of the Cluster of Excellence "Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics" (MAP) lead…

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A compact and clever anaesthesia unit

ARCUS -- It’s a portable, fully electronic, stand-alone inhalation anaesthesia unit that offers the electronic gas mixer EGAMIX. The wall version is used for induction. Compared to a conventional mechanical rotameter, this machine simplifies work considerably due to the fully automatic electronic control and supervision of the adjusted parameters, the manufacturer EKU Elektronik GmbH. reports.

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The 2009 Bernhard Dräger Award

Dr Vasilios Papaioannou, of the Democritus University of Thrace in Alexandroupoli, Greece, received the €15,000 Bernhard Dräger Award for Advanced Treatment of Acute Respiratory Failure during the opening of The European Society for Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) annual conference in Vienna.

Experts fear for Europe’s medical engineering

When over 3,000 international experts gathered at the World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering in Munich, Germany to evaluate future trends, they heard that Asia is showing major gains in medical engineering — a field in which computer sciences are a key innovation driver – but that Europe is on the way to innovation leadership in telemedicine and e-health.

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Parkinson's Disease: genetic risk factors identified

Two genes containing mutations known to cause rare familial forms of parkinsonism are also associated with the more common, sporadic form of the disease where there is no family history, researchers have found. An International study reveals common gene variants in people of European descent.

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A promising new breast cancer test

The Innovation Prize for outstanding, application-oriented ideas in life sciences has been awarded by the Working Group of BioRegions at the Biotechnica in Hanover to research groups from Heidelberg, Munich and Ulm. Professor Lisa Wiesmüller, of the Women’s Hospital, University of Ulm, received the €2,000 prize for developing a test system for the identification and early detection of breast…

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The biology of cancers

Cancer research is progressing rapidly. For a large part, biology contributes to its most significant advances, which aim to renew the whole model of cancer care.

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The first whole-body MRI-PET system

The technological integration of positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been the dream of molecular imaging experts and engineers for some time. Now, the German Science Council has agreed to provide 6.56 million funding to install a whole-body MRI-PET prototype in the centre of excellence for imaging procedures at the radiology clinic in Eberhard-Karls…

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A 7-Tesla in clinical diagnostics?

Most of the 30 institutes around the world that work with a 7-Tesla MRI scanner do not focus on answering questions about the clinical benefit of this field strength; their efforts revolve around the brain and neurosciences. One exception is the Erwin L Hahn, at the Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which is based at the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex, a World Heritage Site in…

Eröffnung des Heidelberger Ionenstrahl-Therapiezentrums (HIT)

Am 2. November wurde das Heidelberger Ionenstrahl-Therapiezentrum (HIT) feierlich eröffnet. Die am GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt entwickelte Krebstherapie steht nun erstmals im Routinebetrieb einer großen Patientenzahl zur Verfügung. Bislang wurden Patienten ausschließlich am Therapieplatz bei GSI behandelt. Die Therapie mit Ionenstrahlen…

Taking part in clinical trials is good for health

Patients with chronic heart failure who agree to take part in clinical trials have a better prognosis than those who do not, according to a study reported in the November European Journal of Heart Failure. The finding, say the authors, may even call into question the commonplace ethical requirement of most clinical trials that by choosing not to take part in the study a patient will not be…

Biochips to aid in cancer diagnosis

It is very difficult to predict whether a cancer drug will help an individual patient: only around one third of drugs will work directly in a given patient. Researchers at the Heinz Nixdorf Chair for Medical Electronics at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have developed a new test process for cancer drugs. With the help of microchips, they can establish in the laboratory whether a…

HPV vaccines indicate further benefits for cervical cancer protection

New human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine studies presented at the 16th International Meeting of the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) in Belgrade, Serbia, this week have confirmed sustained protection against precancerous cervical lesions in healthy young women, as well as beneficial effects for women previously treated for cervical, vulvar or vaginal precancers or genital warts.

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Cutting costs with medical technology

Medical technology innovation, often viewed as a cost-driver can also be the key to cost-cutting in healthcare while at the same time improve the health outcome for patients. This was the core message of an experts' panel organised by the European Health Technology Institute for Socio-Economic Research (EHTI) at the European Health Forum Gastein.

Cancer: Holistic approach is needed

Europe is facing the challenge of an expected dramatic increase in the prevalence of cancer that could reach 15 million Europeans by 2020. Health systems will require the promotion of innovative funding and a rethink in regulation, according to a new study released today at the European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG), the European Union's leading health policy congress for experts and…

Pharma research suffers

The biotech industry is being hit twice as hard by the economic crisis. In addition to the general economic downturn, the largely dried-up equity market, which has massively complicated the usual equity financing through the stock exchange or venture capital, is causing problems for companies.

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