Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have developed a new method for the production of medicine. They print medical drugs in QR coded patterns onto an edible material. The production can be tailored to fit each patient and has the potential to protect against wrong medication and fake medicine according to the researchers. For the last 100 years, researchers have constantly pushed the…
Extensive surgery involving mastectomy and removal of several lymph nodes can be safely avoided for more women with some types of breast cancer, if they receive targeted drugs before surgery, according to research presented at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference. The study focused on women with HER2 positive breast cancer, an aggressive form of the disease, who were given a targeted drug…
A completely new classification of diabetes which also predicts the risk of serious complications and provides treatment suggestions. The major difference from today’s classification is that type 2 diabetes actually consists of several subgroups, the results indicate. “This is the first step towards personalised treatment of diabetes”, says physician and diabetes expert Leif Groop.
Conventional chemotherapy in oncology is increasingly yielding to new procedures such as targeted therapy and immunotherapy. This results in changes for radiologists because new procedures require familiarisation with certain imaging to ensure that the treatment process is interpreted correctly.
Testing cancer drugs on miniature replicas of a patient’s tumour could help doctors tell in advance which treatments will work, a major new study reports. The exciting new technique involves growing ‘mini tumours’ from biopsy samples – and could help end reliance on trial and error in selecting cancer treatments for patients where genetic tests are not predictive of response. Researchers…
One of the biggest challenges in treating prostate cancer is distinguishing men who have aggressive and potentially lethal disease from men whose cancer is slow-growing and unlikely to metastasize. For years, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level, cancer grade and tumor stage have been used to sort prostate cancer patients into risk groups established by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.…
Geometry is often referenced for matters of the heart. Marriage has been described as “two parallel lines,” and others have compared love to an “irrational equation” or as unending as “pi.” But when it comes to the medical matters of the heart, geometry can be a lonely and dangerous affair. “The shape and size of a heart is not the same for every person, and a diseased heart, such…
The Olympic Games are starting to prove themselves not just as a showcase for the world's elite athletes, but for leading-edge health IT initiatives. The International Olympic Committee and GE Healthcare announced the launch of a new analytics tool meant to enable personalized care at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in South Korea, as well as at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. GE Healthcare…
Bracco Imaging S.p.A., a global leader in diagnostic imaging, announced that it has initiated new experimental activities in its R&D Center in Geneva, Switzerland, to explore a new application for gas-filled microbubbles in the development of personalized gene therapy for treatment of chronic dysfunctional diseases related to lipid metabolism. Microbubbles have already revolutionized medical…
In the nineties Deep Blue, the famous chess computer, defeated Kasparow. Only a year ago Google’s Deepmind managed to master the ancient Chinese Go, known for its utmost complexity.
Headlines, of late, have touted the successes of targeted gene-based cancer therapies, such as immunotherapies, but, unfortunately, also their failures.
A team of UCLA bioengineers has demonstrated that its technology may go a long way toward overcoming the challenges of treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, among the most common types of cancer in children, and has the potential to help doctors personalize drug doses.
The ability to digitise results from patient samples has been one of the key enabling technologies that make personalised medicine possible now, says Dr Fiona Carragher, the Deputy Chief Scientific Officer for NHS England.
Hardly any topic has been discussed as broadly as personalised medicine, with countless stakeholders, ministries and organisations involved. That’s good news says Professor Angela Brand, Professorial Fellow at the Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) and Professor at the Department of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at Maastricht University.…
Advanced computer software underpins a service - coupled with a countrywide database, which enables Denmark’s pathologists to optimise the assessment of patients’ specimens.In turn, the digitisation of the system in recent years has led to significant improvements in pathology services, delivering greater efficiency and advances in patient safety.
Healthcare and business professionals as well as scientists consider Big Data a promising technology to advance medical research and patient care. “Big Data analysis allows us to better tailor therapies based on the individual patient’s status, that is to implement personalized healthcare,” says Dominik Bertram, Development Manager at SAP and Head of the development field “Personalized…
Though it is the underlying science that drives diagnosis and treatment decisions, pathology is an often overlooked field. As part of the health continuum, as the turning point for treatment, as a new source for research and discovery – in all these ways, the power of pathology has gone unnoticed. However, the industry is slowly coming to realize its potential in transforming care, knows Hans…
As medical professionals search for new ways to personalize diagnosis and treatment of disease, RPB-supported researchers at the University of Iowa have already put into practice what may be the next big step in precision medicine: personalized proteomics.
With precision imaging playing a greater role in daily radiology practice as patients receive ever more personalised care, the detail and extent of that shift is outlined in the ECR session ‘Personalised radiology: myth or reality?’, which includes a presentation from renowned radiologist Professor Gabriel Krestin, chairman of the radiology and nuclear medicine department at Erasmus MC,…
Eckert & Ziegler AG, a specialist for isotope-based applications in medicine, science and industry, is expanding its cooperation program with promising drug developers in the field of nuclear medicine and will support Curasight, a spin-off based on research by the group of Professor Andreas Kjaer at the National University Hospital (Rigshospitalet) and University of Copenhagen, in obtaining…
A new technology that will dramatically enhance investigations of epigenomes, the machinery that turns on and off genes and a very prominent field of study in diseases such as stem cell differentiation, inflammation and cancer, is reported in the research journal Nature Methods.
Researchers in Canada and the U.K. have for the first time sequenced and assembled de novo the full genome of a living organism, the bacteria Escherichia Coli, using Oxford Nanopore's MinIONTM device, a genome sequencer that can fit in the palm of your hand.
Nowadays the concept of personalised medicine is usually applied to oncology. However, there are other clinical disciplines in which therapies tailored to the individual patient are within reach, viz. ophthalmology. In the researchers’ limelight is intravitreal drug delivery since the outcomes of injections into the vitreous differ from patient to patient. Ophthalmologists in Vienna, Austria,…
Given the increasing focus on telehealth and telecare services aimed at improving long-term patients’ living conditions and save costs, numerous pilots in various countries have been conducted for proof of concept purposes. Among these, the United Kingdom’s ‘Whole System Demonstrator’ (WSD) programme is the largest randomised controlled trial. Set up by the English National Health Service…
No alcohol, but exercise and a healthy diet – that’s what women can do to help prevent breast cancer recommends Prof. Thomas Helbich (Director of Molecular and Gender Imaging at the Medical University of Vienna) who hosted the European Institute for Biomedical Imaging Research (EIBIR) session ‘The complexity of personalized breast care’ at ECR 2015. Report: Chrissanthi Nikolakudi