Making rare cell types visible

Researchers are developing a new method

06-Apr-2023 - The human body contains more than 30 trillion cells. Until recently, the sheer number of cells in the organism meant that approaches to understanding human diseases and developmental processes based on the analysis of single cells were a futuristic vision. The development of new sequencing ...

Point-of-care diagnostics: New methods for detecting single molecules

Pathogen-specific detection: Even one single DNA molecule is enough

04-Nov-2021 - Resistance to antibiotics is on the rise worldwide. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM alongside the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich have developed a process for rapidly detecting multidrug-resistant pathogens. The unique feature: Even one ...

Progress toward Personalized Medicine

Microfluidic chip for analysis of single cells

21-Aug-2018 - A few little cells that are different from the rest can have a big effect. For example, individual cancer cells may be resistant to a specific chemotherapy—causing a relapse in a patient who would otherwise be cured. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, scientists have now introduced a ...

Making intricate images with bacterial communities

21-Mar-2018 - Working with light and genetically engineered bacteria, researchers from Stanford University are able to shape the growth of bacterial communities. From polka dots to stripes to circuits, they can render intricate designs overnight. The technique can achieve biofilms grown at a resolution of 25 ...

Lab-on-a-chip for tracking single bacterial cells

02-Feb-2018 - Researchers at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, together with researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, have set up a novel lab-on-a-chip with accompanying automatic analysis software. As they report in Nature Communications, this integrated setup can be used to study gene ...

Fluorescence microscopy on a chip -- no lenses required

21-Sep-2017 - Fluorescence microscopy gives researchers incredible power to illuminate the tiniest structures and capture the real-time activities of live cells by tagging biological molecules with a veritable rainbow of fluorescent dyes. This power comes at a cost: The technology can be expensive and ...

Next-generation drug testing on chips

29-Aug-2017 - Researchers at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) in Japan have designed a small 'body-on-a-chip' device that can test the side effects of drugs s on human cells. The device solves some issues with current, similar microfluidic devices and offers promise ...

New model developed to study inflammatory bowel disease in human biopsy samples

04-Nov-2016 - Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a complex condition that requires a lifetime of care and increases a person's cancer risk. But its origins are still a mystery. Now, a team of researchers have created a new culture model of the human intestine where living tissue from a patient biopsy can be ...

Adipose analysis on microfluidic chips

Platform works with minute quantities of liquid to grow cells and study their development

14-Jul-2016 - A Freiburg-based research group has developed a microfluidic chip where more than one hundred apidose-derived adult stem cell cultures can grow and divide. In the human body, adipose tissue acts as a primary energy store. Adult stem cells have the task of maintaining and regenerating this ...

Cellphone principles help microfluidic chip digitize information on living cells

22-Apr-2016 - Phone calls and text messages reach you wherever you are because your phone has a unique identifying number that sets you apart from everybody else on the network. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are using a similar principle to track cells being sorted on microfluidic ...