Latest news with #biomedicalEngineering
BBC News
4 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
Oxford team's organ-preserving device wins top innovation award
The team behind a pioneering device that keeps human organs alive outside the body has earned a top engineering prize. The device manufactured by Oxford-based OrganOx won this year's MacRobert Award, which is run by the Royal Academy of Engineering, on Tuesday. OrganOx was founded in 2009 by biomedical engineer Prof Constantin Coussios and transplant surgeon Prof Peter device mimics the human body by pumping a blood-like fluid through organs at normal body temperature, supplying oxygen and nutrients. This allows organs - such as livers and kidneys - to remain functional for over 24 hours, producing bile and urine, and even repairing themselves."The fact that there are 6,500 people alive today because of those efforts is what this award recognises," Prof Coussios said.A major US transplant centre reported a drop in median liver transplant wait times from 82 to 14 days, and a reduction in waiting list mortality from 18% to 6%. Recently, the team successfully transplanted 36 kidneys in a first-in-human trial in over 7,500 people still on the UK transplant waiting list, the technology offers hope. "Liver and kidney transplantation are in our immediate sights," said Prof Coussios. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Medscape
25-06-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Medscape 2050: Robert Langer
Medscape 2050: The Future of Medicine Smart cells, artificial hearts, microneedles, a brain on a chip: These are just a few of the advances in biomedical engineering that Robert Langer, ScD, director of the Langer Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), envisions in the future. Langer's work blends biotechnology and materials science, and he is known for developing pioneering tech in the areas of drug delivery, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. Langer finds inspiration in the natural world, from geckos' feet to porcupine quills, as well as what he calls just 'basic research,' pursuing the burning question of 'how things work' with a mind open to discovery. Dream big, Langer says. 'If you could make a kidney from scratch, you wouldn't have to do a kidney transplant.' Or a heart, for that matter. But there are other fascinating avenues of study that can impact disease. By 2050, smart materials might sense blood sugar levels in a diabetes patient. Smart cells might seek out cancer cells and destroy them. Pills could shoot out tiny needles to deliver drugs to the stomach or intestine. 'The value of AI,' Langer predicts, 'will be pervasive' in making these leaps forward, analyzing chemical structures and histology or collecting data from inside the body. But the goal is collaboration across a range of disciplines. Take 'artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, immunology, materials science and put them together,' Langer recommends. This is how we change patients' lives.
