Latest news with #biomedicalengineering
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
'Inverse' vaccines may hold key to challenge autoimmune diseases
NEW YORK, June 30 (UPI) -- For the millions of Americans battling autoimmune disorders, new hope may be on the horizon in the form of reverse or inverse vaccines -- injections that target a specific part of the immune system. experts told UPI. However, these injections work differently from conventional immunizations like the flu shot and currently available immunosuppressant treatments for autoimmune conditions. They work by targeting only the specific part of the immune system that's behind diseases such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and Type 1 diabetes, the experts say. "Inverse vaccines are being developed to treat undesired immune responses, [and] for these situations, the body is reacting to something that is not dangerous," said Lonnie Shea, a researcher in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan who has studied inverse vaccines and worked on some of the key technology behind them. "A vaccine activates an immune response to a specific antigen," Shea told UPI via email. Inverse vaccines are being developed to treat undesired immune responses, [and] for these situations, the body is reacting to something that is not dangerous. Essentially, an inverse vaccine "aims to decrease the response to a specific antigen, like insulin in Type 1 diabetes," he added. First line of defense When healthy, the immune system is the body's first line of defense against diseases such as cancer and infections caused by viruses and bacteria, according to the National Institutes of Health. However, if the immune system isn't working properly, it can erroneously attack healthy cells, tissues and organs, causing autoimmune diseases that can affect any part of the body, weakening function and potentially leading to death, the NIH says. More than 80 autoimmune diseases are known, some of which are caused by exposure to environmental toxins and have no discovered cure. At least 15 million people in the United States, or about 5% of the population, have an autoimmune disease, the agency reports. Although no cure exists for these conditions, symptoms can be managed with drugs called immunosuppressants, which as the name suggests "broadly reduces your immune system response," Shea said. These drugs, which are typically administered via monthly injections, can have significant side effects, including making those taking them more susceptible to infections, according to the NIH. Many people taking them also have to be careful taking traditional vaccines, such as flu shot or COVID-19 shots because of their impact on the immune system. Training the immune system Developed by researchers at the University of Chicago and elsewhere, inverse vaccines use synthetic nanoparticles attached to specific disease-related proteins, or antigens, to train certain parts of the immune system to behave differently, limiting the attacks that cause autoimmune diseases, neurologist Dr. Lawrence Steinman said. With the inverse vaccines currently being studied, the nanoparticles are designed to mimic human cell death, which is a normal process in the human body, according to the 2021 study that first documented their effectiveness in people with celiac disease, another autoimmune disorder. Dying cells are considered foreign bodies, but the human immune system knows not to attack them. As a result, with the nanoparticles in inverse vaccines, the immune system can be trained not to attack them, or the proteins attached to them, which effectively short-circuits the process behind autoimmune diseases, Steinman said. "Instead of immunizing the recipient to a viral infection, the inverse vaccine tolerizes the immune system, so it will not attack our own tissues," Steinman, who has written about inverse vaccines, told UPI in an email. Several companies are running clinical trials of inverse vaccines, including Cour Pharma, which recently completed successful phase 2 clinical trials for their use in celiac disease and another autoimmune disease, primary biliary cholangitis, according to Shea at the University of Michigan, one of the researchers who started the company. Additional trials -- phase 2 studies are the second stage in the drug research and development process -- are starting for myasthenia gravis and Type 1 diabetes, he added. Although more research is needed before the shots become available, a process that could take five years or more, inverse vaccines offer key advantages, Shea said. For example, unlike immunosuppressants with their monthly dosing, the effects of inverse vaccines appear to last longer, perhaps for as much as a year, similar to conventional vaccines, research suggests. They may also work for people with severe, life-threatening allergies, such as peanut allergies, according to Shea, who has published a study in this area using mice. However, there's also the "risk that instead of tolerizing the human immune system to the target, the process induces conventional immunization, which would make autoimmune conditions like Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis worse," Steinman said. However, "We have come close to success in some early-stage trials," he said "Thus far, none of the results are sufficiently robust for submission in the FDA approval process."
Telegraph
24-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Britain's graduates ‘left on the scrapheap' as entry-level jobs disappear
Caoilen Doyle will graduate from his master's in biomedical engineering at the University of Strathclyde on Friday, but is struggling to find full-time employment in his field. Doyle, 27 from Motherwell, near Glasgow, has applied to more than 40 engineering roles and attended three assessment centres but still hasn't managed to secure a job. For now, he will have to satisfy himself with his part-time work as a swimming instructor. 'There's a lot more networking needed if you don't know somebody already in the industry,' says Doyle, who has spent seven years in higher education. It will be a familiar story to many university leavers. After submitting essays, handing in assignments and completing exams, graduates now face an even more challenging task: finding a job. Graduate job postings in the 12 months to June are down 33pc compared to a year earlier, according to Indeed. Not only are there fewer jobs on offer but there are also more university leavers. The numbers have climbed from 828,000 in the 2018/19 academic year to just over 1m in 2023/24 (including both postgraduate and undergraduate students). As a result, graduates are having to scrap it out over fewer jobs. Each entry-level role received 140 applications on average in 2024, according to the Institute of Student Employers, up from 86 applications per role in 2023. The struggles of well-educated people to find work is part of the growing problem of worklessness in Britain. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 987,000 people aged 16 to 24 were classed as not in education, employment or training (Neet) in January to March 2025. 'The situation for young people is ... a worry for me at the moment,' Alison McGovern, the employment minister, told the Work and Pensions Committee earlier this month. 'Nearly 1m young people [are] effectively on the scrapheap.' Rise of the robots While studying for her master's degree in social and geographic data science at UCL, it dawned on Hannah Schuller, 24, that finding her first job would be a struggle. 'It was during that year that I realised a job would by no means be as easy to get as I thought it had been maybe three years prior when I started higher education,' says Schuller, who graduated in September 2024 with a distinction. Schuller has applied to roles ranging from data handling and analysis to data journalism. She has found herself waiting months for a reply and, like many others, is struggling to navigate a new world where artificial intelligence (AI) is often the first thing that reads her submission. 'I don't really care if an AI tool is going through the applications,' Schuller says. 'I think the bigger problem that it reflects is that there's not enough opportunities out there and that there are too many people in the first place applying for too few things.' As well as transforming hiring, AI is also fuelling drops in job openings within industries where tasks can be automated. It may help to explain a 62pc drop in graduate roles in HR over the last year and a 44pc slump in entry-level jobs in accounting. 'Big four' accountants KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and EY are hiring hundreds fewer grads than they were a few years ago as they use AI to complete the kind of 'grunt' work that would typically be done by junior staff. Many businesses have also put a freeze on hiring or are cutting back jobs following Rachel Reeves's tax raid in the autumn Budget, which increased the cost of employing staff by raising employers' National Insurance contributions. Meanwhile, Stephen Isherwood, of the Institute of Student Employers, says declines in industries such as technology reflected the fact 'they over recruited significantly after the pandemic and there's still a retrenchment from that'. 'Really, really disheartening' It's not just grads feeling the squeeze. The latest figures from Indeed show that vacancies across all levels of seniority and industry are now at the lowest level since the pandemic. A cooling labour market has meant that some graduates find themselves competing against more experienced jobseekers who have been forced to apply for junior or entry-level roles in an effort to find work. Many university leavers find themselves in a catch-22 as they are unable to get the experience they need to compete against these kinds of candidates. 'In all likelihood it's unfortunately probably going to remain quite a challenging picture for graduates for the foreseeable,' says Jack Kennedy, at Indeed. Simran Abdullatif graduated with a first-class degree in Criminology and Sociology from the University of Kent last year. Since then, the 23-year-old has found the job search 'really, really disheartening'. 'Once I started looking seriously, there was nothing. Honestly, there was nothing,' she says. The aspiring solicitor has cast her net wide in her search for an entry-level role. After sending out over 100 job applications for vacancies ranging from law schemes to secretarial roles, Ms Abdullatif hasn't been invited for a single interview. 'I've come to realise how tough just finding a job is. I've honestly even been applying to Tesco, Morrisons, Lidl and even they aren't getting back to me,' she says. 'I keep saying to my mum: 'what was the point of me studying so hard to get a first-class for that first-class to not even be able to do anything for me?' You've studied for so long and you don't see the fruits of your labour. 'Maybe I need to get more experience under my belt, but then no one wants to give you the experience.' Doyle is similarly struggling to know where to go from here. Despite all the applications and assessment days, he has had little in the way of constructive criticism about how to improve his changes. 'I think I've only had proper feedback from one of them, but even for the rejection emails that I get, it just sounds like, 'oh, we've decided to go with other candidates progressing forward',' he says. 'So there's not really much you can build on.'
Gizmodo
17-05-2025
- Health
- Gizmodo
Your Pruney Fingers After After a Bath Always Wrinkle the Same Way, Study Reveals
Pruney fingers and toes after a long time in the pool or the bathtub are one of those things we all expect but couldn't explain scientifically until recently. In 2023, Binghamton University biomedical engineer Guy German and colleagues found that this happens because the blood vessels in our digits contract when we spend too much time in water. Then a kid asked a brilliant question that triggered a whole new research project. 'A student asked, 'Yeah, but do the wrinkles always form in the same way?' And I thought: I haven't the foggiest clue!' German explained in a Binghamton University statement. 'So it led to this research to find out.' German and Rachel Laytin, a former graduate researcher at the university's Biological Soft Matter Mechanics Laboratory, revealed that the answer is, simply put, yes: pruney fingers always seem to wrinkle along the same patterns. They detailed their work in a study published in February in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. The two researchers photographed study participants' fingers after they had been immersed in water for half an hour, then repeated the process at least 24 hours later. They compared the pruniness in the two images, looking for similarities, and found that the 'topography' of the wrinkles was the same across both immersions. The blood vessels in our fingers and toes 'don't change their position much—they move around a bit, but in relation to other blood vessels, they're pretty static,' German said. 'That means the wrinkles should form in the same manner, and we proved that they do.' The research also confirms something people have observed for decades: Individuals with median nerve damage—injury to a major nerve in the hand—don't get wrinkles after prolonged water exposure. 'One of my students told us, 'I've got median nerve damage in my fingers.' So we tested him—no wrinkles!' German said. While the recent study was conducted to answer a child's relatively simple question, the findings could have important implications for forensics, particularly in identifying fingerprints at crime scenes or bodies recovered from water. German explained that his father, a former U.K. police officer, encountered some of these difficulties while on the job. As such, 'biometrics and fingerprints are built into my brain,' he added. 'I always think about this sort of stuff, because it's fascinating.' It might be time to add pruney prints to law enforcement's biometric database.
Daily Mail
14-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Scientists reveal the real reason why your fingers wrinkle when you soak in the bath
It's a phenomenon we're all familiar with. You go for a swim, or enjoy a relaxing soak in the bath, and soon enough your fingers and toes go wrinkly. But have you ever wondered why this happens? A common misconception is that our fingers wrinkle due to swelling triggered by water absorption. Now, scientists have confirmed that this isn't the case – instead, it's all down to our blood vessels. Guy German, an associate professor in the department of biomedical engineering at Binghampton University, New York, recruited three volunteers to soak their fingers for 30 minutes. His team annotated the patterns of looped peaks and valleys that formed on the sodden skin. They discovered that these patterns mostly repeated themselves when they were soaked again 24 hours later. 'Often people assume that these winkles form because skin absorbs water, which makes it swell up and buckle,' he told The Conversation. 'To be honest, I did too for a long time.' However, it turns out it's actually our autonomic nervous system at work. This controls our involuntary movements such as breathing, blinking and our heart beating – as well as how our blood vessels contract and relax. Normally temperature, medication and what we eat and drink can influence how they behave. 'This contraction of your blood vessels is also what causes the skin to wrinkle after a lengthy swim,' Dr German said. 'When your hands and feet come into contact with water for more than a few minutes, the sweat ducts in your skin open, allowing water to flow into the skin tissue. 'This added water decreases the proportion of salt inside the skin. 'Nerve fibres send a message about lower salt levels to your brain, and the autonomic nervous system responds by constricting the blood vessels. 'The narrowing of the blood vessels causes the overall volume of skin to reduce, puckering the skin into these distinct wrinkle patterns. 'It's like how a dried-out grape becomes a wrinkled raisin – it's lost more volume than surface area.' He explained that submerged fingers usually reproduce the same wrinkly pattern because blood vessels 'don't change their position much'. The experiments, published in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, also confirmed another theory – that wrinkles don't form in people who have nerve damage in their fingers. Dr German also revealed another advantage to wrinkled fingers and toes – grip. Researchers have found wrinkled skin can provide more grip underwater compared to unwrinkled, smooth skin. This could make walking along an underwater surface easier, with less likelihood of slipping.
Malay Mail
14-05-2025
- Health
- Malay Mail
Thai Engineering Student's Journey at CUHK Exemplifies Excellence in Global Healthcare Innovation
CUHK Vice-Chancellor's Scholarship awardee Jarinyagon CHANTAWANNAKUL (right) from Thailand receives recognition at the University's Scholarship Presentation Ceremony 2021/22, exemplifying CUHK's commitment to nurturing international talents. The significant scholarship recognises her outstanding academic achievements and potential contributions to healthcare innovation. Choosing Excellence in Healthcare Innovation Academic Achievement and Research Excellence Biomedical Engineering student Jarinyagon CHANTAWANNAKUL gains hands-on research experience during her summer internship at Stanford University's Department of Otolaryngology, School of Medicine. Mentorship and Faculty Support Global Exposure and Professional Development Future Impact in Healthcare Innovation For Thai Students Considering CUHK HONG KONG SAR - Media OutReach Newswire - 14 May 2025 - The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) continues to attract international talent in specialised fields, as demonstrated by the journey of Jarinyagon CHANTAWANNAKUL, a final-year Biomedical Engineering student from Thailand. Her story highlights CUHK's growing reputation as a premier destination for healthcare technology education in selected CUHK after recognising Hong Kong as one of Asia's few locations offering specialised Biomedical Engineering programmes. The university's comprehensive infrastructure, including dedicated libraries, laboratories, and teaching hospitals, along with its unique college system and generous hostel policy, proved decisive factors in her choice. Her academic excellence was recognised with the prestigious Vice-Chancellor's Scholarship, ensuring her financial stability throughout her academic journey has been marked by notable achievements, including the Charles K. Kao Scholarship, which supported her research exchange at Stanford University's Department of Otolaryngology. Most recently, she secured funding from the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation's (HKSTP) Ideation programme to develop her final year project into a commercial CUHK, Jarinyagon has benefited from close mentorship by distinguished faculty members. Professor Scott Wu Yuan has served as her project supervisor, career mentor, and life adviser, while Professor Liting Duan's guidance as academic adviser has helped ensure her continued success throughout the classroom learning, Jarinyagon's professional experience includes valuable internships at both Stanford University and a Hong Kong biotech company. Her first full-time paid position as an R&D intern in Hong Kong's biotech sector provided crucial insights into industry operations and workplace dynamics in one of Asia's primary business ahead, Jarinyagon aims to leverage her CUHK education to make meaningful contributions to healthcare through innovation. Her involvement with HKSTP's Ideation programme exemplifies how CUHK prepares students to transform academic projects into practical healthcare prospective Thai students, Jarinyagon emphasises CUHK's strong global reputation and generous scholarship opportunities as key attractions. The university's diverse cultural environment provides invaluable opportunities for international students to expand their global perspectives while pursuing world-class #CUHK The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. About CUHK Founded in 1963, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) stands as a leading comprehensive research university, consistently ranked among Asia's top educational institutions.
