Nanochip generates body cells to heal your body parts

[Bayard]

This Insane Nanochip Device Can Heal Tissue Just by Touching The Skin Once

Imagine buzzing the skin over an internal wound with an electrical device and having it heal over just a few days – that's the promise of new nanochip technology that can reprogram cells to replace tissue or even whole organs.

It's called Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT), and while it's only been tested on mice and pigs so far, the early signs are encouraging for this new body repair tool - and it sounds like a device straight out of science-fiction.

The prototype device, developed by a team at Ohio State University, sits on the skin and uses an intense electrical field to deliver specific genes to the tissue underneath it. Those genes create new types of cells that can be used nearby or elsewhere in the body.

"By using our novel nanochip technology, injured or compromised organs can be replaced," says one of the study leaders, Chandan Sen. "We have shown that skin is a fertile land where we can grow the elements of any organ that is declining."

During animal tests, researchers were able to use TNT to reprogram skin cells on the outside of injured legs to become vascular cells, which are key to regulating a healthy blood flow through the body.

Within a week, active blood vessels appeared in the injured legs, and by the second week the injured legs had been saved by TNT.

What's more, nerve cells generated in the lab using the same technique were used to successfully help brain-injured mice recover from a stroke.

"This is difficult to imagine, but it is achievable, successfully working about 98 percent of the time," says Sen. "With this technology, we can convert skin cells into elements of any organ with just one touch."

Other scientists are already investigating ways of reprogramming cells to repair the body, but what makes this particular technique stand out is that it skips the usual intermediary step of creating pluripotent stem cells, cells that can then turn into any other cell type.

In this case the cells go straight from skin cells to another variety of cell, all thanks to the targeted release of genes and an electrical pulse.

The TNT technology is made up of two components: the nanotechnology-based chip that sits on the skin, about the size of a cufflink, and the biological cargo it contains to affect the tissue underneath.

The chip gets zapped with a harmless electrical charge to release the cargo into the cell membranes, and the chip can then be removed.

According to the researchers it all takes less than a second to apply. The process is non-invasive, and because the reprogrammed cells are already in the patient's body, immune suppression is not required to make sure the new tissue is accepted.

We should note that there's still a long way to go before we could use this process on our own bodies, but the researchers are continuing to refine the technique and work towards human trials sometime next year.

"The concept is very simple," says one of the researchers, L. James Lee. "As a matter of fact, we were even surprised how it worked so well."

"In my lab, we have ongoing research trying to understand the mechanism and do even better. So, this is the beginning, more to come."

The research has been published in Nature Nanotechnology.

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-nanochip-devices-could-heal-organs-with-a-single-touch

A more recent story:

"Next generation of organ-on-chip has arrived"
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/01/human-body-on-chip-platform-may-speed-up-drug-development/

Fascinating research, with tremendous potential.

[0rganism]

1. the beginnings of immortality therapy for the ultra-wealthy

in the end, most of us will still get to suck dirt

[qazplm135]

4. I mean

this treatment doesn't strike me as all that expensive.

I will agree that the poor probably won't see it til it's ubiquitous, but it's probably something that most could have access to unless I'm completely off on the expense.

[0rganism]

9. it probably could be made widely available, but i doubt it would be in a capitalist society

hard to use basic health as a threat and overcharge people for health care if they're just nano-regenerating all the time

[qazplm135]

11. way too cynical

and it could just as easily be profitable to have people living longer, means they can work more and buy more shit.

[0rganism]

12. mmhmm

if cheap labor wasn't so essential to late-stage capitalism i might agree with you

[qazplm135]

13. what's cheaper labor than people who live another 30 years?

What more incentive to work then buying something affordable that will give you those 30 years?

[0rganism]

14. 30 years? that's the beginning

sure, 30-year extensions will be available to the servant caste, and we'll all be very happy to get it
meanwhile, the wealthy will be looking ahead to 300
same as it ever was

[qazplm135]

15. no one is getting 300 in our lifetimes

or probably even our grandkids.

It's going to take centuries to get that level of long life, and again, there are as many economic reasons to spread it around as there are to restrict it.

[0rganism]

16. right, thus "the beginnings"

if we're lucky our descendants will not be eager to hoard such advances

[CatMor]

2. Hope it's not perfected before trumps demise.

[qazplm135]

3. I firmly believe that in the next 30 years

we are going to see large advancements in body part replacement and increased health into your 90s and beyond.

So long as your brain is ok, I can see people living to be 120-130 at the tail end of that time frame.

110 becoming the new 90 as it were.

Nothing crazy, we ain't living forever, but I think we will see several decades potentially added on.

[Newest Reality]

5. Great!

The immortal, cyborg trillionaires can then hunt the rest of us for sport.

Innovations like these must really make their oligarchy system tingle.

I would like to be the first to welcome our transhuman overlords.

These are exciting times for them, and a journey of getting any access to healthcare for us.

[empedocles]

7. Seems to beat 'cryo tech' of chopping off the head and freezing it for the future

[eleny]

6. K&R and Bookmarked

Thanks so much for posting. Otherwise, I'm speechless!

[Bayard]

8. I see this as wonderful news

Wonderful for diabetics that can grow a new pancreas, people with lung cancer that can grow a new lung, congestive heart failure patients that can grow a new heart. A real breakthrough for babies born with genetic diseases to maybe have a life.

[Towlie]

10. I call bullshit! You have to be VERY CAREFUL when evaluating science articles.

It takes a lot of careful research to properly decide whether to accept some unknown author's interpretation of a scientific paper, let alone the veracity of the paper itself. This advice applies mainly to the sciencealert.com article.

As for the news.harvard.edu article, it doesn't appear to have anything to do with the formerly mentioned sciencealert.com article. I call bullshit.

[Bayard]

17. I cheerfully admit to not being a scientist

But I trust the science:

"team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, developed the first human “organ-on-a-chip” (organ chip) model of the lung that recapitulates human organ level physiology and pathophysiology with high fidelity, which was reported in Science in 2010."

Sounds like the same topic to me.