Pour la première fois, une ex-directrice de l’école Bedford explique de vive voix avoir alerté plusieurs fois ses supérieurs quant au climat toxique.

À l’exception notable des électeurs conservateurs.

Ce n’est pas mon opinion, mais celle d’endocrinologues, qui sont les plus crédibles dans ce débat.

Le Bloc Québécois trône toujours en tête, à 35% des intentions de vote, selon un sondage Léger-Le Journal-TVA.

If it seems like the Christmas shopping season starts earlier every year, you're not wrong. In response to growing customer demand, stores of all stripes brought out their festive collections weeks before the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season.

Supporters say the Supreme Court of Canada's so-called Jordan ruling in 2016 has sped up proceedings and strengthened Charter rights for prompt justice. But some victims say the time limits for trials work in criminals' favour and cases continue to collapse because those limits are breached. 

You humans might be amazed to know what we dogs have figured out.

Ten years after the iPhone dug its grave, the personal computer is rising like a phoenix.

Le chanteur Zach Bryan aurait demandé à son ex-copine Brianna LaPaglia de ne pas parler de leur relation en lui offrant 12 millions de dollars.

La nouvelle saison sera déposée sur illico+ le 13 novembre.

James Van Der Beek s’est ouvert sur son combat contre le cancer.

Un premier spectacle d’humour en solo, intitulé «Après seulement 32 ans d’absence sur scène».

La vedette colombienne du reggaeton Karol G s’est excusée pour des paroles de son nouveau single «+57» jugées offensantes.

La ville de Québec pourra compter sur des prestations du groupe La Bottine Souriante et de la DJ belge MATTN pour l’amener en 2025.

La majorité des billets encore offerts en ligne pour aller voir Taylor Swift à Toronto sont des arnaques, constate un expert en cybersécurité.

Elle tiendra la vedette de l’adaptation québécoise du succès mondial Ménopause aux côtés de Claudine Mercier, Catherine Sénart et Geneviève Charest.

WIDESPREAD rain fell across NSW at the weekend.

Technology differences mean meters in northern England and Scotland may not work properly, energy firm body admits.

‘Self-taught’ athlete Phoenix Martin is a gold medal winner thanks to his determination to succeed, and the help of his coach...his dad.

La présence de lésions intestinales serait associée à une hausse importante du risque de développer la maladie de Parkinson.

The Subject Expert Committee (SEC), which advises the national drug regulator on matters related to approval of new drugs and medical devices and clinical trials, has recommended grant of market authorisation for

The Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), under the ministry of commerce and industry, has released a list of registered interested parties regarding the ongoing Second Sunset Review anti─dumping

Trelleborg Medical Solutions showcases its comprehensive polymer-based solutions and capabilities for the medical technology and biopharmaceutical industries at Compamed 2024 in Dusseldorf from November 11 to 14, at stand F02 in hall 8A.

Peytant has announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted marketing authorisation (clearance to market in the United States as a Class II device) for the AMStent Tracheobronchial Covered Stent System, a therapy platform.

When chemist Dora Richardson’s employer decided to terminate the breast cancer research on the drug Tamoxifen in the early 1970s, she and her colleagues continued the work in secret.

Humans and pigs could both serve as mixing vessels for a bird flu–seasonal flu hybrid, posing a risk of wider spread

Two years of experimentation taught a Nashville guitarist not every musical myth makes sense

Charco Neurotech, a medtech company based in the United Kingdom, has developed CUE1, a non-invasive wearable that is intended to assist those with Parkinson’s disease to manage their motor symptoms. The device is typically affixed to the sternum, and provides vibratory action in a focused region of the body. The technology is based on the […]

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed plant-based microrobots that are intended to pave the way for medical robots that can enter the body and perform tasks, such as obtaining a biopsy or performing a surgical procedure. The robots consist of a hydrogel material that is biocompatible and the composite contains cellulose […]

A new survey of plan sponsors sheds light on their satisfaction with transparency at large and small pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

As you will see, clients remain slightly more satisfied with the perceived transparency of smaller PBMs compared with the Big Three PBMs—CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and Optum Rx.

However, plan sponsors are dissatisfied with transparency about how both large and small PBMs make money. Smaller PBMs have an edge, but it’s narrower than you might think.

Perhaps PBMs’ clients are unable or unwilling to negotiate better deals, write more effective contracts, and switch to more satisfying relationships. Or maybe they don’t mind the current system, despite the challenges for patients. Some argue that transparency could swoop down to solve this problem. Riddle me this: Should we watch what plan sponsors say, or what they do?

Read on to see what you think of my arguments below. Then, click here to share your thoughts with the Drug Channels community.
Read more »

The ACRO D&I Site Resource Grants Program aims to help sites acquire the resources and skills that will get them selected for studies and improve the reach of clinical research into underrepresented communities.

The post ACRO Announces Diversity and Inclusion Site Resource Grants Program first appeared on ACRO.

ACRO is pleased to announce the launch of the ACRO Diversity and Inclusion Site Resource Grants Program! The ACRO D&I Site Resource Grants Program aims to help sites acquire the resources and skills that will get them selected for studies and improve the reach of clinical research into underrepresented communities. “We are excited to invite […]

The post ACRO Announces Diversity and Inclusion Site Resource Grants Program first appeared on ACRO.

ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast is back with bonus episode! Host Sophia McLeod sat down with Tafoya Hubbard and Kristen Surdam to discuss ACRO’s new D&I Site Resource Grants Program.

The post Bonus Episode: Fast Facts on the ACRO D&I Grants Program first appeared on ACRO.

Bonus Episode: Fast Facts on the ACRO D&I Grants Program ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast is back with bonus episode! Host Sophia McLeod sat down with Tafoya Hubbard (ACRO Site Resource Grants Program Manager) and Kristen Surdam (ACRO D&I Steering Committee Member) to discuss ACRO’s new D&I Site Resource Grants Program. They provide background on the […]

The post Bonus Episode: ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast first appeared on ACRO.

Today, ACRO is thrilled to announce the Good Clinical Podcast, where we take a look at the current state of clinical research and what direction the industry must head in to continue improving trials for patients. Host Sophia McLeod is joined by industry leaders to discuss the latest industry trends, cutting-edge innovation, and reflect on […]

The post Listen Now: ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast Episode 1 first appeared on ACRO.

On the latest episode of ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast, Dr. Tala Fakhouri (Associate Director for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Policy, FDA) and Stephen Pyke (Chief Clinical Data & Digital Officer, Parexel) join the podcast to discuss how the FDA and regulators around the world are thinking about the use of AI in clinical research. […]

The post Listen Now: ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast Episode 2 first appeared on ACRO.

On the latest episode of ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast, Nicole Stansbury (SVP, Global Clinical Operations, Premier Research) and Madeleine Whitehead (RBQM Product & People Lead, Roche) join the podcast to discuss ACRO’s collaboration with TransCelerate BioPharma, Inc., the impact that ICH E6(R3) will have on Good Clinical Practice, and implications for innovation. They dive deeper […]

The post Listen Now: ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast Episode 3 first appeared on ACRO.

RBQM: Moving Beyond a Belt & Suspenders Approach to Data Quality On the latest episode of ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast, Danilo Branco (Director, Central Monitoring Operations, Fortrea), Cris McDavid (Director, Global Clinical Operations, RBQM, Parexel), and Valarie McGee (Senior Director, Clinical Systems Optimization, the PPD Clinical Research Business of Thermo Fisher Scientific) join the podcast […]

The post Listen Now: ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast Episode 5 first appeared on ACRO.

The State of Clinical Trials in the UK: 2024 Update On the season 2 finale of ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast, Steve Cutler (CEO, ICON plc) and Professor Lucy Chappell (CEO, NIHR) join the podcast to discuss the current clinical research landscape in the UK. They dive deeper into the competitive nature of bringing clinical research to a country, process-related challenges that need to […]

The post Listen Now: ACRO’s Good Clinical Podcast Episode 6 first appeared on ACRO.

On December 3, a federal appeals court ruled against one of the FDA’s untouchable restrictions on industry—thou shalt not promote the off-label use of pharmaceutical products. An industry that is little interested in constitutional law suddenly finds itself talking about the First Amendment and whether, and on what grounds, the case will be appealed. Meantime, the court’s decision left FDA Matters torn between cheering and booing. Patients are poorly served if their doctor is prescribing drugs without being able to tap into all sources of relevant knowledge. However, permitting off-label promotion undercuts the incentive for companies to thoroughly investigate the safety and efficacy of a drug for a second or third use.

On May 24, Governor Tim Walz signed into law Minnesota’s new comprehensive data privacy law, the Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act (HF 4757 referenced as the MCDPA). The MCDPA goes into effect on July 31, 2025, with some exceptions for colleges and universities (who have until 2029). The MCDPA is similar to other state privacy laws, […]

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the British Pharmaceutical Students’ Association have called for all overseas candidates to sit the March 2021 registration assessment in their home countries.

Community pharmacies should be reimbursed for their additional costs during the COVID-19 pandemic “as soon as possible”, the prime minister has told The Pharmaceutical Journal.

By Mike Cloonan, CEO of Sionna Therapeutics, as part of the From The Trenches feature of LifeSciVC An insightful piece on this blog following the JPM healthcare conference noted the “refreshing burst of enthusiasm” in the biotech sector. It’s true

The post Lessons From A Private Funding Round: Science, Relationships, And Experience appeared first on LifeSciVC.

By Arthur O. Tzianabos, PhD, CEO of Lifordi Immunotherapeutics, as part of the From the Trenches feature of LifeSciVC As the biotech industry continues to pick up steam, I have been getting a number of phone calls from folks in

The post Stars and Scars… Some Lessons Learned About Leadership appeared first on LifeSciVC.

Sweat: We all do it. It plays an essential role in controlling body temperature by cooling the skin through evaporation. But it can also carry salts and other molecules out of the body in the process. In medieval Europe, people would lick babies; if the skin was salty, they knew that serious illness was likely. (We now know that salty skin can be an indicator for cystic fibrosis.)

Scientists continue to study how the materials in sweat can reveal details about an individual’s health, but often they must rely on gathering samples from subjects during strenuous exercise in order to get samples that are sufficiently large for analysis.

Now researchers in China have developed a wearable sensor system that can collect and process small amounts of sweat while providing continuous detection. They have named the design a “skin-interfaced intelligent graphene nanoelectronic” patch, or SIGN for short. The researchers, who described their work in a paper published in Advanced Functional Materials, did not respond to IEEE Spectrum’s interview requests.

The SIGN sensor patch relies on three separate components to accomplish its task. First, the sweat must be transported from the skin into microfluidic chambers. Next, a special membrane removes impurities from the fluid. Finally, this liquid is delivered to a bioreceptor that can be tuned to detect different metabolites.

The transport system relies on a combination of hydrophilic (water-attracting) and hydrophobic (water-repelling) materials. This system can move aqueous solutions along microchannels, even against gravity. This makes it possible to transport small samples with precision, regardless of the device’s orientation.

The fluid is transported to a Janus membrane, where impurities are blocked. This means that the sample that reaches the sensor is more likely to produce accurate results.

Finally, the purified sweat arrives at a flexible biosensor. This graphene sensor is activated by enzymes designed to detect the desired biomarker. The result is a transistor that can accurately measure the amount of the biomarker in the sample.

At its center, the system has a membrane that removes impurities from sweat and a biosensor that detects biomarkers.Harbin Institute of Technology/Shenyang Aerospace University

One interesting feature of the SIGN patch is that it can provide continuous measurements. The researchers tested the device through multiple cycles of samples with known concentrations of a target biomarker, and it was about as accurate after five cycles as it was after just one. This result suggests that it could be worn over an extended period without having to be replaced.

Continuous measurements can provide useful longitudinal data. However, Tess Skyrme, a senior technology analyst at the research firm IDTechEx, points out that continuous devices can have very different sampling rates. “Overall, the right balance of efficient, comfortable, and granular data collection is necessary to disrupt the market,” she says, noting that devices also need to optimize “battery life, calibration, and data accuracy.”

The researchers have focused on lactate—a metabolite that can be used to assess a person’s levels of exercise and fatigue—as the initial biomarker to be detected. This function is of particular interest to athletes, but it can also be used to monitor the health status of workers in jobs that require strenuous physical activity, especially in hazardous or extreme working conditions.

Not all experts are convinced that biomarkers in sweat can provide accurate health data. Jason Heikenfeld, director of the Novel Device Lab at the University of Cincinnati, has pivoted his research on wearable biosensing from sweat to the interstitial fluid between blood vessels and cells. “Sweat glucose and lactate are way inferior to measures that can be made in interstitial fluid with devices like glucose monitors,” he tells Spectrum.

The researchers also developed a package to house the sensor. It’s designed to minimize power consumption, using a low-power microcontroller, and it includes a Bluetooth communications chip to transmit data wirelessly from the SIGN patch. The initial design provides for 2 hours of continuous use without charging, or up to 20 hours in standby mode.

For people with diabetes, glucose monitors are a valuable tool to monitor their blood sugar. The current generation of these biosensors detect glucose levels with thin, metallic filaments inserted in subcutaneous tissue, the deepest layer of the skin where most body fat is stored.

Medical technology company Biolinq is developing a new type of glucose sensor that doesn’t go deeper than the dermis, the middle layer of skin that sits above the subcutaneous tissue. The company’s “intradermal” biosensors take advantage of metabolic activity in shallower layers of skin, using an array of electrochemical microsensors to measure glucose—and other chemicals in the body—just beneath the skin’s surface.

Biolinq just concluded a pivotal clinical trial earlier this month, according to CEO Rich Yang, and the company plans to submit the device to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval at the end of the year. In April, Biolinq received US $58 million in funding to support the completion of its clinical trials and subsequent submission to the FDA.

Biolinq’s glucose sensor is “the world’s first intradermal sensor that is completely autonomous,” Yang says. While other glucose monitors require a smartphone or other reader to collect and display the data, Biolinq’s includes an LED display to show when the user’s glucose is within a healthy range (indicated by a blue light) or above that range (yellow light). “We’re providing real-time feedback for people who otherwise could not see or feel their symptoms,” Yang says. (In addition to this real-time feedback, the user can also load long-term data onto a smartphone by placing it next to the sensor, like Abbott’s FreeStyle Libre, another glucose monitor.)

More than 2,000 microsensor components are etched onto each 200-millimeter silicon wafer used to manufacture the biosensors.Biolinq

Biolinq’s hope is that its approach could lead to sustainable changes in behavior on the part of the individual using the sensor. The device is intentionally placed on the upper forearm to be in plain sight, so users can receive immediate feedback without manually checking a reader. “If you drink a glass of orange juice or soda, you’ll see this go from blue to yellow,” Yang explains. That could help users better understand how their actions—such as drinking a sugary beverage—change their blood sugar and take steps to reduce that effect.

Biolinq’s device consists of an array of microneedles etched onto a silicon wafer using semiconductor manufacturing. (Other glucose sensors’ filaments are inserted with an introducer needle.) Each chip has a small 2-millimeter by 2-millimeter footprint and contains seven independent microneedles, which are coated with membranes through a process similar to electroplating in jewelry making. One challenge the industry has faced is ensuring that microsensors do not break at this small scale. The key engineering insight Biolinq introduced, Yang says, was using semiconductor manufacturing to build the biosensors. Importantly, he says, silicon “is harder than titanium and steel at this scale.”

Miniaturization allows for sensing closer to the surface of the skin, where there is a high level of metabolic activity. That makes the shallow depth ideal for monitoring glucose, as well as other important biomarkers, Yang says. Due to this versatility, combined with the use of a sensor array, the device in development can also monitor lactate, an important indicator of muscle fatigue. With the addition of a third data point, ketones (which are produced when the body burns fat), Biolinq aims to “essentially have a metabolic panel on one chip,” Yang says.

Using an array of sensors also creates redundancy, improving the reliability of the device if one sensor fails or becomes less accurate. Glucose monitors tend to drift over the course of wear, but with multiple sensors, Yang says that drift can be better managed.

One downside to the autonomous display is the drain on battery life, Yang says. The battery life limits the biosensor’s wear time to 5 days in the first-generation device. Biolinq aims to extend that to 10 days of continuous wear in its second generation, which is currently in development, by using a custom chip optimized for low-power consumption rather than off-the-shelf components.

The company has collected nearly 1 million hours of human performance data, along with comparators including commercial glucose monitors and venous blood samples, Yang says. Biolinq aims to gain FDA approval first for use in people with type 2 diabetes not using insulin and later expand to other medical indications.

This article appears in the August 2024 print issue as “Glucose Monitor Takes Page From Chipmaking.”

In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people currently need a lifesaving organ transplant. Instead of waiting for donors, one way to solve this crisis in the future is to assemble replacement organs with bio-printing—3D printing that uses inks containing living cells. Scientists in Israel have found that origami techniques could help fold sensors into bio-printed materials to help determine whether they are behaving safely and properly.

Although bio-printing something as complex as a human organ is still a distant possibility, there are a host of near-term applications for the technique. For example, in drug research, scientists can bio-print living, three-dimensional tissues with which to examine the effects of various compounds.

Ideally, researchers would like to embed sensors within bio-printed items to keep track of how well they are behaving. However, the three-dimensional nature of bio-printed objects makes it difficult to lodge sensors within them in a way that can monitor every part of the structures.

“It will, hopefully in the future, allow us to monitor and assess 3D biostructures before we would like to transplant them.” —Ben Maoz, Tel Aviv University

Now scientists have developed a 3D platform inspired by origami that can help embed sensors in bio-printed objects in precise locations. “It will, hopefully in the future, allow us to monitor and assess 3D biostructures before we would like to transplant them,” says Ben Maoz, a professor of biomedical engineering at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

The new platform is a silicone rubber device that can fold around a bio-printed structure. The prototype holds a commercial array of 3D electrodes to capture electrical signals. It also possesses other electrodes that can measure electrical resistance, which can reveal how permeable cells are to various medications. A custom 3D software model can tailor the design of the origami and all the electrodes so that the sensors can be placed in specific locations in the bio-printed object.

The scientists tested their device on bio-printed clumps of brain cells. The research team also grew a layer of cells onto the origami that mimicked the blood-brain barrier, a cell layer that protects the brain from undesirable substances that the body’s blood might be carrying. By folding this combination of origami and cells onto the bio-printed structures, Maoz and his colleagues were able to monitor neural activity within the brain cells and see how their synthetic blood-brain barrier might interfere with medications intended to treat brain diseases.

Maoz says the new device can incorporate many types of sensors beyond electrodes, such as temperature or acidity sensors. It can also incorporate flowing liquid to supply oxygen and nutrients to cells, the researchers note.

Currently, this device “will mainly be used for research and not for clinical use,” Maoz says. Still, it could “significantly contribute to drug development—assessing drugs that are relevant to the brain.”

The researchers say they can use their origami device with any type of 3D tissue. For example, Maoz says they can use it on bio-printed structures made from patient cells “to help with personalized medicine and drug development.”

The origami platform could also help embed devices that can modify bio-printed objects. For instance, many artificially grown tissues function better if they are placed under the kinds of physical stresses they might normally experience within the body, and the origami platform could integrate gadgets that can exert such mechanical forces on bio-printed structures. “This can assist in accelerating tissue maturation, which might be relevant to clinical applications,” Maoz says.

The scientists detailed their findings in the 26 June issue of Advanced Science.

For the first time, scientists have created a flexible programmable chip that is not made of silicon. The new ultralow-power 32-bit microprocessor from U.K.-based Pragmatic Semiconductor and its colleagues can operate while bent, and can run machine learning workloads. The microchip’s open-source RISC-V architecture suggests it might cost less than a dollar, putting it in a position to power wearable healthcare electronics, smart package labels, and other inexpensive items, its inventors add.

For example, “we can develop an ECG patch that has flexible electrodes attached to the chest and a flexible microprocessor connected to flexible electrodes to classify arrhythmia conditions by processing the ECG data from a patient,” says Emre Ozer, senior director of processor development at Pragmatic, a flexible chip manufacturer in Cambridge, England. Detecting normal heart rhythms versus an arrhythmia “is a machine learning task that can run in software in the flexible microprocessor,” he says.

Flexible electronics have the potential for any application requiring interactions with soft materials, such as devices worn on or implanted within the body. Those applications could include on-skin computers, soft robotics, and brain-machine interfaces. But, conventional electronics are made of rigid materials such as silicon.

Open-source, Flexible, and Fast Enough

Pragmatic sought to create a flexible microchip that cost significantly less to make than a silicon processor. The new device, named Flex-RV, is a 32-bit microprocessor based on the metal-oxide semiconductor indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO).

Attempts to create flexible devices from silicon require special packaging for the brittle microchips to protect them from the mechanical stresses of bending and stretching. In contrast, pliable thin-film transistors made from IGZO can be made directly at low temperatures onto flexible plastics, leading to lower costs.

The new microchip is based on the RISC-V instruction set. (RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer.) First introduced in 2010, RISC-V aims to enable smaller, lower-power, better-performing processors by slimming down the core set of instructions they can execute.

“Our end goal is to democratize computing by developing a license-free microprocessor,” Ozer says.

RISC-V’s is both free and open-source, letting chip designer dodge the costly licensing fees associated with proprietary architectures such as x86 and Arm. In addition, proprietary architectures offer limited opportunities to customize them, as adding new instructions is generally restricted. In contrast, RISC-V encourages such changes.

A bent Flex-RV microprocessor runs a program to print ‘Hello World’. Pragmatic Semiconductor

“We chose the Serv designed by Olof Kindgren... as the open source 32-bit RISC-V CPU when we designed Flex-RV,” Ozer says. “Serv is the smallest RISC-V processor in the open-source community.”

Other processors have been built using flexible semiconductors, such as Pragmatic’s 32-bit PlasticARM and an ultracheap microcontroller designed by engineers in Illinois. Unlike these earlier devices, Flex-RV is programmable and can run compiled programs written in high-level languages such as C. In addition, the open-source nature of RISC-V also let the researchers equip Flex-RV with a programmable machine learning hardware accelerator, enabling artificial intelligence applications.

Each Flex-RV microprocessor has a 17.5 square millimeter core and roughly 12,600 logic gates. The research team found Flex-RV could run as fast as 60 kilohertz while consuming less than 6 milliwatts of power.

All previous flexible non-silicon microprocessors were tested solely on the wafers they were made on. In contrast, Flex-RV was tested on flexible printed circuit boards, which let the researchers see how well it operated when flexed. The Pragmatic team found that Flex-RV could still execute programs correctly when bent to a curve with a radius of 3 millimeters. Performance varied between a 4.3 percent slowdown to a 2.3 percent speedup depending on the way it was bent. “Further research is needed to understand how bending conditions such as direction, orientation and angle impact performance at macro and micro scales,” Ozer says.

Silicon microchips can run at gigahertz speeds, much faster than Flex-RV, but that shouldn’t be a problem, according to Ozer. “Many sensors—for example, temperature, pressure, odor, humidity, pH, and so on—in the flexible electronics world typically operate very slowly at hertz or kilohertz regimes,” he says. “These sensors are used in smart packaging, labels and wearable healthcare electronics, which are the emerging applications for which flexible microprocessors will be useful. Running the microprocessor at 60 kHz would be more than enough to meet the requirements of these applications.”

Ozer and his team suggest each Flex-RV might cost less than a dollar. Although Ozer did not want to say how much less than a dollar it might cost, he says they are confident such low costs are possible “thanks to low-cost flexible chip fabrication technology by Pragmatic and a license-free RISC-V technology.”

The scientists detailed their findings online 25 September in the journal Nature.

Here’s how four different health systems are partnering with Microsoft to save time for clinicians.

The post How 4 Health Systems Are Partnering with Microsoft appeared first on MedCity News.