More by Jonathan Griffin

While pacemakers have treated many patients with heart rhythm disorders, their bulky design and use of wires limits their usefulness and poses a risk of heart damage or infection. Now, researchers have cut the cords, shrunk the size, and expanded the capabilities of current designs.

Researchers have developed sugar-coated gold nanoparticles to both image and destroy biofilms. In a study, they used the nanoparticles on the teeth and wounded skin of rats and mice, eliminating biofilms in as little as one minute and outperforming common antimicrobials.

The qualities of flowing blood, or hemodynamics, hold important insights into vascular diseases, but technological limitations have largely kept measurements of these properties out of reach in the clinic. Now, there may be a potential solution on the horizon.

Frequent insulin injections are an unpleasant reality for many patients with type 1 diabetes. However, new technology could create a different reality for these patients.

A beating heart makes for a formidable surgical arena, but a new robotic catheter could someday equip surgeons to operate in the cardiac environment with greater ease.

Artificially causing – or inducing – labor is becoming increasingly common, yet this practice comes with risks and its level of success is difficult to foresee. But now, new research may offer a way to help predict outcomes and improve the process.

Introducing medical devices — commonly made of materials such as titanium, silicone, or collagen — into our bodies can elicit a host of different immune responses. While some responses can harm our bodies, others can help heal them. A new study fills in a critical piece of the puzzle.

Navigating the labyrinthine vasculature of the brain with standard surgical instruments can be incredibly challenging, even for the steadiest of hands. But with some robotic assistance, brain surgeons could potentially operate with far greater ease.

The National Institutes of Health and the higher education non-profit VentureWell have selected 10 winners and five honorable mentions of the Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge, who are set to receive prizes totaling $145,000. The awards will be presented to the winning teams during the annual Biomedical Engineering Society conference held Oct. 11-14, 2023.

Now in its 12th year, the DEBUT Challenge calls on teams of undergraduate students to produce technological solutions to a broad spectrum of unmet health needs.

Alongside the National Institute of Biomedical

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have used ultrasound to nudge rodents into an energy-conserving state that mirrors a natural, hibernation-like survival mechanism known as torpor. The technique could help buy precious time for patients in critical care.

For most of our tissues and cells, a lack of oxygen, or hypoxia, is bad news. However, cancer cells can thrive in these conditions, rendering tumors less susceptible to anti-cancer treatments including radiation. Now, new research may offer a way to break through cancer’s hypoxia-induced defenses.

One day, the ultrasound equipment that health care professionals use for essential diagnostic imaging may no longer be confined to the clinic, instead operated by patients in the comfort of their homes. New research marks a major step toward that future.

Researchers have shown that an automated cancer diagnostic method, which pairs cutting-edge ultrasound techniques with artificial intelligence, can accurately diagnose thyroid cancer, of which there are more than 40,000 new cases every year.

Tissue engineering research has uncovered that a skin cell type could be a new therapeutic target to accelerate the healing of burns and possibly other wounds.