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Straits Times
29-06-2025
- Health
- Straits Times
Singapore-made gel allows lab testing of drugs on live samples from advanced abdominal cancer
Hydrogel pieces in a petri dish in front of a vibrating microtome, a machine that shaves fragments from a tumour. The fragments, when cultivated on the hydrogel, can stay alive for up to 12 days outside the body. PHOTO: NUS-CDE Singapore-made gel allows lab testing of drugs on live samples from advanced abdominal cancer SINGAPORE – A hydrogel developed in Singapore to keep tumour samples alive outside the body for drug testing is now being used in research to find individualised treatment for advanced cancer in the abdominal lining. This offers hope to some patients who face an average survival rate of just several months. The jelly-like hydrogel is made from hyaluronic acid, a water-retentive substance found naturally in human tissues and fluids in the skin, joints and eyes. Scientists in Singapore have found that it can keep samples of advanced cancer in the abdominal lining alive for up to 12 days, enabling them to conduct drug tests and monitor how the cancer cells react to treatment. Without the hydrogel, cancer samples typically disintegrate within a few hours to a couple of days outside the body. The research was conducted using samples of secondary cancer in the abdominal lining, known as secondary peritoneal metastasis. Secondary cancers are those that have spread from the original site to other parts of the body. Primary cancers refer to the original tumours. In a 2023 study, the team had bioengineered the hydrogel to keep primary tumour samples from the head and the neck alive for 10 days to test drugs and treatments on them. The study was co-led by Dr Eliza Fong (right) from the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore, and Dr Johnny Ong (centre) from the Department of Sarcoma, Peritoneal and Rare Tumours at the National Cancer Centre Singapore. Looking into the microscope is Mr Kenny Wu, a PhD student. PHOTO: NCCS Secondary peritoneal metastasis is typically associated with advanced-stage disease. It occurs when cancer cells spread from primary sites such as the ovaries, stomach, colon, pancreas, appendix, gallbladder, breasts, uterus or lungs to the peritoneum, the protective membrane lining the abdominal cavity. The condition often poses a critical challenge in patient management in Singapore, as therapeutic options are highly limited and treatment outcome varies across patients. 'Developing clinically effective treatments remains a significantly unmet problem,' said Assistant Professor Eliza Fong from the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore. For instance, patients whose gastric cancer has spread to the peritoneum often face a grim prognosis and rapid disease progression. The median survival rates range from just three to six months, and five-year survival rates are usually below 5 per cent. 'With this ground-breaking discovery, cancer that has spread to the peritoneum... may no longer be a death sentence. The findings offered hope of survival for cancer patients,' said Associate Professor Johnny Ong, a senior consultant from the Department of Sarcoma, Peritoneal and Rare Tumours at the National Cancer Centre Singapore. Cancers are made up of highly complex tissues, comprising not only the rapidly proliferating malignant cells, but also various supporting cells such as immune cells. This means that two patients with the same type of cancer may respond differently to the same drug. A piece of hydrogel held in front of a vibrating microtome, a machine that shaves precise fragments off a resected tumour that can then be cultivated on the hydrogel. Copyright: NUS-CDE Prof Fong told The Straits Times that her team found that both the cancerous and supporting cells were preserved, allowing for the testing of chemotherapeutic drugs , targeted therapies and immunotherapies. She said the hydrogel 'is highly valuable for drug development and personalised treatments as the hydrogel-cultured tumours closely represent those in patients'. 'Mechanistically, the breakthrough in this study is that we were able to show that the hydrogel effectively preserved the viability of the tumour fragments by disrupting myosin II-mediated tissue contraction,' she said, referring to how the myosin II protein can cause tissues to contract and change shape. Prof Ong noted that the study also showed how hydrogel-supported samples of peritoneal metastasis responded differently to various chemotherapeutics across patients. He added that researchers are now leveraging the models to study how fluid build-up in the abdominal cavity affects the tumour microenvironment, or the conditions that support cancer growth. Their findings were published in Advanced Materials, a leading journal for materials science, on May 20. The results of the 2023 study were published in peer-reviewed journal Biomaterials on Jan 20, 2024. Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Redefining the transistor: The ideal building block for artificial intelligence
SINGAPORE, March 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The team led by Associate Professor Mario Lanza from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore, has just revolutionised the field of neuromorphic computing by inventing a new super-efficient computing cell that can mimic the behaviour of both electronic neurons and synapses. The work, titled "Synaptic and neural behaviours in a standard silicon transistor" was published in the scientific journal Nature on 26 March 2025 and is already attracting interest from leading companies in the semiconductor field. Electronic neurons and synapses are the two fundamental building blocks of next-generation artificial neural networks. Unlike traditional computers, these systems process and store data in the same place, eliminating the need to waste time and energy transferring data from memory to the processing unit (CPU). The problem is that implementing electronic neurons and synapses with traditional silicon transistors requires interconnecting multiple devices — specifically, at least 18 transistors per neuron and 6 per synapse. This makes them significantly larger and more expensive than a single transistor. The team led by Professor Lanza has found an ingenious way to reproduce the electronic behaviours characteristic of neurons and synapses in a single conventional silicon transistor. The key lies in setting the resistance of the bulk terminal to a specific value to produce a physical phenomenon called "impact ionisation," which generates a current spike very similar to what happens when an electronic neuron is activated. Additionally, by setting the bulk resistance to other specific values, the transistor can store charge in the gate oxide, causing the resistance of the transistor to persist over time, mimicking the behaviour of an electronic synapse. Making the transistor operate as a neuron or synapse is as simple as selecting the appropriate resistance for the bulk terminal. The physical phenomenon of "impact ionisation" had traditionally been considered a failure mechanism in silicon transistors, but Professor Lanza's team has managed to control it and turn it into a highly valuable application for the industry. This discovery is revolutionary because it allows the size of electronic neurons to be reduced by a factor of 18 and that of synapses by a factor of 6. Considering that each artificial neural network contains millions of electronic neurons and synapses, this could represent a huge leap forward in computing systems capable of processing much more information while consuming far less energy. Furthermore, the team has designed a cell with two transistors — called Neuro-Synaptic Random Access Memory (NSRAM) — that allows switching between operating modes (neuron or synapse), offering great versatility in manufacturing since both functions can be reproduced using a single block, without the need to dope the silicon to achieve specific substrate resistance values. The transistors used by Professor Lanza's team to implement these advanced neurons and synapses are not cutting-edge transistors like those manufactured in Taiwan or Korea, but rather traditional 180-nanometer node transistors, which can be produced by Singapore-based companies. According to Professor Lanza, "once the operating mechanism is discovered, it's now more a matter of microelectronic design". The first author of the paper, Dr Sebastián Pazos, who is from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, commented, "Traditionally, the race for supremacy in semiconductors and artificial intelligence has been a matter of brute force, seeing who could manufacture smaller transistors and bear the production costs that come with it. Our work proposes a radically different approach based on exploiting a computing paradigm using highly efficient electronic neurons and synapses. This discovery is a way to democratise nanoelectronics and enable everyone to contribute to the development of advanced computing systems, even without access to cutting-edge transistor fabrication processes." Read more at: View original content: SOURCE National University of Singapore Sign in to access your portfolio
Associated Press
29-03-2025
- Science
- Associated Press
Redefining the transistor: The ideal building block for artificial intelligence
SINGAPORE, March 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The team led by Associate Professor Mario Lanza from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore, has just revolutionised the field of neuromorphic computing by inventing a new super-efficient computing cell that can mimic the behaviour of both electronic neurons and synapses. The work, titled " Synaptic and neural behaviours in a standard silicon transistor" was published in the scientific journal Nature on 26 March 2025 and is already attracting interest from leading companies in the semiconductor field. Electronic neurons and synapses are the two fundamental building blocks of next-generation artificial neural networks. Unlike traditional computers, these systems process and store data in the same place, eliminating the need to waste time and energy transferring data from memory to the processing unit (CPU). The problem is that implementing electronic neurons and synapses with traditional silicon transistors requires interconnecting multiple devices — specifically, at least 18 transistors per neuron and 6 per synapse. This makes them significantly larger and more expensive than a single transistor. The team led by Professor Lanza has found an ingenious way to reproduce the electronic behaviours characteristic of neurons and synapses in a single conventional silicon transistor. The key lies in setting the resistance of the bulk terminal to a specific value to produce a physical phenomenon called 'impact ionisation,' which generates a current spike very similar to what happens when an electronic neuron is activated. Additionally, by setting the bulk resistance to other specific values, the transistor can store charge in the gate oxide, causing the resistance of the transistor to persist over time, mimicking the behaviour of an electronic synapse. Making the transistor operate as a neuron or synapse is as simple as selecting the appropriate resistance for the bulk terminal. The physical phenomenon of 'impact ionisation' had traditionally been considered a failure mechanism in silicon transistors, but Professor Lanza's team has managed to control it and turn it into a highly valuable application for the industry. This discovery is revolutionary because it allows the size of electronic neurons to be reduced by a factor of 18 and that of synapses by a factor of 6. Considering that each artificial neural network contains millions of electronic neurons and synapses, this could represent a huge leap forward in computing systems capable of processing much more information while consuming far less energy. Furthermore, the team has designed a cell with two transistors — called Neuro-Synaptic Random Access Memory (NSRAM) — that allows switching between operating modes (neuron or synapse), offering great versatility in manufacturing since both functions can be reproduced using a single block, without the need to dope the silicon to achieve specific substrate resistance values. The transistors used by Professor Lanza's team to implement these advanced neurons and synapses are not cutting-edge transistors like those manufactured in Taiwan or Korea, but rather traditional 180-nanometer node transistors, which can be produced by Singapore-based companies. According to Professor Lanza, 'once the operating mechanism is discovered, it's now more a matter of microelectronic design'. The first author of the paper, Dr Sebastián Pazos, who is from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, commented, 'Traditionally, the race for supremacy in semiconductors and artificial intelligence has been a matter of brute force, seeing who could manufacture smaller transistors and bear the production costs that come with it. Our work proposes a radically different approach based on exploiting a computing paradigm using highly efficient electronic neurons and synapses. This discovery is a way to democratise nanoelectronics and enable everyone to contribute to the development of advanced computing systems, even without access to cutting-edge transistor fabrication processes.'
