Latest news with #bioengineering
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
Cyborg tadpoles ‘hold clues to origin of autism'
Cyborg tadpoles with electrodes grown into their brains have been created by Harvard scientists to help study autism and schizophrenia. Tiny flexible electrodes were implanted into tadpole embryos when they were days old, allowing them to completely embed into the central nervous system as the amphibians grew. It is the first time that researchers have shown it is possible to create a device that integrates seamlessly into the brain while it develops. Usually, scientists implant metal electrodes into mature brains to monitor brain cell activity, but by then, the critical early stages of development are over and the process often causes some neuronal damage. Neurological conditions such as autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are thought to be 'baked in' to the brain early on, so being able to watch the brain developing could offer vital clues into why they develop. 'Autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia – these all could happen at early developmental stages,' said Dr Jia Liu, assistant professor of bioengineering at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 'There is just no ability currently to measure neural activity during early neural development. Our technology will really enable an uncharted area. 'If we can fully leverage the natural development process, we will have the ability to implant a lot of sensors across the 3D brain non-invasively, and at the same time, monitor how brain activity gradually evolves over time. No one has ever done this before.' To create the cyborg tadpoles, scientists used soft, stretchy implantable ribbons containing dozens of sensors capable of recording the activity of single neurons in the brain. The probes were developed at Harvard and are made from a material known as a 'fluorinated elastomer', similar to Teflon, which can live stably in the brain for several months. It is as soft as biological tissue but can be engineered into highly resilient electronic components that can house multiple sensors for recording brain activity. The ribbons were implanted on an area of the embryo called the 'neural plate', which is the earliest stage of the nervous system. As the embryo develops, the plate bends into a u-shape, taking the ribbon probes inside. By the time the neural plate has grown into the neural tube – the basis of the brain and central nervous system – the electronics are completely embedded inside, where they can give a read-out of how the neurons are firing and communicating with each other. Researchers say the device can record electrical activity from single brain cells with millisecond precision, with no impact on normal tadpole embryo development or behaviour. By integrating their stretchable device into the neural plate, the researchers showed they could continuously monitor brain activity during each embryonic stage. 'These so-called cyborg tadpoles offer a glimpse into a future in which profound mysteries of the brain could be illuminated, and diseases that manifest in early development could be understood, treated or cured,' Harvard said in a press notice about the new technology. The research is published in the journal Nature.
CBS News
22-05-2025
- Science
- CBS News
Stanford University marks a century of scientific discoveries
Stanford University is celebrating 100 years of engineering, commemorating a century of innovation and showcasing the engineering of tomorrow. Soham Sinha is a Bioengineering Ph.D student at Stanford. He's working on something so science fiction, you would think it was out of a movie. "Our lab and the entire goal is to 3D print a fully functioning human heart but once we get to that scale, we need a fully functional blood network with it to keep that heart alive," said Sinha. "When you are doing something first of its kind, you're like, 'Oh my God! We're breaking new frontiers where we're at the edge of science where we're no longer pulling ideas from science fiction, you know. Stuff that you only see in the movies and suddenly like, I'm right here where science fiction is reality'." This research is in Bioengineering Associate Professor Mark Skylar-Scott's lab at Stanford. He shared his inspiration for this revolutionary work. "Pretty early on, I found a way to make blood vessels in tissue, and it was when I was able to keep thick slabs of tissue, not a thin film of cells at the bottom of a dish but a good chunky slab of human cells, when you can put blood vessels into that and you can keep it fed and alive, that's when I realized, 'Wow like this is something that has been missing in tissue engineering for decades.' This is something that can allow us to think big and focus on really hard problems," said Skylar-Scott. Connor Hoffman is an electrical engineering student and Stanford University's Solar Car Project President. He showed off the "Azimuth" Stanford Solar Car. He said it's been his dream to study at Stanford. "I wanted to come to Stanford since I was five years old," said Hoffman. "I saw a video when I was very young of 'Stanley', which was an autonomous vehicle that traversed through the desert and won. It was fully built by Stanford, and I knew I wanted to come here, so the hundredth anniversary is huge. It's very, very exciting for me as a student and for someone who has been excited in this university for a very long time." Jennifer Widom, Stanford Dean of the School of Engineering, said she's lucky to oversee the program during this important milestone. "It's incredible," said Widom. "I've been learning a lot about the history of Stanford engineering, and decade by decade, there is just so much science, discovery, innovation, inventions that have been going on for 100 years and at least 100 more coming." The future is bright for Stanford and students like Sinha. "I'm a very passionate individual," said Sinha, "I really like working on a project that really speaks to me, so the 3D printing that we're doing is really a passion project. I feel like I'm not just doing the Ph.D to do a Ph.D. It's because I really want to do this." It's this passion that Sinha and many engineers at Stanford share, a passion to make breakthroughs unlike anything we've seen before to improve our lives in ways we never thought possible through engineering of the future. The founders of Hewlett-Packard met and became friends as Stanford engineering students in the 1930's. In the 1990's, Stanford University's engineering graduate students went on to create companies like Yahoo, Google and Nvidia.
