New Atlas

Health & Wellbeing Audio available

Painless microneedle patch provides month-long contraception

Michael Irving January 14, 2019

Contraceptives are inconvenient – implanted devices are invasive, and you have to remember to take the pill every day. Now researchers at Georgia Tech are developing a painless, contraceptive microneedle patch that people can apply themselves in seconds, and only needs to be done once a month.

Researchers have developed a contraceptive patch that can be applied in five seconds and lasts over ...

Medical Audio available

How moth viruses, magnetic particles and gene editing could cure disease

Michael Irving November 12, 2018

Researchers at Rice University have developed a new way to activate treatments only in the right places, using an inert virus, magnetic nanoparticles and the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.

Rice researchers have developed a new method for targeted gene editing

Medical

Probiotics and antibiotics team up against deadly superbugs

Michael Irving October 18, 2018

Bacteria continue to evolve resistance to our best drugs, but probiotics help keep bad bugs at bay. Now, MIT researchers have found a way to combine probiotics and antibiotic drugs into an uneasy alliance that seems to work better than either treatment alone.

Probiotics and antibiotics have formed an uneasy alliance against superbugs

Robotics Audio available

Will this creepy robotic caterpillar one day deliver drugs in the human body?

Michael Irving September 26, 2018

In the future, tiny robots of all kinds of shapes could be swimming and crawling through your body, delivering drugs or patching up wounds. The next robot to join those ranks is a caterpillar-inspired device, which gets around with ease on hundreds of tiny, pointy legs.

The new robot crawls along like a caterpillar on hundreds of tiny legs

Medical

Nasal spray and ultrasound team up for direct-to-brain drug delivery

Michael Irving September 10, 2018

The blood-brain barrier is an effective shield against infection, but it’s not so helpful when you’re trying to get drugs in there. Nasal sprays could bypass the barrier, and now researchers have developed a way to use ultrasound pulses to drive the drugs to where in the brain they’re needed.

Drug nanoparticles could be delivered directly to the brain through a nasal spray, which is then ...

Medical

Inhalable viruses show promise as a better way to treat lung infections

Michael Irving July 18, 2018

As a lung infection, the most direct route to treat pneumonia would be inhalable drugs. Now researchers at Georgia Tech have made a step towards that goal, with breathable viruses that hunt down and kill disease-causing bacteria in the lungs.

Inhalable bacteriophages could be used to treat lung infections like pneumonia

Medical

X-rays burst chemo-filled nanobubbles for targeted cancer drug delivery

Michael Irving July 15, 2018

Researchers at CNBP have developed a new targeted treatment for cancer. Chemotherapy drugs are wrapped in “nano-bubbles” called liposomes, which are then injected into the desired part of the body and made to release their payload on demand, by applying X-ray radiation.

A new potential cancer treatment uses nanobubbles called liposomes to deliver drugs right to a tumor, ...

Medical

Ultrasound remotely bursts heat-sensitive capsules, delivering drugs directly to tumors

Rich Haridy July 10, 2018

A promising new cancer drug delivery system has successfully passed early human safety trials. The treatment delivers cancer drugs in heat-activated capsules to tumors in the liver and then uses a focused ultrasound beam to remotely trigger the targeted release of their drug payload.

Heat-sensitive capsules were warmed up using ultrasound to release their chemotherapy drug payload in the liver

Medical

How combining ultrasound, gene therapy and drugs switches neurons on and off

Michael Irving July 10, 2018

Caltech researchers have developed a three-part technique for activating neurons that’s far less invasive than surgery, combining ultrasound waves, gene therapy and drugs that has been able to affect memory formation in mice.

Caltech researchers have developed a technique that combines ultrasound waves, gene therapy and drugs to switch ...

Medical

Cancer-killing nanoparticles sneak through defenses camouflaged in tumor cells

Michael Irving June 19, 2018

A new therapy designed at Penn State has turned one of cancer's tactics against it. The team camouflaged a cancer-killing drug using cells from the tumor itself, allowing them to sneak medicine past the tumor’s defenses like a nanoscale Trojan horse and deliver a killing blow from the inside.

Researchers at Penn State have camouflaged drug-delivering nanoparticles by wrapping them inside cancer cells