https://medicalxpress.com/biomedical-technology-news/ en-us Latest medical news and research in Laboratory medicine Using 3D printers to create complex structures from biocompatible materials that can include living cells has the potential to revolutionize medicine. This process—3D bioprinting—has powered breakthroughs in tissue engineering, medical implants and reconstructive surgery and may ultimately allow for the creation of transplantable human organs. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-red-health-bioprinted-tissue-implants.html Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:20:06 EDT news707483470 Spatial transcriptomics is a powerful tool for creating a detailed map of not just how genes are expressed in a piece of tissue, but also where genetic activity takes place in different cells and locations within the tissue. This is especially valuable for studying tumors, which each have their own unique microenvironment that affects how they behave. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-tumor-floor-immunotherapy-response-current.html Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:40:07 EDT news707407382 Vasculitis is a disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks blood vessel walls, causing them to become inflamed. If left untreated, the rare disease can severely damage organs, including the kidneys and lungs. Physicians can treat vasculitis with immunosuppressive medications. But because these drugs often cause serious side effects, they have long sought a way to identify patients in remission to avoid treating them unnecessarily or minimize treatment regimens. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ai-proteomics-uncover-blood-proteins.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:20:08 EDT news706974122 Sepsis, a life-threatening condition that stems from the body trying to fight off an infection, plagues more than 1.5 million patients a year in the U.S. alone, with one in three deaths recorded in hospitals attributed in part to sepsis. Despite the severity of the condition, which can kill in as little as 12 hours, it takes between two and seven days for most traditional approaches to definitively identify sepsis-causing bacteria in blood infections. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-approach-sepsis-diagnosis-days-hours.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:00:24 EDT news706952341 Two major international Peter Mac-led studies have found AI models were just as good as human pathologists at a task that predicts outcomes for patients with breast cancer. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ai-human-pathologists-breast-cancer.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 09:40:08 EDT news706954271 A new multi-institutional study led by researchers at Dartmouth Health and Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth suggests that alpha-gal syndrome, a tick-borne disease that can result in a chronic allergy to meat and animal byproducts, also may complicate certain patients' ability to safely receive a blood plasma or platelet transfusion. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-additional-transfusion-emerges-patients-borne.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:00:05 EDT news706878721 Kidney disease is silent in its early stages, progressing without symptoms until the disease is advanced. Researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, in collaboration with researchers at WashU Medicine and Texas A&M University, have been developing a minimally invasive method to improve diagnosis at earlier stages. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-painless-microneedle-patch-kidney-disease.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:20:13 EDT news706869721 Researchers at the University of Cologne, University Hospital Cologne and the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research have developed a method that, for the first time, enables damage to individual cells to be precisely quantified. The method uses molecular markers—specifically gene expression—and enables detailed analysis of disease progression in individual tissue samples, such as a biopsy. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-gene-markers-quantify-individual-kidney.html Fri, 21 Aug 2026 14:40:03 EDT news706537561 Iron deficiency is one of the world's most common nutritional disorders, affecting millions of women and children globally. Yet diagnosing it remains difficult in many low-resource settings, where access to laboratories and trained health care workers is limited. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-rapid-iron-treatment-worldwide.html Thu, 20 Aug 2026 19:00:03 EDT news706445076 At the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukraine was hit with a 40% surge in demand for blood for its civilians and military personnel. Despite damaged health care facilities, supply chain disruptions and population displacement, the country maintained a self-sufficient blood supply by centralizing operations and expanding donor recruitment, according to a new international study that included scientists from Northwestern University. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ukraine-wartime-blood.html Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:20:05 EDT news706293541 One of the major challenges in glioma surgery is that tumor boundaries are often difficult to define. Diffuse gliomas can infiltrate surrounding brain tissue beyond what surgeons can see directly or what conventional imaging can fully resolve. During surgery, neurosurgeons must remove as much tumor as possible while preserving critical brain functions. This makes accurate intraoperative assessment of tumor infiltration essential for more precise surgical decision-making. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ultra-glioma-margins-3d-minutes.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:00:01 EDT news706196041 Researchers searching for genetic clues to the growing problem of malaria drug resistance have identified new mutations associated with the parasite's decreased susceptibility to current treatment. By sequencing the whole genomes of malaria parasites from the blood of hundreds of infected people in Uganda, a team of researchers led by scientists at Brown University found that a cluster of genetic variants in some parasites showed significantly decreased susceptibility to the drugs most commonly used to treat malaria in Africa and the United States. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-fast-malaria-parasite-mutations-uganda.html Mon, 17 Aug 2026 05:20:01 EDT news705857635 Blood biomarkers may make it possible to detect changes seen in Alzheimer's disease without advanced brain imaging or cerebrospinal fluid tests. At the same time, much of the research behind today's biomarkers has been conducted in high-income countries and among people of European ancestry. Previous studies in African populations have mainly examined a smaller number of already established markers. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-alzheimer-protein-patterns-vary-populations.html Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:40:02 EDT news705839881 If you see a doctor regularly, chances are you have had a lipid panel ordered and your blood drawn at a lab. The results told your physician your levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, factors that play a role in diagnosing conditions such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Now, a team led by Wei Gao, a professor in Caltech's Cherng Department of Medical Engineering, has developed a stick-on patch capable of gathering the same lipid measurements by analyzing sweat. And it can do so not just once but continuously. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-sensor-enables-noninvasive-cholesterol.html Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:20:01 EDT news705765645 In Alzheimer's disease, amyloid plaques form in the brain, followed by threadlike structures made of the protein tau. Both changes have toxic effects on the brain's nerve cells years before dementia symptoms appear. Historically, diagnosis has primarily relied on cognitive changes, which manifest at a later stage of the disease. Biomarker-based diagnostics were initially limited to specialized clinics capable of performing cerebrospinal fluid sampling or PET scans. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-broader-panel-protein-markers-blood.html Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:40:05 EDT news705666482 A tumor is more than its cancer cells. Immune cells, blood vessels and other surrounding tissue influence how a cancer grows and responds to treatment. Two tumors containing the same cell types can respond very differently to the same therapy depending on how those cells are arranged. Spatial proteomics captures this organization in molecular detail, but the resulting data, which contain many different variables, are difficult to interpret and compare across studies. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-ai-tumor-tissue-cancer.html Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:00:04 EDT news705592621 Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a new method for diagnosing lung cancer: a simple, fast, low-cost blood test that does not require DNA sequencing. The method identifies a chemical fingerprint of cancer cells in the blood by analyzing cell-free DNA originating from those cells. In the study, the test distinguished between lung cancer patients and healthy individuals with a sensitivity of 93.1% and a specificity of 90.3% for patients with stage 2–4 disease. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-simple-blood-chip-lung-cancer.html Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:20:03 EDT news705584281 In the 1970s, PVC bags revolutionized the storage of blood and blood products for transfusion. Disposable plastic (PVC) bags replaced reusable glass bottles, making the process more convenient and safer from contamination. Over half a century later, the same disposable plastic bags are creating a new kind of problem because of microplastics (MPs). These tiny particles, less than 5 millimeters in size, are formed by the polymer degradation of plastic materials as they break down and age. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-common-blood-storage-bags-leach.html Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:40:01 EDT news705224279 Modern therapies have transformed care for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Yet the disease continues to progress in a substantial proportion of patients, even in the absence of relapses. Detecting and treating this gradual worsening of disability remains one of the greatest challenges in MS care. Researchers from the University of Basel, Switzerland, now report on a blood marker that could help track disease progression and monitor treatment response. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-blood-marker-tracks-hidden-multiple.html Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:20:03 EDT news704994661 The trillions of microorganisms living in our intestine influence our health, from digestion and metabolism to immunity. Yet scientists still struggle to understand how these microbes shape these important physiological functions because gut microbiomes are extraordinarily complex, redundant, and dynamic. New technologies are therefore essential for advancing microbiome research. Researchers at the University of Vienna have now reported effective strategies for simultaneously measuring thousands of microbial and host proteins. The findings have been published in Nature Communications. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-gut-protein-captures-microbial-host.html Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:00:05 EDT news704985482