MELBOURNE, Australia – Researchers at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne are pushing the boundaries on creating kidney tissue from stem cells. For more than two decades, Melissa Little and her team at Murdoch have investigated the molecular and cell development basis of kidney disease and the potential for regeneration. The team has developed approaches for directing the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells to human kidney organoids and is applying that knowledge to disease modeling, drug screening, cell therapy and tissue engineering.

One necessary step to fend off a dystopian future of medical care without antibiotics is the development of new antibiotics. Another is improved deployment of existing ones, a feat which will take, among other things, better antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST). “I’m astounded that we can get men to the moon, and we are using practices [dating] almost back to the age of Robert Koch to identify bacteria,” Deborah Hung told BioWorld MedTech. “The standard practice takes amazingly long.”

Children are more susceptible to developing allergic asthma than adults. An estimated 6 million children have allergic asthma, making asthma one of the most common long-term diseases of childhood. Asthma is potentially life-threatening, yet there is no cure, rather only management of symptoms. Progress in understanding the disease was reported in the Dec 17, 2019, issue of Immunity.

One necessary step to fend off a dystopian future of medical care without antibiotics is the development of new antibiotics. Another is improved deployment of existing ones, a feat which will take, among other things, better antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST).