Keeping you up to date on recent developments in orthopedics, including: Injectable porous scaffolds promote better, quicker healing after spinal cord injuries; Researchers grow most lifelike bone yet from woven cells; Rapid 3D printing method moves toward 3D-printed organs; Study links kidney stones with bone problems.
With COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing still scaling up and the scarcity of some supplies, most of the vaccine doses available so far have been distributed in 75 countries while 115 countries are still waiting, World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said at the March 9 Global C19 Vaccine Supply Chain and Manufacturing Summit.
With the prevalence of central nervous system disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and stroke increasing annually, the need for novel therapeutics to treat neurologic and psychiatric disorders has never been greater. Unfortunately, even though there is a significant unmet medical need, because of the high risk and low approval rates of drugs targeting those devastating diseases, in the past decade big pharma companies have been dramatically reducing their R&D spending on CNS disorders, noted Naheed Kurji, president and CEO of Toronto-based Cyclica Inc.
In a span of a mere two years, the state of California passed two ballot initiatives dealing with privacy that promise to have an impact on digital health, the second of which created an office specifically for privacy enforcement matters. Eric Goldman, a professor of law at the Santa Clara (California) University School of Law, said on a recent webinar that the state attorney general’s office and the new California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) have overlapping jurisdiction, and as a consequence, companies doing business in California may find themselves at the mercy of not one, but two enforcement entities.
Stimulating the liver with focused ultrasound decreased obesity, chronic inflammation and metabolic dysfunction in preclinical studies, reported GE Research and the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, the research arm of Northwell Health. In a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers demonstrated that nerve modulation with ultrasound in mice helped regulate neurons involved in food intake, glucose regulation and metabolism without negative side effects.
Medi-Scan Inc. has emerged from stealth mode with cloud-based software that converts the data on ultrasound analog 2D grayscale images into a digital 3D high-definition (HD) format in less than two minutes. The company is currently focusing its efforts on the heart and lungs, with the aim of providing quick, point-of-service evaluation and triaging of patients with heart disease and other conditions, including COVID-19.