With so many disadvantages having the potential to severely undermine the successful outcome of the therapy, there is an immense requirement, driven by a fusion of both need and convenience, for biomaterials that operate autonomously and intelligently, effectively eliminating the need for human micromanagement. Professor Jeff Bates and his team at the University of Utah are taking this challenge head on. We spoke to Ashwin Velraj, PhD student in Professor Bates’ lab.

Lung cancer remains a major global health concern, with rising incidence and mortality rates. Despite the rise in clinical treatment tools, numerous patients have limited chances to utilize drugs with higher success rates than chemotherapy. The urgency to discover new medications with improved effectiveness, capable of extending survival and combating drug resistance, has driven efforts to identify potential targets and advance promising therapeutic alternatives. Recognizing the pressing need, Prof. Jens Kurreck and his team at the Technical University of Berlin, acknowledged the importance of identifying alternative methods for screening and testing new drugs for lung cancer.

Dr. Ulises A. Aregueta Robles and his team, as well as many others, see some key drawbacks with the use of animal models: intra-animal differences, long study periods, and a difficulty with extrapolating the results to human tissue responses. To overcome these issues within testing neuromodulation devices, and provide an alternative to animal testing, the team has set out to develop in vitro human tissue models. Here, they have created a model of human scala tympani, which can be used for testing cochlear implants.

“What if our existing tests and methodologies for studying bacteria are fundamentally flawed?” Inspired by this question, the team from Karolinska Institutet set out to develop an AST that focuses specifically on biofilms and is widely applicable regardless of the bacteria type. To accomplish this, they had to first gain a comprehensive understanding of the intricate process of biofilm formation.