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Illustration of an ATOMS microchip localized throughout the gastrointestinal tract. The chip, which works on rules much like these utilized in MRI machines, is embodied with the properties of nuclear spin. Credit score: Ella Marushchenko for Caltech Researchers at Caltech have developed a prototype miniature medical system that might in the end be utilized in "good tablets" to diagnose and deal with ailments. A key to the brand new expertise -- and what makes it distinctive amongst different microscale medical gadgets -- is that its location could be exactly recognized throughout the physique, one thing that proved difficult earlier than. "The dream is that we are going to have microscale gadgets which are roaming our our bodies and both diagnosing issues or fixing issues," says Azita Emami, the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering and Heritage Medical Anal...

The scientists found that on the HIV envelope protein, at a site important for viral function, a small group of sugar molecules, known as glycans, serves as a key "anchor" for antibodies that can broadly neutralize the virus. Future candidate vaccines are therefore likely to include this glycan cluster among their specific viral targets in order to maximize the chances of stimulating an effective antibody response. "We learned in this study that grabbing hold of these glycans can be a very important early step in an effective immune response to HIV, and with this knowledge, we believe we can design better candidate vaccines," said principal investigator Dennis R. Burton, professor of immunology and microbiology at TSRI. The research, published in the September issue of  Immunity , is part of a broad reverse-engineering effort by scientists around the world to use antibodies isolated from HIV-infected people to guide the development of a successful vaccine. T...

And trying different antibiotics to control one such "superbug" may only encourage others lurking nearby, according to new findings made in hundreds of nursing home patients by a team from the University of Michigan. In fact, the researchers say it's time to think about such bacteria as members of an antibiotic-resistant ecosystem in healthcare environments -- not as single species that act and respond alone. Forty percent of the 234 frail elderly patients in their study had more than one multidrug-resistant organism, or MDRO, living on their bodies. Patients who had specific pairs of MDROs were more likely to develop a urinary tract infection involving an MDRO. The researchers created a map of interactions among bacteria and classes of antibiotics, which they've published with their findings in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Eventually, that kind of mapping could help healthcare providers. For instance, they could choose to treat a p...