Human eggs have been fully grown for the first time in a laboratory. The advance could safeguard the fertility of girls with cancer ahead of potentially harmful medical treatment, such as chemotherapy as immature eggs can be recovered from patients’ ovarian tissue could be matured in the lab and stored for later fertilisation. Conventionally, cancer patients can have a piece of ovary removed before treatment, but...
Edinburgh-based medical research company TC BioPharm has formed a strategic collaboration with Japanese multinational Nipro Corporation to develop a new immunotherapy drug aimed at range of cancers, boosted by £2.7m of Scottish Enterprise funding. The product will use TCB’s “safe CAR-T platform”, which is based on the unique properties of modified gamma delta T cells to selectively target cancer whilst leaving healthy cells untouched. CAR-Ts is the term for...
Shares in Collagen Solutions PLC rose 13% after it unveiled a partnering deal in South Korea. Insung Medical will help commercialise the UK firm’s flagship product, ChondroMimetic. This is a minimally-invasive, surgically-placed scaffold for the repair of cartilage defects in the knee. To read the full article, click here.
A research breakthrough by scientists at the University of Dundee, St Andrews and Stony Brook may help to stop a potential modern epidemic in it’s tracks. The liver disease NASH is developed in approximately 10-15% of obese individuals with type-2 diabetes. “This condition is particularly sinister because it is difficult to identify affected patients, and even when a correct diagnosis is made there are currently...
The Centre of Tissue Repair (CTR) is expected to be completed in 2020. Together with the Centre of Regenerative Medicine, the CTR will form the Institute for Regeneration and Repair. The centres will work to discover new therapies to repair tissue damage caused by disease and injury. The CTR will bring together experts from different fields to develop existing research expertise in stem cell biology,...
Developments in a technique known as ‘nanokicking’ allows scientist to grow 3D samples of mineralised bone in a lab. Currently surgeons can only harvest small amounts of living bone from the patient to use as a graft. The lab-grown bone can be implanted to the patient to repair or replace damaged sections of bone. To read the full article, click here.