Researchers have pinpointed a primary cause of a rare skull disorder in infants, and the discovery could help wounded soldiers, car-wreck victims and other patients recover from disfiguring facial injuries.

Doctors at Princess Margaret Hospital for Children (PMH, Australia) have developed an insulin pump which acts like an artificial pancreas and are using the ground-breaking technology to treat diabetes.

Researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia are 3D-printing their own artificial human brains in the lab, in an ambitious project that sounds like something out of science fiction.

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan have succeeded in inducing human embryonic stem cells to self-organize into a three-dimensional structure similar to the cerebellum, providing tantalizing clues in the quest to recreate neural structures in the laboratory.

Bone marrow transplantation is a life-saving therapy for patients with blood cancers like leukemia or lymphoma. However, the depletion of the patient’s immune system prior to transplantation can put patients at risk of for an infection by a virus called cytomegalovirus (CMV) that can be life threatening in these immune-compromised individuals. Now, researchers have found that a very small subset of anti-viral immune cells, transplanted along with a donor’s blood stem cells, could be enough to fight and even prevent the disease caused by CMV.

Stem cell transplants may be more effective than the drug mitoxantrone for people with severe cases of multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a new study published in the February 11, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Now 3D printing implants is a complicated business as it is, but the jaw is particularly difficult to reproduce. After all, it’s completely filled moving parts that need to work perfectly – humans can get by with a limping leg, but they need to eat and drink. Dr Yoav Leiser and his team therefore relied on CT scanning and 3D printing to produce a 3D printed titanium ‘Patient Specific Implant’ (or PSI), and the procedure proved to be very successful. Surgery was performed by Leiser and Professor Adi Rachmiel, director of Rambam’s Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. 

Scientists from the Dresden University of Technology have made a giant stride in the field of regenerative medicine, having successfully grown spinal cord-like tissue in the lab from embryonic stem cells. Although mouse cells were used, the study raises the possibility that one day, with further development, this technique could be used to help patients with spinal cord injuries.