CAR-T cell therapy is an exciting new form of cancer therapy that uses the patient’s own immune system to attack cancer cells. However, CAR-T cells are difficult to monitor in a patient, preventing an assessment of whether they are working or not. These researchers have developed an easy solution to study leukaemia- and lymphoma-specific CAR-T cells.

Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) is one of the deadliest blood cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of less than 25%. There has been no dramatic improvement in AML treatments since the 1970s, but this group of researchers has identified a druggable Achille’s Heel, specific to AML and other blood cancers.

Measuring how the brain controls muscle movement is of great value, for example in assessing physical rehabilitation, neurodegenerative or muscular degenerative diseases, and athletic training. Current techniques for this, however, lack depth of information about individual nerve-to-muscle-fibre functional connections. This technology provides the resolution for these individual connections, creating a sharper image of nerve-motor function.

The most common method of measuring blood pressure – the “cuff method” – is surprisingly inaccurate. Incorrect measurements lead to misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment for hypertension, which is a major risk for cardiovascular disease. This device measures multiple physical parameters in a non-invasive manner to give a more accurate blood pressure measurement.

Biomarkers are molecules that enable assessment of disease from body fluids such as blood and saliva. Current methods for biomarker detection are time- and labour-intensive, and require bulky, and often expensive, machinery. As a solution to this, a small transportable device has been developed that detects your choice of biomarker on-the-spot.

Rapid diagnosis of sepsis is a matter of life and death. However, detecting bacteria in blood is like finding a needle in a haystack – for every bacterial cell there are ten billion other cells! This novel technology removes these cells and captures the bacteria for further analysis.