The Next Step In Medical Engineering…The Human Body
Beltim & Associates strives to stay at the forefront of medical engineering, and bioengineering might be the most promising, exciting avenue for future medical science.
Revolutionizing Dental Health With a Mint
As long as time travel remains elusive, scientists seek to rewind biological time by regenerating bodily tissues to repair parts that once seemed irreparable. Starting with teeth, the stars of a multi-billion dollar whitening industry. Yet researchers at the University of Washington have created something that offers a more fundamental fix than gels, strips, and laser-light-emitting mouthpieces. It's a minty lozenge. One that releases dental building blocks to form fresh enamel.
Enamel cannot regenerate. And we lose it constantly. Once eroded, it reveals the yellower dentin beneath. But enamel remodeling could be easier than most would have imagined.
Each lozenge contains phosphorus and calcium, like other tooth-aiding items. But it also includes "engineered peptides," the building blocks of protein. Not all proteins are equal, so these are genetically derived from amelogenin, a key-player protein in tooth development.
The influx of minerals and peptides coats one's less-than-pearly whites, "remineralizing the tooth surface." The new enamel is as bio-compatible as the old, readily bonding with the strong but unflattering dentin beneath.
Enamel-enhancing lozenges could supplement brightening toothpaste and related products, for those who demand blinding dental brilliance. However, they employ the opposite process. Lozenges banish conventional whiteners like peroxides, which could cause hypersensitivity by corrosively (subtractively) removing discoloration. But the dental lozenges provide an additive process, to give teeth their shiny white armor.
Microchips, Can Build New Bones Using Sound
Enamel is the body's hardest substance, but bone is also all incredibly dense. It's considered pound-for-pound stronger than concrete or steel but is fleetingly fragile in certain conditions. Degenerative diseases and cancers can dramatically strip bone mass, and better treatments are necessary. Fortunately, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) has developed a better treatment. It quickly, easily, and cheaply nudges stem cells into bone tissue. In the days of yore, generating bone cells required "complicated and expensive equipment." But no longer, as RMIT's technique is powered by a simple microchip.
The microchip produces high-frequency sound waves to massage stem cells "for ten minutes a day for five days," the ideal regimen for differentiation.
Microchipping the birth of living bones can be scaled up, bypassing a second major obstacle: mass production. Now, RMIT researchers can efficiently whip up many cells simultaneously. While they're knocking down barriers, how about one more: no longer requiring the very painful harvesting of stem cells from patients' bone marrow. Instead, RMIT's osseous tissue can be derived from the much easier-to-access fat cells. The undifferentiated stem cells are mechanosensitive. They respond to mechanical stimuli, so chemicals and drugs are no longer necessary. Technicians can simply "apply just the right amount of pressure in the right places" to induce cellular transformation.
Once turned to bone, cells might be delivered into the body via injection, or by being slathered onto a medical implant.
Restoring Sight With Bionic Eyes
Bioengineering may also someday restore sight. The possibilities are staggering, with more than 2 billion people suffering from vision loss worldwide. In financial terms, the World Health Organization estimates that global visual impairments account for $25 billion in yearly lost productivity.
Unfortunately, bionic eyes are expensive. The Argus II, used by more than 300 people, costs around $150,000. Med-science is only at the periphery of eyesight recovery, but advances like the Phoenix99 Bionic Eye are a significant step toward a sighted future for countless individuals.
Developed by the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales, it consists of two implants: a "stimulator" that attaches to the eye and a "communication module" inserted beneath the skin behind the ear.
The Phoenix99 Bionic Eye could help patients with degenerative eye diseases. Like those that damage the retina, which is full of neurons like the photoreceptors that respond to light. One crucial layer of retinal cells turns "incoming light into electrical messages" for the brain to process. But when these cells are junked by disease, vision loss occurs. Bypassing this problem, the bionic targets the remaining, working neurons of the retina, "tricking the brain into believing that light was sensed."
As bioengineering technologies improve, they could positively impact or completely change the lives of countless millions. This takes thousands of companies like Beltim & Associates to work together creating parts and groundbreaking machines. The road to a longer, healthier life, the next evolutionary leap is engineering our very cells is well on its way!