117. Ultrasound + Lasers = Bye Heart Disease, Mapping The Immune System, 3D-Printed  Hypercar

Summary: Show Notes:  Groundbreaking heart disease treatment uses ultrasound-assisted lasers | Brighter Side News (01:21) Atherosclerosis, a buildup of plaque, can lead to heart disease, artery disease, and chronic kidney disease and is traditionally treated by inserting and inflating a balloon to expand the artery.  Rohit Singh, of the University of Kansas, and other researchers developed a method that combines a low-power laser with ultrasound to remove arterial plaque safely and efficiently.  High-power laser treatments direct thermal energy to vaporize water in the artery and create a vapor bubble, which expands and collapses to break the plaque.  The addition of irradiation from ultrasound causes the microbubbles to expand, collapse, and disrupt the plaque.   Singh talks about the combo of laser treatment with ultrasounds: “In conventional laser angioplasty, a high laser power is required for the entire cavitation process, whereas in our technology, a lower laser power is only required for initiating the cavitation process … Overall, the combination of ultrasound and laser reduces the need for laser power and improves the efficiency of atherosclerotic plaque removal."   Because it destroys rather than compresses the plaque, the combination technique will have a lower restenosis rate, or re-narrowing of the artery, compared to balloon angioplasty or stenting. Restenosis occurs when an artery that was opened with a stent or angioplasty becomes narrowed again.   Singh and collaborators are also using the methodology for photo-mediated ultrasound therapy and ultrasound-assisted endovascular laser thrombolysis.  Former can be used to remove abnormal microvessels in the eye to prevent blindness The latter can dissolve blood clots in veins.   Locusts can 'smell' human cancer cells | Futurity (05:54) Researchers, at Michigan State University, have shown that locusts can not only “smell” the difference between cancer cells and healthy cells, but they can also distinguish between different cancer cell lines. This work could provide the basis for devices that use insect sensory neurons to enable the early detection of cancer using only a patient’s breath. The success of engineered devices can make it easy to overlook the performance of our natural tools, especially the sense organ right in front of our eyes. Why we trust dogs and their super-sniffers to detect telltale smells of drugs, and explosives Scientists are working on technology that can mimic the sense of smell, but nothing they’ve engineered can yet compete with the speed, sensitivity and specificity of old-fashioned biological olfaction. Olfaction: The sense of smell. Why not start with the solutions biology has already built after eons of evolution, and engineer from there?  The research team is essentially “hacking” the insect brain to use it for disease diagnosis. Easily attach electrodes to locust brains The scientists then recorded the insects’ responses to gas samples produced by healthy cells and cancer cells, and then used those signals to create chemical profiles of the different cells. How well could the locusts differentiate healthy cells from cancer cells using three different oral cancer cell lines? According to Christopher Contag, the director of IQ, “We expected that the cancer cells would appear different than the normal cells … But when the bugs could distinguish three different cancers from each other, that was amazing.” Although the team’s results focused on cancers of the mouth, the researchers believe their system would work with any cancer that introduces volatile metabolites into breath, which is likely most cancer types.  In biochemistry, a metabolite is an intermediate or end product of metabolism. The term metabolite is usually used for small molecules.  Let’s end it off with a quote from Contag about early detection: “Early detection is so important, and we should use every possible tool to get there, whether i