5 medical breakthroughs that are so crazy they sound like science fiction

As scientific research and technology develop, amazing medical technology innovations continue to emerge. From artificial intelligence that can predict a patient's life cycle to technology that can turn your skin cells into any organ - there are many ideas in the laboratory that can expand the limits of medicine and redefine public health strategies. However, unless your hobbies include a lot of flipping through scientific journals and technology reviews, it is easy to miss the most promising technologies in the field of medicine and health.

So here is a list of some of the latest breakthrough technologies that can change the way we think about medicine and health for readers.

1 "One-time healing" regenerative nanodevice

Imagine that you may lose a leg in a terrible accident. You are taken to the hospital emergency room and the doctor puts a small chip on your skin. Subsequently, your skin cells are transformed into the necessary cells to heal and save that leg.

Thanks to researchers at Ohio State University, their tissue nanotransfection (TNT) technology may be able to turn this scenario from science fiction into clinical reality.

The device consists of two parts: First, a nanochip - about the size of a phone SIM card - is designed to deliver biological instructions to skin cells for reprogramming. The second part is the "cargo" it carries, which is the biological instructions that will guide your skin cells to transdifferentiate. The "cargo" is transferred to the cells by a weak electric shock that is almost unnoticeable.

The study used mice and pigs as experimental subjects, and the researchers restored blood flow by converting their skin cells, which saved a severely injured leg in a mouse. TNT can also be used to generate nerve cells to help mice recover from brain damage caused by stroke. The technology is scheduled to begin clinical trials next year, so keep an eye out for announcements about repairing damaged organs with nanotransfected skin cells

. Nanoparticles help microneedle patches burn fat to fight obesity

In addition to being applied to regenerative medicine, nanotechnology is also being developed to treat obesity and diabetes - through "microneedle patches" loaded with nanoparticles that can promote fat burning.

Humans can store fat in the form of white fat or brown fat. White fat is suitable for long-term energy storage, while brown fat is easier to burn. However, when we become adults, most of the fat we store is white fat. People have long been looking for drugs that can turn white fat into brown fat, but the problem is that these drugs also have side effects in other parts of the body, which means they are not suitable for systemic use by oral or injection. The

microneedle patch developed by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center provides controlled drug delivery so that only the desired area is affected. Once applied to the skin, the patch releases the "brown fat conversion" drug wrapped in nanoparticles. Because these particles slowly dissolve when they come into contact with the body, the drug only directly affects the fat under the skin. The study published in ACS Nano used obese mice as test subjects. After a week of treatment, they found that the fat in the target area was reduced by 20%, while also reducing blood sugar levels, meaning that the technology has the potential to be used to treat diabetes.

3 A technology that lets you compose music with your mindHave

you ever read the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? The author of the book was a magazine editor who, due to an accident, was completely paralyzed except for one eyelid. He wrote the book using blinking as a form of communication.

Now imagine if you could write a book, or compose an entire symphony, with just your thoughts.
Researchers at Graz University of Technology have made this a reality using brain-computer interface technology, or BCI technology. They have named the application "Brain Composer," and with it, people can compose music just by thinking. BCI technology seeks to replace and enhance everyday bodily functions through programs controlled by brain waves. Essentially, they are applications that read brain waves and allow users to control external devices. They can replace or enhance everyday functions, allowing people with limited behavior to complete tasks ranging from writing a letter (or book) to controlling exoskeletons and prosthetics.

The study enrolled 18 subjects who wore brainwave-measuring caps connected to a BCI and music composition software. Various musical notes flashed on a screen in front of them, and they concentrated on the notes they wanted. Since your brain waves change slightly when you concentrate, BCI detects this change and translates it into the desired action, such as writing down a special chord or symbol.

We could soon be entering an era where completely paralyzed patients can also be treated, and through BCI technology they will be able to compose music, walk with an exoskeleton, and live in unprecedented ways.

4 Cancer Detection Pen

One of the main obstacles in cancer surgery is distinguishing healthy tissue from cancerous tissue. Remove too little and increase the chance of recurrence; remove too much and it may have adverse effects on physiological function.

Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have come up with a pen-shaped device, called the MasSpec Pen, which can identify cancerous tissue during surgery in an astonishing 10 seconds and has shown 96% accuracy in trials to date.

Currently, the most advanced method for cancer detection during surgery is called frozen section analysis, which can take about 30 minutes or longer to process samples. In cancer cases that are difficult to detect after freezing, the error rate of frozen section analysis can reach 10-20%.

The MasSpec Pen identifies cancerous tissue by comparing metabolite molecules produced by tissue cells. Cancer cells produce different metabolites than healthy cells, and the MasSpec Pen can display a "normal" or "cancer" result after detecting the difference.

When the pen is pressed against the patient's tissue, the plastic tip of the pen releases a drop of water, which absorbs thousands of metabolites and is analyzed by a mass spectrometer. The mass spectrometer can identify the molecular fingerprint of the tissue under examination to identify cancerous tissue.
The study analyzed tissue from 253 cancer patients, and the device is expected to begin testing in live surgeries next year. If widely used, this will not only increase the speed of tissue analysis by about 150 times, but will also be very beneficial for the accuracy and speed of cancer surgery.

5 Artificial intelligence predicts life expectancy

If you could know how long you have left to live, would you want to know? With the development of artificial intelligence, computers may soon be able to answer this question by scanning your internal organs.

In this work, published recently in the journal "Scientific Reports" under the Nature Publishing Group, scientists at the University of Adelaide used artificial intelligence to predict patients' life expectancy by analyzing medical images.

The researchers used images of 48 patients' chests and fed them into a "deep learning" algorithm to predict the patient's five-year survival rate. The result was 69% accurate, which is similar to the predictions of medical professionals.

Deep learning is a machine learning technique in which an algorithm "learns" to recognize useful patterns in a given data set, and then makes observations and predictions. In this study, the algorithm "learned" the complexity of disease manifestations and assessed the health of patients by observing organ imaging data. Similar technologies are also being explored for different medical fields.

From now on, artificial intelligence will only become more accurate: the more data you feed it, the more samples the algorithm has to discover insights that we can't find. That's why in the next stage of the study, scientists will feed tens of thousands of images to the AI ​​for analysis. It may still take some time before this kind of medical AI is widely used in the clinic, but the current positive results may mean that it won't be long before a computer can take a look and tell you how long you have left in your life.