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The University of Louisville announced a coronavirus “breakthrough” Wednesday that even University of Kentucky fans can get behind. The school said researchers have developed technology that it believes will block coronavirus from infecting human cells. It is seeking fast-track development for the new technology and has applied to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for testing approval.

Sticky nanotubes that trap bacteria like flypaper can be used to identify bacterial infections in seconds rather than days, report Spanish chemists. Although only tested on the typhus-causing Salmonella typhi bacteria so far, if the process can be applied more widely it could revolutionise bacterial testing in the medical and food industries. Detecting bacteria is currently a laborious process, requiring several stages that can take up to two days. Instead, this new method promises to be as easy as testing for pH, say researchers at the Universityof Rovira i Virgili in Catalonia, Spain. The technique uses carbon nanotubes coated with aptamers -...

Ultra-small particles loaded with medicine - and aimed with the precision of a rifle - are offering a promising new way to strike at cancer, according to researchers working at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital. In a paper to appear the week of April 10 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reports a way to custom design nanoparticles so they home in on dangerous cancer cells, then enter the cells to deliver lethal doses of chemotherapy. Normal, healthy cells remain unscathed. print this page email this page The team conducted...