Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and NC State have created an injectable gel-like scaffold that can hold combination chemo-immunotherapeutic drugs and deliver them locally to tumours in a sequential manner. The results in animal models so far suggest this approach could one day ramp up therapeutic benefits for patients bearing tumours or after removal of the primary tumours.

Treating type 1 diabetes and some cases of type 2 diabetes has long required painful and frequent insulin injections or a mechanical insulin pump for insulin infusion. But researchers from the University of North Carolina and NC State have now developed what could be a much more patient-friendly option: artificial cells that automatically release insulin into the bloodstream when glucose levels rise.

Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a method to control proteins inside live cells with the flick of a switch, giving researchers an unprecedented tool for pinpointing the causes of disease using the simplest of tools: light. The work, led by Klaus Hahn and Nikolay Dokholyan and spearheaded by Onur Dagliyan, a graduate student in their labs, builds on the breakthrough technology known as optogenetics.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have adapted a technology developed for solar energy in order to selectively remove one of the trickiest and most-difficult-to-remove elements in nuclear waste pools across the country, making the storage of nuclear waste safer and nontoxic. The work, published in Science, not only opens the door to expand the use of one of the most efficient energy sources on the planet, but also add...

In a first for medical science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pharmacy researchers turn skin cells into cancer-hunting stem cells that destroy brain tumors known as glioblastoma, a discovery that can offer, for the first time in more than 30 years, a new and more effective treatment for the disease. The technique, reported in Nature Communications, builds upon the newest version of the Nobel Prize-winning technology from 2007, which...

A new drug delivery method may enable cancer drugs to overcome resistance mechanisms in tumors, resulting in the destruction of cancer cells using 50 times less chemotherapy than is currently required.

A 3D printing technology developed by Silicon Valley startup, Carbon3D, enables objects to rise from a liquid media continuously rather than being built layer-by-layer as they have been for the past 25 years. The technology allows ready-to-use products to be made 25 to 100 times faster than other methods and creates previously unachievable geometries that open opportunities for innovation not only in health care and medicine, but also in other ma...