Bacterial spores can be modified to display molecules of interest, including drugs, immunogenic peptides, antibodies and other functional proteins of interest (such as enzymes). The resulting engineered bacterial spores can provide many useful functions such as the treatment of infections, use as an adjuvant for the delivery of vaccines, and the enzymatic degradation of environmental pollutants.
The National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Pathology is seeking statements of capability or interest from parties interested in collaborative research to further develop, evaluate, or commercialize a method for target-activated microdissection.
In medical diagnostic procedures for examining the cervix and the tissues of the vagina and vulva, long working-distance (-30 cm) lighted binocular microscopes (colposcope) that provide up to 25x optical magnification are used to create an illuminated magnified view. Speculum dilations can give rise to specular reflections from the tissue surface, causing physicians to overlook possible abnormalities – thus decreasing the quality of a colposcopy.
This technology includes a device and method for maintaining access to a location in the body while reducing or eliminating the potential for pulling an access device (i.e., catheter) back through an opening, such as a cardiac procedure. An introducer sheath includes a distal indented portion and a balloon, so that once placed in a desired location through tissue, the balloon can be inflated to anchor the sheath against retraction.
This technology includes a method for performing cardiac imaging without the need for the patient to hold their breath. Free breathing pixel-wise myocardial T1 parameter mapping includes performing a free-breathing scan of a cardiac region at a plurality of varying saturation recovery times to acquire a k-space dataset; generating an image dataset based on the k-space dataset; and performing a respiratory motion correction process on the image dataset.
This technology includes part of transcatheter aortic valve replacement and to enable non-surgical thoracic aortic aneurysm endograft repair. The invention enables a completely new way to access the arterial circulation to allow introduction of large devices, such as transcatheter aortic valve replacement, percutaneous left ventricular assist devices, and thoracic aortic endografts. It also can be used in most labeled and off-label applications of Amplatzer (AGA Medical, St Jude) nitinol occluder devices to occlude intracardiac holes and to allow non-surgical direct access to the heart.
This technology includes structures and methods for cinching a band around the heart for treating conditions including tricuspid valve regurgitation (TR). When positioned appropriately along the atrioventricular groove, the band is tightened around the heart which narrows the tricuspid annulus and relieves TR.
This technology includes a guidewire purpose-built for delivery of bulky transcatheter heart valves (THV). Conventional THV guidewires are rigid and have a distal tip shaped like a pigtail to prevent apical ventricular perforation. This invention is a 3-dimensional helical or antihelical curve that can protect against apical perforation, possibly better, and that allows subtle 3-mensional deflection to aid the operator in achieving coaxiality or overcoming delivery obstacles such as calcific spicules.
This technology includes tools to guide optimization of thermometry imaging/post-processing protocols. Proton Resonance Frequency (PRF) thermometry is a widely used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) based technique to monitor changes in tissue temperature in response to thermal therapy. The use of PRF thermometry with thermal therapy procedures is indispensable to ensure delivery of desired thermal dose to the target tissue, and to minimize unintended damage to the normal tissue.
This technology includes the determination of temperature dependent temporal deviations of the real from the intended gradient waveforms and k-space trajectories during MRI image acquisition, and the use of appropriate temperature dependent pre-compensations to avoid or reduce the image distortion caused by these temporal deviations on the gradient waveforms and k-space trajectories, which will improve imaging quality.