Miracles and wonders: breakthroughs in medical research

The real story in health care is not what's happening in Washington but what's happening in research. Witness:

The skin gun is not science fiction—it's a prototype medical device that literally sprays skin cells onto burn victims to re-grow skin. Old methods like skin grafts took weeks to heal; the skin gun needs about an hour. Though it is still technically in an experimental stage, the skin gun has already successfully treated over a dozen burn victims. The way it works is by using stem cells from the patient's healthy skin and mixing it with a solution to come up with the spray paint. And combined with that fancy gun, the rest is easy.

Scientists have converted adult skin cells directly into beating heart cells efficiently without having to first go through the laborious process of generating embryonic-like stem cells. The powerful general technology platform could lead to new treatments for a range of diseases and injuries involving cell loss or damage, such as heart disease, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease.

Scientists are bringing probioticsl therapy into the 21st century by genetically engineering the microbes to enhance their effect on the immune system. They hope the new bugs will ultimately help treat inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, as well as other disorders that result from an overactive immune system.

Paper strips containing dots that turn blue when exposed to blood.

Researchers have invented a technique that uses inexpensive paper to make "microfluidic" devices for rapid medical diagnostics and chemical analysis. This new approach offers the potential to extend the inexpensive paper-based systems so that they are able to do more complicated multiple analyses on the same piece of paper. It's a generic platform that can be used for a variety of applications.

A San Diego company has developed a treatment that aims to prevent much of that muscle damage from a heart attack before it starts. The treatment works by injecting a concentrated slurry of stem cells and other regenerative cells isolated from the patient's body directly into the heart's main artery within 24 hours after an attack. "You can't do anything about dead tissue, but tissue that's bruised and damaged—that's revitalizable. If you can get new blood flow in there, that tissue comes back to life," says the company's CEO.

A blood test so sensitive that it can spot a single cancer cell lurking among a billion healthy ones is moving one step closer to being available at your doctor's office. This is like a "liquid biopsy" that avoids painful tissue sampling and may give a better way to monitor patients than periodic imaging scans.