Browse Technologies

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Researchers at Vanderbilt have created a novel drug delivery system using two distinct T-cell populations that interact to promote engraftment and persistence in pre-clinical models, increasing the efficacy of T-cell therapies. Furthermore, "booster" treatments can be administered months after the first dose to produce an expansion of antigen specific T cells. These advantages result in longer-term therapeutic efficacy and could reduce the number of treatments required. This system also represents a viable self-renewing platform for the delivery of biologic drugs in patients who would otherwise require frequent administration.

Vascular inflammation caused by metabolic, autoimmune, and microbial insults mediates cardiovascular diseases that include hypertension and atherosclerosis (heart attacks, strokes), systemic lupus, and giant cell arteritis. An estimated 35 million Americans have hypercholesterolemia, contributing to 500,000 deaths underlying heart attacks and strokes. In these diseases, metabolic, autoimmune, and microbial insults continually challenge blood and vascular cells by triggering signaling to the nucleus mediated by BCL10. Genetic ablation of BCL10 rescues animals from atherosclerosis, aortic aneurysms, and fatty liver and insulin resistance due to overnutrition. Intracellular therapy with CP-CRADD is designed to extinguish BCL10-mediated noxious signals to avert vascular inflammation and its life-threatening complications including ruptured aneurysms in aorta and brain.

Vanderbilt researchers have designed a general purpose system for precise steering of multi-lumen needles. One significant application of the system is decompression of the cranium during hemorrhagic events (ICH).

This invention presents a robotic wrist and gripper that operate with three independent degrees of freedom (yaw, pitch and roll) for increased dexterity in minimally invasive surgical procedures. This is the smallest robotic wrist of its kind, and due to its size and unparalleled dexterity, this wrist enables complex surgical maneuvers for minimally invasive procedures in highly confined spaces. Examples of surgical areas benefiting from use of this wrist include natural orifice surgery, single port access surgery, and minimally invasive surgery. In particular, the proposed wrist allows for very high precision roll about the longitudinal axis of the gripper while overcoming problems of run-out motion typically encountered in existing wrists. Thus this wrist is particularly suitable for extreme precision maneuvers for micro-surgery in confined spaces.