The rise of multidrug-resistant bacteria is a fast-growing global challenge. By tapping into the medicinal properties of local plants, Moroccan biology professor Adnane Remmal has developed a way to “boost” the efficacy of antibiotics used to treat bacterial infections. His invention might help curb the overuse of antibiotics that is leading to antimicrobial resistance and halt the spread of multidrug-resistant (MDR) “superbugs”.
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are waiting for life-saving donor organs. Many organs fail to reach their recipients because technology limits preservation time outside the body. A major improvement, the Organ Care System (OCS) developed by US heart surgeon Waleed Hassanein, preserves organ function for longer periods and ensures higher transplant success rates.
Doctors can now create real-time images of human tissue for early detection of cancer, glaucoma and other ailments thanks to US engineers James G. Fujimoto and Eric A. Swanson and German physicist Robert Huber. Their breakthrough imaging technology, optical coherence tomography (OCT), is now standard procedure for eye examinations.
Patients suffering from the autoimmune disease known as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) could soon benefit from much better treatment outcomes. A new medication invented by French immunologist Sylviane Muller and her team at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris not only alleviates symptoms, but is the first treatment of its kind to halt the progression of the disease.
Space-based radio navigation positioning has made significant strides in recent decades. It is now poised to make a greater leap thanks to Galileo, Europe's global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Signalling technology developed by a team of European engineers not only helps Galileo deliver better accuracy and clear up signal clutter; it also pushes satellite navigation and its features to the next level.
Ushering in a new era of personalised medicine and drug development, Dutch molecular geneticist Hans Clevers and teams at the Hubrecht Institute and the University Medical Center (UMC) in Utrecht pioneered so-called "organoids". The "mini-organs" – including livers, lungs and intestines – are grown from the stem cells of individual patients and allow doctors to test the specific effects of drugs safely – outside the body.
Malaria is one of the ten deadliest diseases of our time and is diagnosed in only 10% of all cases. Changing the paradigm, Dutch haematologist Jan van den Boogaart and Austrian biochemist Oliver Hayden developed the first automated, computer-based blood test for malaria. Combining medicine and information sciences, the test is based on a computer algorithm that detects infections with unprecedented accuracy.
Treatment outcomes have greatly improved over the past decades thanks to the inventions of Italian nephrologist Giuseppe Remuzzi and fellow researchers Carlamaria Zoja and Ariela Benigni. The team's medications use angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors to treat chronic kidney disease and complications related to organ transplants.
Convenient audio streaming, storage and playback would hardly be imaginable without the contributions of Swedish sound specialist Lars Liljeryd. Blending his lifelong love of music and his largely self-taught knowledge of electronics, this iconoclastic inventor designed one of the world's most popular digital audio compression codecs.
