A team of researchers from SWOG Cancer Research Network, a cancer clinical trials group funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), have shown that they can use methylation patterns in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) extracted from blood samples to predict which patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer are likely to benefit from chemotherapy before their surgery. In the future, such a biomarker from a blood sample, or “liquid biopsy,” might save some patients from having to undergo a difficult chemotherapy regimen that would provide them little benefit.

Northwestern University engineers have taken their transient pacemaker and integrated it into a coordinated network of four soft, flexible, wireless wearable sensors and control units placed on different anatomically relevant locations on the body. The sensors communicate with each other to continuously monitor the body’s various physiological functions, including body temperature, oxygen levels, respiration, muscle tone, physical activity and the heart’s electrical activity. The system then uses algorithms to analyze this combined activity in order to autonomously detect abnormal cardiac rhythms and decide when to pace the heart and at what rate.