Ireland’s first BioBrillouin microscope will enable non-invasive assessment of living cells and tissues in real-time
2025-07-03
(Press-News.org)
Trinity College Dublin now has Ireland’s first and only BioBrillouin microscope, which will enable researchers to make giant strides in the fields of inflammation, cancer, developmental biology and biomedical materials, among others.
Cellular and tissue mechanics are potent regulators of disease, dysfunction and regeneration, and understanding them is thus a major focus of biomedical researchers. But existing methods are invasive and limited in the information that they can provide.
However, the incredible new Brillouin microscope can map and quantify the compressibility, viscoelasticity and the detailed mechanics of materials and biological tissues, using non-invasive light. This enables researchers to assess the mechanical properties of live systems (such as cells and tissues) without interfering with them, allowing them to monitor a system and how it changes over time. It is based on light scattering from the result of interactions between a photon of light and the acoustic phonons of a material, which are impacted by the material’s mechanical properties.
With the support of the European Research Council (ERC) and Research Ireland, the Brillouin microscopy system has been installed in the lab of Prof. Michael Monaghan in the School of Engineering at Trinity, where it is housed in the Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute.
‘‘Being the first commercial system in the world, we have tremendous technical support from the vendor, CellSense Technologies GmbH, with whom we have worked closely with to get the system on the ground. Our success is their success,” said Prof. Monaghan, who is a contributor to an expert consensus paper published today in leading international journal Nature Photonics.
This statement gathers the expertise of international experts in the application of Brillouin microscopy in biomedical applications.
“Studying the mechanical properties of live systems is hugely relevant in myriad fields, and promises to enable leaps forward in our understanding of the ways in which inflammation and cancer develop, for example,” added Prof. Monaghan.
“However, it’s also important to understand its use is not limited to biomedical research and related applications – it will help scientists push boundaries even further in fields such as materials science, ICT, energy storage, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices and diagnostics. This groundbreaking equipment will help us advance frontier science, and we anticipate scientists will travel from all over the world to use it – we have welcomed some already.”
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2025-07-03
A new way to grow stem cells may help them release more of the signaling proteins they use to repair tissue, potentially improving future treatments.
Scientists have developed a technique that aligns stem cells into a single sheet, resulting in a marked increase in the secretion of signaling proteins which help repair tissue and regulate the immune system. The new approach, described in the journal Materials Today Bio, could improve stem cell-based treatments for conditions such as heart disease, liver ...
2025-07-03
Journal: JSES Reviews, Reports & Techniques
Title: Mechanisms and Trends of Pediatric Clavicular Fractures in the United States: A 10-Year Epidemiologic Analysis of National Injury Data
Authors: Charu Jain, MD candidate at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Sheena Ranade, MD, Associate Professor of Orthopedics (Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Bottom line: Clavicular fractures are common injuries among children, usually due to sports-related trauma or accidental falls. The purpose of this study ...
2025-07-03
The Synaptic Physiology laboratory, led by Juan Lerma at the Institute for Neurosciences (IN), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Miguel Hernández University (UMH) of Elche, has discovered that a specific group of neurons in the amygdala, a brain region involved in emotion regulation, plays a key role in the emergence of conditions such as anxiety, depression, and altered social behavior. This study, published in iScience, shows that restoring the neuronal excitability balance in a specific area of the amygdala is enough to reverse these behaviors in mice.
“We already knew the amygdala was involved in anxiety and fear, but now we've ...
2025-07-03
An international collaboration featuring the University of Vienna and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) has led to the first-ever chromosome-level genome assembly of a sea spider (Pycnogonum litorale). The genome informs about the development of the characteristic sea spider body plan and constitutes a landmark for revealing the evolutionary history of chelicerates in general. The study was recently published in BMC Biology.
Sea spiders (Pycnogonida) are marine arthropods with highly unusual anatomy: their trunk is very narrow and short, many of their internal organ systems extend into their long legs, and their ...
2025-07-03
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the unexpected, unexplained, sudden death of a child younger than one year old. Although the number of babies born in the United States who die from SIDS annually has declined in recent decades, it is the most common cause of death among infants between one month and one year old, and some 2,300 babies die of it each year, according to Boston Children’s Hospital.
Yet new health survey data from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania finds that ...
2025-07-03
You have probably heard people say that “it should be worth our time to work”. This is true even in Norway, where generous social welfare programs help take care of people who have ended up outside the workforce, whether involuntarily or not.
“This is what we call the ‘work incentive principle’. Basically, there should always be a financial advantage to working instead of receiving unemployment benefits,” said Roberto Iacono, an associate professor at the Norwegian Univeristy of Science and Technology ...
2025-07-03
It has long been known that loneliness is a risk factor in the development of anxiety and depression. However, the association itself has been less well studied. This is especially true during the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
“Our research team investigated how loneliness in adolescence, both in isolation and in interaction with low resilience, affects anxiety and depression in young adulthood,” said Nayan Deepak Parlikar. She is a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University ...
2025-07-03
Scientists who have written in the CABI One Health journal say there is an urgent need for aflatoxin control strategies in Pakistan’s feed supply chain to improve animal health, productivity, food safety and exports of animal-based products.
The researchers argue that aflatoxins – toxic metabolites produced by certain fungi – are frequently found in animal feed due to poor storage and handling practices. Their presence, they say, not only compromises animal health but also leads to transfer through contaminated milk, meat and eggs, posing serious risks to public health.
A review article ...
2025-07-03
Researchers have long focused on the STING (Stimulator of Interferon Genes) pathway as a way to harness the immune system’s natural defenses against cancer. This pathway, which plays a key role in helping the body defend against potential pathogens, can be leveraged to trigger an innate immune response that targets cancer cells. However, a study published July 3 in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, led by biochemist Lingyin Li (Bluesky: @lingyinli.bsky.social), is spearheading a new school of thought.
Historically, research on STING has overwhelmingly focused on activating the pathway ...
2025-07-03
Researchers in Japan have successfully generated lung cells similar to alveolar epithelial type 2 (AT2) cells from mouse embryonic fibroblasts without using stem cell technology. The AT2-like cells were generated in just 7 to 10 days—a significant reduction compared to the approximately one month typically required by conventional stem cell-based differentiation methods.
This approach may pave the way for treating serious respiratory diseases, such as interstitial pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which currently lack effective treatments. The study was published ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Ireland’s first BioBrillouin microscope will enable non-invasive assessment of living cells and tissues in real-time
