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Medical Word of the Day: Elliptocytosis

Published
by
Greg
on April 23, 2009
in medical words
. 0 Comments

Topic: Blood

Red blood cells - elliptocytosis Elliptocytosis is a hereditary disorder of the red blood cells (RBCs). In this condition, the RBCs assume an elliptical shape, rather than the typical round shape.

Elliptocytosis:(audio pronunciation)

Hematologic disorder characterized by elliptically shaped red blood cells (elliptocytosis) with variable breakup of red cells (hemolysis) and varying degrees of anemia. Inherited as a dominant trait. Due to mutation (change) in one of the genes encoding proteins of the red cell membrane skeleton.  Elliptocytosis is frequently harmless. In mild cases, fewer than 15% of red blood cells are oval-shaped. However, some people may have crises in which the red blood cells rupture, releasing their hemoglobin. Persons with this disease can develop anemia, jaundice, and gallstones.

In 1956 Newton Morton brilliantly showed that there were at least 2 forms of elliptocytosis, one form linked to the Rh blood group and another form not linked to Rh (now known to be on chromosome 1). The Rh-linked form, called EL1, in is due to a mutation in erythrocyte membrane protein 4.1. Forms of elliptocytosis not linked to Rh are due to mutations in the alpha-spectrin gene, the beta-spectrin gene, or the band 3 gene. The linkage between elliptocytosis and Rh was one of the first autosomal linkages discovered.

Greg Olson :: Ubiquity :: 303-962-8700 :: greg@ubiquitygroup.com

Follow on Twitter:: @ubiquity

Ubiquity specializes in generating demand for life science companies.  We help bioscience and med tech companies create a better human health experience by driving investor interest, awareness and product desire.

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Medical Word of the Day: Hemolysis

Published
by
Greg
on April 22, 2009
in medical words
. 0 Comments

Topic: Blood Cells
Hemolysis:

(audio pronunciation)                                                                                                                                                                                   The destruction of red blood cells which leads to the release of hemoglobin from within the red blood cells into the blood plasma. Etymology: The word “hemolysis” is made up of “hemo-”, blood + “lysis”, the disintegration of cells.

Hemoglobin:                                                                                                                                                                                                                         The oxygen-carrying pigment and predominant protein in the red blood cells. Hemoglobin forms an unstable, reversible bond with oxygen. In its oxygenated state it is called oxyhemoglobin and is bright red. In the reduced state it is called deoxyhemoglobin and is purple-blue.

Each hemoglobin molecule is made up of four heme groups surrounding a globin group. Heme contains iron and gives a red color to the molecule. Globin consists of two linked pairs of polypeptide chains. The development of each chain is controlled at a separate genetic locus. Changes in the amino acid sequence of these chains results in abnormal hemoglobins. For example, hemoglobin S is found in sickle-cell disease, a severe type of anemia in which the red cells become sickle-shaped when oxygen is in short supply.

When red blood cells die, the hemoglobin within them is released and broken up: the iron in hemoglobin is salvaged, transported to the bone marrow by a protein called transferrin and used again in the production of new red blood cells; the remainder of the hemoglobin becomes a chemical called bilirubin that is excreted into the bile which is secreted into the intestine, where it gives the feces their characteristic yellow-brown color.

 Additional Definitions:

Polypeptide: A peptide consisting of 2 or more amino acids. Amino acids make up polypeptides which, in turn, make up proteins.

Bilirubin: A yellow-orange compound produced by the breakdown of hemoglobin from red blood cells.

Locus: The place, in Latin.. In genetics, a locus is the place a gene occupies on a chromosome. One locus, two loci.

Transferrin: A plasma protein that transports iron through the blood to the liver, spleen and bone marrow.

Hemoglobin S: The most common type of abnormal hemoglobin and the basis of sickle cell trait and sickle cell anemia.

Greg Olson :: Ubiquity :: 303-962-8700 :: greg@ubiquitygroup.com :: Follow on Twitter:: @ubiquity

Ubiquity specializes in generating demand for life science companies.  We help bioscience and med tech companies create a better human health experience by driving investor interest, awareness and product desire.

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Medical Word of the Day: Polymyositis

Published
by
Greg
on April 21, 2009
in medical words
. 2 Comments

Polymyositis:  (Webster definition with audio pronunciation) A chronic inflammatory disease of muscle that begins when white blood cells, the immune cells of inflammation, spontaneously invade muscles, especially the muscles closest to the trunk or torso, resulting in sometimes severe muscle pain, tenderness and weakness.

There are commonly periods of increased symptoms, called flares or relapses, and periods of decreased symptoms, known as remissions. The disease is slightly more common in females than males. It affects all age groups, although its onset is most common in middle childhood and in the twenties. It occurs throughout the world. It can be associated with skin rash and is then referred to as “dermatomyositis.” It also can affect other areas of the body and is, therefore, a systemic illness.

Occasionally, polymyositis is associated with other diseases of connective tissue such as systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, and rheumatoid arthritis. Polymyositis is also associated with modestly increased risk of cancer, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, lung and bladder cancer.

Polymyositis treatment:

Initially, polymyositis is treated with high doses of corticosteroids. These are medications related to cortisone and can be given by mouth or intravenously. They are given because they can have a powerful effect to decrease the inflammation in the muscles. They usually are required for years and their continued use will be based on what the doctor finds related to symptoms, examination, and muscle enzyme blood test.

Greg Olson :: Ubiquity :: 303-962-8700 :: greg@ubiquitygroup.com :: Follow on Twitter:: @ubiquity
Ubiquity specializes in generating demand for life science companies.  We help bioscience and med tech companies create a better human health experience by driving investor interest, awareness and product desire.

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Medical Word of the Day: Hydrocephalus

Published
by
Greg
on April 20, 2009
in medical words
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Topic: Neuro: Medical Word of the Day: Hydrocephalus

This is a word that is near and dear to our hearts at Ubiquity. My business partner’s newphew has hydrocephalus. We actively support an orginization based near Seattle, Washington: The Hydrocephalus Research Guild. This is a special interest guild of Seattle Children’s Guild Association, Seattle, WA. HRG seeks to fund research at Seattle Children’s to find better hydrocephalus.  We need to find better treatment for hydrocephalus.

Hydrocephalus has been described as a ticking time bomb by those who suffer from it. There is no cure and very little research being conducted for a cure. Hydrocephalus is the number one reason for brain surgery in children in the U.S. The most significant treatment, a shunt, was developed in 1952 with little innovation since then.

What is Hydrocephalus:
Hydrocephalus is an abnormal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the ventricles of the brain. The fluid is often under increased pressure and can compress and damage the brain.

Hydrocephalus can arise before birth or any time afterward. It may be due to many causes including a birth defect, hemorrhage into the brain, infection, meningitis, tumor, or head injury. Most forms of hydrocephalus are the result of obstructed CSF flow in the ventricular system. With physical obstruction of CSF flow in the ventricular system is usually the cause of the hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus is a common companion of spina bifida (meningomyelocele).

What is termed “hydrocephalus ex-vacuo” occurs when there is damage to the brain caused by stroke or injury, and there may be an actual shrinkage of brain substance. “Hydrocephalus ex-vacuo” is essentially only hydrocephalus by default; the CSF pressure itself is normal.

Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) can also occur due to a gradual blockage of the CSF drainage pathways in the brain. Although the ventricles enlarge, the pressure of the CSF remains within normal range. NPH is characterized by memory loss dementia, gait disorder, urinary incontinence and a general slowing of activity.

Left Image: Hydrocephalus brain scan image.   Right Image:  Normal Scan.  The dark space is the extra fluid in the brain which is actually cerebrospinal fluid.

Hydrocephalus brain scan click to enlarge

Learn more about hydrocephalus at HRG.

What can you do to help? You can support HRG in many ways. Support HRG

  1. Become a corporate sponsor.
  2. Donate an auction item.
  3. Make a tax-deductible contribution.
  4. Buy tickets to the event.
  5. Volunteer for the event.
  6. Become a member of the HRG.

Greg Olson :: Ubiquity :: 303-962-8700 :: greg@ubiquitygroup.com :: Follow on Twitter:: @ubiquity
Ubiquity specializes in generating demand for life science companies.We help bioscience and med tech companies create a better human health experience by driving investor interest, awareness and product desire.

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Social Media Monitoring: Why Life Science companies should listen?

Published
by
Greg
on April 17, 2009
in social media
. 2 Comments

Socia Media ListeningI have had many conversations with life science companies about social media/emerging media. The light has finally gone on in the room and I believe this is due to all the media attention. Many of my contacts in the medical technology and bioscience industry indicated that their products or services are not consumer facing and thus do not need to participate in social media marketing.

Now it is becoming clear within the life science community; whether you sell stents, heart monitoring software, medical tubing, the famous blue pill or products only in development; you will need to actively listen to what is being discussed online. Your customers, decision makers, influencers and investors are participating online. Discussing your products and service on blogs, videos, podcasts, news articles, and possibly talking to your parents about your company. While monitoring can help with most things we can’t really monitor what they say to your parents.

All joking aside, this article is to bring you up to speed on how to get involved in online monitoring and some top reasons and give you an understanding how Ubiquity may be able to help you. (Its my blog, I can self promote every 96 days.)

Online media is becoming more and more prevalent every day. With new information being discussed in blogs, social communities, news feeds and even online video conversation. Keeping up with online conversations can be a daunting task. But, interesting conversations are happening all over the web, making the resources worth the effort.

See Social Media Basics blog entry: The dog ate my social media: Social media basics.

Customers, prospects, and peers are discussing your business brand, your industry, and your competitors using social media, with or without you. Unfortunately, choosing not to listen doesn’t make those conversations go away. ‘Actively listening’ means protecting your business brand reputation, discovering opportunities, staying competitive, and avoiding a runaway crisis.
Why Actively Listen:
1. It will uncover potential new customers and partners at their point of need.
2. It provides real-time data as it is discovered.
3. Conversation dynamics are constantly tallied from every post/video/image in a topic profile so we can track the viral nature and allow for easy sorting. This enables us to quickly sort through the noise.

Social Media Conversation Map(Click on image for larger size: From Brian Solis)

Actively Listening to social media will also provide:
Multiple Languages - Online monitoring can support for multiple languages including English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Simple Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Crisis Monitoring - Watch daily for words that could be potentially damaging to your brand.

Competitive Intelligence - Watch daily for competitors’ brands or partners to appear and investigate further.

Marketing Trends - New words and topics associated with your brand can provide an opportunity for the development of new business channels.

Online Communities and Influencers - Learn which online communities are important to your business.

Branding and Marketing - The findings will help you in determining proper messaging for your products, help you better target and also help improve your organic rankings on the web.

10 reasons to monitor the online world: This is a good list from David Alston at Radian6.

Check out his recent column yet 5 more reasons to listen.

  1. The Complaint – Watch for posts complaining about your products or services, company, and staff. Catching something early means getting a chance to show how responsive you are.
  2. The Compliment – Compliments can come in many forms. It could be a congratulations message about a recent award. It could be a customer raving about the experience they just had with a product or with customer service. Social media compliments are the online equivalent of those old school references or testimonials of days past.
  3. The Expressed need – The best way to watch for expressed needs is to look for keywords often used to describe those needs. People shout out what they are doing and ask the general public for advice occasionally when they are about to make a purchase.
  4. The Competitor – If you are watching your industry and the keywords used to describe it you will probably be the first to know when a new competitor appears on the scene. From a competitive intelligence perspective you may also wish to be alerted any time a competitor’s name is used.
  5. The Crowd – Topics will often pop up online that draw huge crowds from a page visits or commenting perspective. There is a lot to be learned in discussion threads, especially when they have the potential to affect your brand. Following the swarms can give you a better understanding of current sentiment and thinking towards a certain topic and who the players are that have opinions on it.
  6. The Influencer – Influencers within a space can carry a lot of weight. They gain there power either from the number of times they post on a topic, the number of people who link to their posts on a topic, the number of people gathering to comment and how engaged visitors to their posts become.
  7. The Crisis – Discussions happening in social media can serve as an early warning system before an issue goes mainstream. By using advanced tools you can observe new words popping more frequently about your brands. If you were an airline, as an example, the sudden appearance of the word “cancellations” along with the words “bad” and “customer service” would immediate trigger a need to drill into the posts driving them. Tracking these “crisis” words over time on a go forward basis would also then help gauge the effectiveness of any outreach campaigns to address the underlying issues. A crisis could also be based on industry or legislative crisis within the life science community.
  8. The ROI – There has been a lot of buzz lately on how to successful measure online marketing and outreach campaigns. Much of the focus has centered around the topic of engagement. While a universal engagement metric has yet to be agreed upon there are still a number of effective ways to measure engagement and ROI in general. Track the mentions of a brand in user-generated content before, during and after a campaign. Isolate positive words associated with a particular brand and gauge the number of times they were used over a period of time.
  9. The Audit – A brand is the sum of all conversations and is no longer completely controlled by the corporation. By analyzing social media a corporation or agency can score a brand’s overall user sentiment, determine which words are commonly associated with it, understand which competitors rank closest in buzz or online mentions, uncover which sites are advocates, and rank which social media channels contain more discussion versus others.
  10. The Thread – Following discussions using keywords associated with it can help bridge the thread across all types of social media. This thread would then appear as a connected conversation for easy analysis.

How to get started: A typical process

  1. Discovery session to determine goals
  2. Set-up initial online monitoring session and create snapshot of data
  3. Review snapshot of data with team members and refine as needed
  4. Develop key review dates of data as needed.
  5. Create executive summaries with recommendations
  6. Develop plan around findings

Why use Ubiquity for Life science Online Marketing:
Ubiquity specializes in generating demand for Life Science companies. We understand the medical technology and bioscience industry, your clients and the decision makers. We work in emerging media and know how to create actionable, measurable strategies from the information we find.

Ubiquity uses a number of tools to aggregate data which is supplied to our medical technology clients as an executive summary. Each summary may have charts, graphs and the links to each conversation and is customized to fit your needs.

Greg Olson :: Ubiquity
2406 West 32nd Ave., Suite B
Denver, Colorado 80211

tel: 303.962.8700
cell: 303.587.2847

www.ubiquitygroup.com
Follow me on Twitter:@ubiquity

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The dog ate my social media: A quick look at Social Media basics

Published
by
Greg
on April 15, 2009
in social media
. 0 Comments

I have had many conversations with people wanting to get started in social media. It is a wide range of companies: Ranging from a cupcake bakery, automobile belt and hose manufacturer to a medical device company. Everyone has certain excuses to why they have not become part of this emerging media. So I just tell them to say, my dog ate my social media. All fun aside. Your customers, prospects and competitors are using these online communities every day and I bet a few of them are talking about your product or service.

Lets run through a few basic items.

What is Social Media: There are probably a 1000 definitions. Lets go with this one.

Social media is the use of technology combined with social interaction to engage and participate in conversations.
Instead of one to one it is one to many.
There are so many definitions but it is more about how it is changing marketing.
• Social media, and by that I’m lumping together blogs, RSS, social search, social networking and bookmarking, presents the marketer with a rich set of new tools to help in the effort to generate new business.
• Social media can help business: The list is endless:
Increased web traffic/more inbound links, build brand awareness and improve customer loyalty, earlier problem detection, relatively low cost, and integrates with marketing.
What is Twitter:

Twitter is micro-blogging: 140 character limit. A Web site and service that lets users send short text messages from their cellphones to a group of friends. Launched in 2006, Twitter (www.twitter.com) was designed for people to broadcast their current activities and thoughts. Twitter expanded “mobile blogging” (updating a blog from a cellphone) into “microblogging,” the updating of an activities blog (microblog) that distributes the text to a list of names. Messages can also be sent and received via instant messaging.

Every day there are stories popping up in local papers, on local news stations and even the radio. Here are few interesting ways Twitter is being used:

• Dell has said it has made 1 million (Read more)in revenue last year using twitter promoting items in its outlet department. Great way to move product.
• A pregnant woman has a band on her belly with sensors that sends alerts through Twitter, every time the baby kicks.
• A sensor placed in a plant, sends alerts through Twitter when it needs water, has too much water, needs sunlight, etc
• Milwaukee Wisconsin is using Twitter for public safety alerts, receive leads on accidents. (Read More)
• 2008 California Fires: The really bad fires last year: THE (Los Angeles Fire Department) LAFD used it to keep the community appraised of fire emergencies. (Read More)
• Personal uses: Twittering you are at a restaurant or trying to find friends at a concert.
• Cyclist Lance Armstrong has over 500,000 followers (Follow Lance)
• I have about 2,000 but I haven’t won the Tour De France even once, so win the Tour de France a few times and you to can have a half a million followers.

B2B Followers flock to Twitter: Great article

How not to use Twitter:
If your not going to invest time into Twitter, than it probably isn’t for you. I find Twitter an amazing tool for research and listening to what people are saying.

List of Twitter Tools and Twitter Tool Box: Couple of good links of a variety of tools to use Twitter in your business. Various Twitter-related tools and plugins have been multiplying fast

Facebook:

Facebook is a great online community. I am amazed at how fast it is growing. The numbers today are something like over 4 million new users a day. The interesting data is in the growth and what ages ranges are coming onto Facebook. This is great opportunity for businesses to tap into these online communities.

Facebook’s 35-54 year old demographic segment not only continued to grow the fastest, but it accelerated to a 276.4% growth rate over the past 6 months. That demo is DOUBLING roughly every two months. Here’s the full breakdown:
The 35-54 year old demo is growing fastest, with a 276.4% growth rate in over the approximate 6 months since we last produced this report
The 55+ demo is not far behind with a 194.3% growth rate
The 25-34 year population on Facebook is doubling every 6 months
For those interested in advertising alcohol on Facebook, there are 27,912,480 users 21+, representing 66.3% of all users
Miami is the fastest growing metropolitan area (88.5%) and Atlanta (6.4%) is the slowest
There are more females (55.7%) than males (42.2%) on Facebook - 2.2% are of unknown gender.
The largest demographic concentration remains the college crowd of 18-24 year olds (40.8%) which is down from (53.8%) six months ago.
A warning about being involved on social networks and posting personal information.

This information can be found and someone else can post it. I have consulted many companies about having personal information on the site. The Colorado Govenor’s son had pictures of him and friends drinking in the Governors mansion (They were of age but riding the Colorado flag around like a horse is probably not the best picture to post.)

What does listening to social media mean?
Use a free tool called Tweetdeck which allows you to easily search by terms.

Direct unfiltered brutally honest nature of online discussions is black gold.. Helping you spot tends and find out what customers really think…

How would a company go about listening?
Every company should be listening. Another topic around Social Media is online marketing and Search.
Many online tools which will search online news sources, blogs, video and photo site comments and microblogs.

Content Aggregation: Tweetdeck, Google Alerts, Yahoo Pipes, coComment, Commentful

Professional monitoring services: Radian6 and Filtrbox

How should they respond to what they hear?
I prefer transparency and authenticity. People are really good at reading BS. If there is a problem, lets get down to it immediately.
Recent example: Amazon: See NY Times Article on a good example of what can go wrong when you don’t listen.

Be proactive, Listen and help bring the conversation closer

How do you measure your social media efforts?
Measures vary greatly on a client by client basis and the network they are participating.
First: Take a snapshot of your social media world.
Obvious numbers: Number of FB Fans: Twitter followers, web traffic.

Two real measurements are influence and engagement.
Engagement metrics:
Unique visitors, Time spent on site, Frequency of visits, conversations
Things I would think of with Social Media measurement:

  • Increased page views on your website, did they download information. Did they contact you.
  • Conversations about your product/service/company
  • Traffic: Quality often beats quantity
  • Interaction: Engaged customers are highly valuable.
  • Sales: Like I said before Dell discovered Twitter and it made 1M
  • Leads
  • Search Marketing: One link might lead to referrals and links from other sites
  • Brand Metrics This is where word of mouth and the viral factor which are inherent in sites like FB and Twitter help shifit key brand metrics both positive and negative.
  • PR: PR is changing with Social Media. How companies respond to online conversations will be a key to their success.
  • Customer Engagement: Customer can quickly switch from one brand to another, especially online. Listen to customers and let them know your listening will allow you to improve your products and services. These customers will tell their online followers and friends about you. The old rule if one person is unhappy they tell 10 people… now it can be millions.
  • Retention what customers buy again and again…
  • Profits: engage customers more often and let them help you improve your products, service and business: They will recommend your business to their social media contacts: Think about this, especially on Myspace / FB. There are people with networks of 1000’s. It all will equal more or less profits.

Steps to think about.

New puppy syndrome: I see so many people and companies start out with a big exciting effort on social media and then it soon passes. This is a program not a campaign, meaning that you cant stop talking and listening to your customers and prospects because you are getting bored with the puppy. It takes love and attention.

Responding to bad buzz: As I stated in the beginning of this story, this is one to many. The old way was, if you have one un-happy customer they may tell 10 people. Well now it is one un-happy customer may tell 683 of their Facebook friends, 2389 Twitter o and 590 Myspace friends and then they will pass your link on to their friends. One comment could reach a million people in minutes. Quick story: A friend was standing in a long Starbucks line and very slow service. He decides to go to another Starbucks since there is usually one within a block, as he is walking he Tweets about the horrible service as said Starbucks. He immediately gets a reply from Starbucks about the situation and they email him a gift card. That is listening and taking care of the situation.

I will post more on Social Media and will be looking at specific case studies within different industries. I look forward to hearing from you.

Greg Olson::Ubiquity Follow me on Twitter: @ubiquity

greg@ubiquitygroup.com :: 303-962-8700 :: www.ubiquitygroup.com

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Medical Word of the Day: Interventional Neuroradiology

Published
by
Greg
on March 10, 2009
in Neuro Words
. 1 Comment

 I have been working with a variety of companies this year. One technology that continues to be at the forefront of medical technology is interventional neuroradiology.  Taking a device a threading it through the blood stream to manage a medical condition that is done in a very minimally invasive manner.  Medical technology around this subject is something to keep an eye on.

Topic: Nuero

Medical Word of the Day: Interventional Neuroradiology 

A subspecialty of neuroradiology in which minimally invasive therapy can be effected by advancing various devices within a blood vessel to a point of a previously identified lesion–eg, an intracranial aneurysm

Medical Word Definition:  Neuroradiology:

The field within radiology that specializes in the use of radioactive substances, x-rays and scanning devices for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the nervous system. Neuroradiology involves the clinical imaging, therapy, and basic science of the central and peripheral nervous system, including but not limited to the brain, spine, head and neck, interventional procedures, techniques in imaging and intervention, and related educational, socioeconomic, and medicolegal issues.

What is a What is a Vascular and Interventional Neurologist? (From the Society of vascular and Interventional Neurology (SVIN)

Vascular and Interventional Neurologist is a physician specialized in treating neurological and stroke conditions using minimally invasive procedures. The specialty is evolved in collaboration with specialists from vascular neurology, neurocritical care, interventional neuro-radiology, and endovascular neurosurgery. To become a vascular and interventional neurologist, a physician has to complete general neurology training followed by one year of stroke training or neurocritical care training and two years of hands on training in neuro-interventional procedures. The neuro-interventional procedures are performed under the guidance of X-ray monitors through the groin artery. The procedures include, but not limited to dissolving clots from blocked brain arteries in patient with stroke, or removing the clot with snare like devices, placing a stent “mesh like tube” to keep the brain and carotid arteries open, treating brain aneurysm by placing platinum coils, treating brain arteriovenous malformation with glue embolization. In addition, procedures to alleviate back pain such as vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty to implant a cement material to repair compression back fracture are performed.

More information can be found through the Society of vascular and Interventional Neurology (SVIN)

The following is a list of diseases and conditions typically treated by neurointerventionists.

  • Cerebral aneurysm
  • Brain arteriovenous malformation (AVM)
  • Carotid-cavernous fistula (CCF)
  • Dural arteriovenous fistula
  • Extracranial (brachiocephalic) atherosclerosis
  • Extracranial (head and neck) and paraspinal vascular malformations
  • Head and neck tumors
  • Intracranial atherosclerosis
  • Juvenile nasopharyngeal tumor
  • Meningiomas
  • Nosebleeds
  • Paragangliomas
  • Stroke
  • Spinal vascular malformations
  • Traumatic vascular lesions
  • Vasospasm
  • Vertebral body tumors
  • Vertebral body compression fractures


Please leave comments and links on this technology.
Greg Olson ::   Partner / Ubiquity

Specializing in generating demand for medical technology and bioscience companies.  What do you demand?

http://www.ubiquitygroup.com/             Follow Ubiquity on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ubiquity

Phone: 303-962-8700        Email: greg@ubiquitygroup.com

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Medical Word of the Day: Endothelium

Published
by
Greg
on March 5, 2009
in bioscience
. 0 Comments

3-5-2009: Topic: Bioscience:

Medical Word of the Day: Endothelium:

The endothelium is the thin layer of cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels, forming an interface between the circulating blood in the lumen and the rest of the vessel wall. Endothelial cells line the entire circulatory system, from the heart to the smallest capillary. Science within our body is amazing as these cells help reduce the turbulence created by the blood flowing through our system and thus allowing the blood to go further.

Artery cross section showing endothelial cells

German researchers are using new imaging technology to watch single cells give rise to blood cells. This technology may one day allow them to discover how to replicate the creation of blood cells in the lab and be able to supply this blood for patients needing transfusions.

See more on this article: New Technology sheds light on rise of blood cells.

A quick search resulted in a company that manufactures cultured vascular endothelial cells and cell culture products.
VEC Technologies, Inc. is a manufacture of normal endothelial cells and endothelial cell related products.

Greg Olson : : Ubiquity :: 303-962-8700

Email for additional information: greg@ubiquitygroup.com

Specializing in generating demand for medical technology and bioscience companies

What do you demand?

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ubiquity

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Medical Word of the Day: Neuromodulation / Neurostimulation

Published
by
Greg
on March 2, 2009
in Neuro Words
. 1 Comment

3-2-2009 Topic: Neuro

Medical Word of the Day: Neuromodulation

Electrical stimulation of a peripheral nerve, the spinal cord, or the brain for relief of pain, also means the effect of a neuromodulator on another neuron.

Neuromodulator definition: Any of a various substances, as certain hormones and amino acids, that influence the function of neurons but do not act as neurotransmitters.

Companies are using medical devices to stimulate both the brain and the stomache to control over-eating.EntroMedics, Inc and Leptos Biomedical Inc. are developing devices to help obesity. Neuromodulation is also called neurostimulation is still an emerging science and unforseen consequences of manipulating the body’s chemical-electrical nervous system are unknown.

3-5-2009: Note: One of my LinkedIn contacts referred me to Nevro. Not much on their website but indicate they are working on novel neuromodulation therapies for multiple indications.

Greg Olson : : Ubiquity :: 303-962-8700

Email for additional information: greg@ubiquitygroup.com

Specializing in generating demand for medical technology and bioscience companies

What do you demand?

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ubiquity

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Medical Work of the Day: Transillumination

Published
by
Greg
on February 23, 2009
in medical words
. 0 Comments

2-23-2009: Medical Word o the Day: Transillumination

Transillumination: The passing of a strong beam of light through a part of the body for medical inspection. A method of examination by the passage of light through tissues or a body cavity.

A common use of transillumination is in infancy. The infant’s skull should normally not transilluminate (let a beam of light pass through it). But in hydranencephaly, a condition in which the cerebral hemispheres are almost totally absent, the head appears normal, but when transilluminated, light shines completely through.

This is just one example of the use of transillumination, a simple, inexpensive, painless procedure. 

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