BioNanoHybrids™ 101

Demystifying "BioNanoHybrids™" and the technologies which make POD™ (Personal-On-Demand) possible.

Created byBMC Labs

Last updated 12/2013

English

What you'll learn

To learn about POD™
To know how POD™ is made
To learn about "synaptic entanglement"
To learn about "BioNanoHybrids™"

Course content

3 sections • 22 lectures • 58m total length

BioNanoHybrids™ 101: Introduction0:35
The subject of this course is the emerging field of neural stem cell technology. During the course you will learn the following:

·what stem cells are;

·how they were discovered; and

·some of their many possible medical uses.

·how BMC's neural stem cell technology has been used to create BioNanoHybrids™and POD.
SECTION 1A: Neural Stem Cell Technology0:53
Stem cells hold great potential as medical tools for the prevention or treatment of diseased and injured tissues. They have been the subject of a significant amount of research over the last three decades and potentially useful clinical applications are starting to be seen.
SECTION 1B: Discovery of Stem Cells2:04
The discovery of stem cells is one of the most important discoveries in the field of developmental biology in the last fifty years and has fueled an explosion in biological and medical research that is just now producing tangible applications.
SECTION 1C: Use of Stem Cells1:58
Studies of human embryonic stem cells made use of stem cells derived from unused embryos prepared at fertility clinics in the course of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy.
SECTION 1D: Stem Cell Studies3:52
Stem cell studies have been focused in two main areas. Firstly, developmental biology, where studies aimed to improve understanding of the role of stem cells in embryonic developmen. Secondly, regenerative medicine, where studies focused on the potential of stem cells to promote the healing and regeneration of damaged tissues and organs.
SECTION 1E: Neural Stem Cells2:06
One of the first types of stem cell identified by scientists was the neural stem cell.Neural stem cells are stem cells that reside in tissues of the brain and central nervous system and that help to maintain and repair the brain following illness, disease or during aging.
SECTION 1F: Cytokines, Chemokines, & Growth Factors1:46
An important focus of past and present research has been to identify the appropriate combination and dosage of cytokines, chemokines and growth factors, and the necessary culture conditions, so that stem cells in culture will develop in the desired way.
SECTION 1G: BMC Labs2:48
Scientists working at BMC have now been able to solve some of these problems for neural stem cells.Careful experimentation has succeeded in defining a number of important parameters required to precisely control the growth and development of neural stem cells both in culture and when implanted into a living host.
SECTION 1 Has Concluded. Thank You.19:41
Thank You.

Medical Implants & Neural Interfaces: Introduction0:30
The subject of this course is medical implants and neural interfaces. During the course you will learn:

- what medical implants are

- what medical implants can be used for

-the scientific advances that have allowed BMC to create POD, the world’s most sophisticated biomedical implant.
SECTION 2A: History of Medical Implants2:23
Medical implants are artificial structures that are placed within the body to replace, repair, support or enhance a part of the body.Implants are distinct from transplants, in which a natural biological structure is transferred from one body to another for medical reasons.
SECTION 2B: Passive & Active Implants1:28
Medical implants can be divided into two broad categories, passive and active, according to the way in which they work. Passive, or “dumb”, implants are entirely inert and have a purely mechanical function. In contrast active, or “smart”, implants interact with the body in some way, usually to regulate or replace some chemical or electrical function of the body.
SECTION 2C: The Pacemaker1:37
Artificial heart pacemakers provide periodic electrical impulses to the heart muscle, stimulating the heart muscle to contract and cause the heart to beat in time with the electrical impulses. As technology has improved cardiac pacemakers have become progressively smaller and more long-lived.
SECTION 2D: Cochlear Implants1:33
Cochlear implants restore some ability to distinguish sounds to individuals with damaged hearing.An external microphone worn near to the ear translates sound into electrical signals that are transmitted to an implanted receiver attached to electrodes inserted into the cochlea, part of the inner ear.
SECTION 2E: Retinal Implants2:02
The basic principal of a retinal implant is extremely simple: light sensed either by a head-mounted camera or by photosensitive elements on the surface of the implant is converted to an electrical signal that is transmitted to the retinal cells or to the nerve cells beneath the retina.
SECTION 2F: The Future of Implants3:10
Recent medical advances are now beginning to blur the line between implants and transplants. As medical technology has improved it has become possible to build biosynthetic devices that combine both artificial and biological materials.
SECTION 2G: Personal-On-Demand3:15
POD is made possible by BMC’s breakthrough multidisciplinary approach to developing nerve cell-microprocessor interfaces, which allows the efficient bi-directional exchange of information between POD and the human central nervous system.

Synthetic Biology, Artificial Organisms, & BioNanoHybrids: Introduction0:33
The subject of this course is synthetic biology, designer organisms and BioNanoHybrids™. During the course you will learn what synthetic biology is and what it can be used for.You will also learn about the emerging field of synthetic organisms and their uses, and how BMC has used this new technology to create the BioNanoHybrid™ POD.
SECTION 3A: Synthetic Biology1:09
Synthetic biology is a relatively recent invention and is a growing part of the larger field of biotechnology. Synthetic biology refers to the process of designing and constructing artificial biological molecules, tissues, organs or organisms.
SECTION 3B: Artificial Skin1:00
Artificial skin protects damaged tissue and accelerates the overall healing process. Newer versions of artificial skin can be prepared with different scaffold materials to improve its mechanical and biological properties.
SECTION 3C: Biosynthetic Organs & Tissues1:56
Scientific and medical teams are now using new technologies such as improved biocompatible materials, stem cell technologies and 3D bio-printing to develop new methods to construct biosynthetic organs and tissues from biological cells.
SECTION 3D: Birth of Genetic Engineering1:51
In parallel with advances in tissue engineering and the construction of biosynthetic organs, significant advances were being made in understanding and synthesizing the genetic machinery that controls the development of all organisms. The discovery of the genetic code paved the way for the development of genetic engineering, the ability to manipulate the genetic information within a cell in order to change and control the proteins made by that cell.

Requirements

Must watch some David Cronenberg films -- Existenz, Shivers, Videodrome

Description

POD is made possible by BMC’s breakthrough multidisciplinary approach to developing nerve cell-microprocessor interfaces.

It has been known for more than a decade that neurons and other biological cell-types grown on the surface of microprocessors are able to exchange information with those microprocessors. Furthermore, recent advances in the fields of nanotechnology and materials science have allowed the construction of functional nanoprocessors many times smaller than the microchips that are commonly used in phones or computers today.

Using our proprietary neural stem cell technology combined with recent advances in synthetic genomics and synthetic biology, BMC Labs is able to direct the development of complex, self-organizing, synthetic neural ganglia capable of interacting with nanoprocessors constructed on graphene-treated silicon nanoparticles. The neural ganglia not only act as an additional memory store for the nanoprocessors, but are capable of linking individual nanoprocessors into powerful multi-processor networks with significantly enhanced computing power. These hybrid devices constructed from modified biological tissues and state-of-the art nanoprocessors (BioNanoHybrids™) provide the basis for POD and many other devices that BMC has in its development pipeline.

Who this course is for:

Amateur scientists
Science Fiction fans

BioNanoHybrids™ 101

What you'll learn

Course content