Google is developing cancer and heart attack detector

 Google hopes to develop a wristband that would carry out non-invasive blood tests

Google is aiming to diagnose cancers, impending heart attacks or strokes and other diseases, at a much earlier stage than is currently possible.

The company is working on technology that combines disease-detecting nanoparticles, which would enter a patient's bloodstream via a swallowed pill, with a wrist-worn sensor.
The idea is to identify slight changes in the person's biochemistry that could act as an early warning system.
The work is still at an early stage.
Early diagnosis is the key to treating disease. Many cancers, such as pancreatic, are detected only after they have become untreatable and fatal.
There are marked differences between cancerous and healthy tissues.
Google's ambition is to constantly monitor the blood for the unique traces of cancer, allowing diagnosis long before any physical symptoms appear.
The project is being conducted by the search company's research unit, Google X, which is dedicated to investigating potentially revolutionary innovations.

US nurse who survived Ebola feels 'fortunate and blessed'

Nurse Nina Pham, who caught Ebola while caring for a patient in Dallas, is released from hospital having beaten the virus

President  Barack Obama hugging the Ebola Free Nurse

An American nurse said she felt "fortunate and blessed to be standing here" after she was released from a hospital outside Washington on Friday, having beaten the Ebola virus.

Nina Pham is one of two nurses who became infected with Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas.

Her colleague, Amber Vinson, is being treated at a hospital in Atlanta and is said to be making "good progress".

Mr Duncan died of the virus on October 8.

Ms Pham, 26, thanked staff at the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where she was treated.

Cancer killing stem cells engineered in lab

Brain tumours are often solid and hard to reach so stem cells are an effective way of targeting them

Scientists from Harvard Medical School have discovered a way of turning stem cells into killing machines to fight brain cancer.

In experiments on mice, the stem cells were genetically engineered to produce and secrete toxins which kill brain tumours, without killing normal cells or themselves.

Researchers said the next stage was to test the procedure in humans.

A stem cell expert said this was "the future" of cancer treatment.

“Start Quote: We do see the toxins kill the cancer cells”  

Deadly MERS virus detected in Egypt

First case of coronavirus that has killed 92 people in Saudi Arabia detected in the Egyptian capital. Last updated: 26 Apr 2014 14:35

The MERS virus has killed at least 92 people in Saudi Arabia [Reuters]

Egypt has recorded its first case of the deadly SARS-like MERS coronavirus in the capital Cairo. Egyptian State TV said on Saturday a patient at a Cairo hospital who recently arrived from Saudi Arabia had tested positive for the virus.     The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus has killed at least 92 people in Saudi Arabia, where the coronavirus was first detected in humans in 2012. The virus which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, has spread from the Gulf to Europe and has been reported in Malaysia.     MERS is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.     A study has said the virus has been "extraordinarily common" in camels for at least 20 years, and may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.     Experts are still struggling to understand MERS, for which there is no known vaccine.