Scientists for the first time have created an embryo that is part human and part pig as part of a groundbreaking experiment that published this week in the biochemistry journal Cell. This incredible chimera was developed by a team of researchers from the Graduate School of Agriculture and Department of Advanced Bioscience at Kindai University in Japan. Heralded as one of the most successful chimeras to date, the experiment is a leap forward for the field of regenerative medicine, which is searching for ways to produce human organs using animal models.
The complicated procedure involves the injection of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into a developing pig blastocyst. These iPS cells are a type of stem cell that has been created from an adult cell and has the ability to differentiate into a variety of cell types including neuronic, cardiac, pancreatic and more. In the procedure developed by the Kindai team, a laser beam was used to make an opening in the outer membrane of a pig blastocyst cell. The channel was wide enough for a needle to deliver the human iPS cells into the matrix of the developing embryo. The resulting hybrid cell was then implanted into a female pig (sow) and allowed to develop for four weeks.
After a month of in situ development, the embryo was harvested and analyzed. It was found that a small fraction of the pig embryo was composed of human cells. The human stem cells that were present had grown into precursor cells capable of eventually developing into heart cells, liver cells, and neurons.
Though researchers cautioned that the results were “highly inefficient,” the experiment hold promise as a model to better understand human embryonic and stem cell development as well as explore human disease progression. These results also may lead to the future use of farm animals as a host for growing transplantable human tissues. The future application of the technology may provide organs suitable for transplant and could help lessen the worldwide organ shortage that currently exists.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.