Cortisol is a crucial hormone that regulates many important bodily functions like blood pressure and metabolism, and imbalances of this stress hormone can lead to health problems.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a widely used surgical treatment for neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, and obsessive–compulsive disorder. The procedure involves implanting electrodes into specific brain regions to regulate abnormal activity.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) refer to cancer cells that have broken off from a primary tumor. These tumor cells can travel through the blood in the circulatory system and lodge themselves in other organs to cause secondary tumors. Therefore, the detection and subsequent characterization of CTCs from blood can help in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of various cancers. However, the efficient capture of CTCs from blood has been proven to be difficult.

A new swallowable device called PRIM (Pill for ROS-responsive Inflammation Monitoring) could someday make tracking inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)—a chronic condition that causes inflammation in the digestive tract—as simple as checking the color of your stool. Researchers from Mass General Brigham and the University of Toronto designed and tested the device in preclinical models.