A blood vessel imaging system installed at the National Laboratory Animal Center could help researchers develop a treatment for cardiovascular disease in humans, the center said yesterday.
The center, based at the National Biotechnology Research Park in Taipei’s Nangang District (南港), is one of the National Applied Research Laboratories’ (NARL) eight centers.
Center director Yu Chun-Keung (余俊強) and Hung Kuan-yu (洪冠予), the superintendent of National Taiwan University Hospital’s Hsinchu Branch, yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at a ceremony in Taipei, with NARL president Wang Yeong-her (王永和) serving as a witness.
Photo courtesy of the National Laboratory Animal Center
Cooperation between the two institutions would speed up the clinical application of innovative techniques developed by the hospital, while NARL offers other research resources related to semiconductor, information and communications technologies, Wang said.
Demand for oncological, cardiovascular and neurological testing for animals has been increasing, so the center last year spent NT$30 million (US$989,576) installing a biplane angiography system in its laboratory at the Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park, center associate research fellow Su Yu-chia (蘇裕家) said.
The system can provide 3D X-ray images of animals in real time, which enables veterinarians to see the structures of animal organs while performing surgery and increases the success rate of the surgeries, he said.
Techniques such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging also produce 3D images, but they do not allow surgeons to take images during surgery, Su said.
The MOU would allow physicians at the hospital who want to develop new treatments for cardiovascular disease in humans to use the center’s imaging system to first try the treatments on laboratory animals, he said.
The institutions would jointly develop innovative medical techniques, such as navigating inside bronchial tubes, treating various heart arrhythmias and diagnosing intracerebral hemorrhages, he said.
They would share data from certain experiments that employed the imaging system, Su said, adding that the biplane angiography system could be rented by researchers at other institutions.
The center, whose headquarters is in Taipei, has a preclinical testing lab at the Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park, as well as a preclinical animal care and surgery facility at the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學工業園區) in Tainan.
DAREDEVIL: Honnold said it had always been a dream of his to climb Taipei 101, while a Netflix producer said the skyscraper was ‘a real icon of this country’ US climber Alex Honnold yesterday took on Taiwan’s tallest building, becoming the first person to scale Taipei 101 without a rope, harness or safety net. Hundreds of spectators gathered at the base of the 101-story skyscraper to watch Honnold, 40, embark on his daredevil feat, which was also broadcast live on Netflix. Dressed in a red T-shirt and yellow custom-made climbing shoes, Honnold swiftly moved up the southeast face of the glass and steel building. At one point, he stepped onto a platform midway up to wave down at fans and onlookers who were taking photos. People watching from inside
A Vietnamese migrant worker yesterday won NT$12 million (US$379,627) on a Lunar New Year scratch card in Kaohsiung as part of Taiwan Lottery Co’s (台灣彩券) “NT$12 Million Grand Fortune” (1200萬大吉利) game. The man was the first top-prize winner of the new game launched on Jan. 6 to mark the Lunar New Year. Three Vietnamese migrant workers visited a Taiwan Lottery shop on Xinyue Street in Kaohsiung’s Gangshan District (崗山), a store representative said. The player bought multiple tickets and, after winning nothing, held the final lottery ticket in one hand and rubbed the store’s statue of the Maitreya Buddha’s belly with the other,
‘NATO-PLUS’: ‘Our strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific are facing increasing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party,’ US Representative Rob Wittman said The US House of Representatives on Monday released its version of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes US$1.15 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan. The omnibus act, covering US$1.2 trillion of spending, allocates US$1 billion for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, as well as US$150 million for the replacement of defense articles and reimbursement of defense services provided to Taiwan. The fund allocations were based on the US National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026 that was passed by the US Congress last month and authorized up to US$1 billion to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in support of the
HIGH-TECH DEAL: Chipmakers that expand in the US would be able to import up to 2.5 times their new capacity with no extra tariffs during an approved construction period Taiwan aims to build a “democratic” high-tech supply chain with the US and form a strategic artificial intelligence (AI) partnership under the new tariffs deal it sealed with Washington last week, Taipei’s top negotiator in the talks said yesterday. US President Donald Trump has pushed Taiwan, a major producer of semiconductors which runs a large trade surplus with the US, to invest more in the US, specifically in chips that power AI. Under the terms of the long-negotiated deal, chipmakers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) that expand US production would incur a lower tariff on semiconductors or related manufacturing
RSS