Prof Joan Sanders of the University of Washington has spent her career working on better prosthetics for lower limb amputees, trying to solve problems that complicate everyday life for people who have lost a limb. She is the first author of a new article in Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences, which reports the development of a quick, efficient method for making prosthesis sockets with built-in sensors that monitor the socket’s changing fit in real time — like a shoe that becomes more or less comfortable the more it’s worn. In the future, this could help prosthetists track a patient’s changing needs and adapt the socket to fit better. 

In this Frontier Scientists Q&A, Sanders tells us about her decades of problem-solving research, and her work building the foundations for a new generation of adjustable, comfortable prosthetics that don’t need constant management by their users. 

Researchers at Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco (UCSF) have discovered how a SARS-CoV-2 protein called ORF8 is responsible for hijacking the immune system’s macrophages and causing this dangerous cycle. The work, published in Science Advances, also shows that blocking ORF8 reduces lung inflammation and damage in mice infected with SARS-CoV-2.