On July 8, Korea University College of Medicine held the 1st Yale-Korea University Urology Symposium at Yukwangsa Hall on the second floor of the College of Medicine's main building.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo and University Health Network have developed MetaboSense, a new device that continuously monitors key indicators of donor lung health during ex vivo lung perfusion, a process used to assess lungs outside the body before transplantation. Unlike current methods that rely on hourly manual testing, MetaboSense provides real-time measurements of glucose and lactate levels, giving clinicians a more detailed picture of lung function and potentially helping them identify more viable donor lungs. The researchers believe the technology could reduce the number of donated lungs that are rejected, helping address organ shortages for patients with end-stage lung disease, while its modular design may also allow it to be adapted for monitoring other organs such as the liver, kidney, heart and pancreas.

Scientists, clinicians, and patient advocates from across the pediatric sarcoma community called for bridging cancer drug discovery and treatment through a unified clinical infrastructure. After meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Banbury Center, the group outlined future research priorities and healthcare opportunities in an article for the journal Genes & Development.

A patented sensorized pen for the early screening of writing difficulties. A study by Politecnico di Milano and the University of Insubria (Varese and Como) has been published, involving more than 700 children from across the entire primary and lower secondary school cycle. The participants used the THInkPen (Tele-Health Ink Pen) while completing two BVSCO-3 tasks, the Battery for the Clinical Assessment of Writing and Orthographic Skills. This is the most widely used test in Italy for assessing writing difficulties, dysgraphia and dysorthography.

A research team led by Professor Jiandong Ding at Fudan University has derived a set of equations for random degradation inspired by the classic Poisson raindrop problem, providing the first theoretical framework to quantify “acquired heterogeneity” — the uneven degradation that emerges during service rather than from manufacturing defects. Applying this framework to biodegradable metal stents, the team discovered that coating iron with polylactide (PLA) increases the corrosion rate by 3-fold but reduces corrosion inhomogeneity by 4,000-fold in blood-mimetic medium, paradoxically leading to later device fracture despite faster degradation. The resulting metal–polymer composite stent was validated in preclinical porcine studies, clinical trials involving 1,108 patients across multiple cohorts, and 5-year follow-up of 45 first-in-human cases, demonstrating safety, durability, and reliability. The theoretical framework is, in principle, applicable to any field where random spatiotemporal variability undermines system performance, from ship corrosion and bridge fracture to climate variability and big data analytics.