For the 1.3 million people who suffer renal failure each year, kidney dialysis is a major undertaking. The lengthy out-patient process requires near-daily trips to the doctor’s office to be hooked up for hours to a massive machine; making it difficult to hold a job or have a normal social life. But Victor Gura of UCLA’s Geffen School of medicine has patented and tested the holy grail of nephrology: a portable, wearable dialysis machine.

Catching cancer before it metastasizes, or spreads throughout the body, is one way to increase your chances of survival. Now scientists may have found a way to help even when cancer is already on the move, by using magnets to lasso cancer cells and drag them out of the body. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that magnetic nanoparticles—tiny shards of magnetic metal, less than a hundred thousandths of an inch in diameter—can be attached to cancer cells, which can then be manipulated and moved with another magnet.