Media Coverage

Forbes
...DARPA, the Pentagon’s ambitious research arm, last week announced a $37 million grant for the development of an array of “organs on a chip” designed to facilitate the study of human physiology, in particular the rapid testing of new pharmaceutical agents...

Harvard Gazette
Biofilms may no longer have any solid ground upon which to stand. A team of Harvard scientists has developed a slick way to prevent the troublesome bacterial communities from ever forming on a surface...

Science Friday / NPR
Bioengineers are developing microchips, about the size of a thumb, that can behave like human organs. Donald Ingber, director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, discusses how the "organ-on-a-chip" works and why the technology could replace the animal model for drug testing...

Mashable
A microchip version of the human body is currently in development. The final device won’t look much like a person, but it will host real human cells and have the same basic functions as 10 major human organs...

PC World
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University is going even further with its organ-on-a-chip research by linking up 10 of these individual chips to simulate the entire human body...

Boston.com
Local scientists are among the leaders of a new national initiative to build “organs on a chip” -- living human tissue on a miniature platform that could be used to test potential medications for side effects, overcoming a major hurdle in drug development...

Wired Science
Now Frankenstein can have a pet jellyfish. A team of scientists has taken the heart cells of a rat, arranged them on a piece of rubbery silicon, added a jolt of electricity, and created a “Franken-jelly.” Just like a real jellyfish, the artificial jelly swims around by pumping water in and out of its bell-shaped body...

SciTech Daily
A newly published study from a team of engineers describes a strategy for building self-thermoregulating nanomaterials called SMARTS, which may be able to be tailored to maintain just about any desired parameter by meeting the environmental changes with a compensatory chemical feedback response...

Harvard Gazette
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University today announced that it has received a $2.6 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a smart suit that helps improve physical endurance for soldiers in the field...

Today's Green Minute
Mother Nature designed chitin to be an exoskeleton for insects that can be either flexible or rigid…and that has inspired Harvard researchers to invent a similar substance that may become a biodegradable replacement for plastic!

New Scientist
Life-threatening blood clots could now be destroyed more effectively thanks to smart nanoparticles that deliver drugs directly to an obstructed vessel. The therapy, developed by Netanel Korin and a team from Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, uses a biologically-inspired approach to achieve the task....

Huffington Post
Think of it as Liquid-Plumr for the circulatory system. Researchers have designed a clump of tiny particles that rides the current of the bloodstream, seeks out life-threatening blood clots, and obliterates them. The approach works in mice and could soon move on to human trials...

Voice Of America
Researchers found that, when microscopically small nanoparticles were coated with the drug and injected into the bloodstream, the particles targeted clogged vessels and the drug coating dissolved the clots before they could cause damage or death...

Science
Think of it as Liquid-Plumr for the circulatory system. Researchers have designed a clump of tiny particles that rides the current of the bloodstream, seeks out life-threatening blood clots, and obliterates them. The approach works in mice and could soon move on to human trials...

Bloomberg
Obstructions in blood vessels lead to a force called shear stress, attracting platelets that form blood clots. Researchers designed a drug-delivery method that activates only in those conditions, potentially enabling more targeted delivery of clot- busting medicines in lower doses that can be given before a patient gets to a hospital, they wrote in a paper published online today in the journal Science...

Wall Street Journal
In an effort to develop new ways of diagnosing and treating diseases, scientists are increasingly tracking the various patterns by which the body senses and reacts to stimuli. Such patterns, commonly referred to as body rhythms, are a constant dynamic. A foot senses a crack in the sidewalk and the brain instructs the muscles to compensate so the person doesn't fall down...