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Founding donor Hansjörg Wyss doubles his gift to Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering from $125 million to $250 million to advance Institute efforts

Hansjörg Wyss [Read bio]

Boston and Cambridge, Mass. -- The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University announced today that Hansjörg Wyss (Harvard MBA, '65), the entrepreneur and philanthropist who enabled the Institute's creation in 2009 with a $125 million gift, has donated a second $125 million gift to the University to further advance the Institute's pioneering work.

The Wyss Institute seeks to solve some of the world's most complex challenges in healthcare and the environment by drawing inspiration from Nature's design principles. In addition to uncovering new knowledge about how nature builds, controls, and manufactures, the Institute measures success in the ability of its faculty and staff to translate their discoveries into products that can have near-term impact.

"Mr. Wyss is extraordinarily generous, and we are deeply grateful that he has expanded his support of multidisciplinary research at Harvard," said Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president and Lincoln Professor of History. "Through the Wyss Institute, we are realizing his vision -- generating promising technologies and building partnerships that extend far beyond our campus. This additional gift will enable the Institute's continued success and create new opportunities to improve people's lives and the world in which we live."

The Institute has grown at a rapid pace since its founding in January 2009, and now includes over 350 full-time staff located in 100,000 square feet of research space distributed between Harvard's Longwood Medical Campus and Cambridge sites. This burgeoning community of scientists, biologists, physicists, chemists, engineers, and clinicians includes 27 core and associate faculty and their students and fellows, as well as 40 staff with extensive experience in product development and team management across multiple industries. The work at the Institute ranges from early-stage exploration of new ideas to focused technology translation, with an emphasis on validating and de-risking technologies to enable their commercialization.

The lung-on-a-chip, shown here, is one of ten organs-on-a-chip in development at the Wyss Institute. Organs-on-chips are poised to revolutionize drug development and environmental testing by replacing animal studies.

"We wanted to create a place where the innovation and imagination of the world's best minds could work beyond disciplinary boundaries to deliver life-changing medicines and technologies that are inspired by Nature," said Mr. Wyss, who, after graduating from Harvard Business School in 1965, started a successful medical research and design company whose products have helped millions of patients recover from skeletal and soft tissue trauma and injuries. "I could not have dreamt of the Institute's remarkable discoveries thus far, and am proud and excited to help them continue to build, explore, and improve lives."

A native of Switzerland who now lives in Wilson, Wyoming, Mr. Wyss's philanthropy fosters new ideas, new tools, and new collaborations in areas ranging from medicine, education and the arts to economic opportunity, conflict resolution, and land conservation. The Wyss Foundation, which Mr. Wyss established in 1998, is known for helping protect some of the country's most iconic landscapes -- from Montana's Crown of the Continent to the Wyoming Range -- and ensuring they remain open and accessible to all. All together, the Wyss Foundation has invested more than $175 million to help local communities, land trusts and non-profit partners conserve nearly 14 million acres in the West for future generations to explore and enjoy.

Mr. Wyss is also a founder of the AO Foundation, a medically guided nonprofit led by an international group of surgeons who specialize in the treatment of trauma and disorders of the musculoskeletal system, and PeaceNexus, a non-profit foundation that brings together and advises government institutions, non-governmental organizations, and businesses to expand peacebuilding capacity in conflict areas around the world. His significant contributions to the Beyeler Foundation have helped conserve and display some of the world's most important pieces of modern art.

The RoboBee is a tiny robot that was inspired by the biology of a fly. It has many potential applications, from disaster relief to agriculture.

At Harvard, Mr. Wyss's support for the Institute's model of interdisciplinary work has led to impressive productivity in intellectual property creation, numerous corporate collaborations, multiple licensing agreements, and technology translation at an accelerated pace, with two potential products currently entering human clinical trials -- a cancer vaccine and a vibrating shoe insole that promises to restore balance in the elderly. At the same time, the Institute's faculty members have an unparalleled publication record, with an average of one breakthrough publication in Science or Nature every month since its founding 52 months ago.

"Four years ago, we were tasked with developing an entirely new model for innovation, collaboration, and technology translation that more effectively bridges academia and industry, and that is precisely what we did," said Wyss Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D.

Part of what makes the Institute so effective, Ingber said, is its ability to harness expertise of members from its nine partner institutions, and to leverage the intellectual and commercial power of the Greater Boston region and beyond. Other members of the Institute consortium include Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston University, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts University Medical Center, Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, and Tufts University.

"The Wyss Institute has rapidly established itself as a hub for the new field of biologically inspired engineering," said Alan M. Garber, M.D., Ph.D., provost of Harvard University. "Thanks to Mr. Wyss's critical support, the Institute has developed novel insights into living organisms with remarkable speed and productivity -- and it has applied those insights to create an array of bioinspired devices and materials that promise to advance medicine and many other fields."

The Wyss Institute organizes its research priorities around six synergistic technology platforms including: Bioinspired Robotics, Programmable Nanomaterials, Biomimetic Microsystems, Adaptive Material Technologies, Anticipatory Medical and Cellular Devices, and Synthetic Biology. Examples of projects under way include:

The RoboBee -- a tiny robot inspired by the biology of a fly that may be used in search and rescue missions or to carry out pollination and replace dying bee populations [Related video]
Human Organs-on-Chips -- microchips lined by human cells that are poised to revolutionize drug development and environmental testing by replacing animal studies [Related video]
SLIPS -- a novel surface coating that repels just about everything – from oil and water to blood -- which is being applied to increase energy efficiency of refrigeration systems, prevent fouling of water and waste treatment plants, and to prevent blood coagulation in dialysis devices and tubing [Related video]
An Anticipatory Medical Device -- a vibrating mattress that senses when an infant is about to stop breathing and then transmits signals that prevent apnea [Related video]
MAGE -- a genome reengineering instrument that fast-forwards the evolutionary process to produce more efficient and cost-effective microbial manufacturing plants for the chemical, pharmaceutical, and agricultural industries
A Biospleen for sepsis therapy -- a dialysis-like therapeutic device that cleanses blood of a diverse array of pathogens and toxins by mimicking the body's innate immune system

The continued support will ensure that the Institute maintains its fast pace, Ingber said. "Mr. Wyss's additional gift -- for which we are beyond grateful -- ensures that our adventure in high-risk research and technology translation will continue," he said.

To view more projects, go to the Institute's Enabling Technology Platforms.

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Contacts

Wyss Institute
Kristen M. Kusek
Kristen.kusek@wyss.harvard.edu
+1 617-432-8266

Harvard Public Affairs & Communications
Tania deLuzuriaga
tania_deluzuriaga@harvard.edu
+1 617-495-1585

Harvard Alumni Affairs & Development Communications
Joseph C. Raposo
joseph_raposo@harvard.edu
+1 617-496-6153

IMAGES and additional VIDEO/B-roll AVAILABLE.

For more information about Mr. Wyss, visit www.wyssfoundation.org.

Related video: Overview of the Wyss Institute

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About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious Webby Award, as well as the World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

Beautiful "flowers" self-assemble in a beaker

Elaborate nanostructures blossom from a chemical reaction perfected at Harvard

"Spring is like a perhaps hand," wrote the poet E. E. Cummings: "carefully / moving a perhaps / fraction of flower here placing / an inch of air there... / without breaking anything."

With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory -- and not at the scale of inches, but microns.

These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that's what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.

These false-color SEM images reveal microscopic flower structures created by manipulating a chemical gradient to control crystalline self-assembly. (Image courtesy of Wim L. Noorduin.)

By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, has found that he can control the growth behavior of these crystals to create precisely tailored structures.

"For at least 200 years, people have been intrigued by how complex shapes could have evolved in nature. This work helps to demonstrate what's possible just through environmental, chemical changes," says Noorduin.

The precipitation of the crystals depends on a reaction of compounds that are diffusing through a liquid solution. The crystals grow toward or away from certain chemical gradients as the pH of the reaction shifts back and forth. The conditions of the reaction dictate whether the structure resembles broad, radiating leaves, a thin stem, or a rosette of petals.

A crystalline tulip, sculpted by chemistry. (Image courtesy of Wim L. Noorduin.)

It is not unusual for chemical gradients to influence growth in nature; for example, delicately curved marine shells form from calcium carbonate under water, and gradients of signaling molecules in a human embryo help set up the plan for the body. Similarly, Harvard biologist Howard Berg has shown that bacteria living in colonies can sense and react to plumes of chemicals from one another, which causes them to grow, as a colony, into intricate geometric patterns.

Replicating this type of effect in the laboratory was a matter of identifying a suitable chemical reaction and testing, again and again, how variables like the pH, temperature, and exposure to air might affect the nanoscale structures.

The project fits right in with the work of Joanna Aizenberg, an expert in biologically inspired materials science, biomineralization, and self-assembly, and principal investigator for this research.

Aizenberg is the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard SEAS, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

Her recent work has included the invention of an extremely slippery material, inspired by the pitcher plant, and the discovery of how bacteria use their flagella to cling to the surfaces of medical implants.

Image courtesy of Wim L. Noorduin.

"Our approach is to study biological systems, to think what they can do that we can't, and then to use these approaches to optimize existing technologies or create new ones," says Aizenberg. "Our vision really is to build as organisms do."

To create the flower structures, Noorduin and his colleagues dissolve barium chloride (a salt) and sodium silicate (also known as waterglass) into a beaker of water. Carbon dioxide from air naturally dissolves in the water, setting off a reaction which precipitates barium carbonate crystals. As a byproduct, it also lowers the pH of the solution immediately surrounding the crystals, which then triggers a reaction with the dissolved waterglass. This second reaction adds a layer of silica to the growing structures, uses up the acid from the solution, and allows the formation of barium carbonate crystals to continue.

"You can really collaborate with the self-assembly process," says Noorduin. "The precipitation happens spontaneously, but if you want to change something then you can just manipulate the conditions of the reaction and sculpt the forms while they're growing."

Increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide, for instance, helps to create 'broad-leafed' structures. Reversing the pH gradient at the right moment can create curved, ruffled structures.

Noorduin and his colleagues have grown the crystals on glass slides and metal blades; they've even grown a field of flowers in front of President Lincoln's seat on a one-cent coin.

"When you look through the electron microscope, it really feels a bit like you're diving in the ocean, seeing huge fields of coral and sponges," describes Noorduin. "Sometimes I forget to take images because it's so nice to explore."

In addition to her roles at Harvard SEAS, the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and the Wyss Institute, Joanna Aizenberg is Director of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard and Director of the Science Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Coauthors included Alison Grinthal, a research scientist at Harvard SEAS, and L. Mahadevan, who is the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at SEAS, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and of Physics, and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute.

The project was supported by National Science Foundation grants to the Harvard Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR-0820484) and the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems (ECS-0335765); and by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.

PRESS CONTACTS:

Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Caroline Perry, (617) 496-1351

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
Kristen Kusek, (617) 432-8266

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About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

About the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) serves as the connector and integrator of Harvard's teaching and research efforts in engineering, applied sciences, and technology. Through collaboration with researchers from all parts of Harvard, other universities, and corporate and foundational partners, we bring discovery and innovation directly to bear on improving human life and society. For more information, visit: http://seas.harvard.edu.

Robotic insects make first controlled flight

In culmination of a decade's work, RoboBees achieve vertical takeoff,
hovering, and steering

Watch video...

Cambridge, Mass.-- In the very early hours of the morning, in a Harvard robotics laboratory last summer, an insect took flight. Half the size of a paperclip, weighing less than a tenth of a gram, it leapt a few inches, hovered for a moment on fragile, flapping wings, and then sped along a preset route through the air.

Like a proud parent watching a child take its first steps, graduate student Pakpong Chirarattananon immediately captured a video of the fledgling and emailed it to his adviser and colleagues at 3 a.m. -- subject line, "Flight of the RoboBee."

"I was so excited, I couldn't sleep," recalls Chirarattananon, co-lead author of a paper published this week in Science.

The demonstration of the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot is the culmination of more than a decade's work, led by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

"This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years," says Robert J. Wood, Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS, Wyss Core Faculty Member, and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-supported RoboBee project. "It's really only because of this lab's recent breakthroughs in manufacturing, materials, and design that we have even been able to try this. And it just worked, spectacularly well."

Inspired by the biology of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap almost invisibly, 120 times per second, the tiny device not only represents the absolute cutting edge of micromanufacturing and control systems; it is an aspiration that has impelled innovation in these fields by dozens of researchers across Harvard for years.

"We had to develop solutions from scratch, for everything," explains Wood. "We would get one component working, but when we moved onto the next, five new problems would arise. It was a moving target."

Flight muscles, for instance, don't come prepackaged for robots the size of a fingertip.

"Large robots can run on electromagnetic motors, but at this small scale you have to come up with an alternative, and there wasn't one," says co-lead author Kevin Y. Ma, a graduate student at SEAS.

The tiny robot flaps its wings with piezoelectric actuators -- strips of ceramic that expand and contract when an electric field is applied. Thin hinges of plastic embedded within the carbon fiber body frame serve as joints, and a delicately balanced control system commands the rotational motions in the flapping-wing robot, with each wing controlled independently in real-time.

At tiny scales, small changes in airflow can have an outsized effect on flight dynamics, and the control system has to react that much faster to remain stable.

The robotic insects also take advantage of an ingenious pop-up manufacturing technique that was developed by Wood's team in 2011. Sheets of various laser-cut materials are layered and sandwiched together into a thin, flat plate that folds up like a child's pop-up book into the complete electromechanical structure.

The quick, step-by-step process replaces what used to be a painstaking manual art and allows Wood's team to use more robust materials in new combinations, while improving the overall precision of each device.

"We can now very rapidly build reliable prototypes, which allows us to be more aggressive in how we test them," says Ma, adding that the team has gone through 20 prototypes in just the past six months.

Applications of the RoboBee project could include distributed environmental monitoring, search-and-rescue operations, or assistance with crop pollination, but the materials, fabrication techniques, and components that emerge along the way might prove to be even more significant. For example, the pop-up manufacturing process could enable a new class of complex medical devices. Harvard's Office of Technology Development, in collaboration with Harvard SEAS and the Wyss Institute, is already in the process of commercializing some of the underlying technologies.

"Harnessing biology to solve real-world problems is what the Wyss Institute is all about," says Wyss Founding Director Don Ingber. "This work is a beautiful example of how bringing together scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines to carry out research inspired by nature and focused on translation can lead to major technical breakthroughs."

And the project continues.

"Now that we've got this unique platform, there are dozens of tests that we're starting to do, including more aggressive control maneuvers and landing," says Wood.

After that, the next steps will involve integrating the parallel work of many different research teams who are working on the brain, the colony coordination behavior, the power source, and so on, until the robotic insects are fully autonomous and wireless.

The prototypes are still tethered by a very thin power cable because there are no off-the-shelf solutions for energy storage that are small enough to be mounted on the robot's body. High energy-density fuel cells must be developed before the RoboBees will be able to fly with much independence.

Control, too, is still wired in from a separate computer, though a team led by SEAS faculty Gu-Yeon Wei and David Brooks is working on a computationally efficient brain that can be mounted on the robot's frame.

"Flies perform some of the most amazing aerobatics in nature using only tiny brains," notes coauthor Sawyer B. Fuller, a postdoctoral researcher on Wood's team who essentially studies how fruit flies cope with windy days. "Their capabilities exceed what we can do with our robot, so we would like to understand their biology better and apply it to our own work."

The milestone of this first controlled flight represents a validation of the power of ambitious dreams -- especially for Wood, who was in graduate school when he set this goal. "This project provides a common motivation for scientists and engineers across the university to build smaller batteries, to design more efficient control systems, and to create stronger, more lightweight materials," says Wood. "You might not expect all of these people to work together: vision experts, biologists, materials scientists, electrical engineers. What do they have in common? Well, they all enjoy solving really hard problems."

"I want to create something the world has never seen before," adds Ma. "It's about the excitement of pushing the limits of what we think we can do, the limits of human ingenuity."

PRESS CONTACTS:

Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Caroline Perry, (617) 496-1351

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard
Kristen Kusek, (617) 432-8266

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About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

Cry me a river of possibility: Scientists design new adaptive material inspired by tears

Tunable material system designed by Harvard team is easily adaptable
for diverse applications in fuel transport, textiles, optical systems, and more

When sitting at rest, the adaptive and multifunctional material is smooth, clear, and flat; droplets of water or oil on its omniphobic surface flow freely down its surface. Stretching or bending it makes the fluid surface rougher, which confers the ability to precisely control the movement of water or oil droplets. Watch videos...

April 8, 2013, Boston, MA -- Imagine a tent that blocks light on a dry and sunny day, and becomes transparent and water-repellent on a dim, rainy day. Or highly precise, self-adjusting contact lenses that also clean themselves. Or pipelines that can optimize the rate of flow depending on the volume of fluid coming through them and the environmental conditions outside.

A team of researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) just moved these enticing notions much closer to reality by designing a new kind of adaptive material with tunable transparency and wettability features, as reported yesterday in the online version of Nature Materials.

"The beauty of this system is that it's adaptive and multifunctional," said senior author Joanna Aizenberg, Ph.D., a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at SEAS.

The new material was inspired by dynamic, self-restoring systems in Nature, such as the liquid film that coats your eyes. Individual tears join up to form a dynamic liquid film with an obviously significant optical function that maintains clarity, while keeping the eye moist, protecting it against dust and bacteria, and helping to transport away any wastes -- doing all of this and more in literally the blink of an eye.

The new bioinspired, adaptive material developed by Joanna Aizenberg and her team is a continuous liquid film that coats, and is infused in, an elastic porous substrate. Any deformation of the substrate -- such as stretching -- changes the size of the pores, which causes the liquid surface to change its shape. To date, the research team has demonstrated the ability to dynamically control two key functions with great precision: transparency and wettability. As shown here, when stretched, the material confers the ability to reversibly "pin" droplets of water -- stopping them in their tracks.

The bioinspired material is a continuous liquid film that coats, and is infused in, an elastic porous substrate -- which is what makes it so versatile. It is based on a core concept: any deformation of the substrate -- such as stretching, poking, or swelling -- changes the size of the pores, which causes the liquid surface to change its shape.

With this design architecture in place, the team has thus far demonstrated the ability to dynamically control -- with great precision -- two key functions: transparency and wettability, said Xi Yao, Ph.D, Wyss Institute and SEAS postdoctoral fellow, and lead author of the study.

Sitting at rest, the material is smooth, clear and flat; droplets of water or oil on its surface flow freely off of the material. Stretching the material makes the fluid surface rougher, Yao explained. The rough surface makes it opaque for one thing, and enables one to do something never possible before: It offers the ability to make every droplet of oil or water that is placed on it reversibly start and stop in their tracks. This capability is far superior to the "switchable wettability" of other adaptive materials that exist today, Yao said, which simply switch between two states -- from hydrophobic (water-hating) to hydrophilic (water-loving).

Top: Schematic showing the design of the liquid-infused dynamic material. The bottom two photographs show the dry and lubricated elastic substrates (transparent when at rest).

"In addition to transparency and wettability, we can fine-tune basically anything that would respond to a change in surface topography, such as adhesive or anti-fouling behavior," Yao said. They can also design the porous elastic solid such that it responds dynamically to temperature, light, magnetic or electric fields, chemical signals, pressure, or other environmental conditions, he said.

The material is a next generation of a materials platform that Aizenberg pioneered a few years ago called SLIPS. SLIPS stands for Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces, and is a coating that repels just about anything with which it comes into contact -- from oil to water and blood.

But whereas SLIPS is a liquid-infused rigid porous surface, "the new material is a liquid-infused elastic porous surface, which is what allows for the fine control over so many adaptive responses above and beyond its ability to repel a wide range of substances. A whole range of surface properties can now be tuned, or switched on and off on demand, through stimulus-induced deformation of the elastic material," Aizenberg said.

"This sophisticated new class of adaptive materials being designed by the Institute's Adaptive Materials Technologies platform led by Joanna Aizenberg have the potential to be game-changers in everything from oil and gas pipelines, to microfluidic and optical systems, building design and construction, textiles, and more," said Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D.

The work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

In addition to Yao and Aizenberg, the paper's coauthors included Wyss Core Faculty member L. Mahadevan, Ph.D., who is also the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at SEAS, and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Professor of Physics at Harvard University; Wyss Institute and SEAS Postdoctoral Fellow Yuhang Hu, Ph.D.; SEAS Staff Scientist Alison Grinthal, Ph.D.; and Tak-Sing Wong, Ph.D., formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and now an Assistant Professor at The Pennsylvania State University.

For more information, contact Kristen Kusek
Kristen.kusek@wyss.harvard.edu
+1 617-432-8266

IMAGES and VIDEO AVAILABLE

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About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

About the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) serves as the connector and integrator of Harvard's teaching and research efforts in engineering, applied sciences, and technology. Through collaboration with researchers from all parts of Harvard, other universities, and corporate and foundational partners, we bring discovery and innovation directly to bear on improving human life and society. Alumni of note include: Steve Ballmer, A.B. '77, co-founder and current CEO of Microsoft Corporation; Leo Beranek, Ph.D. (S.D.) '40, HBS A.M.P. '65, former President of BBN Technologies, National Medal of Science winner; Tony Hsieh, A.B. '95, founder of online shoe seller Zappos.com; and Bob Metcalfe, Ph.D. '73, University of Texas Austin, Polaris Partners, National Medal of Technology winner, co-inventor of the Ethernet. For more information, visit: http://seas.harvard.edu.

Wyss Institute awarded DARPA contract to further advance sepsis therapeutic device

The Spleen-on-a-chip, developed at the Wyss Institute, will be used to treat bloodstream infections that are the leading cause of death in critically ill patients and soldiers injured in combat. [Credit: Wyss Institute]

Boston, MA -- The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University announced today that it was awarded a $9.25 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to further advance a blood-cleansing technology developed at the Institute with prior DARPA support, and help accelerate its translation to humans as a new type of sepsis therapy.

The device will be used to treat bloodstream infections that are the leading cause of death in critically ill patients and soldiers injured in combat.

To rapidly cleanse the blood of pathogens, the patient's blood is mixed with magnetic nanobeads coated with a genetically engineered version of a human blood 'opsonin' protein that binds to a wide variety of bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites, and toxins. It is then flowed through microchannels in the device where magnetic forces pull out the bead-bound pathogens without removing human blood cells, proteins, fluids, or electrolytes -- much like a human spleen does. The cleansed blood then flows back to the patient.

The technology makes use of specialized blood proteins and magnetic forces to pull pathogens from the blood. [Credit: Wyss Institute]

"In just a few years we have been able to develop a suite of new technologies, and to integrate them to create a powerful new device that could potentially transform the way we treat sepsis," said Wyss founding director and project leader, Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D. "The continued support from DARPA enables us to advance our device manufacturing capabilities and to obtain validation in large animal models, which is precisely what is required to enable this technology to be moved towards testing in humans."

The team will work to develop manufacturing and integration strategies for its core pathogen-binding opsonin and Spleen-on-a-Chip fluidic separation technologies, as well as a novel coating technology called "SLIPS," which is a super-hydrophobic coating inspired from the slippery surface of a pitcher plant that repels nearly any material it contacts. By coating the inner surface of the channels of the device with SLIPS, blood cleansing can be carried out without the need for anticoagulants to prevent blood clotting.

In addition to Ingber, the multidisciplinary team behind this effort includes Wyss core faculty and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty member Joanna Aizenberg, Ph.D., who developed the SLIPS technology; Wyss senior staff member Michael Super, Ph.D., who engineered the human opsonin protein; and Mark Puder, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pediatric Surgery at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School who will be assisting with animal studies.

Contact:
Kristen M. Kusek
Kristen.kusek@wyss.harvard.edu
+1 617-432-8266

IMAGES AVAILABLE

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About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

Harvard's Wyss Institute and Sony DADC Announce Collaboration on Organs-on-Chips

The Wyss Institute's lung-on-a-chip, made using human lung and blood vessel cells, is a device about the size of a memory stick that acts much like a lung in a human body. A vacuum re-creates the way the lungs physically expand and contract during breathing. [Credit: Wyss Institute]

Boston, MA -- Today the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Sony DADC announced a collaboration that will harness Sony DADC's global manufacturing expertise to further advance the Institute's Organs-on-Chips technologies.

Human Organs-on-Chips are composed of a clear, flexible polymer about the size of a computer memory stick, and contain hollow microfluidic channels lined by living human cells -- allowing researchers to recapitulate the physiological and mechanical functions of the organs, and to observe what happens in real time. The goal is to provide more predictive and useful measures of the efficacy and safety of new drugs in humans -- and at a fraction of the time and costs associated with traditional animal testing.

"We are excited to apply Sony DADC's deep manufacturing expertise to confront one of the major challenges in the life sciences by helping to accelerate the translation of the Wyss Institute's Organ-on-Chips from the benchtop to the marketplace," said Christoph Mauracher, Senior Vice President of the BioSciences division of Sony DADC. "The Organs-on-Chips have the potential to revolutionize testing of drugs, chemicals, toxins and cosmetics."

This collaboration builds on the momentum the Wyss Institute team has gained recently on its Organs-on-Chips research program. With support from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)*, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and pharmaceutical partners, more than ten Organs-on-Chips are currently under development at the Wyss Institute, including a lung, heart, liver, kidney, bone marrow, and gut-on-a-chip; there is also a major effort to integrate these organ chips into "human body on-chips" that mimic whole body physiology.

In February, Wyss Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who leads the Organs-on-Chips research program, received the prestigious 3Rs Prize from the UK's National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research for the lung-on-a-chip. This month, the Society of Toxicology awarded him the Leading Edge in Basic Science Award for his "seminal scientific contributions and advances to understanding fundamental mechanisms of toxicity."

"Our work with Sony is a wonderful example of the Wyss Institute model in action," said Ingber. "We collaborate with industry to help de-risk the technologies we develop, both technically and commercially, and therefore expedite their translation into real world applications."

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*Part of this research was sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) and DARPA; the views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of ARO, DARPA or the U.S. Government.

Contacts

Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
Kristen M. Kusek
+1 617-432-8266
Kristen.kusek@wyss.harvard.edu

Sony DADC
Manfred Koranda
+43 6246 880 8143
manfred.koranda@sonydadc.com

About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

About Sony DADC
Sony DADC is a leading disc and digital service provider for the entertainment, education and information industries, offering world-class digital and physical supply chain solutions and software services. Building on the company's experience in high-precision manufacturing, its mass production capability and supply chain expertise, Sony DADC's BioSciences division partners with life sciences and diagnostics companies, enabling the industrial manufacturing of smart consumables. Sony DADC's global set-up comprises production sites, distribution hubs, digital and service facilities in 19 countries worldwide, including Japan, the US and Europe. For more information please visit http://biosciences.sonydadc.com.

Wyss Institute's Lung-on-a-Chip wins prize for potentially reducing need for animal testing

UK award recognition validates US teams' approach to revolutionize drug development

Don Ingber

BOSTON, MA -- In a London ceremony today, Wyss Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., received the NC3Rs 3Rs Prize from the UK's National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) for his innovative Lung-on-a-Chip -- a microdevice lined by human cells that recapitulates complex functions of the living lung.

"We believe that our human breathing Lung-on-a-Chip, and other organ chips we have in development, represent a first wave of exciting new alternative approaches to animal testing that hopefully will change how drug development is carried out in the future," Ingber said. "This award helps to validate this radical new approach on the global stage, and to strengthen our resolve to work with government agencies and pharmaceutical companies that have been supporting our work to pursue this alternative approach to animal testing."

The lung-on-a-chip offers a new in vitro approach to drug screening by mimicking the complicated mechanical and biochemical behaviors of a human lung. It is a small device the size of a memory stick composed of a clear, flexible polymer that contains hollow channels fabricated using computer microchip manufacturing techniques.

Combining microfabrication techniques with modern tissue engineering, the lung-on-a-chip offers an in vitro approach to drug screening by mimicking the complicated mechanical and biochemical behaviors of a human lung. Watch video...

Two of the channels are separated by a thin, flexible, porous membrane that is lined on one side with human lung cells from the air sac, and exposed to air; human capillary blood cells from the lung are placed on the other side with medium flowing over their surface to mimic blood flow. A vacuum applied to side channels deforms this tissue-tissue interface to re-create the way human lung tissues physically expand and retract when breathing.

In their latest publication in Science Translational Medicine being honored by this award, Ingber's team used the lung-on-a-chip to mimic a complex human disease: pulmonary edema, or "fluid on the lungs." They closely mimicked a drug toxicity that produces pulmonary edema in humans, identified potential new therapies to prevent this life-threatening condition, and revealed new insights about the disease -- specifically demonstrating on the chip that the physiological breathing motion of the lungs exacerbates drug toxicity-induced edema. They also studied the disease process in real time, precisely tracking fluid flow and clot formation, which cannot easily be done using an animal model.

Lung-on-a-chip

"The NC3Rs annual 3Rs Prize champions the 3Rs globally [replacement, refinement, and reduction of animals used in research], rewarding real scientific and technological advances," said NC3Rs Chief Executive Vicky Robinson, Ph.D. Ingber and his team received a monetary award equivalent to about $30,000, which will be used to support continued research and collaboration around the on-chip technology.

"This disruptive technology may be the beginning of a revolution of the systems we use to model human disease and test drugs in the future, with great potential to reduce the need for animals," said Robinson.

Ingber's lung-on-a-chip research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is also supporting his work to integrate the lung-on-a-chip with more than nine other organ chips to create a "human body on-a-chip" that mimics whole body physiology.

For more information, contact Kristen Kusek
Kristen.kusek@wyss.harvard.edu
+1 617-432-8266

IMAGES and VIDEO AVAILABLE

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About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles for self-organizing and self-regulating, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

About the NC3Rs
The NC3Rs is an independent scientific organization which leads on the discovery, development, and promotion of new ways to replace, reduce, and refine the use of animals in research and testing (the 3Rs). It is supported primarily by government, but also receives funding from the charitable and industrial sectors. The Centre has an annual budget of approximately £6.75 million and is the UK's major funder of 3Rs research. Further information about NC3Rs activities and programmes can be found at www.nc3rs.org.uk.

New Technology May Help Doctors Monitor Concussions, Aging, and Neurological Function

Harvard's Wyss Institute develops a computer tablet application that could rapidly assess neuromuscular performance at the bedside

Watch video...

Boston, MA -- Doctors routinely track their patients' hand-eye coordination to monitor any neuromuscular deficits, particularly as patients age or when they are injured -- but the tests they have been using to track this kind of information may be subjective and qualitative.

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Hebrew SeniorLife, Boston (BIDMC), recently completed the first clinical study of a new rapid neuroassessment device they developed to quantitatively measure neuromuscular performance, as reported in yesterday's online Journal of Gerontology: Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.

In the study, 150 healthy people from the Boston area aged 21 to 95 used a stylus to follow a moving target around a circle on a computer tablet. As every person performed this tracing task, proprietary computer methods developed at the Wyss Institute measured people's deviations from the circular path, which the researchers then analyzed as a function of age, sex, and handedness. Using this approach, a number can be obtained that can show differences in performance between various individuals or conditions. An older person performs quite differently on the tracing exercise, for example.

A team at Harvard's Wyss Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess have developed a computer tablet application that could rapidly and quantitatively assess neuromuscular performance.

"This new tool may hold great potential to augment existing protocols in a doctor's neuromotor assessment toolbox," said Wyss Senior Staff Engineer Leia Stirling, Ph.D., who led the study. "It is portable, repeatable, quick to administer, and easy to perform." Whereas current methods to assess a patient's neuromuscular function include subjective descriptions of a patient's reflexes and cognitive status, the tracing tool could add a slew of new information displayed as a "score." For example, doctors can record a "score" for "complexity," which relates to how well a person can adapt to changes, and "motion fluidity," which relates to how long the patient pauses during the task. Older subjects involved in the study had lower complexity and motion fluidity scores.

Wyss Core Faculty member Ary L. Goldberger, M.D., who is also the Director of the Margret & H. A. Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine at BIDMC, introduced the idea of studying complexity in the human body. "We have demonstrated in earlier studies that a loss of complexity is potentially associated with a range of human health issues from congestive heart failure and sleep apnea to aging," he said.

The team envisions a day when the technology -- which they informally called "NeuroAssess" -- might be used on the playing field and in doctor's offices worldwide. "One day it might sit next to the thermometer and pressure cuff in the doctor's office," Stirling said. "Just as your blood pressure is recorded during every visit, so could your neuromuscular score be tracked over time to determine progress through recovery and rehabilitation." The same technology could be used to assess off-target neurological side effects in human clinical trials.

In the NeuroAssess trial, which involved collaborators from Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston, participants were instructed to use a stylus to follow a moving target on the screen (as shown on the left). The right side of the video shows the performance of one participant, where the red line indicates a horizontal "unrolling" of the target's circular trajectory -- and the blue line indicates the distance from the line that is traced, to the target around the circle. The team developed a series of algorithms that take the data reflecting the distance from the line to compute an actual neuromuscular score for the tracing performance. View video...

Now that the baseline data have been collected from the healthy population of study subjects, the next goal is to determine NeuroAssess' potential to become a quantitative assessment tool for groups of people with neuromuscular pathologies, such as those who suffered concussions or have multiple sclerosis.

The team is currently conducting a study with athletes in the Boston area to determine the sensitivity of the technology in diagnosing concussions.

"The interdisciplinary team who masterminded this new technology represent the best of the Wyss Institute model, which makes it possible for scientists, engineers and clinicians who don't traditionally work together to sit down, dream up game-changing technologies, and more easily and quickly translate them into products for high value applications," said Wyss Founding Director Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D.

The work was funded by the Wyss Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation, and the James S. McDonnell Foundation. In addition to Stirling and Goldberger, the team included Lewis A. Lipsitz, M.D., Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Gerontology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Director of the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife; Mona Qureshi, Wyss Clinical Research Manager; Damian G. Kelty-Stephen, Ph.D., Wyss Staff Research Scientist; and Madalena D. Costa, Ph.D., Wyss affiliate, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Margret and H. A. Rey Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

For more information, contact Kristen Kusek
Kristen.kusek@wyss.harvard.edu
+1 617-432-8266

IMAGES and VIDEO AVAILABLE

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About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles for self-organizing and self-regulating, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute recently won the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology.

About Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
BIDMC is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and currently ranks third in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit www.bidmc.org

Scientists Notch a Win in War Against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Sophisticated modeling and biotechnology used to weaken cells
by fouling their metabolic machinery

Jim Collins and his team found that increasing the ROS production in E. coli cells rendered the bacteria weaker in the face of existing antibiotics.

Boston, MA -- A team of scientists just won a battle in the war against antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" -- and only time will tell if their feat is akin to the bacterial "Battle of Gettysburg" that turns the tide toward victory.

They won this particular battle, or at least gained some critical intelligence, not by designing a new antibiotic, but by interfering with the metabolism of the bacterial "bugs" -- E. coli in this case -- and rendering them weaker in the face of existing antibiotics, as reported today in Nature Biotechnology.

It's the "kick 'em when they're down" style of fighting, and the team from Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Boston University used sophisticated computer modeling and biotechnology as their weapons of choice.

"We are in critical need for novel strategies to boost our antibiotic arsenal," said senior author and Wyss Core Faculty member Jim Collins, Ph.D., a pioneer of synthetic biology who is also the William F. Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University, where he leads the Center for BioDynamics. "With precious few new antibiotics in the pipeline, we are finding new ways to harness and exploit certain aspects of bacterial physiology."

In this case, the team targeted a little understood but key part of bacterial metabolism called ROS production.

ROS, or "reactive oxygen species," include molecules like superoxide and hydrogen peroxide that are natural byproducts of normal metabolic activity. Bacteria usually cope just fine with them, but too many can cause serious damage or even kill the cell. In fact, Collins' team revealed a few years ago the true antibiotic "modis operandi": they kill bacteria in part by ramping up ROS production.

The precise genetic mechanisms by which E. coli produces ROS remain elusive, Collins said, so his team adopted a standard computer model that maps out the way scientists currently understand E. coli metabolism. Collins' team began by adding to this "system-level" metabolic model hundreds of reactions that are known to increase ROS production. Then they deleted various genes to see which were involved in ROS production, honed in on the suspected targets after running thousands of computer simulations, and validated the model in the laboratory -- achieving 80-90% agreement with the model-based predictions.

"The next challenge was to determine if increasing the ROS production by the cell itself would render it more susceptible to death by oxidative, ergo, antibiotic attack," Collins said -- and it did. The team deleted a series of genes that led to increased ROS production in the cell, added different antibiotics and biocides such as bleach -- known cell-killers by way of increasing ROS production -- and the cells died at a much higher rate than the cells without the deleted genes. In short, by interfering with the bacterial metabolism, the antibiotics and biocides were even more lethal to the cells.

"There is no magic bullet for the global health crisis we're experiencing in terms of antibiotic-resistant bacteria," said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Wyss Founding Director, "and yet there is tremendous hope in the kinds of pioneering systems biology approaches Jim and his team are spearheading."

The team's next steps are to use molecular screening technologies to precisely identify molecules that boost ROS production, Collins said, and to test the approach used in this E. coli study on other kinds of bacteria -- such as the mycobacteria responsible for tuberculosis, a potentially lethal lung disease.

This work was funded by the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award Program and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In addition to Collins, the research team included: Mark P. Brynildsen, Ph.D., formerly at Boston University and now Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University; Jonathan A. Winkler, Ph.D., a Scientist at Seres Health who used to be a Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University; Catherine S. Spina, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Boston University and graduate student at the Wyss Institute; and Boston University Research Assistant I. Cody Macdonald.

For more information, contact Kristen Kusek
Kristen.kusek@wyss.harvard.edu
+1 617-432-8266

IMAGES AVAILABLE

About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles for self-organizing and self-regulating, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups.

Jennifer A. Lewis, pioneer in 3D printing and bioinspired materials, joins Harvard faculty

First professorial chair endowed by Hansjörg Wyss appointed at Harvard University

Jennifer Lewis manipulates various gels, polymers, and colloidal suspensions to create architectures that mimic those found in nature.

Boston, Mass., January 10, 2013 -- Jennifer A. Lewis, Sc.D., an internationally recognized leader in the fields of 3D printing and biomimetic materials, has been appointed as the first Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Lewis is the first senior faculty to occupy a Wyss-endowed professorial chair.

3D printing -- also known as additive manufacturing -- is the process of fabricating three-dimensional solid objects from digital computer models. Following computer-generated drawings, 3D printers generally deposit successive layers of various materials to build a physical object from the bottom up. The technique is used in a range of fields, from producing crowns in a dental lab to rapid prototyping of aerospace, automotive, and consumer goods.

Lewis' research, however, has expanded 3D printing to a far more sophisticated level. By designing novel inks from diverse classes of materials, as well as high precision 3D printing platforms with exceedingly small nozzles, her research group is able to create very finely tailored structures with precise electronic, optical, mechanical, and chemical properties.

"Our approach is distinct from commercially available 3D printers because of its materials flexibility, precision, and high throughput," Lewis said.

Jennifer A. Lewis' deep understanding of the chemistry and physics of soft materials enables her to design and manipulate various materials to create architectures that mimic those found in nature. Clockwise from top left: A schematic view of the printing process for 3D hydrogel scaffolds; origami made by printing and folding intricate 3D metallic and ceramic structures; a hydrogel with an embedded microvascular network, for use in tissue engineering; and a hydrogel scaffold seeded with fibroblast cells. (Images courtesy of R. Shepherd and J. A. Lewis; B. Y. Ahn and J. A. Lewis; C. H. Hansen, S. Kranz, and J. A. Lewis; and R. Shepherd and J. A. Lewis.)

Lewis' deep understanding of the chemistry and physics of soft materials enables her to design and manipulate various gels, polymers, and colloidal suspensions and create architectures that mimic those found in nature -- such as bone, spider webs, or vascular networks. Her unique prototyping platform can pattern a broad array of functional materials under ambient conditions with features as tiny as one micron (less than one 25,000th of an inch) over areas as large as the top of a square coffee table, all in a matter of minutes. Once deposited, the inks solidify very rapidly, enabling the creation of intricate spanning and self-supporting structures, even at a microscopic scale.

The potential uses for this technique in the near term are broad and include printed electronics, 3D polymer scaffolds for tissue engineering, and advanced materials for energy harvesting and storage.

"With this prestigious Wyss professorship, Jennifer will expand her innovative work in the fabrication of delicate 3D structures, opening exciting new research frontiers, and helping us to design solutions to a host of medical, environmental and industrial problems," said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director of the Wyss Institute. "Jennifer's impressive dossier spans so many disciplines at the heart of our work, from tissue engineering to bioinspired robotics, and adaptive materials that optimize energy use -- and we're thrilled she is joining the team."

Prior to her appointment at Harvard, Lewis was the Hans Thurnauer Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she started her career in 1990. She has received numerous honors for her work, including the NSF Presidential Faculty Fellow Award, the Brunauer Award from the American Ceramic Society, the Langmuir Lecture Award from the American Chemical Society and the Materials Research Society Medal. She is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Advanced Functional Materials and Soft Matter, in addition to authoring 120 papers and eight patents. Lewis also has a passion for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and outreach, and has been active in this for two decades.

Lewis' new laboratory at Harvard integrates multiple platforms for materials synthesis, assembly, and characterization, as well as a design studio that will foster a pervasive culture of creativity and collaboration.

"We are delighted that Jennifer is joining us," said Cherry A. Murray, Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences; and Professor of Physics. "An inspirational leader in materials engineering and a natural collaborator, she will bring dynamism, creativity, and expertise to partnerships within the Harvard engineering, life science, and medical communities to forge the development of new functional materials for therapies and diagnostics."

For more information, contact Kristen Kusek
Kristen.kusek@wyss.harvard.edu
+1 617-432-8266

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About the Hansjörg Wyss Chairs of Biologically Inspired Engineering
The endowed chairs were established in 2008 by Hansjörg Wyss, MBA, as part of his gift to Harvard to launch the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Each chair recognizes a distinguished scholar whose research expands knowledge in areas related to the mission of the Institute: "to create biologically inspired materials and devices to advance human health and improve the environment, thereby revolutionizing clinical medicine and creating a more sustainable world." Jennifer Lewis' appointment at Harvard University officially began on January 1, 2013.

About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University uses nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating nature's principles for self-organizing and self-regulating, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for health care, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups. The Wyss Institute was recently awarded the prestigious World Technology Network award for innovation in biotechnology. For more information, visit: http://wyss.harvard.edu.