Wyss InstituteBacteria – Wyss Institute

Biomaterial vaccines to make implanted orthopedic devices safer

Jessica Leff — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 19:55:42 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Patients with implanted medical devices like orthopedic joint replacements, pacemakers, and artificial heart valves run a small but significant risk that these devices get infected with bacterial pathogens. This starts them on a burdensome path requiring “redo” (revision) surgeries, prolonged antibiotic treatments, or in severe cases amputation.

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Researchers call for global discussion about possible risks from “mirror bacteria”

Jessica Leff — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 14:27:15 +0000

A group of researchers including Wyss Core Faculty member George Church, Ph.D. has published new findings in Science on potential risks from the development of mirror bacteria — synthetic organisms in which all molecules have reversed chirality (i.e. are ‘mirrored’). Scientists had begun early work toward creating mirror bacteria, and while the capability is at least a decade away…

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Starting a fluorescent biosensor revolution

Mariel Schoen — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Biosensors – devices that use biological molecules to detect the presence of a target substance – have enormous potential for detecting disease biomarkers, molecules-in-action in diverse biological processes, or toxins and other harmful substances in the environment. One of the more common types, fluorescent biosensors, consists of a target-binding biomolecule…

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Justin Scott on Engineering Proteins for Real-World Impact

Jessica Leff — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 15:05:06 +0000

The Humans of the Wyss (HOW) series features members of the Wyss community discussing their work, the influences that shape them as professionals, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and beyond. Years ago, Justin Scott was working in finance when a conversation with a friend who cared deeply about their science-related job prompted him to make a change. Chasing that same job…

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Circe Bioscience licenses technology to decarbonize industry with microbes developed at Wyss Institute at Harvard University

Jessica Leff — Wed, 15 May 2024 10:55:37 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell (BOSTON) — The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University announced today that Circe, a startup developed at the Institute and spun out of Harvard, has signed a worldwide, exclusive licensing agreement coordinated by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) to commercialize a novel bioproduction technology that could significantly…

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Engineered Live Biotherapeutic Product (eLBP) to Protect the Microbiome from Antibiotics

Jessica Leff — Wed, 01 May 2024 14:44:43 +0000

Antibiotics not only kill the pathogenic bacteria causing an infection, they also indiscriminately wreak havoc on the trillions of “good” bacteria making up the human microbiome. Known as “dysbiosis,” this alteration of our gut microbial composition manifests as discomforting diarrhea in up to 35% of patients in the short term, and can take months to resolve, often requiring dietary corrections…

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Plastic Degradation Company, Breaking, Emerges from Stealth with Naturally-Derived Solution to Degrade Multiple Plastics with $10.5M in Seed Funding

Jessica Leff — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:00:50 +0000

(Boston, MA and Dallas, TX) – Breaking, a plastic degradation and synthetic biology company, gestated at Colossal Biosciences based on a core discovery out of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, launches today with the announcement of their discovery, X-32, which they will develop to address the global plastics crisis. In its natural state…

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Using AI, researchers identify a new class of antibiotic candidates

Jessica Leff — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 15:55:21 +0000

By Anne Trafton, MIT News Office Using a type of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, researchers at the Wyss Institute and MIT have discovered a class of compounds that can kill a drug-resistant bacterium that causes more than 10,000 deaths in the United States every year. In a study appearing today in Nature, the researchers showed that these compounds could kill methicillin…

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Plastivores: Plastic-Degrading Super-Microbes and Enzymes

Jessica Leff — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 14:21:30 +0000

More than 360 million tons of plastic waste are generated around the world every year, presenting a global threat to our environment and human health. There is presently little or no way for ecosystems to decompose most commercial plastics, with more than 75% of waste plastic remaining either in landfills, soils, or in the oceans for decades. Plastics increasingly contaminate all environments and…

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Wyss Institute promotes Christopher Chen to a Core Faculty member and appoints Ellen Roche and Michael Springer as new members of its Associate Faculty

Jessica Leff — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 14:58:15 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Christopher Chen, M.D., Ph.D. has had a long and prolific past at the Wyss Institute and its 3D Organ Engineering Initiative as an Associate Faculty member, and based on his deep commitment to the Institute and its translational mission, he has now been promoted to become one of the Institute’s 12 Core Faculty members. The Wyss Institute is also excited to welcome…

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