Wyss InstituteFundamental Research – Wyss Institute

Building big with DNA gets a software upgrade

Jessica Leff — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:55:09 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — 44 years ago, Nadrian Seeman published his groundbreaking ideas on using DNA as a structural material, expanding DNA’s significance way beyond that as a carrier of genetic information. Since then, the steadily growing field of DNA nanotechnology has seen numerous innovations. One of them was the DNA origami technique, which enables researchers to fold a single…

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Cutting to the Case: Don Ingber

Jessica Leff — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 13:56:59 +0000

Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., is the Founding Director of Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and a pioneer of organ-on-a-chip technology. In this episode of Cutting to the Case, Ingber and host Cameron Sabet discuss how he helped create organs-on-chips, what these systems can teach us that traditional models cannot, and how biologically inspired engineering…

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Researchers clear major obstacle in genetic engineering of proteins

Jessica Leff — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:13:59 +0000

By STEPHANIE DUTCHEN / Harvard Medical School Communications (BOSTON) — Scientists have been hard at work for more than 20 years to instruct biological systems, such as E. coli cells, to produce proteins they don’t naturally do. Success could mean faster, cheaper, innovative solutions for medicine, agriculture, materials science, environmental remediation, and other industries.

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Wyss Institute receives Massachusetts Life Science Center award to advance metabolomics and lipidomics research across Massachusetts ecosystem

Jessica Leff — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:03:23 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — The Wyss Institute at Harvard University has received an award from the Massachusetts Life Science Center (MLSC), enabling it to host a next-generation metabolomics and lipidomics analytical platform. The platform will allow its researchers to creatively pursue new approaches to biomarker and drug discovery across multiple health challenges the Institute is…

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Recapitulating intramuscular vaccination with mRNA vaccines in patient-specific Lymphoid Organ Chips

Mariel Schoen — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:55:40 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — The protective abilities of the Moderna and BioNTech mRNA vaccines developed against COVID-19 saved millions of lives during the pandemic and put this platform technology in the spotlight of vaccine research. By now, mRNA vaccines for other infectious diseases, such as influenza, RSV, and HIV are being tested in clinical trials and highly anticipated.

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David Chou on keeping people safe from radiation on Earth and beyond

Jessica Leff — Thu, 28 May 2026 13:00:27 +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. David Chou’s work is literally out of this world! In addition to identifying radiation countermeasures for use on Earth, he is part of the AVATAR project, which aims to understand how humans…

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Decoding inflammatory bowel disease – on a chip

Jessica Leff — Thu, 21 May 2026 09:30:43 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which comprises the inflammatory conditions Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, affects about 1.6 million Americans, many of whom cannot be effectively treated. This is mostly due to a lack of understanding of what exactly causes the increased inflammation, fibrosis, and compromised intestinal barrier that underlie this…

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Wyss Institute technologies enable breakthrough in astronaut health research aboard NASA’s Artemis II mission

Jessica Leff — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:55:20 +0000

By Alexandra Jirstrand (BOSTON) – Launched on April 1, 2026, Artemis II is a historic, approximately 10-day lunar flyby mission that is sending four astronauts farther into space than any humans have traveled since the Apollo era, marking a critical step toward sustained lunar exploration and future missions to Mars. The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard…

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Toward autonomous self-organizing biological robots with a nervous system

Mariel Schoen — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:30:42 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Biobots, whose growing line of variants started with Xenobots, are fascinating tiny self-powered living robots built exclusively using frog embryonic cells. Originally developed in the laboratories of Wyss Institute Associate Faculty member and Tufts University Professor Michael Levin, Ph.D. and his collaborators at University of Vermont…

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When Matter Makes Decisions: Michael Levin on the Intelligence of Form

Jessica Leff — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:39:49 +0000

In this episode of Grow Everything, hosts Karl Schmieder and Erum Azeez Khan have a conversation with Professor Michael Levin, Ph.D., Wyss Associate Faculty member and the Director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University. He reveals how cells make decisions without brains, store memories without DNA, and navigate anatomical space like we navigate physical space. Discover how his team…

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