Application Area: Intestinal Disease

Technologies 5

• Armored Probiotics
  Antibiotics are the most prescribed medications in the world because of their ability to kill dangerous pathogenic bacteria. However, they also attack the body’s essential microbiome, which contains beneficial microbes in the intestinal tract, skin and the mucous membranes that cover many tissue surfaces. This results in an imbalance in the normal microbiome known as...
• Flexible force sensors for microrobotics
  As robots have gotten smaller, softer, and more maneuverable, they’ve opened up myriad possibilities for interacting with objects on a tiny scale, including on and in the human body. However, human hands still have a major advantage over robots: the ability to feel. Researchers at the Wyss Institute are using the Pop-Up MEMS manufacturing technique...
• Flexible robots to assist in endoscopic procedures
  Endoscopes are a standard device in gastrointestinal medicine, used by surgeons to noninvasively see and take biopsies from tissues along the entire digestive tract. However, endoscopes themselves amount to hollow tubes with a camera and light attached, through which different instruments are threaded to the procedure site, and are rigid and not very maneuverable. Two...
• Human Organs-on-Chips
  Clinical studies take years to complete and testing a single compound can cost more than $2 billion. Meanwhile, innumerable animal lives are lost, and the process often fails to predict human responses because traditional animal models often do not accurately mimic human pathophysiology. For these reasons, there is a broad need for alternative ways to...
• Putting Biofilms to Work
  A team at the Wyss Institute sees biofilms as a robust new platform for designer nanomaterials that could treat inflammatory bowel diseases, clean up polluted rivers, manufacture pharmaceutical products, fabricate new textiles, and more. A novel protein engineering system called BIND, which stands for Biofilm-Integrated Nanofiber Display, could be the essential ingredient in tomorrow’s probiotic...

News 16

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• Research Spotlights Human intestine on-a-chip: state-of-the-art and into the future
  May 3, 2018
• Press Release A gut reaction…on a chip
  February 14, 2018
• Press Release True to type: From human biopsy to complex gut physiology on a chip
  February 13, 2018

Multimedia 4

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  Video/Animation
  Distributed Cell Division Counter
  Genetically engineered E. coli containing a fluorescing red protein enabled a Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School team to analyze the population fluctuations of gut microbes by comparing proportion of “marked” to “unmarked” cells. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

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  Video/Animation
  Gastrointestinal Re-Programming
  In this animation, see an example of how genetically engineered microbes being developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute could detect and treat a wide range of gastrointestinal illnesses and conditions. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

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  Video/Animation
  Human Organs-On-Chips
  Wyss Institute researchers and a multidisciplinary team of collaborators have engineered microchips that recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of living human organs, including the lung, intestine, kidney, skin, bone marrow and blood-brain barrier. These microchips, called ‘organs-on-chips’, offer a potential alternative to traditional animal testing. Each individual organ-on-chip is composed of a clear flexible polymer...

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  Video/Animation
  Introduction to Organs-on-a-Chip
  What if we could test drugs without animal models? Wyss Institute researchers and a multidisciplinary team of collaborators have engineered microchips that recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of living human organs, including the lung, intestine, kidney, skin, bone marrow and blood-brain barrier. These microchips, called ‘organs-on-chips’, offer a potential alternative to traditional animal testing. Each...