Application Area: Intestinal Disease

Technologies 4

• 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 18

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• Press Release Human microbiome metabolites tip the scale in intestinal E. coli infections
  March 20, 2019
• Awards Sasan Jalili-Firoozinezhad honored with 2018 Lush Young Researcher award
  November 19, 2018
• Research Spotlights Human intestine on-a-chip: state-of-the-art and into the future
  May 3, 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...