Wyss InstituteIntestinal Disease – Wyss Institute

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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A malaria drug treatment could save babies’ lives

Jessica Leff — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 17:55:22 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell (BOSTON) — Wars, drought, displacement, and instability are causing a dramatic increase in the number of pregnant and breastfeeding women around the world who suffer from malnutrition. Without access to sufficient nutrients in the womb, babies born to these women are more likely to die due to complications like pre-term birth, low birth weight…

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Reimagining personalized medicine for each patient: Alican Ozkan

Jessica Leff — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 16:00:51 +0000

By Jessica Leff Listen to Alican tell his story. | Wyss Institute · Alican Ozkan Reimagine The World On the banks of the Aegean Sea sits Izmir, the third-most-populous city in Turkey. It’s geographically part of Asia, but culturally seems more at home in Europe. This is also the city where Alican Ozkan grew up. His parents, both chemical engineers, met at their university.

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How do we make safer and more effective drugs?

Jessica Leff — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 15:14:20 +0000

Wyss researchers are using an ever-growing number of human tissue-mimicking Organ Chips to improve and accelerate the drug development process for a wide number of unmet diseases – and understand what causes them to erupt. More recently, they added a human Vagina Chip and personalized Barrett’s esophagus Chip to their arsenal, and created in vitro models of inflammatory bowel disease in children…

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Barrett’s esophagus modeled in a human Organ Chip

Jessica Leff — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 14:55:25 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Acid reflux, the backwash of stomach acid into the throat, or esophagus, is something that people many experience occasionally. But when it happens repeatedly and becomes a chronic problem, it can result in “Barrett’s esophagus” (BE), a condition in which cells in the epithelial lining of the esophagus appear to transform into stomach or intestine cells.

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Andrés Cubillos-Ruiz on Making Antibiotics Safer for your Gut

Jessica Leff — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 16:01:50 +0000

The Humans of the Wyss (HOW) series features members of the Wyss community discussing their work, the influences that shape them as scientists, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and beyond. Andrés Cubillos-Ruiz has long been fascinated by the power of microbes. Before coming to the Wyss, he studied how ocean microbes maintain the whole ecosystem of the planet through their…

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Modeling a devastating childhood disease on a chip

Mariel Schoen — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 14:55:26 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell (BOSTON) — Millions of children in low- and middle-income nations suffer from environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), a chronic inflammatory disease of the intestine that is the second leading cause of death of children younger than five years of age. EED is a devastating condition that is associated with malnutrition, stunted growth, and poor cognitive development…

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Girija Goyal on Increasing the Efficacy of Clinical Trials

Jessica Leff — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 14:00:36 +0000

The Humans of the Wyss (HOW): ATT Edition series highlights members of the Wyss Advanced Technology Team (ATTs), showcasing their role, their work, the influences that shape their approach, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and beyond. Reliant on strong technical expertise, diverse product development experience, and a focus on end-user needs, ATTs translate high-risk technologies…

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Mucus Layer In Vitro on Human Colon Chip

Jessica Leff — Mon, 12 Jul 2021 17:04:46 +0000

Using Human Organ Chips, researchers at the Wyss Institute were able to generate the mucus layer of the colon in vitro, which has never been done before. In the colon, the mucus layer protects intestinal epithelial cells against inflammatory stimuli such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants. The ability to support mucus-producing cells is one step towards modeling inflammatory bowel diseases…

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Of mice and men and leveraging their different tolerance to pathogens

Jessica Leff — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 18:20:59 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Trillions of commensal microbes live on the mucosal and epidermal surfaces of the body and it is firmly established that this microbiome affects its host’s tolerance and sensitivity to a variety of pathogens. However, host tolerance to infection with pathogens is not equally developed in all organisms. For example, it is known that the gut microbiome of mice…

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