Application Area: Sepsis

Technologies 2

• Tethered Liquid Perfluorocarbon (TLP), a non-stick coating for medical devices
  Every device implanted in the body or in contact with flowing blood faces two critical challenges that can threaten the life of the patient it is meant to help: blood clotting and bacterial infection. To confront this challenge, Wyss Institute researchers created a super-repellent, Thin Layer Perfluorocarbon (TLP) coating specifically designed to prevent clot formation...
• Pathogen Capture Technology for Infectious Disease Therapeutics and Diagnostics
  Microbial contamination is the cause of life-threatening cases of sepsis, meningitis and multiple other infectious diseases that are a major cause of death world-wide. Equally prevalent are pathogenic contaminants in our environment, food, and manufacturing processes. In each case, the presence of microbial contaminants must be confirmed, and when they are found, they need to...

News 25

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• Translation News Wyss Institute startup, Opsonix Inc., honored with prestigious Spinoff Award
  May 15, 2017
• Press Release How to diagnose systemic infections much more quickly and reliably
  June 14, 2016
• Press Release Harvard’s Wyss Institute to lead multi-institutional project to uncover underlying causes of tolerance to infection
  May 31, 2016

Multimedia 5

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  Audio/Podcast
  Disruptive: Confronting Sepsis
  In this episode of Disruptive, Wyss Institute Founding Director Don Ingber and Senior Staff Scientist Mike Super discuss how their team developed a new therapeutic device inspired by the human spleen. This blood-cleansing approach can remove sepsis-causing pathogens from circulating blood without ever needing to know their identity. In animal studies, treatment with this device...

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  Video/Animation
  Pathogen-Extracting Sepsis Therapy
  This video explains how sepsis induced by an overload of blood pathogens can be treated with the Wyss Institute’s improved pathogen-extracting, spleen-mimicking device. Blood is flown through a cartridge filled with hollow fibers that are coated with a genetically engineered blood protein inspired by a naturally-occurring human molecule called Mannose Binding Lectin (MBL). MBL is...

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  Video/Animation
  Antibiotic Efficacy
  In this video, Wyss Institute Core Faculty member James Collins and Michael Lobritz explain how antibiotics can have vastly different effects on pathogenic bacteria and suggest potential implications for improving antibiotic treatments in infected patients. For more information, please visit our press release: Reenergizing Antibiotics in the War Against Infections Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard...

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  Video/Animation
  Bioinspired Blood Repellent Coating
  In this video, Wyss Institute Founding Director Don Ingber, Core Faculty member Joanna Aizenberg, Staff Scientist Dan Leslie and Postdoctoral Fellow Anna Waterhouse explain how a coating they developed using FDA-approved materials could prevent blood clotting in medical devices without the use of blood thinners. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

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  Video/Animation
  Bioinspired Approach to Sepsis Therapy
  Wyss Institute Founding Director Don Ingber, Senior Staff Scientist Michael Super and Technology Development Fellow Joo Kang explain how they engineered the Mannose-binding lectin (MBL) protein to bind to a wide range of sepsis-causing pathogens and then safely remove the pathogens from the bloodstream using a novel microfluidic spleen-like device. For more information, please visit...