Wyss InstituteChemical Engineering – Wyss Institute

Pulling carbon into seawater using engineered bacteria

Jessica Leff — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:00:14 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Rock weathering, the breakdown and dissolving of rocks and minerals caused by their exposure to water, air, and biological life, is a major regulator of Earth’s atmospheric CO2 levels and climate. Throughout Earth’s history, rock weathering has been faster during warm periods with increased atmospheric CO2 levels. Dissolved minerals ultimately wash into the…

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Dispersible Gas Carriers: Enhancing Efficiency in Biomanufacturing

Jessica Leff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:12:47 +0000

The bioeconomy is being held back not by biology, but by the physics of getting gas into water at scale to support bioproduction by microbial and mammalian cells. Oxygen (O₂) and other gases are poorly soluble in water, and dissolving them at scale requires mechanical sparging and mixing systems that cause foaming, shear stress, contamination, and uneven gas distribution throughout the reactor.

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Chemist’s fix for a stubborn biomanufacturing problem? Engineer the liquid, not the machine

Jessica Leff — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:57:11 +0000

By Yahya Chaudhry, Harvard Staff Writer (CAMBRIDGE, Mass.) – In the race to build a biomanufacturing economy, one of the most stubborn obstacles is surprisingly mundane: getting enough gas into a tank of liquid. From pharmaceuticals to alternative proteins, many technologies depend on microbes that need to breathe oxygen or consume other gases such as carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

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Nixe: Bioinspired Sustainable and Water-repellent Textile Coating

Jessica Leff — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:48:28 +0000

PFAs, per- and polyfluorinated chemical compounds, were first used with the invention of Teflon in 1938 and by now are found in the blood of 97% of Americans. They pose risks to human reproductive and immune health, and are strongly suspected to cause cancer, developmental defects, and other health problems. As “forever chemicals,” they are passed through entire ecosystems and along food chains.

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Broad-spectrum coronavirus drug developed through AI-enabled dynamic modeling

Jessica Leff — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 14:55:26 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — About 30% of all respiratory tract infections are caused by coronaviruses, leading to widespread illnesses and, in some cases, to epidemic and even pandemic outbreaks, as we experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the development of groundbreaking technology that enables the design of prophylactic vaccines, access to those vaccines is not equal across…

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Implantable biosensors get a major longevity boost

Jessica Leff — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 14:55:18 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Wearable and implantable biosensors that can accurately detect biological molecules in a non- or minimally invasive manner have vast potential for monitoring patients’ physiology and response to therapies. For example, wearable glucose monitors that measure blood glucose levels and convert these measurements into readily readable and continuously recorded…

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Ropirio: Novel Treatments Targeting the Lymphatic System

Mariel Schoen — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 13:56:37 +0000

The human lymphatic system is vast and critical to our health, including the proper functioning of our immune system. Over the last decade, research into the lymph system has revealed its dysfunction in a wide variety of diseases, but development of drugs to directly target the lymph system has lagged, in part because there are few reliable preclinical models of lymph vessels on which to test drug…

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Ropirio launches from Wyss Institute to develop first-in-class lymphatic medicines

Mariel Schoen — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 13:55:12 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell (BOSTON) — The Wyss Institute at Harvard University announced today that Ropirio Therapeutics, Inc. (Ropirio) has secured a worldwide, exclusive license from Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) and Boston University (BU)’s Technology Development office for novel molecules that activate the lymphatic system – a first in the pharma industry. “There has been a…

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Starting a fluorescent biosensor revolution

Mariel Schoen — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 09:00:00 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Biosensors – devices that use biological molecules to detect the presence of a target substance – have enormous potential for detecting disease biomarkers, molecules-in-action in diverse biological processes, or toxins and other harmful substances in the environment. One of the more common types, fluorescent biosensors, consists of a target-binding biomolecule…

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A better way to make RNA drugs

Jessica Leff — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 09:00:40 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell (BOSTON) — While the COVID-19 vaccines introduced many people to RNA-based medicines, oligonucleotides have already been on the market for years to treat diseases like Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and amyloidosis. RNA therapies offer many advantages over traditional small molecule drugs, including their ability to address almost any genetic component within cells and to guide…

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