Wyss InstituteNanobiotechnology – Wyss Institute

Building protection against infectious diseases with nanostructured vaccines

Mariel Schoen — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:56:44 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — The COVID-19 pandemic brought messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines to the forefront of global health care. After their clinical trial stages, the first COVID-19 mRNA vaccine was administered on 8 December 2020 and mathematical models suggest that mRNA vaccines prevented at least 14.4 million deaths from COVID-19 in the first year alone.

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Anastasia Ershova on Designing and Building with RNA and DNA

Jessica Leff — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 13:52:34 +0000

The Humans of the Wyss (HOW) series features members of the Wyss community discussing their work, the influences that shape them as professionals, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and beyond. Anastasia Ershova loves fencing because every opponent is a new puzzle to solve, and both fencers are constantly engaged, making adjustments based on each other’s actions. The same could be…

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Wyss Institute at Harvard University launches its Diagnostics for Human and Planetary Health platform headed by David Walt

Jessica Leff — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 14:55:47 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — To address the diagnostic challenges of our times and prepare for the future of healthcare, the Wyss Institute is launching its “Diagnostics for Human and Planetary Health” platform. Patients with a plethora of diseases could be treated more effectively now, if they had access to sensitive diagnostic tests. In addition, many diseases cannot be diagnosed early…

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David Walt named as laureate for National Medal of Technology and Innovation

Jessica Leff — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 14:52:56 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — On January 3, Wyss Institute Core Faculty member David Walt, Ph.D., who also is a Professor of Pathology at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School (HMS), an Associate member at the Broad Institute, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor…

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Closing in on Parkinson’s Disease proteins in extracellular vesicles in the blood

Jessica Leff — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 13:20:38 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Brain disorders like Parkinson’s (PD) or Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) start to develop in patients much earlier than when their first clinical symptoms appear. Treating patients at these early stages could slow or even stop their disease, but there is currently no way to diagnose brain disorders at those pre-symptomatic stages. Thus far, the specific brain lesions…

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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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ACE-ing protein detection in single cells

Jessica Leff — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 14:55:40 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Since the 1950s, researchers have used a famous method invented by Wallace Coulter known as “flow cytometry” to characterize different types of immune cells in research studies and in blood samples from human individuals. This has enabled a much deeper understanding of immune cell development as well as new ways to assess human health and diagnose various blood…

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DoriVac: DNA Origami-Based Vaccines for Combination Immunotherapy

Jessica Leff — Wed, 01 May 2024 17:54:19 +0000

Serious diseases like cancer and autoimmune conditions require multiple drugs to treat and manage them, but combining drugs is challenging for a number of reasons. The primary problem is toxicity, as the side effects of multiple drugs can compound each other and produce much greater patient suffering than either drug alone – sometimes to the point that the combination is too dangerous to give to a…

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Crisscross Nanoseed Detection: Nanotechnology-Powered Infectious Disease Diagnostics

Jessica Leff — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:34:25 +0000

Speed, accuracy, and affordability are of the essence in the detection of established and newly emerging pathogens to provide timely care, mitigate transmission, and help lower the financial burden on healthcare systems. Among them, those causing sexually transmitted diseases (STIs), including HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, cause a major global burden on health care systems. In the U.S. alone…

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DNA Nanostructures for Drug Delivery

admin — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 05:58:48 +0000

Researchers at the Wyss Institute have developed two methods for building arbitrarily shaped nanostructures using DNA, with a focus on translating the technology towards nanofabrication and drug delivery applications. One proprietary nanofabrication technique, called “DNA-brick self-assembly,” uses short, synthetic strands of DNA that work like interlocking Lego® bricks. It capitalizes on the…

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