Wyss InstituteToxicology – Wyss Institute

Beating cancer cells at their own game by stepping on their cGAS

Jessica Leff — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 17:30:44 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Cancer cells develop various strategies to paralyze immune cells to evade their attack in the complex tumor microenvironment (TME). Using one such strategy, they cripple their own production of a small signaling molecule known as cGAMP, which, if released into the TME, can be taken up by immune cells that then build up a first line of defense against cancer…

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Human Organ Chip technology sets stage for pan-influenza A CRISPR RNA therapies

Jessica Leff — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 13:55:54 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) – The Influenza A virus (IAV) has been the cause of six major flu pandemics, responsible for 50 to 100 million deaths globally. In the U.S. alone, it is estimated that, despite seasonally updated vaccines, IAV infections still lead to 140,000 to 710,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 to 52,000 deaths annually. The development of antiviral treatments against IAV…

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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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14 Wyss Faculty named Highly Cited Researchers in 2022

Jessica Leff — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 15:57:03 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell (BOSTON) — Clarivate has announced its Highly Cited Researchers 2022 list, which uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis to identify individuals from across the globe who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their chosen field(s) of research. Each year’s list recognizes the authors of scientific papers that rank in the top 1% by citations in the Web…

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A new vision for AAV-delivered gene therapies

Jessica Leff — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 18:58:16 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — In recent years, adeno-associated virus (AAV) has been recognized as the leading vehicle (vector) for in vivo delivery of therapeutic genes because it is non-pathogenic and efficiently targets many different cell and tissue types. The recent Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of AAV-based gene-replacement therapies to treat spinal muscular atrophy and a…

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Interrogator: Human Organ-on-Chips

Jessica Leff — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 16:00:40 +0000

This video describes the “Interrogator” instrument that can be programmed to culture up to 10 different Organ Chips and sequentially transfer fluids between their vascular channels to mimic normal human blood flow between the different organs of our body. Its integrated microscope enables the continuous monitoring of the tissues’ integrities in the individual organ chips in long-term studies.

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Human Body-on-Chip platform enables in vitro prediction of drug behaviors in humans

Jessica Leff — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 15:58:57 +0000

(BOSTON) — Drug development is an extremely arduous and costly process, and failure rates in clinical trials that test new drugs for their safety and efficacy in humans remain very high. According to current estimates, only 13.8% of all tested drugs demonstrate ultimate clinical success and obtain approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). There are also increasing ethical concerns…

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FcMBL: Broad-Spectrum Pathogen Capture for Infectious Disease Diagnosis and Therapy

admin — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 00:35:45 +0000

Infectious diseases have plagued humanity for millennia, and the pathogens that infect and sicken humans are constantly evolving. Severe infections can cause sepsis, a life-threatening condition in which a patient’s immune system overreacts to the infection. The body starts to attack itself, which can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death. Sepsis is very common – one out of every three…

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Renal reabsorption in living devices

Jessica Leff — Mon, 04 Mar 2019 19:57:05 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (CAMBRIDGE, Mass.) — Every day our kidneys tackle the daunting task of continuously cleaning our blood to prevent waste, salt and excess fluid from building up inside our bodies. To achieve this, the kidneys’ approximately one million filtration units (glomeruli) first remove both waste products and precious nutrients from the blood stream…

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Sasan Jalili-Firoozinezhad honored with 2018 Lush Young Researcher award

Jessica Leff — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 18:58:29 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — In a ceremony held in Berlin, Germany, Sasan Jalili-Firoozinezhad received a Young Researcher Award from the Lush Foundation for his project modeling injuries that result from ionizing radiation on a human intestine-on-a-chip (Intestine Chip). The Intestine Chip can be used to investigate potential countermeasure drugs that could be developed to treat and prevent…

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