Focus Area: Bioinspired Therapeutics & Diagnostics
270 Results for 'Bioinspired Therapeutics & Diagnostics'
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Technologies 20
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wFDCF Face Masks: A Wearable COVID-19 Diagnostic
The Problem The COVID-19 pandemic has made it starkly clear that the world lacks rapid, accurate diagnostic tests for pathogens. When patients arrive in a medical facility for treatment, the triage process is hindered by diagnostic tests that are inaccurate or take a long time to produce results. In addition, patients who are asymptomatic and... -
Broad-Spectrum RNA Therapeutic for COVID-19 and Influenza
The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than two million people worldwide and death tolls continue to mount due to the lack of an effective prevention, cure, or widespread vaccine for the disease. Influenza viruses have been even more deadly in the past, and still cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. Seasonal flu vaccines... -
Cellular “Backpacks” to Slow Tumor Growth
Macrophages are the body’s multipurpose defense agents, patrolling for pathogens and engulfing cellular debris, foreign substances, microbes, and even cancer cells. But cancerous tumors have evolved an insidious defense mechanism: they can switch arriving macrophages from an anti-cancer state to a pro-cancer state, in which they help promote the tumor’s growth. As a result, attempts... -
Using Systems Biology to Find and Test New Drugs Faster
The pharmaceutical industry is infamous for big numbers: it takes 10-15 years and can cost over $2 billion to bring a new drug from the lab to the market. Up to 6 of those years and $1 billion are spent in laborious preclinical trials to identify and validate new potential drug compounds, and much of... -
eRapid: Multiplexed Electrochemical Sensors for Fast, Accurate, Portable Diagnostics
Handheld electrochemical sensors have revolutionized at-home medical testing for diabetics, but they have not yet been successfully applied to diagnosing other conditions. These sensors are based on the activity of an enzyme, and there are only a limited number of enzymes that can be used to detect biomarkers of human disease. An alternative, much more... -
FcMBL: Broad-Spectrum Pathogen Capture for Infectious Diseases
Microbial infection is the cause of life-threatening cases of sepsis, meningitis and multiple other diseases that are major causes of death world-wide. Equally prevalent are pathogenic contaminants in our environment, food, and manufacturing processes. In each case, the presence of dangerous microbes must be confirmed, and when they are found, they need to be removed,...
Collaborations 1
Brain Targeting ProgramNews 191
Multimedia 58
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Video/AnimationBeating Back the Coronavirus – Nasal swabsEarly in the COVID-19 pandemic, Nasopharyngeal swabs or nasal swabs, used to collect mucus samples to test for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, were in short supply. This created a bottleneck in diagnostics, hampering our ability to control the pandemic. To respond to this need, an interdisciplinary team at the Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School collaborated... -
Video/AnimationInnovation Showcase – Wyss Institute: Wearable Technology with BiosensorsJay Sugarman talks with Peter Nguyen Ph.D., Luis Soenksen, Ph.D., and Nina Donghia–all of whom are associated with the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. They’re on Innovation Showcase to inform viewers about the groundbreaking research they and their colleagues have been involved with related to the development of wearable technology as...
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Audio/PodcastTalking Biotech: COVID-19 Detection Masks and WearablesCOVID-19 is the spectrum of pathologies caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus. While the pandemic moves well into its second year, the importance of detection in populations cannot be overstated. However, testing methods typically include visiting testing centers, and it is hard to find a test that is both rapid and precise. Wyss Research Scientist Dr.... -
Video/AnimationMucus Layer In Vitro on Human Colon ChipUsing 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... -
Video/AnimationBeating Back the Coronavirus – COVID-19 detecting face maskUsing freeze-dried cell free reactions and CRISPR-based biosensors, researchers at the Wyss Institute and M.I.T. have created a face mask that can detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a wearer’s breath in under 90 minutes. Such a mask would allow medical professionals to quickly identify COVID-19 patients and begin effective treatments. This facemask is a proof-of-concept... -
Video/AnimationWearable Synthetic Biology – Clothing that can detect pathogens and toxinsWhat if we could create clothing that harnesses synthetic biology to detect the wearer’s exposure to toxins and pathogens? A team of researchers at the Wyss Institute and M.I.T. did just that byembedding freeze-dried, synthetic biology-based sensors into flexible materials and textiles. These sensors can detect pathogens such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus and toxins such...