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Mice Don’t Menstruate: Reimagining Women’s Health Using Organ Chips with Dr. Donald Ingber
In this episode, host Sharon Kedar, Co-Founder of Northpond Ventures, is joined by Dr. Donald Ingber, Founding Director at Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Dr. Ingber’s commitment to following his passion has led him to countless medical and technological breakthroughs, including Organ Chip technology. These incredible chips recreate the structure and...
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Bridging science, engineering, and art: from mechanobiology to Human Organs-on-Chips
In this Marsilius Lecture, Wyss Founding Director Don Ingber shares his personal path from a serendipitous experience in an undergraduate art class that led to his discovery of how living cells are constructed using “tensegrity” architecture and how this contributed to the birth of the field of Mechanobiology to his more recent work on human...
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How do we make safer and more effective drugs?
Wyss researchers are using an ever-growing number of human tissue-mimicking Organ Chips to improve and accelerate the drug development process for a wide number of unmet diseases – and understand what causes them to erupt. More recently, they added a human Vagina Chip and personalized Barrett’s esophagus Chip to their arsenal, and created in vitro...
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Wyss Institute Brain Targeting Program
This animation explains how Wyss Institute researchers and their industry partners aim to identify novel transport targets and shuttle compounds to enable more effective delivery of drugs to the brain. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University.
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Interrogator: Human Organ-on-Chips
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...
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MORPH: A new soft material microfabrication process
What has the ability to move and show its colors, is made only of silicone rubber and manufactured at the millimeter scale? A soft robotic peacock spider. Researchers have combined three different manufacturing techniques to create a novel origami-inspired soft material microfabrication process that goes beyond what existing approaches can achieve at this small scale....
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Therapeutic Organ Engineering: Highlights From The 8th Annual Wyss Symposium
The 8th Annual Wyss International Symposium focused on innovations in therapeutic organ engineering, featuring diverse speakers doing exciting work in 3D organ engineering, materials fabrication, and vascular integration. This video highlights some of the themes discussed in their presentations as well as the advances that are leading to the ultimate goals of developing new approaches...
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8th Annual Wyss Institute Symposium: Therapeutic Organ Engineering
Screened just before the symposium opening, this animation artistically connects concepts of therapeutic organ engineering presented during the event. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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Podocyte Cells: Kidney-on-a-Chip
This video shows a 3-dimensional rendering of the glomerulus-on-a-chip with human stem cell-derived mature podocytes (in green) grown and differentiated in one channel (shown on top) and that extend their processes through the modeled glomerulus basement membrane towards glomerular vascular cells (in magenta) in the parallel running channel (shown on the bottom). Credit: Wyss Institute...
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ArtScience Talks @ Le Lab – Seeing Is Believing: Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines
Wyss Core Faculty member David Mooney presents a talk with Mary Mooney, titled Seeing Is Believing: Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines. Marshaling a patientÍs immune system to recognize and destroy cancerous cells is an exciting strategy to attack cancer, and this talk will explore materials that engage the immune system through science and artistic representation. Mary K....
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3D Printing Ceramic Foam
This video shows the 3D printing process that adds layer upon layer of the foam link to create a 3D porous ceramic honeycomb pattern. This new capability is an important step toward generating porous materials for lightweight structures, thermal insulation, tissue scaffolds and other applications. Credit: Lori Sanders
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3D Printed Heart-on-a-Chip
In this video, learn how Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS researchers have created a 3D-printed heart-on-a-chip that could lead to new customizable devices for short-term and long-term in vitro testing. Credit: Johan U. Lind (Disease Biophysics Group), Alex D. Valentine and Lori K. Sanders (Lewis Lab)/Harvard University
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Smoking Human Lung Small Airway-on-a-Chip
In this video, Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber and Technology Development Fellow Kambez Benam explain how the integrated smoking device mimics normal cigarette smoke exposure and how it can impact research into the causes of COPD and into new biomarkers and therapeutics. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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Bioprinting: The Kidney’s Proximal Tubules
In this video, see how the Wyss Institute team has advanced bioprinting to the point of being able to fabricate a functional subunit of a kidney. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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Disruptive: Mechanotherapeutics – From Drugs to Wearables
Mechanobiology reveals insights into how the body’s physical forces and mechanics impact development, physiological health, and prevention and treatment of disease. The emerging field of Mechanotherapeutics leverages these insights towards the development of new types of pharmaceuticals, drug delivery systems, engineered tissues, and wearable therapeutic devices that leverage physical forces or target mechanical signaling pathways...
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Disruptive: Putting Biofilms to Work
Biofilms are commonly known as the slime-producing bacterial communities sitting on stones in streams, dirty pipes and drains, or dental plaque. However, Wyss Core Faculty member Neel Joshi is putting to work the very properties that make biofilms effective nuisances or threats in our daily lives. In this episode of Disruptive, Joshi and postdoctoral fellow...
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Mechanotherapeutics: From Drugs to Wearables
The Wyss Institute’s 7th annual international symposium focused on advances in the field of Mechanobiology that have resulted in the development of new types of pharmaceuticals, drug delivery systems, engineered tissues, and wearable therapeutic devices that leverage physical forces or target mechanical signaling pathways as a core part of their mechanism of action. Organized by...
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Robobee: Saving Energy While in the Air
The RoboBee, pioneered at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, uses an electrode patch and a foam mount that absorbs shock to perch on surfaces and conserve energy in flight. Credit: Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS)
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3D Printing Metal in Midair
In this video, see the laser-assisted method developed by Wyss Core Faculty member Jennifer Lewis that allows metal to be 3D printed in midair. Credit: Lewis Lab / Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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Printing Vascular Tissue
Printing vessel vasculature is essential for sustaining functional living tissues. Until now, bioengineers have had difficulty building thick tissues, lacking a method to embed vascular networks. A 3D bioprinting method invented at the Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS embeds a grid of vasculature into thick tissue laden with human stem cells and connective matrix. Printed...
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4D Printing: Shapeshifting Architectures
A team at the Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS has developed a new microscale printing method to create transformable objects. These “4D-printed” objects go a step beyond 3D printing to incorporate a fourth dimension: time. The method was inspired by the way plants change shape over time in response to environmental stimuli. This orchid-shaped structure...
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Small Airway-on-a-Chip: Modeling COPD and Asthma
Development of new therapeutics for chronic lung diseases have been hindered by the inability to study them in vitro. To address this challenge, Wyss Institute researchers used their Organ-on-a-Chip technology to produce a microfluidic ‘human lung small airway-on-a-chip.’ The device, which is composed a clear rubber material, is lined by living Human lung small airway...
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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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Disruptive: Bioinspired Robotics (pt. 1)
Our bodies—and all living systems—accomplish tasks far more complex and dynamic than anything yet designed by humans. Many of the most advanced robots in use today are still far less sophisticated than ants that “self–organize” to build an ant hill, or termites that work together to build impressive, massive mounds in Africa. From insects in...
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Disruptive: Bioinspired Robotics (pt. 3)
Our bodies—and all living systems—accomplish tasks far more complex and dynamic than anything yet designed by humans. Many of the most advanced robots in use today are still far less sophisticated than ants that “self–organize” to build an ant hill, or termites that work together to build impressive, massive mounds in Africa. From insects in...
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Disruptive: Bioinspired Robotics (pt. 2)
Our bodies—and all living systems—accomplish tasks far more complex and dynamic than anything yet designed by humans. Many of the most advanced robots in use today are still far less sophisticated than ants that “self–organize” to build an ant hill, or termites that work together to build impressive, massive mounds in Africa. From insects in...
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Jumping on Water: Robotic Water Strider
In this video, watch how novel robotic insects developed by a team of Seoul National University and Harvard scientists can jump directly off water’s surface. The robots emulate the natural locomotion of water strider insects, which skim on and jump off the surface of water. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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Gastrointestinal Re-Programming
In this animation, see an example of how genetically engineered microbes being developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute could detect and treat a wide range of gastrointestinal illnesses and conditions. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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Human Organs-On-Chips
Wyss Institute researchers and a multidisciplinary team of collaborators have engineered microchips that recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of living human organs, including the lung, intestine, kidney, skin, bone marrow and blood-brain barrier. These microchips, called ‘organs-on-chips’, offer a potential alternative to traditional animal testing. Each individual organ-on-chip is composed of a clear flexible polymer...
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BIND Biofilm
In this video Wyss Institute Core Faculty member Neel Joshi and Postdoctoral Fellow Peter Nguyen describe how their protein engineering system called BIND (Biofilm-Integrated Nanofiber Display) could be used to redefine biofilms as large-scale production platforms for biomaterials that can be programmed to provide functions not possible with existing materials. An animation depicts how it...
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Kilobots: A Thousand-Robot Swarm
In this video, Kilobots self-assemble in a thousand-robot swarm. The algorithm developed by Wyss Institute Core Faculty member Radhika Nagpal that enables the swarm provides a valuable platform for testing future collective Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms. Credit: Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
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Self-Folding Robots
In this video, Wyss Institute Core Faculty member Rob Wood, who is also the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and SEAS Ph.D. student Sam Felton discuss their landmark achievement in robotics – getting a robot to assemble itself and walk away autonomously –...
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Soft Robotic Exosuit
In this video, Harvard faculty member Conor Walsh and members of his team explain how the biologically inspired Soft Exosuit targets enhancing the mobility of healthy individuals and restoring the mobility of those with physical disabilities. This research is partially funded by the National Science Foundation. Note: This technology is currently in the research and...
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Cyborg Microchip Medicine
This edition of Revolutions focuses on Cyborg Microchip Medicine. Dr Don Ingber, Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University is visiting Melbourne University and discussed this revolutionary research with Jon Faine.
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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. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard...
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Bone Marrow-on-a-Chip
Wyss Institute Founding Director Don Ingber, Postdoctoral Fellow Yu-suke Torisawa, and Researcher Catherine Spina explain how and why a they built bone marrow-on-a-chip, and how they got it to act like whole living marrow and manufacture blood cells. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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Tough Gel
A team at the Wyss Institute is honing a tough, rubbery hydrogel initially developed at Harvards School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The gel is 90 percent water, yet it stretches without breaking to more than 20 times its original length and recoils like rubber, the researchers first reported in Nature in 2012. In fact,...
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Shrinking Gel
When the temperature rises to just below body temperature, this biocompatible gel shrinks dramatically within minutes, bringing tooth-precursor cells (green) closer together. Credit: Basma Hashmi
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Bioprinting: Building in Blood Vessels
Building in blood vessels. Then they addressed a big challenge in tissue engineering: embedding 3D vascular networks. They developed a ‘fugitive’ ink that can easily be printed, then suctioned off to create open microchannels that can then be populated with blood-vessel-lining cells to allow blood to flow. Read more: wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/141 Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard...
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Bioprinting: Building with Bio-Inks
Building with bio-inks. Using their custom-built printer, the fugitive ink for the vasculature, and other biological inks containing extracellular matrix and human cells, the researchers printed a 3D tissue construct. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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Bioprinting: Building Intricate Structures
Building intricate structures. The team first designed a custom printer that can precisely co-print multiple materials in 3D to create intricate heterogeneous patterns. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University
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RoboBee: Controlled flight of a robotic insect
Inspired by the biology of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap at 120 times per second, robotic insects, or RoboBees, achieve vertical takeoff, hovering, and steering. The tiny robots flap their wings using piezoelectric actuators — strips of ceramic that expand and contract when an electric field is applied. Thin...
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Researchers mimic pulmonary edema in Lung-on-a-Chip
The Wyss Institute’s human breathing lung-on-a-chip, made using human lung and blood vessel cells, acts much like a lung in a human body. A vacuum re-creates the way the lungs physically expand and contract during breathing. As reported in Science Translational Medicine on November 7, 2012, Wyss researchers have now mimicked a human disease –...
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SLIPS
‘SLIPS’ technology, inspired by the slippery pitcher plant that repels almost every type of liquid and solid, is a unique approach to coating industrial and medical surfaces that is based on nano/microstructured porous material infused with a lubricating fluid. By locking in water and other fluids, SLIPS technology creates slick, exceptionally repellent and robust self-cleaning...
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SLIPS: Keeping Ice Away
What if we could design surfaces that prevent ice formation? ‘SLIPS’ technology, inspired by the slippery pitcher plant that repels almost every type of liquid and solid, is a unique approach to coating industrial and medical surfaces that is based on nano/microstructured porous material infused with a lubricating fluid. By locking in water and other...
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Introduction to Organs-on-a-Chip
What if we could test drugs without animal models? Wyss Institute researchers and a multidisciplinary team of collaborators have engineered microchips that recapitulate the microarchitecture and functions of living human organs, including the lung, intestine, kidney, skin, bone marrow and blood-brain barrier. These microchips, called ‘organs-on-chips’, offer a potential alternative to traditional animal testing. Each...
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Lung-on-a-Chip
Combining microfabrication techniques with modern tissue engineering, lung-on-a-chip offers a new in vitro approach to drug screening by mimicking the complicated mechanical and biochemical behaviors of a human lung. This extended version of the video includes our findings when we mimicked pulmonary edema on the chip. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University