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Technologies 6

• Engineering organoids to recapitulate brain tissue
  The ability to derive and manipulate pluripotent stem cells has opened up new avenues for modeling biological systems in both healthy and diseased conditions. In order to more fully recapitulate the tissue microenvironment with its cell-cell, cell-extracellular matrix, and cell-niche interactions, it is essential to transition stem-cell culturing from monolayers to 3D structures. Self-organization of...
• Regenerating heart valves
  The human heart beats approximately 35 million times every year, pumping blood into the circulation via four different heart valves. In more than four million people each year, heart valves fail for different reasons, including birth defects, age-related deteriorations and infections. At present, clinicians use either artificial prostheses or fixed animal and cadaver-sourced tissue to...
• Ultra-Strong Flexible Biomaterials
  Hydrogels are already being developed for use as scaffolds for tissue engineering, vehicles for drug delivery, actuators for optics and fluidics, and models for biological studies of tissue-supporting material called the extracellular matrix. But these water-rich polymer gels are weak; they rupture if stretched just a little, and they break easily compared with resilient biological...
• Human Organs-on-Chips
  Clinical studies take years to complete and testing a single compound can cost more than $2 billion. Meanwhile, innumerable animal lives are lost, and the process often fails to predict human responses because traditional animal models often do not accurately mimic human pathophysiology. For these reasons, there is a broad need for alternative ways to...
• 4D Printing of Shapeshifting Devices
  Organisms, such as flowers and plants, have tissue compositions and microstructures creating dynamic morphologies that can shapeshift in response to changes in their environments. Researchers at the Wyss Institute have mimicked a variety of such dynamic shape changes like those performed by tendrils, leaves, and flowers in response to changes in humidity or temperature with...
• 3D Bioprinting of Living Tissues
  Progress in drug testing and regenerative medicine could greatly benefit from laboratory-engineered human tissues built of a variety of cell types with precise 3D architecture. But production of greater than millimeter sized human tissues has been limited by a lack of methods for building tissues with embedded life-sustaining vascular networks. In this video, the Wyss...

News 61

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• Press Release Wyss Institute’s Organ Chips get smart and go electric
  June 14, 2017
• Press Release Engineering heart valves for the many
  May 18, 2017
• Press Release Engineering human stem cells to model the kidney’s filtration barrier on a chip
  May 10, 2017

Multimedia 17

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  Video/Animation
  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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  Video/Animation
  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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  Video/Animation
  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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  Video/Animation
  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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  Video/Animation
  MeTro Hydrogels
  An international team led by the Wyss Institute recently used microfabrication techniques to design a new micropatterned hydrogel that shows great promise for tissue engineering — cardiac tissue in particular. It incorporates an elastic protein called tropoelastin, which is found in all elastic human tissues. The Wyss Institute’s Ali Khademhosseini discusses the research. Credit: Wyss...

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  Video/Animation
  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