Technology Area: Cell Therapy

Technologies 5

• 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...
• T cell traps
  T cells, a subtype of white blood cells, play key roles in cell-mediated immunity, be it to fight infections and cancer or, when corrupted, to react against the body’s own cells in more than 80 autoimmune diseases, including type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and others. However, isolating disease-related T cells from the body...
• A broad strategy to reduce the toxicity of protein drugs
  Therapeutic variants of the natural hormone erythropoietin (EPO) which is produced in the kidney to boost the production of red blood cells are commonly used to treat anemias stemming from kidney disease, chemotherapy and other complications. However, many drugs that are based on therapeutic proteins, including EPO, often cause unwanted side effects because they not...
• Implantable cancer vaccine
  The Wyss Institute’s implantable, biodegradable cancer vaccine leverages immunotherapeutic methods and could one day help overcome melanoma, other cancers, infectious diseases, auto-immune diseases, as well as vaccinate against specific peptides, proteins, or antigens. The implant is a biodegradable polymer scaffold containing growth factors and components of each patient’s tumors. The technology was initially designed to...
• Injectable Hydrogels for Better Drug Delivery
  Wyss researchers have developed a new approach to delivering drugs and therapeutic cells using biocompatible and biodegradable hydrogels made of alginate, a naturally occurring polysaccharide from brown algae. Injectable hydrogels could greatly improve clinical ability to provide extended drug release and controlled delivery throughout the body or at targeted local sites.  The method holds promising...

News 43

View all

• 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
• Community Seeing Is Believing: Therapeutic Cancer Vaccines
  April 5, 2017

Multimedia 3

• 

  Video/Animation
  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...

• 

  Video/Animation
  Cas9: As a Transcriptional Activator
  In this technical animation, Wyss Institute researchers instruct how they engineered a Cas9 protein to create a powerful and robust tool for activating gene expression. The novel method enables Cas9 to switch a gene from off to on and has the potential to precisely induce on-command expression of any of the countless genes in the...

• 

  Video/Animation
  Gene Editing Mechanism of CRISPR-Cas9
  In this animation, learn how CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology can be used to precisely disrupt and modify specific genes. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University.