Wyss InstituteGene Circuits – Wyss Institute

Toward autonomous self-organizing biological robots with a nervous system

Mariel Schoen — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:30:42 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Biobots, whose growing line of variants started with Xenobots, are fascinating tiny self-powered living robots built exclusively using frog embryonic cells. Originally developed in the laboratories of Wyss Institute Associate Faculty member and Tufts University Professor Michael Levin, Ph.D. and his collaborators at University of Vermont…

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Wyss Institute-led collaboration awarded by ARPA-H PRINT program to engineer off-the-shelf, universal, transplant-ready graft for liver failure

Jessica Leff — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:55:47 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — The majority of human illnesses are caused by damage to a single organ, like the liver, whose failure accounts for 2M deaths worldwide every year. Orthotopic transplants are the only curative therapy available, but the severe shortage of donor organs, which are reserved for the most severe cases, leaves millions of patients without an accessible solution.

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DARPA-ABC program supports Wyss Institute-led collaboration toward deeper understanding of anesthesia and safe drugs enabling anesthesia without the need for extensive monitoring

Jessica Leff — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:55:41 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Currently, no anesthetic compound or cocktail can be used safely outside of a hospital facility. This is because current drugs impair the brain and central nervous system’s ability to regulate a number of vital processes, including respiration, body temperature, and heart rate in addition to creating a state of unconsciousness or sedation…

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Preventing pollution with bioinspired solutions

Jessica Leff — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 21:14:47 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell In honor of Pollution Prevention Week, we’re highlighting three Wyss projects that are taking on the formidable problems of PFAS and plastic – persistent and toxic pollutants that threaten the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or “forever chemicals,” are toxic substances that increase the risk of many health…

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Instrument-Free Molecular Diagnostics

Mariel Schoen — Wed, 01 May 2024 17:25:23 +0000

Molecular diagnostics is the fastest-growing segment of the global in vitro diagnostics market, but the vast majority of these tests require expensive equipment and supplies, limiting their use to medical facilities. There is a large unmet need for cheap, readily accessible, accurate diagnostic tests that can be deployed in non-clinical settings to address threats to public health…

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Engineered Live Biotherapeutic Product (eLBP) to Protect the Microbiome from Antibiotics

Jessica Leff — Wed, 01 May 2024 14:44:43 +0000

Antibiotics not only kill the pathogenic bacteria causing an infection, they also indiscriminately wreak havoc on the trillions of “good” bacteria making up the human microbiome. Known as “dysbiosis,” this alteration of our gut microbial composition manifests as discomforting diarrhea in up to 35% of patients in the short term, and can take months to resolve, often requiring dietary corrections…

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Paper-Based Diagnostics

admin — Wed, 01 May 2024 00:34:41 +0000

With the imminent threat of new pandemics and frequent disease outbreaks exemplified by the recent Ebola and Zika epidemics, there is a growing need for low-cost, easily deployable and simple-to-use diagnostic tools. The Wyss Institute has developed paper-based synthetic gene networks as a next generation diagnostic technology for use in global healthcare crises and patient care. This new type of…

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Solving Sustainability with Synthetic Biology

Mariel Schoen — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 12:58:58 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell As humans, we like to think that we are the smartest animals on planet Earth. After all, no other species has invented smartphones, heat pumps, or jet engines. But for all our innovations, we have also created problems on a global scale. Take plastic, for example. Humans invented plastic scarcely more than a century ago, but we now produce more than 350 million…

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Announcing the 2024 “Faculty Focus” List

Mariel Schoen — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 22:05:49 +0000

This year, we’re excited to announce our first-ever Wyss Faculty Focus list. We asked our world-class faculty which of their technologies they’re most excited about getting out of the lab and into the real world, and they’ve chosen the ones below. If you’re interested in collaborating, licensing, or otherwise getting involved with any of these technologies, please reach out to their respective…

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Aric Lu on Breaking Biology by Bioprinting Complex Tissue

Jessica Leff — Thu, 18 May 2023 15:06:04 +0000

The Humans of the Wyss (HOW) series features members of the Wyss community discussing their work, the influences that shape them as scientists, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and beyond. Like each cell in the body, each paddler in a dragon boat plays a specific role. In both cases, each has different characteristics and strengths, but all must work together in tandem for the…

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