Wyss InstituteMicrobiome – Wyss Institute

Human cervix modeled in microfluidic organ chip fills key women’s health gap

Jessica Leff — Fri, 31 May 2024 14:55:29 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) has been identified as one of the many unmet needs in women’s health and affects more than 25% of reproductive-aged women. It is caused by pathogenic bacteria that push the healthy microbiomes in the female vagina and cervix – the small gatekeeper canal that connects the uteruns and vagina – into a state of imbalance known as dysbiosis.

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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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Atlantic Health Research Spotlight: Female-Reproductive-Tract Organ Chips for Women’s Health and Fertility Studies

Jessica Leff — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 19:34:29 +0000

Innovation has disrupted care as we know it. Challenges with access, complex diseases, and care delivery persist, but so do areas of opportunity for emerging tech and discoveries. The Atlantic explored gene editing, artificial intelligence, climate change, weight-loss and diabetes treatments, and more at their annual Health Summit. Wyss researchers Aakanksha Gulati, Ph.D., and Ola Gutzeit, Ph.D.

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Ola Gutzeit on Improving Fertility

Jessica Leff — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 13:54:21 +0000

The Humans of the Wyss (HOW) series features members of the Wyss community discussing their work, the influences that shape them as professionals, and their collaborations at the Wyss Institute and beyond. As a reproductive health specialist in the clinical setting, Ola Gutzeit discovered a lack of effective methods for enhancing fertility care. Driven by a constant desire to seek innovative…

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Probiotic pills packed with an unexpected punch

Jessica Leff — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 17:14:14 +0000

By Jessica Leff Elite athletes are as rare as centenarians: both groups make up about 0.01% of the human population. This begs the question: what is unique about these super performers/the super fit, and can we use that information to improve the health of all humans throughout their lifespan? That was the central idea behind the sports genomics project at the Wyss Institute…

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The Vagina Chip: A New Preclinical Model for Research on Vaginal Epithelium Microbiome Interactions

Jessica Leff — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 19:33:14 +0000

The Vagina Chip allows researchers to study a human model of the vaginal microbiome and develop new treatments for bacterial vaginosis and other conditions that threaten women’s health. Credit: Research Square…

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A breakthrough in bacterial vaginosis treatment for women’s health

Mariel Schoen — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 18:56:46 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell (BOSTON) — The human microbiome has been a hot topic over the last decade, with research pointing to disrupted bacterial communities as culprits for a host of maladies including irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, and autoimmune diseases. Most studies have focused on the microbiome within the human gut, but there is growing recognition that another oft-ignored bacterial…

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Andrés Cubillos-Ruiz on Making Antibiotics Safer for your Gut

Jessica Leff — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 16:01:50 +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. Andrés Cubillos-Ruiz has long been fascinated by the power of microbes. Before coming to the Wyss, he studied how ocean microbes maintain the whole ecosystem of the planet through their…

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DNA: From blueprint to blank slate

Jessica Leff — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:03:24 +0000

By Lindsay Brownell DNA has come a long way since it was first described in 1869 by Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher. So much so, in fact, that in 2003 the US Congress designated April 25th National DNA Day to commemorate the successful completion of the Human Genome Project that year, and the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure in 1953. Since then, DNA has become an incredibly valuable…

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Of mice and men and leveraging their different tolerance to pathogens

Jessica Leff — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 18:20:59 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Trillions of commensal microbes live on the mucosal and epidermal surfaces of the body and it is firmly established that this microbiome affects its host’s tolerance and sensitivity to a variety of pathogens. However, host tolerance to infection with pathogens is not equally developed in all organisms. For example, it is known that the gut microbiome of mice…

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