Wyss InstituteMicrofabrication – Wyss Institute

Wyss Institute Core Faculty member Christopher S. Chen elected to the National Academy of Medicine

Jessica Leff — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 13:28:06 +0000

By Alexandra Jirstrand (BOSTON) — Christopher S. Chen, M.D., Ph.D., Core Faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and the William F. Warren Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine.

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Passive Directional Valve Technology: Towards More User-friendly and Accessible Microfluidic Devices for Diagnostic and Research Applications

Jessica Leff — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 17:42:46 +0000

Automated fluid-transporting and processing systems that function on the scale of micrometers (microfluidic systems) are becoming increasingly important for advancing various diagnostic, drug fabrication and delivery, and tissue engineering applications. Efforts to create smaller microfluidic devices with functionalities realized at larger scales rely heavily on valves to enable the regulated…

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Manufacturing Mini Surgical Robots

Jessica Leff — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 15:29:21 +0000

Surgical robots have revolutionized procedures for patients around the world, making them more precise and less invasive than earlier tools. But most surgical robots are massive devices that can take up an entire room and cost millions of dollars. And the surgical tools themselves that enter the patient’s body are currently too large to access certain organs and tissues.

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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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Microrobotic Laser-Steering Medical Device for Minimally Invasive Surgery

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 04:59:00 +0000

Endoscopy has proven extremely useful in many areas of medicine because it can be carried out with relatively few risks in a short time, and be used to diagnose and treat numerous diseases. In gastroenterology, endoscopies of the upper gastrointestinal tract (esophagus, stomach, first part of the small intestine; upper GI endoscopies) and lower gastrointestinal tract (small intestine…

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A Laser Steering Device for Robot-Assisted Surgery

Jessica Leff — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 18:58:55 +0000

Responding to an unmet need for a robotic surgical device that is flexible enough to access hard to reach areas of the G.I. tract while causing minimal peripheral tissue damage, Researchers at the Wyss Institute and Harvard SEAS have developed a laser steering device that has the potential to improve surgical outcomes for patients. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University…

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Wielding a laser beam deep inside the body

Jessica Leff — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 18:58:36 +0000

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Minimally invasive surgeries in which surgeons gain access to internal tissues through natural orifices or small external excisions are common practice in medicine. They are performed for problems as diverse as delivering stents through catheters, treating abdominal complications, and performing transnasal operations at the skull base in patients with neurological…

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Low-Cost Tactile Displays for the Blind and Visually Impaired

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 22:18:05 +0000

Age-related medical conditions are responsible for most cases of blindness and visual impairment worldwide. In 2015, there were an estimated 36 million blind people in the world, with an additional 217 million suffering from moderate to severe vision impairment. Over 80% of the visually impaired were older than 50, and this percentage is expected to rise due to a globally aging population.

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Interrogator: Human Organ-on-Chips

Jessica Leff — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 16:00:40 +0000

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 in long-term studies.

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Human Body-on-Chip platform enables in vitro prediction of drug behaviors in humans

Jessica Leff — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 15:58:57 +0000

(BOSTON) — Drug development is an extremely arduous and costly process, and failure rates in clinical trials that test new drugs for their safety and efficacy in humans remain very high. According to current estimates, only 13.8% of all tested drugs demonstrate ultimate clinical success and obtain approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). There are also increasing ethical concerns…

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