AIMBE
Fellowbook News
AIMBE Fellowbook collects news stories highlighting the members of the AIMBE College of Fellows. Read the latest stories, jump to the College Directory, or search below to find the newest research, awards, announcements and more for the leaders of the medical and biological engineering community.
Douglas Lauffenburger honored for contributions to biological engineering education
Douglas Lauffenburger | Via MIT | March 11, 2021Professors awarded the National Academy of Engineering’s prestigious Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education. The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has announced that two MIT professors have been jointly awarded the Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education, the most prestigious engineering education award in the […]
Viruses Mutate, But Treatments Are Static. Is There a Way to Change That?
Leor Weinberger | Via UCSF | March 11, 2021There is a big, global problem: viruses such as HIV and COVID-19 mutate, but treatments for them don’t. For more than 20 years, Leor Weinberger, PhD, has been thinking about how to make vaccines work more efficiently by being adaptive, rather than static. “We’re fighting biology with chemistry,” said Weinberger, director of the Gladstone Center […]
Adhesion, contractility enable metastatic cells to go against the grain
Adam Engler | Via UCSD | March 9, 2021Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University have discovered a key feature that allows cancer cells to break from typical cell behavior and migrate away from the stiffer tissue in a tumor, shedding light on the process of metastasis and offering possible new targets for cancer therapies. It has […]
Pericardial injection effective, less invasive way to get regenerative therapies to heart
Ke Cheng | Via NC State News | March 5, 2021Injecting hydrogels containing stem cell or exosome therapeutics directly into the pericardial cavity could be a less invasive, less costly, and more effective means of treating cardiac injury, according to new research from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Stem cell therapy holds promise as a way to […]
Immune Cell Profiles Reveal Cancer’s Leading Indicators
Garry Nolan | Via Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | March 4, 2021If you want to understand economics, study market crashes and depressions. If you want to understand immunology, study cancer. It is when systems are tottering on the brink of failure that you may observe stark differences between function and dysfunction. By seizing opportunities to see where systems go wrong, you may find ways to reverse […]
Olin President Gilda Barabino Named AAAS President-Elect
Gilda Barabino | Via Olin College of Engineering | March 3, 2021Gilda A. Barabino, Ph.D., President of Olin College of Engineering, has been selected as president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Barabino was elected as an AAAS Fellow in 2010 and has been a member of the organization since 1987. She began her term on Feb. 24. After serving for one year […]
LNP Delivers CRISPR Directly to Mouse Liver, Dramatically Cuts Cholesterol Levels for Months
Qiaobing Xu | Via Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | March 2, 2021Scientists at Tufts University and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT have developed a lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology that can package and deliver CRISPR gene editing machinery specifically to the liver. Their studies in mice demonstrated use of the LNP technology to shuttle CRISPR Cas9 mRNA and guide RNA directly to the liver, to […]
Scientists achieve milestone in animal-free production of biologics
Mattheos Koffas | Via Science Board | March 2, 2021For the first time, scientists have successfully produced sugar-based biologic molecules utilizing bacteria, without the need for animal products. The paper, published in Nature Communications on March 2, describes the production of a common designer polysaccharide, chondroitin sulfate (CS). Sulfated glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are linear polysaccharides consisting of repeating disaccharide units composed of N-acetylhexosamine and uronic […]
Purigen Simplifies Simultaneous Extraction and Purification of DNA and RNA from Challenging FFPE Samples
Juan Santiago | Via Business Wire | March 2, 2021Purigen Biosystems, Inc., a leading provider of next-generation technologies for extracting and purifying nucleic acids from biological samples, today announced the launch of the Ionic® FFPE Complete Purification Kit. Scientists are now able to consistently recover both DNA and RNA (mRNA and miRNA) simultaneously from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples in a single workflow. Purigen […]
Scientists achieve milestone in animal-free production of biologics
Jonathan Dordick | Via Science Board | March 2, 2021For the first time, scientists have successfully produced sugar-based biologic molecules utilizing bacteria, without the need for animal products. The paper, published in Nature Communications on March 2, describes the production of a common designer polysaccharide, chondroitin sulfate (CS). Sulfated glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are linear polysaccharides consisting of repeating disaccharide units composed of N-acetylhexosamine and uronic […]
Doppler Used in Novel Microbial Assay To Tell a Friend from a Foe
Michael Ladisch | Via Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | March 2, 2021You must have noticed the sudden change in pitch of a siren on a police car zooming past. That’s the Doppler effect. Scientists at Purdue University have now used the Doppler effect to look inside living cells in a novel approach to detect pathogens and treat infections. In this unique method, Doppler is used to […]
Kidney-on-a-chip offers clues to prevent kidney damage from essential drugs
Yaakov Nahmias | Via Medical Xpress | March 2, 2021There are 1.5 million cases of drug-induced kidney toxicity each year in the U.S. Among the usual suspects are cyclosporin and cisplatin, a pair of widely used chemotherapy drugs. Because both are considered lifesaving therapies, research into mitigating the kidney damage they cause is vital to improving treatment for cancer patients. Using a kidney-specific tissue-on-a-chip […]
Predicting microbial interactions in the human gut
Sergei Maslov | Via Illinois IGB | March 1, 2021The human gut consists of a complex community of microbes that consume and secrete hundreds of small molecules—a phenomenon called cross-feeding. However, it is challenging to study these processes experimentally. A new study, published in Nature Communications, uses models to predict cross-feeding interactions between microbial species in the gut. Predictions from such computational methods could […]
Macrophages of the Human Eye Come into Focus
Dan Hammer | Via The Scientist | March 1, 2021Staring at her images of neurons in living humans’ eyes, Zhuolin Liu got an inkling that she could also see traces of another cell type on the surface of the retina. The images came from a study completed as part of her postdoctoral research at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington, and though the focus of that […]
Tissue-engineered implants provide new hope for vocal injuries
Sherry Harbin | Via Purdue University | February 23, 2021New technology from Purdue University and Indiana University School of Medicine innovators may one day help patients who suffer devastating vocal injuries from surgery on the larynx. A collaborative team consisting of Purdue biomedical engineers and clinicians from IU has tissue-engineered component tissue replacements that support reconstruction of the larynx. The team’s work is published […]
Gut Microbiome Uniqueness May Predict Healthy Aging and Lifespan in Older People
Nathan Price | Via Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | February 22, 2021Researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle have identified distinct signatures in the human gut microbiome that are associated with either healthy or unhealthy aging trajectories, and which in turn could help to predict survival in a population of older individuals. The team’s combined analysis of gut microbiome, phenotypic, and clinical data […]
Thomas H. Epps III and Lashanda Korley Have Teamed up to Envision a More Sustainable Plastics Industry
Thomas Epps | Via Chemical & Engineering News | February 22, 2021Thomas H. Epps III and LaShanda Korley can’t seem to escape each other’s gravity. The two polymer scientists first met at a conference more than 2 decades ago, as students. Soon after, they each emerged as rising stars in the field of soft matter. Epps, an expert in synthesis and nanoscale assembly, joined the faculty […]
Frequency Therapeutics Announces Publication of Phase 1/2 Data Showing Hearing Improvements in Acquired Sensorineural Hearing Loss Patients Receiving FX-322
David Lucchino | Via Frequency Therapeutics | February 22, 2021Frequency Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: FREQ), a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on harnessing the body’s innate biology to repair or reverse damage caused by a broad range of degenerative diseases, today announced the publication of its FX-322 Phase 1/2 study results in Otology & Neurotology, a leading peer-reviewed journal focused on disorders of the ear. The […]
AIMBE Fellow, Peter Basser, Won the Prestigious Eduard Rhein Technology Award
Peter Basser | Via Eduard Rhein Stiftung | February 20, 2021Following unanimous proposals by the Board of Trustees and the jury, the Board decided to award Prof. Koblitz, Ph.D. and Mr. Victor S. Miller, Ph.D. with the Technology Award 2020 and Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen with the Culture Award 2020, and Prof. Denis LE BIHAN, MD, PhD and Mr. Peter J. Basser, Ph.D. with the […]