June 2013 newsletter

June 2013 Give us feedback!   Please take a few seconds to answer four quick questions about our newsletter. We value your ideas and thoughts. Thank you!   News Highlights   Founding donor doubles gift An exciting surprise awaited the Wyss Institute community members who gathered to celebrate five years of Institute work in innovation, collaboration, and technology translation. Harvard University President Drew Faust announced that the Institute's founding donor, Hansjörg Wyss, doubled his initial gift of $125 million to $250 million. The new gift will help ensure the Institute's momentum as it pioneers the field of biologically inspired engineering and develops solutions to some of the world's greatest medical and environmental challenges. More... Printing tiny batteries A team led by Core Faculty member Jennifer Lewis, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was the first to use a 3D printer to make batteries, as reported in Advanced Materials and covered by news sites around the world. The lithium-ion microbatteries, each the size of a grain of sand, could be used to power tiny medical, robotic, and communications devices. More... A Fantastic Voyage The Institute's fourth annual symposium covered the latest bioinspired nanotherapeutics and diagnostics, and drew an energetic crowd of 400 clinicians, industry leaders, faculty, and students from 15 countries. The all-day event featured interactive presentations on targeted drug delivery, self-assembling nanomaterials, regenerative medicine and the challenges of translating such technologies to the commercial space. Presenters included Core Faculty members George Church, Don Ingber, Dave Mooney and Peng Yin; Noubar Afeyan (Flagship Ventures); Sangeeta Bhatia (MIT), Justin Hanes (Johns Hopkins University), and Samir Mitragotri (University of California, Santa Barbara). More... RoboBee takes flight Researchers led by Core Faculty member Rob Wood demonstrated the first controlled flight of the RoboBee, surmounting a decade of engineering challenges they encountered in designing such a small, sophisticated robot. The RoboBee weighs less than one-tenth of a gram and may one day assist in search-and-rescue missions. The landmark achievement, which was reported in Science, underscores the team's progress in unearthing an entire new landscape of meso-scale engineering capabilities. More... Technologies in the Pipeline   Good news and bad news on antibiotic resistance Core Faculty member Jim Collins and his team are hot on the trail of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and recently reported two major studies in one month about this serious public-health issue. In Nature, they revealed part of what makes these bacteria so tough to beat: viruses in the gut actually serve as allies by handing them genes that confer antibiotic resistance. That's the bad news. The good news, which Collins' team reported in Science Translational Medicine, is that treating bacteria with a silver compound boosts the efficacy of four existing antibiotics. These findings help pave the way toward new therapies for drug-resistant and recurrent infections. Wrinkles that we want Inspired by the wrinkling patterns that work various optical wonders in Nature, such as the iridescent cuticle of certain beetles and octopi that change color to avoid predators, Wyss Institute researchers led by Core Faculty member Joanna Aizenberg can now fine-tune the optical properties of a flexible polymer by applying varying degrees of mechanical strain. The results, reported in Advanced Optical Materials, could herald the development of new types of low-cost dynamic privacy screens, encryption devices, and smart window technologies. More... The Goldilocks of hydrogels? Scientists have been trying for years to design biocompatible materials that are "just right" for tissue-engineering applications -- flexible, not too hard to make, and stable enough to support cell growth. A team led by Associate Faculty member Ali Khademhosseini and Postdoctoral Fellow Nasim Annabi has designed a new hydrogel that may do the trick. It incorporates an elastic protein found in all human tissues, the team reported in dual publications in Biomaterials and Advanced Functional Materials. More... New moxie for microPADs Lab on a Chip Flowers assemble in beaker Science Growing bone from silicate nanoplatelets Out and About   Organs-on-chips: Triple play In May, Founding Director Don Ingber briefed the Congressional Biomedical Research Caucus in Washington, DC, about "Human Organs on Chips as Replacements for Animal Testing." In early June, Senior Staff Scientist Tony Bahinski discussed advances and potential pharmacology applications of organs-on-chips at the World Pharma Conference in Philadelphia. And on June 25, Senior Staff Scientist Geraldine Hamilton (shown here) presented the Institute's organs-on-chips technology at TEDx Boston. More... Exosuit on its way   The next technology wave   In the Media   Robodiptera: An insect-like robot…takes to air The Economist Artificial spleen offers hope for faster sepsis diagnosis and treatment MIT Technology Review Entrepreneur gives $125m to Harvard Boston Globe New tiny battery is a powerhouse for computers, robotics USA Today Real-life super-powered 'exosuit': Better, faster, stronger ... softer MSNBC Pin-Size Battery Printed in 3-D Scientific American Forget lab rats: testing asthma drugs on a microchip The Wall Street Journal 3D Printing Tiny Batteries For Tiny Robots, Medical Devices Forbes    More media coverage...           Awards and Distinctions   Complexity in the White House PhysioNet, an online resource for analyzing complex physiologic signals, was featured on the White House blog in a post called "Big Data is a Big Deal for Biomedical Research." This interdisciplinary team effort was spearheaded in part by Core Faculty member Ary Goldberger and Wyss Affiliate Madalena Damasio Costa. IEEE Technical Achievement Award Associate Faculty member Ali Khademhosseini was honored with the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society's 2013 Technical Achievement Award for "pioneering contributions at the interface between engineering, biomaterials and biological sciences, especially applications of micro- and nanoengineered biomaterials for regenerative medicine." More funding for DNA bricks Core Faculty member Peng Yin was awarded nearly $1 million by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to further his work on the self-assembly of complex structures from DNA bricks. The work holds great promise for the development of next-generation nanomachines for medicine, electronics, and more. Yin's group has demonstrated the ability to build shape-defined DNA structures in one (Science, 2008), two (Nature, 2012), and three dimensions (Science, 2012). Community   Institute inspires 8th graders Four 8th graders from the Mission Hill School were nominated to participate in weekly classes held by the Institute's advanced technology team members earlier this year. The Wyss was one of ten partners for this year's program, called Apprentice Learning, which offers students the opportunity to build practical skills and self-confidence while encouraging them to imagine future professional possibilities. More... Follow us...           You may unsubscribe from this newsletter and other Wyss Institute announcements at any time. To post an announcement in a future newsletter, contact Kristen Kusek. To view previous issues of this newsletter, visit our archive page

Hansjörg Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.