Press monitoring
Bionic algae barrel through blood to deliver drugs
8.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Swimming algae have been enlisted to carry drugs to individual cells, raising the prospect that such ‘microswimmers’ could deliver targeted therapies. Miniscule devices propelled by living organisms can ‘swim’ through the body to deliver cargo such as doses of drugs. A variety of organisms have been joined with artificial structures to treat some...
Japan set to allow gene editing in human embryos
5.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Japan has issued draft guidelines that allow the use of gene-editing tools in human embryos. The proposal was released by an expert panel representing the country’s health and science ministries on 28 September. Although the country regulates the use of human embryos for research, there have been no specific guidelines on using tools such as...
Microbial spacesuits help bacteria convert CO2 to useful chemicals
3.10.2018 | Press monitoring
Bacteria have been found living in some pretty hostile environments, but they're not invincible. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have now developed "spacesuits" that wrap around bacteria to not only protect them from the elements, but turn them into biohybrids that capture carbon dioxide and turn it into useful...
Commandeering microbes pave way for synthetic biology in military environments
1.10.2018 | Press monitoring
A team of scientists from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed and demonstrated a pioneering synthetic biology tool to deliver DNA programming into a broad range of bacteria. "Much of the current work in synthetic biology has used a small number of domesticated microbes, including E. coli...
Chemotherapy hydrogel could fight skin cancer from the outside
28.9.2018 | Press monitoring
Skin cancer might seem like the easiest cancer to deal with – after all, it's right there on the outside of the body, so removing it should be simple and safe, right? Unsurprisingly the reality is not so simple and treatment often still requires chemotherapy, which is delivered intravenously and can cause a whole range of unpleasant side...
Zika and yellow fever-vaccines without eggs
26.9.2018 | Press monitoring
A team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems in Magdeburg is developing methods with which viruses for vaccines can be replicated in significantly higher concentrations than before. The researchers produce the pathogens in cell cultures in small bioreactors. The production of vaccines currently...
Mosquitoes that can carry malaria eliminated in lab experiments
24.9.2018 | Press monitoring
The team from Imperial College London were able to crash caged populations of the malaria vector mosquito Anopheles gambiae in only 7-11 generations. This is the first time experiments have been able to completely block the reproductive capacity of a complex organism in the laboratory using a designer molecular approach. The technique, called...
Scientists grow human esophagus in lab
21.9.2018 | Press monitoring
Scientists working to bioengineer the entire human gastrointestinal system in a laboratory now report using pluripotent stem cells to grow human esophageal organoids. The study is the latest advancement from researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM). The center is developing new ways to study...
Nitrogen fixation engineering in cereal crops moves a step closer
19.9.2018 | Press monitoring
One of the major factors that limit crop growth is the availability of nitrogen, but only bacteria and other single-celled microbes called archaea can take nitrogen from the air and fix it into a form that can be used by plants. The process carried out by these microbes is known as biological nitrogen fixation. Legumes obtain nitrogen from...
Using biosensors to deliver personalized doses of antibiotics
17.9.2018 | Press monitoring
At EPFL's Discovery Learning Labs (DLL) – educational facilities designed to promote cross-disciplinary research – a groundbreaking new device is in the works. Eight Master's students in microengineering, bioengineering and life sciences have teamed up (SenSwiss) to develop a portable biosensor as their entry in the SensUs competition, which is...
