Tag Archives: bioengineering

Injectable 3-D vaccines could fight cancer, infectious diseases

“We can create 3D structures using minimally-invasive delivery to enrich and activate a host’s immune cells to target and attack harmful cells in vivo,” said the study’s senior author David Mooney, Ph.D., who is a Wyss Institute Core Faculty member and the Robert P. Pinkas Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard SEAS. Tiny biodegradable rod-like structures made from silica, known as mesoporous silica rods (MSRs), can be loaded with biological and chemical drug components and then delivered by needle just underneath the skin. The rods spontaneously assemble at the vaccination site to form a three-dimensional scaffold, like pouring a box of matchsticks into a pile on a table…

Chemists recruit anthrax to deliver cancer drugs

“Anthrax toxin is a professional at delivering large enzymes into cells,” says Bradley Pentelute, the Pfizer-Laubauch Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry at MIT. “We wondered if we could render anthrax toxin nontoxic, and use it as a platform to deliver antibody drugs into cells.” In a paper appearing in the journal ChemBioChem, Pentelute and colleagues showed that they could use this disarmed version of the anthrax toxin to deliver two proteins known as antibody mimics, which can kill cancer cells by disrupting specific proteins inside the cells…

Directed evolution: Bioengineered decoy protein may stop cancer from spreading

This process, known as metastasis, can cause cancer to spread with deadly effect. “The majority of patients who succumb to cancer fall prey to metastatic forms of the disease,” said Jennifer Cochran, an associate professor of bioengineering who describes a new therapeutic approach in Nature Chemical Biology. Today doctors try to slow or stop metastasis with chemotherapy, but these treatments are unfortunately not very effective and have severe side effects…

Introducing the multi-tasking nanoparticle

“These are amazingly useful particles,” noted co-first author Yuanpei Li, a research faculty member in the Lam laboratory. “As a contrast agent, they make tumors easier to see on MRI and other scans…

Imaging system guides brain tumor removal to improve patient outcomes

The imaging system is known as desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI MS). The technique was developed by R. Graham Cooks, Ph.D., at Purdue University, and the brain study was done with collaborators at Harvard Medical School and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and is described in the June 30 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. DESI MS promises to be a significant improvement over the current method of distinguishing brain tumor tissue from healthy tissue, which relies on an extremely lengthy and difficult procedure for surgeons and patients…

Glutamine ratio is key ovarian cancer indicator — ScienceDaily

source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140505094215.htm

Brain tumor cells penetrated by tiny, degradable particles carrying genetic instructions — ScienceDaily

source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140429125819.htm

Mechanical forces driving breast cancer lead to key molecular discovery — ScienceDaily

source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327165948.htm

New imaging technique speeds removal of non-melanoma skin cancers — ScienceDaily

source : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140128113222.htm

Novel non-invasive therapy prevents breast cancer formation in mice

The therapy emerged from a sophisticated effort to reverse-engineer gene networks to identify genes that drive cancer. The same strategy could lead to many new therapies that disable cancer-causing genes no current drugs can stop, and it also can be used to find therapies for other diseases…