Grantee News

In a new study published in Science Translational Medicine, researchers demonstrated that human kidney organoids are useful models to identify the point of permanent and reversible kidney cell damage and they also discovered a drug candidate that could potentially prevent chronic disease before reaching that point. Read more at STAT.

Ultrasound scans, best known for monitoring pregnancies or imaging organs, can also be used to stimulate cells and direct cell function. A team of Penn State researchers has developed an easier, more effective way to harness the technology for biomedical applications.

A newly designed wearable magnetic metamaterial, developed by NIBIB-funded researchers, could help make MRI scans crisper, faster, and cheaper.

The University of Illinois Chicago College of Engineering and College of Education have received a federal grant to continue a summer biomedical engineering program that has trained 27 Chicago Public Schools science teachers over the last five years. The five-year grant from NIBIB was awarded in January to continue funding the Biomedical Engineering Experience for Science Teachers program.

A robot has performed laparoscopic surgery on the soft tissue of a pig without the guiding hand of a human—a significant step toward fully automated surgery on humans. Designed by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, or STAR. Source: ed today in Science Robotics.

Mammoth Biosciences has secured an emergency authorization from the FDA for its high-throughput COVID-19 test, which is powered by CRISPR gene-editing enzymes.

Fluidigm, "the South San Francisco-based company, which landed NIH money in a Shark Tank-style program for Covid-19 testing, announced that it will take on an investment worth $250 million from Casdin Capital and Viking Global investors, ". The company "will also rebrand, and call itself Standard BioTools.

Siemens Healthineers AG will supply 50 million rapid Covid-19 test kits as part of President Joe Biden‘s push to deliver 1 billion free at-home tests to Americans, the Defense Department said.

A new study shows how the brown anole lizard solves one of nature's most complex problems -- breathing -- with ultimate simplicity. Whereas human lungs develop over months and years into baroque tree-like structures, the anole lung develops in just a few days into crude lobes covered with bulbous protuberances. These gourd-like structures, while far less refined, allow the lizard to exchange oxygen for waste gases just as human lungs do. And because they grow quickly by leveraging simple mechanical processes, anole lungs provide new inspiration for engineers designing advanced biotechnologies.

As our brains age, small lesions begin to pop up in the bundles of white matter that carry messages between our neurons. The lesions can damage this white matter and lead to cognitive deficits. Now, researchers not only provide an explanation for the location of these lesions but also how they develop in the first place.