Explore more about: Synthetic Biology

With an eye toward early disease detection, synthetic biology engineers at the University of Wisconsin have designed and engineered bacteria that find and detect fragments of DNA shed from infectious pathogens.

NIBIB has established the Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration—BETA Center, a new intramural research program to solve a range of medicine’s most pressing problems. The BETA Center will serve the wider NIH intramural research program as a biotechnology resource and catalyst for NIH research discoveries.

Two years ago, Sangeeta Bhatia and Christopher Chen founded a biotech company that on Wednesday officially launched as Satellite Bio in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company aims to translate the work of Bhatia, Chen and their cofounder Arnav Chhabra into "tissue therapeutics" — regenerative medicines built from bioengineered tissue structures, or "satellites," that can be implanted into patients. Source: BiopharmaDive

A Rice University bioengineer and her Brown School of Engineering team were awarded an NIH grant to create gene activity sensors and activators that hold unmatched potential for the treatment of infectious diseases, diabetes, genetic disorders, and cancer. Source: AZO Life Sciences

A change of instructions in a computer program directs the computer to execute a different command. Similarly, synthetic biologists are learning the rules for how to direct the activities of human cells.

Sickle cell disease leads to chronic pain, organ failure, and early death in patients worldwide. A team has demonstrated a gene editing approach that efficiently corrects the mutation underlying SCD in patient blood stem cells and in mice. This treatment rescued disease symptoms in animal models, enabling long-lasting production of healthy blood cells, and could inspire a therapeutic strategy for SCD.

Chase Cornelison's research at UMass Amherst explores the proliferating power of cancer cells to treat spinal cord injuries and restore function following brain damage, promising research that has earned an NIH Trailblazer Award. Source: News Medical.

Researchers have successfully used a DNA-editing technique to extend the lifespan of mice with the genetic variation associated with progeria, a rare genetic disease that causes extreme premature aging in children and can significantly shorten their life expectancy.

Research into what is known as the gut-brain axis continues to reveal how the brain and gut influence each other’s health and well-being. Now researchers are endeavoring to learn more about gut-brain discourse using a model system built in a lab dish.

Researchers have designed a more precise and versatile genome editing system, named prime editing, that harnesses the power of CRISPR-Cas9 in combination with another protein, reverse transcriptase, to directly edit DNA in human cells.