Non-profit biomedical research institute
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (pronounced "veese") is a cross-disciplinary research institute at Harvard University focused on bridging the gap between academia and industry (translational medicine) by drawing inspiration from nature's design principles to solve challenges in health care and the environment. It is focused on the field of biologically inspired engineering to be distinct from bioengineering and biomedical engineering. The institute also has a focus on applications, intellectual property generation, and commercialization.
The Wyss Institute is located in Boston's Longwood Medical Area and has 375 full-time staff. The Wyss is organized around eight focus areas, each of which integrate faculty, postdocs, fellows, and staff scientists. The focus areas are bioinspired therapeutics &amp; diagnostics, diagnostics accelerator, immuno-materials, living cellular devices, molecular robotics, 3D organ engineering, predictive bioanalytics and synthetic biology.
History.
In 2005, Harvard University established a faculty working group to envision the future of bioengineering. The group was called the Harvard Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (HIBIE), with the committee focused on synthetic biology, living materials, and biological control. HIBIE was co-chaired by Harvard professors Donald E. Ingber and David J. Mooney. In January 2009, institute was reformed into the Wyss Institute upon receiving a $125 million gift from Hansjörg Wyss. Ingber became the founding director of the Wyss Institute and David Mooney became a founding Core Faculty member, along with Professors Joanna Aizenberg, David A. Edwards, Kit Parker, George M. Whitesides, George Church, Ary Goldberger, William Shih, Robert Wood, James J. Collins, L. Mahadevan, Radhika Nagpal, and Pamela Silver.
In 2013, Hansjörg Wyss gave another $125 million to Harvard University, doubling his initial gift. The funding was used to further the institute's interdisciplinary research, which includes DNA engineering, cleaning toxins from blood, vibrating insoles to help older adults maintain balance, and a melanoma cancer vaccine. In 2019, Hansjörg Wyss donated a third gift of $131 million to the Wyss Institute. In 2020, the Wyss Institute and Northpond Ventures, a Maryland-based venture capital firm, created the Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation at the Wyss Institute. The $12 million funding supports research related to RNA therapies, genome engineering, and new drug delivery methods.
Within its first ten years, the institute also spun out 29 startup companies to commercialize Wyss Institute developments.
Scientific developments.
The institute was originally founded with fourteen faculty from Harvard University. The institute had around 40 scientists and engineers as a part of the Advanced Technology Team organized around six technology platforms and two cross-platform initiatives across the fields of adaptive material technologies, bioinspired soft robotics, biomimetic microsystems, immuno-materials, living cellular devices, molecular robotics, synthetic biology, and 3D organ engineering. The Wyss Institute has been responsible for a number of scientific developments and spinoffs.
Response to COVID.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wyss Institute was engaged in several notable efforts. This included the development of a diagnostic face mask that can detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the wearer's breath, and the application of the eRapid technology to detect the nucleic acids of the genome of SARS-CoV-2. The technology would be licensed by Antisoma Therapeutics as a point-of-care diagnostic test for COVID-19. The identification of undocumented nucleic acid contamination during routine experiments, which inadvertently caused false positives for COVID-19, led to the development of new safety protocols to protect researchers and ensure data integrity. New nasal swabs that could be manufactured quickly and more easily which launched the startup Rhinostics. Use of computational approaches and organ-chips to repurpose FDA-approved drugs like Amodiaquine to prevent or treat COVID-19.
References.
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