MIT News December 10, 2021 One of the obstacles to developing “living biotherapeutics” is that many of the species that could be beneficial are harmed by oxygen, making it difficult to manufacture, store, and deliver them. Researchers at MIT have shown that they can protect those bacteria with a coating that helps them to survive the manufacturing process. They developed a self-assembling cellular coating to improve the viability and stability of the next generation biotherapeutic Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron. They have demonstrated protection from both harsh processing conditions and oxygen exposure, even in the absence of canonical cryoprotectants. According to the researchers […]
Tag Archives: Therapeutics
The most promising strategies for defeating coronavirus: A review study
EurekAlert April 24, 2020 To help focus the global search for a treatment, researchers at the University of North Carolina provide a comprehensive resource of possible lines of attack against SARS-Cov-2 and related coronaviruses, including the results from all preclinical and clinical trials so far on vaccines against SARS and MERS. They discuss one-by-one the possible strategies against the coronavirus. Among most effective are vaccines. The most successful are likely to carry the Receptor Binding Domain (of the virus’s S-protein), which allows it to bind to and fuse with host cells. The authors discuss a range of options from fusion […]
“Living drug factories” might treat diabetes and other diseases
MIT News March 30, 2020 To have a living drug factory that you can implant cells in patients, which could secrete drugs as-needed a team of researchers in the US (MIT, Boston Children’s Hospital, Joslin Diabetes Center, UMass Worcester) devised a way to protect the transplanted cells from the immune system by housing them inside a device built out of a silicon-based elastomer (polydimethylsiloxane) and a special porous membrane. The device contains a porous membrane that allows the transplanted cells to obtain nutrients and oxygen from the bloodstream but the pores are small enough so that immune cells such as […]