Biologically Inspired Engineering, synbio, synthetic biology, crispr
Staff 
In December, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved olaparib (Lynparza) for the maintenance treatment of adult patients with germline BRCA-mutated metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma whose disease has not progressed on at least 16 weeks of a first-line platinum-based chemotherapy regimen, according to AstraZeneca and Merck. The agent is now the only PARP inhibitor approved for … Read more
The rapid advances over the past few decades in biotechnologies involving somatic cells and gene therapy offer a great potential in regenerative medicine and for the treatment of genetic defects. These advances require an understanding of scientific principles as well as ethical and societal implications before these technologies can be clinically applicable. Somatic Nuclear Transfer … Read more
Last year, leaders from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wrote about America’s leadership in the area of synthetic biology. Here is what they said: Scientific advances in biotechnology, such as genome editing and synthetic biology, hold enormous potential to improve human and animal health, animal welfare, and food security. And researchers and companies based … Read more
Imagine storing digital data in DNA, wearing a device that makes you smarter or creating new materials using synthetic biology by manipulating the genes of microbes. These ideas may sound like science fiction, but scientists are working on technologies that combine what they know about biology and altering it with the help of artificial intelligence. … Read more
George McDonald Church is an American-born geneticist, molecular engineer, and chemist. He is currently the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. As of March 2017, Church serves as a member … Read more
Yeast is used to make foods like beer and bread. Now, synthetic biology turns yeast into medical diagnoses. Using only baker’s yeast, filter paper and a 3-D printed holder, researchers at Columbia University designed an inexpensive, on-the-spot test to detect major fungal pathogens. Diagnosing fungal infections, which kill 2 million people each year and cost … Read more
Policies regulating biotechnology are slow to adapt to the fast-evolving innovation of genetic engineering. originally published June 30, 2016 by Brooke Borel In 2015, a plant pathologist at Pennsylvania State University successfully used new gene editing technology to delete a relatively small bit of DNA from the genome of a white button mushroom. The result: … Read more