Category Archives: BioEngineering

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China is rapidly gaining on the United States when it comes to creating technology that mitigates disease threats and developing pharmaceuticals faster, and its a phenomenon driven by a philosophy that the state, military, and the private sector are one in the same.

That was the testimony of Tara J. OToole, senior fellow and executive vice president at In-Q-Tel, before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. The hearing, Biological Threats to U.S. National Security, examined everything from Chinas push to develop biotechnology infrastructure to luring research scientists away from the United States to work in China.

China has said repeatedly and forcefully, and theyre backing up their words with actions, that they intend to own the biorevolution, OToole said. And they are building the infrastructure, the talent pipeline, the regulatory system, and the financial system they need to do that.

China is partly accomplishing this by combining its internet giants, such as Alibaba, with its biotech companies. The combined strength of these companies research focuses on the industrialization of artificial intelligence in which China is institutionalizing it whereas the United States is only experimenting with it, OToole added.

Chinas goal is to make biotechnology 5 percent of the countrys GDP by 2020. China has changed regulations for its own version of the Food and Drug Administration to be more like that of the United States in order to more easily market to the world. The country has created a talent pipeline that incentivizes its own students to go into the life sciences and bioengineering. China also has at least 20 programs intended to bring scientific talent from the rest of the world.

There are good reasons China is going after the biorevolution: it has the highest incidences of cancer on earth and the population is aging. It also must find an affordable way to deliver health care to a rising middle class.

And China is delivering health care to the world. The country is the largest producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients. However, reliance on foreign pharmaceuticals has national security implications. As many as 80 to 100 percent of critical drugs are manufactured outside the United States. U.S Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) told the committee that following the 2001 anthrax attacks, the U.S. was dependent on a single foreign source for a broad-spectrum antibiotic to treat anthrax.

To what extent is the U.S. reliant on foreign sources for key drug products and medical supplies such as syringes and needles and other critical medical supplies that we would need to respond to a biological attack today? Peters asked the panel of experts.

The United States is critically dependent on China for several drugs and has been shipping manufacturing capacity to Asia for more than a decade.

There isnt a CEO of a major pharma company that hasnt been recruited by China to build facilities there, OToole said.

To address the drug supply chain, the United States has begun exploring the possibility of using synthetic biology to make active pharmaceutical ingredients, especially in response to epidemics.

If there were a natural pandemic in which the entire world needed drugs, Im sure China, as we would, take care of its own people first. Yet, we dont have the surge capacity to produce enough very common, well-used medicine in time to deal with an epidemic, OToole said.

Thomas Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the committee that the U.S. treats medicines too much like commodities that can be sourced for the lowest price somewhere in the world.

In a crisis, everyone in every part of the world would be looking for medicine at the same time, Inglesby said. There should be at least a strategic examination of the kinds of things we must have, and we should consider how to bring some of those medicines back to the U.S. Obviously that cant be done with all medicines. Were an interconnected world. But for national health crises, we should be thinking about making them here.

Part of the problem is that the United States has not done a good job at translating biology to products, OToole said, or building infrastructure for securing and promoting the bioeconomy. Our translational infrastructure for biology is mostly coming from small start-up companies in the private sector, which are the innovation engines for biology, but do not provide the robust infrastructure to manage epidemics, whether deliberate or natural.

The experts made the following recommendations:

* Take on synthetic biology as a national security priority;* Use the National Defense Education Act to improve access to stem education and establish greater scientific careers within the U.S. government;* The contingency fund levels for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID should be increased and sustained;* Support and strengthen the militarys infectious disease research laboratories;* Provide strong, coherent leadership at the National Security Council essential for guaranteeing effective oversight, long before a crisis emerges;* The U.S. Department of Agriculture should prioritize stronger crop surveillance, animal wildlife surveillance, more support for animal vaccine development, and more funding for agricultural biodefense overall;* Strongly support the biological weapons convention.

During epidemics, the U.S. should be able to immediately create diagnostics that could be used similarly to a pregnancy test so that people can determine for themselves who is sick and who isnt. Officials should be able to rapidly develop a new vaccine in response to an epidemic, OToole added.

These same tools also apply to diseases that affect agriculture and the U.S. animal supply. More than half of all infections that people contract are spread by animals.

Ill start by acknowledging that mother nature is a really good terrorist, Julie L. Gerberding, co-chair of the Commission on Strengthening Americas Health Security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the committee. China today is experiencing a dreadful outbreak of swine fever that has probably cost the death or culling of at least 50 percent of their entire population of pork which is a major source of protein for people in China. So, this is a major socioeconomic threat to the state of China today and thats mother nature.

Swine fever, however, is not spread to humans, though it has a devastating economic impact. And U.S. farmers are concerned about trade and travel bringing such infectious diseases to this country.

I would say that the first alarming statistic is that we spend probably about 100 times less on agricultural threats than we do on human threats, Inglesby said. I think there are many reasons for this. But one includes a kind of reluctance within the U.S. government to talk about this threat until quite recently.

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Chinese biotechnology dominates US Senate hearing on biological threats - Homeland Preparedness News

BOCA RATON, Fla., Nov. 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --Florida Atlantic University faculty, staff and students came together with local officials and community partners today to celebrate the 20th anniversary of FAU's John D. MacArthur Campus at Jupiter with a ceremonial groundbreaking for the new FAU Neuroscience Building and a new residence hall.

"I can't think of a better way to commemorate the 20th anniversary of our Jupiter campus than with a celebration marking the construction of two new state-of-the-art buildings," said FAU President John Kelly. "Our Jupiter campus is the only place on earth where Scripps and Max Planck sit next to each other, and FAU is working to ensure this incredible synergy is leveraged to create a unique learning laboratory where exemplary students can shine."

The university will construct the 58,000-square-foot FAU Neuroscience Building to enhance collaborative research with Scripps Research and Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI). The building will increase shared research and office space for new STEM faculty and provide the additional teaching and instructional space needed to support projected enrollment growth, especially in specific areas such as neuroscience, biotechnology, bioengineering, bioinformatics/data science and chemistry. The structure will also support increasing FAU intellectual property licensing activity and "spinout" companies. The $35 million transformative research space represents a significant investment by the state of Florida, FAU and its research partners. Construction is expected to start in the summer of 2020.

The $17.1 million, 165-bed residence hall will provide a total of 435 beds for the Jupiter campus that is currently at max capacity. Construction will begin in spring 2020 with completion set for summer 2021. Residential students living in the new hall will enjoy a fitness area, study rooms, laundry on each floor, computer lab and a rooftop patio.

These two new structures build on FAU's aggressive moves to ramp up its research footprint and academic offerings at the Jupiter campus. In November 2018, FAU expanded on existing graduate and undergraduate opportunities with the announcement of the FAU-Max Planck Academy, the only academic program in the world that will allow the brightest STEM high school students to work side-by-side with preeminent scientists at one of the world's leading neuroscience research institutions. FAU, MPFI and the Germany-based Max Planck Society will welcome the academy's first class in the fall 2020 semester.

"I am incredibly proud of the strides that FAU and the world-class research institutes located on its campus have made in building a robust life science ecosystem in Palm Beach County," said State Rep. MaryLynn Magar. "I am honored to carry that message to Tallahassee and encourage my fellow legislators to continue the state's investment in the unprecedented educational programs and groundbreaking research partnerships that are taking place here in Jupiter."

Other 20th anniversary celebratory events include a ribbon cutting on May 11, 2020 when FAU and MPFI officials open the FAU-Max Planck Academy building.

Named after businessman and philanthropist John D. MacArthur, FAU's Jupiter campus opened on 135 acres of land donated by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in the fall of 1999. The campus established the nationally ranked Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the first public honors institution to be built from the ground up in the United States. FAU's Jupiter campus was built into the master plan of the Abacoa community to help engage local residents and to serve the people of Palm Beach and Martin counties. In 2005, FAU welcomed Scripps Research faculty and staff to its Jupiter campus and a groundbreaking for the MPFI building was held in 2010.

In addition to being home to Scripps Research and MPFI, FAU Jupiter is home to the faculty labs of the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. Recognized as a center of scientific activity, the campus also serves as the headquarters for two of FAU's primary research organizations, the Brain Institute and the Institute for Human Health and Disease Intervention (I-HEALTH). The College of Education also hosts the Academy for Community Inclusion and the community-centered Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD) program on the Jupiter campus. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, housed in the Elinor Bernon Rosenthal Lifelong Learning Complex on the Jupiter campus, is the largest membership organization of its kind in the country delivering personal enrichment courses covering a broad range of stimulating topics that are taught by leading experts.

- FAU -

About Florida Atlantic University:Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University, with an annual economic impact of $6.3 billion, serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at sites throughout its six-county service region in southeast Florida. FAU's world-class teaching and research faculty serves students through 10 colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Graduate College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. FAU is ranked as a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University is placing special focus on the rapid development of critical areas that form the basis of its strategic plan: Healthy aging, biotech, coastal and marine issues, neuroscience, regenerative medicine, informatics, lifespan and the environment. These areas provide opportunities for faculty and students to build upon FAU's existing strengths in research and scholarship. For more information, visit http://www.fau.edu.

This news release was issued on behalf of Newswise. For more information, visit http://www.newswise.com.

Media Contacts: Lynda Rysavy LFigueredo@fau.edu Phone: 561-475-0960

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SOURCE Florida Atlantic University

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Groundbreaking for Neuroscience Building and Residence Hall Mark 20th Anniversary Of FAU's John D. MacArthur Campus - P&T Community

A $106 million Weill Family Foundationinitiative will bring together interdisciplinary researchers and clinicians at three West Coast universities in hopes of finding new treatments for brain and nervous system disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

The University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley), the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the University of Washington (UW) have launched the Weill Neurohub, a cutting-edge research network that seeks to promote collaborations among investigators from an array of fields, including artificial intelligence, engineering and data science.

The gains in knowledge amassed by neuroscientists over the past few decades can now be brought to the next level with supercomputers, electronic brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotics and powerful imaging tools, Sanford I. Weill, the foundations chairman, said in a press release.

The Neurohub will seize this opportunity by building bridges between people with diverse talents and training and bringing them together in a common cause: discovering new treatments to help the millions of patients with such conditions as Alzheimers diseaseand mental illness, he said.

The initiative will support collaborative projects with near-term transformational prospects, as well as pioneering investigators novel project ideas. It also intends to recruit new talent to fill knowledge gaps, and train the next generation of clinicians and scientists. In addition, the UCSF-based Neurohubwill host symposiums and other meetings in order to share knowledge, promote new alliances and motivate scientists.

To fuel development of high-impact new approaches, the Neurohub will begin by funding projects built upon at least one of these four fields: imaging, engineering, genomics and molecular therapies, and computation and data analytics. For their computational and device manufacturing expertise, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will provide support for the initiative. Other labs overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy that specialize in bioengineering, imaging and data science, also will contribute.

The announcement cites a 2016 study by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundationthat found the economic burden of psychiatric and neurological diseases, such as ALS, Parkinsons and Alzheimers,.exceeds $1.5 trillion annually in the U.S nearly 9% of the gross national product.

Each year, more than 5,600 U.S. residents are diagnosed with ALS.With one in five residents turning 65 or older in the next decade, California has the nations largest aging population. That presents significant challenges that extend beyond the state, said Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Every day, millions of people in California, the nation and the world are facing the uncertainty of neuro-related diseases, mental illness and brain injuries, and collaboration between different disciplines in science, academia, government and philanthropy is critical to meet this challenge, Newsom said while thanking the Weill Family Foundation.

Together, we must accelerate the development and use cutting-edge technology, innovation and tools that will advance research and practical application that will benefit people across the world and for generations to come. California is at the forefront of this innovation, Gavin said.

The gift expands on the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established in 2016 with $185 million from the foundation.

Now, with the Weill Neurohub, were going even further: eliminating institutional boundaries between three great public research universities, and also other disciplinary walls between traditional neuroscience and non-traditional approaches to understanding the brain, said Stephen Hauser, MD. Hauser is Weill Institute director and a Neurohub co-director along with Berkeleys Ehud Isacoff, PhD, the Evan Rauch Chair of Neuroscience.

By embracing engineering, data analysis and imaging science at this dramatically higher level areas in which both Berkeley and the UW are among the best in the world neuroscientists on all three campuses will gain crucial tools and insights that will bring us closer to our shared goal of reducing suffering from brain diseases.

Tom Daniel, PhD, is the UW Joan and Richard Komen Endowed Chair and a member of the initiatives leadership committee. He said the Neurohub is unlike any other effort.

To my knowledge, this is a nationally unique enterprise drawing on diverse approaches to accomplish goals no single institution could reach alone, as well as seeding and accelerating research and discovery, Daniel said.

Mary M. Chapman began her professional career at United Press International, running both print and broadcast desks. She then became a Michigan correspondent for what is now Bloomberg BNA, where she mainly covered the automotive industry plus legal, tax and regulatory issues. A member of the Automotive Press Association and one of a relatively small number of women on the car beat, Chapman has discussed the automotive industry multiple times of National Public Radio, and in 2014 was selected as an honorary judge at the prestigious Cobble Beach Concours dElegance. She has written for numerous national outlets including Time, People, Al-Jazeera America, Fortune, Daily Beast, MSN.com, Newsweek, The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. The winner of the Society of Professional Journalists award for outstanding reporting, Chapman has had dozens of articles in The New York Times, including two on the coveted front page. She has completed a manuscript about centenarian car enthusiast Margaret Dunning, titled Belle of the Concours.

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Margarida graduated with a BS in Health Sciences from the University of Lisbon and a MSc in Biotechnology from Instituto Superior Tcnico (IST-UL). She worked as a molecular biologist research associate at a Cambridge UK-based biotech company that discovers and develops therapeutic, fully human monoclonal antibodies.

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$106M Weill Family Foundation Gift Opens Neurohub Research Network - ALS News Today

Nov 21, 2019 08:41 AM EST

Scientists have created a tool that enables humans to experience the sensation of touch withinvirtual reality.

The 'smart skin' machine consists of a soft, lightweight sheet of electronics that sticks to the body. The new innovation utilizes a mixture of vibration, pressure, and motion to mimic the sense of touch for users.

The study outlining the "skin-integrated wireless haptic interfacesfor virtual and augmented reality" was issued in thescientific journalNature.

Nanoengineer John Rogers - a professor of bioengineering at Northwestern University who is the lead author of the study - explained that human touch is probably the most profound, most meaningful heartfelt connection that you can build with a loved one or friends.

Hence, Rogers and his team at Northwestern came up with the idea of a new wireless and battery-free smart skin that could shift the course of this technology. Their smart skin can contour to the body and deliver sensory input -what you'd feel when using it - through a fast, programmable collection of tiny vibrating disks installed in a soft, flexible material.

The authors explained their invention could have severe implications in various areas ranging from video games to prosthetics. The whole new skin's process is "very complex," according to their paper.

"The sense of touch is a [compilation] of [different] sensations, [including] temperature, pressure, and pain. Until now, [there] has been a great challenge to [unite the] sensations of touch into virtual and augmented reality.

"In comparison to the eyes and the ears, the skin is a relatively underexplored sensory interface for VR and AR technology that could, nevertheless, greatly enhance experiences at a qualitative level, with direct relevance in areas such as communication, entertainment, and medicine."

Rogers and his team say the technology could have several applications. The system, for instance, could be utilized to send touch to a loved one through social media or to replicate a specific shape of an object held in a prosthetic hand. The invention could also be used by video gamers to feel hits when playing combat video games.

Virtual realityremains a niche technology, usually used for industrial applications and by a small portion of video gamers. Experts anticipate that improvements like these would help the technology finally break into the mainstream.

Luke Osborn - a postdoctoral researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory who was not involved in the study - said he was excited to see how the new technology would progress in the coming years.

"What's [especially interesting] about their [output] is how they [combine] wireless power delivery," Osborn said.

Osborn's team previously produced a sensory feedback tool called an"e-dermis,"which fits prosthetic hands and mimics nerve endings, allowing amputees to feel any nerve sensation.

The Northwestern teams' new smart skin would add to the technology, allowing amputees "to [know] how much force they're using when they grasp an object as well as how hot or cold the object is," Rogers said.

"You can also [use multiple] devices at [various] areas of interest across the body, and can [wirelessly and simultaneously] control all of them," he added.

The medical applications of the technology motivate Rogers' team. They are currently working with stroke victims who cannot swallow, using a smart skin to help trigger and time swallows with respiration to avoid choking.

2018 NatureWorldNews.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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A 'New Skin' Could Allow You To Virtually Reach Out And Touch Anyone - Nature World News

No offense to the humble spoon (after all, this site is named after it), but its not as necessary for modern American diets than its pointier sibling, the fork.

And although theres been some innovation in terms of environmentally friendly disposable spoons in the form of Planeteers edible spoon, there are few options for plastic fork replacements that dont destroy the Earth. Startup TwentyFifty aims to change that with its fork, which founder Zack Kong, a bioengineering graduate from the University of California San Diego, said is the first compostable fork in the world thats similar in function to plastic and wooden forks.

The difference between TwentyFiftys technically edible products which currently include forks and spoons but will eventually encompass chopsticks, stirrers and straws is its patent-pending manufacturing process that compresses wheat flour, soy flour, corn flour and water into strong utensils that can withstand higher temperatures. Essentially, TwentyFiftys spoons wont melt soaking in a bowl of hot soup for 30 minutes. Due to the nature of the ingredients of the utensils, the company says they will break down in a backyard compost pile in as little as 10 to 30 days, while competing compostable products need to be broken down in industrial plants.

The other benefit of this product is not just the compostability, but its also an organic fertilizer, said Albert Liu, a TwentyFifty board member and business advisor. When these utensils compost, they add 2.7 cents worth of fertilizer to the soil. We use grains to make the utensils, then they go back into the earth to help grow more grains.

The big hurdle for the company now is cost, with retail price per utensil around 50 cents each, wholesale at 25 cents and bulk at 15 cents. Thats hugely expensive compared to plastic, which could be as cheap as pennies per utensil. TwentyFifty anticipates prices to drop to 5 to 10 cents as it scales up and automates its production line, which will allow it to produce 10,000 to 20,000 units a day.

TwentyFiftys target market isnt individual consumers, however, who could just use silverware. Rather, its aiming to partner with universities and municipalities. Liu said the company has a vendor agreement with UC San Diego, and has partnerships in place with Malibu, Santa Monica and San Francisco, which have all placed bans on single-use plastics. The utensils can also be found at a number of California cafes and yogurt shops.

Earlier this year, the New Food Economy found that so-called compostable bowls frequently used by Chipotle and Sweetgreen actually contained forever chemical PFAs, which as their name suggests, dont break down. Meanwhile, plastic pollution continues to be a global threat. So if TwentyFiftys utensils break down like the company claims, and more environmentally friendly alternatives become available, progress can be made toward preventing future waste.

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Startup Says its Spoons and Forks Compost in as Little as 10 Days - The Spoon

Laypeople may think of engineering as being more about numbers and materials than human beings. But thats not the case, especially with bioengineering. Its a field that synthesizes engineering techniques with the biological sciences. Electrical and computer engineering professor Pushkin Kachroo and his department have been committed to expanding bioengineerings reach since his arrival at UNLV more than 10 years ago. With the creation of the universitys School of Medicine, the opportunities for collaboration are growing.

Its a common-sense link that health, medicine and engineering, should be connected together, Kachroo said. Thats where health is going.

Thanks to the new Howe Fellowship in Bioengineering at UNLV, the work of two engineering graduate students is getting a boost in showcasing the ways engineering can materially benefit human health and well-being.

Lina Chato was always good at math growing up in her native Iraq, but she found her real passion when her school opened a new computer lab. Fellow students showed her some simple programs, let her borrow books, and before long she had written her first program about computer-aided learning for electrical circuit design. She was only 13 years old.

Chato received a bachelors degree in computer engineering and a masters degree in mechatronics engineering from the University of Technology, Baghdad. She joined the faculty and published three papers, but when the country became unstable due to the war, she fled with her family to the United States. She settled in Las Vegas, where two of her sisters already lived, and applied to UNLV's College of Engineering. Chato worked as a research assistant before beginning her doctorate program.

I came as a refugee, without any source of money, she said. This first opportunity was really appreciated and important to start my Ph.D. study.

Chato became interested in using machine learning to try to better analyze MRI images of brain tumors. Her work revolves around developing models to predict survival time for Glioma tumor patients. These types of tumors represent nearly three quarters of all malignant tumors.

We still dont know how these tumors behave, she said. The behavior of tumors is an important factor in predicting survival. This model can describe how a brain tumor develops. If we can know that, we can use this in the treatment stage.

When he graduated from the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, Jadin Tredup wasnt sure what he wanted to do pursue music or study math. So he entered UNLVs then newly created entertainment engineering program.

It seemed like a pretty good blend of the two, Tredup said.

At UNLV his focus shifted away from music toward mechanical engineering, and then again toward electrical engineering. His journey took him from robotics to machine learning and artificial intelligence, to the problem of applying brain wave signals.

Now, having just finished his masters degree, hes working on a model to help patients he characterizes as having profound intellectual and multiple disabilities people with very severe and limited cognitive and motor functioning and an inability to communicate verbally.

The idea is, because our bodies carry so much more information beyond what we can produce in words, if we can sense all these physiological signals we can then translate them using AI and machine learning into a language and vocabulary for people, he said.

Tredups work leverages a theory about how the environment impacts how we communicate. For instance, EEGs can measure brain waves and translate them into emotional states; sensors can measure galvanic skin response (sweat, basically, an indicator of emotional state); and eye tracking can measure what patients are paying attention to. They can detect nearly instantaneous changes, allowing researchers to deduce, for example, that a barking dog might be causing anxiety. You can translate the data into a basic language, like Im feeling anxious because of the dog barking.

The next step is to develop a needs assessment for a few specific patients at a care facility, then further develop the algorithm.

No one model is easily applicable person-to-person, Tredup said. We have to create a generalizable model.

Tredup began his doctorate program at UNLV this fall. (He is the fourth in his family after his parents and brother to graduate from UNLV.) The Howe Foundation Fellowship will afford him more time to concentrate on research instead of juggling full-time research and a full-time job. Similarly, Chatos award will help her focus more energy on her research and spend less time as a teaching assistant.

Working with algorithms is cool, but it doesnt mean much unless it has applicability to the world around it, said Tredup. I can use everything Ive learned and help better peoples lives.

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Building the Body | News Center - UNLV NewsCenter