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November 18, 2020

Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering has established its first research and innovation alliance by joining forces with Northpond Labs, the research and development-focused affiliate of a leading science and technology-driven venture capital firm, Northpond Ventures. Through the alliance, Northpond Labs will provide $12 million to create a Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation at the Wyss Institute and to support impactful research with strong translation potential.

The vision for the five-year strategic alliance was developed by senior leadership at Northpond Labs and the Wyss Institute, including Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber and Northpond's Founder and CEO Michael Rubin. In close partnership with Harvard's Office of Technology Development (OTD), both groups have finalized the collaboration agreement and the agreement for the first funded research project.

As a first translation focus of the alliance, Northpond Labs through the Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation will sponsor research on the Wyss Institute's Controlled Enzymatic RNA Synthesis technology to accelerate its development toward commercialization. The novel synthesis approach was created in the Institutes Synthetic Biology platform and has been funded internally as a translationally focused Wyss Validation Project. The technology leverages a new enzyme-based method of generating synthetic RNA oligonucleotides, which have potential as RNA therapeutics, drug delivery vehicles, and genome engineering tools for a variety of disease applications. By using an engineered enzyme without the need for resource-intensive chemistry, it may provide a more effective and environmentally conscious way to synthesize RNA oligonucleotides than conventional chemical approaches used in industry.

The Wyss Institute has developed a new model for innovation, collaboration, and technology translation within academia, breaking historical silos to enable collaborations that cross institutional and disciplinary barriers. The unique translation model spans the full trajectory, from identifying high-value, real-world problems and developing disruptive technology solutions, to refining, optimizing, and validating these technologies so that they are well-positioned for impactful new licensing and start-up opportunities. This novel approach for technology translation within academia, working in collaboration with Harvard OTD, has so far yielded 3,291 patent filings and 75 licensing deals, including 39 new startups.

Through a separate arrangement with Harvard and the Wyss Institute, Northpond is providing an additional $3 million in funding to the Institute to support discovery efforts and to create and fund the Northpond Directors Innovation Fund. This fund will bolster the pursuit and growth of Wyss projects that have the potential to solve important unmet problems in the world, even when the path to commercialization remains unclear. In particular, the fund will be used to support early projects in areas including synthetic biology, biomanufacturing, synthesis of DNA and proteins, and clean water.

"This alliance represents an exciting new mechanism for supporting innovation and providing opportunities for translating discoveries that we at the Wyss Institute have made and are advancing inside academia. Given the Northpond team's deep experience in life sciences and technology, we are excited about the potential this collaboration offers for growth with their support and invaluable perspectives. We see this as the first of many such partnerships that the Wyss Institute will establish in the future," said Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also theJudah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biologyat Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

"We have been impressed by the collaborative and solutions-oriented approach to research at the Wyss Institute, and by the depth and breadth of innovations that it has generated," said Michael Rubin, M.D., Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Northpond Ventures and Labs. Rubin will collaborate with the Institute's Technology Translation Director, Angelika Fretzen, Ph.D., to help oversee the Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation and advance the shared vision. In addition to helping to oversee the Laboratorys program, Rubin will hold an appointment as a Visiting Scholar at the Wyss Institute, to enhance technology translation through community engagement and education.

This strategic alliance represents the first of what the Institute hopes will be multiple collaborations with the investment, corporate, and philanthropic communities that combine targeted investments in basic and applied research with flexible financial contributions; the goal of these collaborations is to sustain the remarkable level of innovation and intellectual property creation that the Institute has demonstrated since its founding almost 12 years ago.

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Harvard's Wyss Institute creates research and innovation alliance with Northpond Labs - Harvard Office of Technology Development

Last years Year of Creativity involved supporting dynamic art projects such as the flash mob at the Cathedral of Learning. But with this years Year of Engagement lacking the ability to engage in person with the Pitt community, project members had to get creative with their initiatives.

The Year of Engagement is this years edition of Pitts Year of series, headed by the Provosts office. This years theme aims to confront the worlds biggest challenges and mobilize towards a better, more equitable and just society for all, according to Kathy Humphrey, the senior vice chancellor for engagement.

The Year of Engagement steering committee helps make this happen. The committee, which consists of 28 members from across the University community, provides funding to projects it thinks will help strengthen the connections between people and create a more engaged Pitt. More than $22,000 in grants have been distributed to nine different projects so far, all of which have plans for new engagement initiatives for the University.

Each of the grant winners are members of the Pitt community, ranging from a librarian to a theater arts professor. Jorge Jimenez, a pre-doctoral fellow in the bioengineering department, is one of the individuals who received funding for a proposal. Jimenez said during a recent event about projects related to the year that he plans to teach computer engineering to Latinx communities to help kids learn how to design using computer software.

I partnered with people who I met from the Disrespecting The Border mural, Jimenez said. To come up with how to take engineering and art and community engagement through the lens of public health experts. To work together to teach kids to design using engineering software We are going to host three virtual workshops that teach the cultural impact of technology in Latin America.

Lynn Kawaratani, the engagement manager at the University Center for International Studies, proposed a project focused on making murals throughout Pittsburgh. Kawaratani said during a recent event about projects related to the year that she finds it interesting that the Year of Engagement coincided with the pandemic.

Its surprising that the year of engagement is this year, Kawaratani said. Its almost like all these pieces are coming together. As terrible as this year has been, theres all these opportunities we can seize upon in this crisis.

Cedric Humphrey, the Student Government Board executive vice president, said when he and fellow SGB member Kathryn Fleisher were coming up with the theme of the year, they werent expecting or thinking about a global pandemic. Instead, he said they picked this year because it is an election year.

There was no way that we couldve known that COVID-19 would impact our year back when we started planning, but we knew it would be a busy year with the presidential election and the census, and now with the renewed social justice movement, Humphrey said. We know that a lot of engagement work is already happening at Pitt, but now, we want to put a spotlight on it.

The Year of Engagement recently hosted two virtual coffee events to honor the nine grant recipients and to give them each the opportunity to discuss their projects with the Pitt community.

In addition to the coffee events, the committee also organized a 14-day social media campaign in the beginning of the semester. The campaign challenged students to respond to daily prompts on Twitter using the #PittEngage hashtag. Some prompts asked participants to answer questions about Pittsburgh-themed topics, take the Harvard implicit bias test and share an act of kindness they did that day.

Whoevers tweet received the most likes would be the winner of the days challenge. Winners were given a choice between receiving Pitt gear or donating that money to youth programs at the Universitys Community Engagement Centers in the Hill District and Homewood.

Steven Abramowitch, a committee member and bioengineering professor, said the vast majority of winners chose to donate the funds more than $3,000 in all. He said the social media challenge reached 23 different units responsibility centers, academic departments, student organizations around Pitt, more than any other campaign has.

Johanna Siegel, a senior bioengineering major, won an individual award and one with her sorority, Phi Sigma Rho. Siegel said she got involved in the social media challenge along with her sorority to raise money for her sororitys philanthropic work.

This is my first year [taking part in these events], and I mostly decided to do it to benefit Phi Rho, Siegel said. We voted as an organization to donate the money, which I thought was really nice.

Siegel said she found out about the year of engagement through an email from Abramowitch, her academic adviser.

He was getting the word out, Siegel said. I was like, whoa, this is really cool because if you win, you can earn money for your organization that you can then choose to use for your organization or donate.

According to Abramowitch, the Year of Engagement team wants to highlight those who are doing good around Pittsburgh and campus.

We had relatively good participation in [the social media challenge], Abramowitch said. And overall, I thought, given the pandemic and everything and the inability for us to meet in person.

Abramowitch said he has been seeing a lot of anxiety this year with the COVID-19 pandemic and wants to try to use the Year of Engagement to alleviate some of the stress that students have been facing by putting out positive messages of what people around the community have been doing in their fields and for the Pitt community.

Theres just been a lot of frustration, anxiety and stress going on, Abramowitch said. And so what we want to do is we want to start focusing on positive messages and really provide examples of student organizations and other departments around Pitt who are just doing outstanding engagement and really highlighting those efforts.

Abramowitch said he finds it hard to plan events this year since they are all virtual and he sees a lot of burnout from students from doing all their classes online. But he said the team this year has been working hard to plan events that will get the Pitt community engaged.

I think a lot of the time when people think of engagement, they think of in-person types of events and activities, Abramowitch said. And certainly weve not been able to do really any of those. So weve really had to modify what it means to be engaged and how to engage and how to get people enthusiastic about engaging.

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Year of Engagement awards funding to proposals, hosts social media challenge - University of Pittsburgh The Pitt News

The research, carried out using a wearable cuff, provides a new method for monitoring movements in babies, and new insights into how babies' reflexes - like kicking - develop. These insights and the cuff could also be used to spot early signs of motor disorders such as cerebral palsy.

The research, published today in Science Advances, was done in collaboration with the Santa Lucia Foundation and Casilino Hospital in Rome.

Babies start kicking as foetuses in the womb and continue to kick instinctively until they are around four months old. The kicks mainly involve spinal neurons, as do protective reflexes found in adults like swiftly removing a hand from heat. However, not much is known about how the movement is generated on a neuronal level because detailed analysis of individual nerve cells has previously not been possible without surgery.

Now, Imperial and Santa Lucia Foundation researchers have developed a non-invasive cuff that slips onto freely kicking babies' legs to monitor neuronal activity without the need for surgery. The system decodes the electrical field potentials on the body surface and mathematically reverses their generation process, thus identifying the neural activity of the spinal cord.

Using the cuff the researchers found that, unlike fast leg movements in adults, babies' kicks are generated by the neurons in the spinal cord firing at the exact same time. This 'extreme synchronisation', the researchers say, increases the force generated by muscles attached to the nerves - which explains why babies' kicks can be relatively hard and fast even though their muscles are still weak and slow.

The researchers say these results, which are published today in Science Advances, are crucially important for our understanding of the development of spinal neural networks.

Lead author Professor Dario Farina of Imperial's Department of Bioengineering said: "This is a fundamental discovery of how foetuses and babies develop. The findings, and the new technology that helped us make the discovery, could help monitor development in babies and spot signs of motor disorders like cerebral palsy early on."

Co-senior author Professor Francesco Lacquaniti of the University of Rome Tor Vergata and Santa Lucia Foundation added: "The new monitoring cuff is an exciting technological achievement that could help us monitor babies for signs of motor problems so that we can diagnose and treat them early."

Fundamental discovery

The cuff attaches to the lower leg and contains a neuromuscular interface which records the electrical signals on the skin. It then decodes these signals and their timings to work out which spinal cord neurons are firing, and how quickly.

They tested the cuff on four freely kicking healthy babies aged two to 14 days old, and on twelve adult men doing various movements.

They found that in babies, all neurons fire closely in time to generate a kick, whereas there was significantly less synchronisation in the adult individuals.

Professor Farina said: "Generating fast movements is vital for human survival and health. Babies can already kick very fast just days after birth, and now we know that they do so using all spinal nerves at the same time."

Evolutionary advantage?

Baby kicks are thought to strengthen leg muscles and prepare the infant to roll over and eventually learn to walk. However, the researchers say their findings could suggest another advantage.

Dr Del Vecchio, the first author of the study from Professor Farina's research group, said: "The strength and speed of the kicking, as well as the synchronisation of nerve activity, could suggest that kicking has a more immediate protective advantage for babies. Perhaps babies developed such strong kicks through evolution to avoid potential dangers like predators."

The researchers are now looking into monitoring spinal neurons in babies with motor disorders like cerebral palsy. They hope their research could help to develop new clinical markers for the early diagnoses of these types of disorders.

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New non-invasive technology could spot early signs of motor disorders in babies - Science Codex

The University of Oregon Board of Trustees last week received briefings on the UOs fall enrollment numbers, its fundraising efforts and developments at the newly opened Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact.

The ad hoc meeting Nov. 13 was the second virtual meeting conducted during fall term. The meetings have been reserved for presentations and board discussions, with no action items on the agenda.

The UO enrolled 3,940 freshmen this fall, a decline of around 13 percent from the 2019-20 school year, according to Roger Thompson, vice president for student services and enrollment management. Total enrollment fell by around 3 percent, for a total of 21,800 undergraduate and graduate students.

The impact of the pandemic was substantial, Thompson said. In March, the university had a record number of applications and appeared on track for its largest ever freshman class, potentially topping 4,800 students.

Then COVID hit, and it made things very difficult, he said. On some level, you could look at this as glass half-full and say it could have been worse. But, given where we had been positioned, this was very disappointing for us.

Thompson said the UO lost ground, in particular, in enrollment of first-year students from California. The percentage of domestic minority students in the enrolling class remained steady compared to the previous year.

The UO did record its best-ever average high school GPA among freshmen at 3.68, up from 3.55 three years ago.

Bob Guldberg, vice president and executive director of the Knight Campus, provided the trustees with an update on the ambitious new science campus. Faculty and researchers began moving into the facility in early September, and a virtual grand opening event will take place Dec. 2.

I commented the other day that we built our Field of Dreams, Guldberg said. That Field of Dreams is really enabling us to recruit some incredibly talented students and faculty now.

Research focus areas at the campus so far include biomaterials, medical sensors and devices, protein engineering and synthetic biology, and neural engineering. Faculty work has yielded 19 externally sponsored projects and three startup companies thus far, Guldberg said.

Goals for the next year include enrolling the first UO-Oregon State University bioengineering doctoral students, launching a bioengineering minor for undergraduate students, hiring additional faculty members in bioengineering, and creating new research and academic partnerships with other institutions of higher education.

This is so incredibly exciting and its really impressive what youve put together so far, said trustee Mary Wilcox.

Mike Andreasen, vice president for university advancement, briefed the board on the UOs fundraising efforts, including the 11-year ongoing campaign.

The UO raised $290 million in fiscal year 2020, Andreasen said, bringing the campaign total to $2.4 billion of its $3 billion goal. The campaign has also dramatically expanded the number of gifts with a total 112,000 individual donors, 97 percent of whom donated under $25,000.

In spite of COVID, generosity continues to grow tremendously, Andreasen said. Were at a moment where were likely going to pivot from donors just giving out of loyalty to more impact giving, to see universities take on grand challenges and improve the lives of our community.

President Michael Schill added that philanthropy will continue to play an increasing role at public universities.

Were going to be relying more and more upon gifts, philanthropy, foundation support, maybe governmental support to launch new programs and to achieve excellence, he said. The Knight Campus is a great example of that. We wouldnt have been able to do it with state funding or tuition dollars.

The board will hold a listening session Nov. 17 at 2 p.m. The session will allow members of the campus community and the public to provide oral comment to trustees, since recent virtual meetings have been limited to written public comment due to logistics.

People interested in providing commentmust registerto do so. Priority will be given to UO students, faculty members and staff. Space is limited to ensure that those participating all have a chance to speak. If registrations exceed the time allotted for the listening session, the board will add another session and give priority to those people who initially registered.

By Saul Hubbard, University Communications

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UO trustees hear about fall enrollment and Knight Campus - AroundtheO

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Global Fumaric Acid (Cas 110-17-8) Market report study covers the breakdown data with Production, Consumption, Revenue and forecast to 2026 - PRnews...

Eight months after Alaskas first COVID-19 case and seven months after in-person school ended in Anchorage, we stand at the darkest moment of the pandemic in our state. Case counts and positivity rates have skyrocketed. Hospitals and the health care workers who staff them are strained. The low death toll, long Alaskas signature accomplishment in its pandemic response, has begun to creep up. Rural communities that had escaped infection for many months are now feeling the brunt of the disease.

But in this darkest hour, we have at last been given the news so many of us have hoped for: COVID-19 vaccines are close to ready, and all evidence so far shows that the two most promising candidates are at least 90% effective. Thats a miracle, the kind of efficacy that could stamp out widespread COVID-19 infections worldwide. Its not too far into the realm of hyperbole to rank the development of a COVID-19 vaccine in the same realm as the Apollo Program that brought humankind to the moon. Never before has a disease been sequenced and a vaccine been developed so quickly. Never before has a vaccine been assembled using messenger RNA, a bioengineering feat that could herald a new era in combating disease. Never in our lifetimes has so much our health, our economy even and our ability to safely gather with other people hinged on a single technological advancement. This Thanksgiving, we ought all give thanks that so many have worked so hard to make it possible.

But its not here yet. Optimistic timetables hold that the vaccines could be approved for emergency use before the end of the year, but only for the highest-risk Americans. Perhaps 10 million doses will initially be available, and the logistical and technological hurdles in delivering the vaccine and keeping it supercooled so that it remains viable are immense. Once the vaccines are in full production, there will be tens of millions of doses produced every month, which could allow for most Americans to receive their shots by late spring or early summer. For those working to develop, transfer and administer the vaccine, there are hundreds of issues to overcome between now and then to make sure it can be rolled out safely and efficiently. For those of us waiting for the vaccine, theres only one significant issue to overcome, but its a doozy: Theres a lot of time between now and when most of us can be inoculated, and were heading in the wrong direction quickly with regard to the virus spread.

Theres less time between now and next summer than weve endured already under the changed world of the pandemic, but in that time, a quarter-million Americans have died. Were at our highest levels of infection yet, both in Alaska and the U.S. at large, and theres plenty of reason to believe that many people or more could die between now and when the vaccine allows us to achieve herd immunity. And every death from COVID-19 between now and then will be doubly tragic, as we now have a sense of how long we must hold out for the cure to arrive.

Given that reality, we must redouble our efforts to abide by the health practices set forth by national and state health authorities. Wear a mask in public. Maintain at least six feet of social distance between yourself and people outside your household bubble. Wash your hands frequently. Modify or cancel plans for holiday get-togethers to minimize risks though we may have to abide being apart from some of the people we love most this Thanksgiving and Christmas, doing so is the best way to ensure that well all be around for next years holidays.

The consequences if we dont get COVID-19 under control could be immense. Although the death rate for the virus is low, it rises when health care facilities are overwhelmed, reaching as high as 10% at the height of the early spikes in places like New York City and Italy. We cant afford to have that happen here, and Anchorage authorities have indicated they will institute more drastic closures of public facilities and businesses if such a situation is imminent. Many people, and many businesses, wont survive if that happens.

We know an end to COVID-19 is coming. We know the vaccines are effective, and we know there will be supply enough for everyone. But we must reach that point, and we must keep as many Alaskans alive as we possibly can on the way there. On the day we stamp out COVID-19 for good, we dont want to look back and realize we could have done more, could have kept more people we love from falling victim. We should be able to look back and recognize that we did everything we could.

Continued here:
There's a light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel. Let's make sure we all get there. - Anchorage Daily News