mFluiDx, a startup founded by BioE PhD alum Charlie Yeh and currently in the CITRIS Foundry incubator, has published their development of a portable, self-powered, low-cost nucleic acid detection chip. This simple chip allows rapid quantitative digital nucleic acid detection directly from small human blood samples, an alternative to real-time PCR testing in remote or low-resource settings.
Archives for March 2017
Herr Lab advances protein expression profiling of circulating tumor cells using microfluidic western blotting
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are detached primary cancer cells found in the circulatory system that are implicated in the metastasis of cancer. Herr and collaborators have developed a microfluidic western blot for an 8-plex protein panel for individual CTCs, derived from estrogen receptor positive breast cancer patients, that advances the state of the art in CTC characterization with tiny sample sizes.
2016 Yearbook
Feature story: Designing healthy futures
See how students in bioengineering and other fields are working at the intersection of design and health at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation.
M.Eng. Capstone Project Highlight: Commercializing Nanocarriers for Neurological Diseases
A capstone team of bioengineering MEng students is developing nanocarriers to deliver medicine to inaccessible regions of the brain to treat neurologic and brain-related diseases.
Two BioE startups graduating from CITRIS Foundry
BioE startups GenEdit (Prof Niren Murthy and PhD Kunwoo Lee) and SmartPhage (MEng Job Shiach) have completed their time as members of the CITRIS Foundry’s startup program and are going out to change the world.
Where’d you get those threads?
Alumni company Bolt Threads has launched its first direct to consumers clothing made of synthetic spider silk – a snazzy tie! Only 50 will be made, but more engineered clothing is on the horizon.
Liepmann and Murthy Lab invention could make vaccinations needle-free
A recent proof-of-concept study shows that a tiny portable microjet injector called MucoJet can deliver a high-pressure stream of liquid and immune system-triggering molecules that penetrate the mucosal layer of the mouth to stimulate an immune response in the buccal region. The jet is pressurized, but not uncomfortably so, and would remove the sting of needles. Postdoctoral scholar Kiana Aran is lead investigator on the study.
Healy leads Berkeley arm of C-DOCTOR
UC Berkeley is a partner in one of two newly established Resource Centers as part of the The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research’s Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Tissue Regeneration Consortium (DOCTRC). Aimed at developing resources and strategies for regenerating dental, oral, and craniofacial tissues that have been damaged by disease or injury, the Center for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Tissue and Organ Regeneration (C-DOCTOR) is a partnership between UC Berkeley, UCSF, USC, UC Davis, UCLA, and Stanford. Professor Kevin Healy is the principal investigator at Berkeley.