Professor Kevin Healy will lead the UC Berkeley efforts in a new multi-university research center funded by the National Science Foundation at the University of Minnesota, Massachusetts General Hospital, UC Berkeley and UC Riverside. The Engineering Research Center for Advanced Technologies for the Preservation of Biological Systems (ATP-Bio) aims to advance methods for storing and preserving biological cells and tissues, work that could benefit biomedical research and dramatically expand organ transplant networks.
research
How is the coronavirus spreading around the Bay Area?
Professor Liana Lareau is using genome sequencing to study how COVID-19 is spreading around the Bay Area.
Patrick Hsu’s COVID-19 antibody test review featured on 60 Minutes
Early in March, a team of 50 scientists in California did what the FDA had not: they started testing the antibody tests.
Lareau receives LGR Seed Funding award for COVID-19 Project
Prof Liana Lareau and collaborator Stacia Wyman have received one of ten Excellence in Research Awards from the Laboratory for Genomics Research (LGR), a collaboration between UC Berkeley/UCSF (IGI) and GlaxoSmithKline. Their project will explore rapid, low-cost, high-throughput viral and metagenome sequencing of COVID-19 patient samples for outbreak surveillance.
Meet the UC Berkeley scientists using decontamination to tackle COVID-19’s PPE shortage
Bioengineering graduate student Gabriela Lomeli interviewed five scientists, including four from Professor Amy Herr’s lab, who have pivoted their research during COVID-19 to write decontamination guidelines for personal protective equipment.
Head-Gordon receives COVID-19 research award
Congratulations Professor Teresa Head-Gordon, who has just been selected for one of the new C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute’s awards for research projects to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Head-Gordon has been funded for her project, “Scoring Drugs: Small Molecule Drug Discovery for COVID-19 Using Physics-Inspired Machine Learning.”
A new test can see, almost literally, infectious bacteria
Up to 20% of urinary tract infections, caused by a resistant microbe known as ESBL-producing bacteria, don’t respond to conventional antibiotics. Professor Niren Murthy and colleagues have developed a 30-minute, low-tech test, called DETECT, to identify ESBL-producing bacteria on a patient’s first visit to the doctor.
Diluting blood plasma rejuvenates tissue, reverses aging in mice
New research from Professor Irina Conboy found that diluting the blood plasma of old mice has the same or stronger rejuvenation effects on the brain, liver and muscle as surgical pairing with young mice or young blood exchange. This discovery shifts the dominant model of rejuvenation away from young blood and toward the benefits of removing age-elevated, and potentially harmful, factors in old blood.
Scientists pivot to COVID-19 research, hoping for quick results to deal with pandemic
Professors Patrick Hsu and Niren Murthy are featured with the emergency funding they have received for urgent COVID-19 research. Hsu is working to apply new CRISPR tools he has discovered to a faster and better diagnosis of COVID-19 infection and potentially new therapeutics, while Murthy is looking for weaknesses in the SARS-CoV-2 proteins that could be leveraged by a small molecule, hopefully knocking out the virus.