Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,735

Doctors have long dreamed of delivering drugs to specific parts of your body, and they may soon have a clever way to do it: fish. UC San Diego researchers have developed nanoscale metallic fish (they’re just 800 nanometers long) that could carry medicine into the deeper reaches of your bloodstream. Each critter has a gold head and tailfin, as well as a nickel body joined by silver hinges. You only have to subject them to an oscillating magnetic field to make them swim — there’s no need for propellers or a passive (read: slow) delivery system. That, in turn, could make the drug carriers smaller even as they move quickly.

The technology definitely has its flaws. It’s not currently biodegradable, so you may be stuck with this school of fish unless there’s a way to flush them out. Gold and silver aren’t the cheapest metals, either. Scientists are working on biodegradability, however, and they’re hopeful that it will be useful for more than just guiding drugs. You could use to control individual cells, for example, or conduct certain forms of non-invasive surgery. It may just be a matter of refining the technique before you can get medicine exactly where you need it.

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A team of researchers at Jadavpur University here has developed a biodegradable energy harvester from raw fish scales that could in future replace pacemaker devices for the heart.

The energy harvester thus could be tapped as a sustainable green power source for next generation self-powered implantable medical devices.

It also has the potential for personal portable electronics with reduced e-waste elements said the researchers.

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This is actually pretty significant to see from DARPA; however, not a total shock given the importance of Synthetic Biology and various parties in the military understanding how CRISPR can be used as a weapon.

A new DARPA program could help unlock the potential of advanced gene editing technologies by developing a set of tools to address potential risks of this rapidly advancing field. The Safe Genes program envisions addressing key safety gaps by using those tools to restrict or reverse the propagation of engineered genetic constructs.

“Gene editing holds incredible promise to advance the biological sciences, but right now responsible actors are constrained by the number of unknowns and a lack of controls,” said Renee Wegrzyn, DARPA program manager. “DARPA wants to develop controls for gene editing and derivative technologies to support responsible research and defend against irresponsible actors who might intentionally or accidentally release modified organisms.”

Safe Genes was inspired in part by recent advances in the field of “gene drives,” which can alter the genetic character of a population of organisms by ensuring that certain edited genetic traits are passed down to almost every individual in subsequent generations. Scientists have studied self-perpetuating gene drives for decades, but the 2012 development of the genetic tool CRISPR-Cas9, which facilitates extremely precise genetic edits, radically increased the potential value of—and in some quarters the demand for—experimental gene drives.

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DARPA’s Safe Genes program aims to build a biosafety and biosecurity toolkit to reduce potential risks and encourage innovation in the field of genome editing

The Safe Genes program could help unlock the potential of advanced gene editing technologies by developing a set of tools to address potential risks of this rapidly advancing field. The Safe Genes program envisions addressing key safety gaps by using those tools to restrict or reverse the propagation of engineered genetic constructs.

“Gene editing holds incredible promise to advance the biological sciences, but right now responsible actors are constrained by the number of unknowns and a lack of controls,” said Renee Wegrzyn, DARPA program manager. “DARPA wants to develop controls for gene editing and derivative technologies to support responsible research and defend against irresponsible actors who might intentionally or accidentally release modified organisms.”

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By Alice Klein

Making a splash? Engineers have created metallic nanofish that are inspired by the swimming style of real fish, and could be used to carry drugs to specific sites of the body.

The nanofish are 100 times smaller than grains of sand, and are constructed from gold and nickel segments linked by silver hinges. The two outer gold segments act as the head and tail fin, while the two inner nickel segments form the body. Each segment is around 800 nanometres long, a nanometre being one billionth of a metre.

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We are entering an era of directed design in which we will expand the limited notion that biology is only the ‘study of life and living things’ and see biology as the ultimate distributed, manufacturing platform (as Stanford bioengineer, Drew Endy, often says). This new mode of manufacturing will offer us unrivaled personalization and functionality.

New foods. New fuels. New materials. New drugs.

We’re already taking our first steps in this direction. Joule Unlimited has engineered bacteria to convert CO2 into fuels in a single-step, continuous process. Others are engineering yeast to produce artemisinin — a potent anti-malarial compound used by millions of people globally. Still other microbes are being reprogrammed to produce industrial ingredients, like those used in synthetic rubber.

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