PI: Isaac Krauss
Technical Lead: Kayla Cerri
Galectins are a family of 12 carbohydrate binding proteins with similar binding affinities to many lactose-based sugars. They are implicated in numerous biological diseases including fibrosis, cancers, vision impairment inflammation, diabetes, and related conditions making them a prime target for novel therapy development. Whereas traditional medicinal chemistry design, synthesis, and testing has been the predominant strategy for galectin inhibitor design, this drug development approach will use a directed evolution method that was developed in-house. Leveraging the mRNA display of glycopeptides, the team can design inhibitors with higher binding affinities and at least a 100-fold selectivity versus off-target galectins. The initial target will be galectin-1, which is implicated in liver, pancreatic, and pulmonary fibrosis, melanoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and lung, kidney, and bladder cancers.
PI: Liz Hedstrom
Technical Lead: Estheban Osorio
Nearly two million Americans were diagnosed with cancer in 2022, making it the country's second leading cause of death. Cancer is a disease caused by the aberrant replication of cells as a result of malfunctioning enzymes within the cell that eventually affect and recruit neighboring, healthy cells. Kinases are a well-studied group of enzymes associated with cancer-related illness and are involved in diverse signaling and metabolic pathways. Dramatic shifts in kinase activity result in undesired, often harmful protein interactions. Here, we propose the development of a CaMKII kinase inhibitor as a potential cancer treatment. CaMKII kinase is an accepted cancer diagnostic marker with no current FDA-approved inhibitors available. This project aims to identify and validate specific CamKII inhibitor candidates for potential cancer therapy use.
PI: Margie Lachman
Technical Leads: Sara Motoyama, Bishal Baral
Nearly two million Americans were diagnosed with cancer in 2022, making it the country's second leading cause of death. Cancer is a disease caused by the aberrant replication of cells as a result of malfunctioning enzymes within the cell that eventually affect and recruit neighboring, healthy cells. Kinases are a well-studied group of enzymes associated with cancer-related illness and are involved in diverse signaling and metabolic pathways. Dramatic shifts in kinase activity result in undesired, often harmful protein interactions. Here, we propose the development of a CaMKII kinase inhibitor as a potential cancer treatment. CaMKII kinase is an accepted cancer diagnostic marker with no current FDA-approved inhibitors available. This project aims to identify and validate specific CamKII inhibitor candidates for potential cancer therapy use.One in 9 Americans over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). As a result of emerging symptoms being mistaken for mental health or sleep disorders, AD is frequently misdiagnosed. Sadly, treatment is less successful when a diagnosis is delayed. Due to the delay between noticeable changes in brain health and the onset of memory loss symptoms, recent advances in AD research are investigating the viability of a detection method at the preclinical stage to allow for early diagnosis and therefore treatments to slow or stop the disease. The importance of cognitive assessments in detecting early indicators of cognitive decline and AD is becoming more widely acknowledged.
The Stop and Go Switch Task (SGST), created by Dr. Lachman, uses reaction time in trials requiring attention switching and inhibitory control to evaluate executive function. It is the only test of its kind that is conducted over the phone. The goal is to develop a platform that automates this test to make it more adaptable. This tool will ultimately serve as a catalyst for research in cognitive aging and develop a diagnostic solution to assess AD risk, leading to early interventions and improved treatment efficacy.
PI: Michael Marr
Technical Lead: Will Dahl
Synthetic single-domain antibodies function as an important weapon against infections and diseases. Currently, the production and screening of synthetic, single-domain antibody libraries often rely on animals, phage display or yeast-based platforms. Traditionally, these reagents are sourced from biological sources by injecting antigens into camelid (Alpaca) species and then harvesting the antibodies. All the current methodologies have biochemical and genetic limitations. This team seeks to develop a platform for synthetic single domain antibody production based on expression and selection in bacterial systems. Use of this approach is faster and more robust than existing approaches and is adoptable by any user that has experience in basic molecular biology.
PI: Maria-Eirini Pandelia
Technical Lead: Trent Quist
Viral polyproteins contain embedded proteases that act as molecular scissors to release the mature non-structural proteins (NSPs) that sustain the replication and transcription of the viral genome. Therefore, these proteases have attracted attention as ideal antiviral targets at the early onset of infection. The role of these proteases is not restricted to the cleavage of viral polyproteins, but also to modulate activities that intercept the function of host proteins, ultimately derailing the host immune defense. Although approaches exist for inhibiting the catalytic domain of various viral proteases, current methods are of variable efficacy and can easily lead to the rise of resistance mutations. Furthermore, the exact molecular mechanism by which these inhibitors halt protein function is often sparsely understood. This project aims to use metallofactors and their effect on protease activities, allowing for therapeutic approaches with general applicability to develop antiviral drugs.
PI: Grace Han
Technical Lead: Subhayan Chakraborty
Sustainable energy solutions and alternatives are becoming increasingly critical as the realities of climate change affect everyday life. This project proposes to leverage the sun as a renewable resource by using novel, photo-active materials to absorb sunlight and convert it into stored and usable heat energy: Molecular Solar Thermal Energy Storage (MOST). Our material sets a new standard in photoswitching organic materials due to its ability to change colors and even transparent when exposed to sunlight. Using MOST, one could coat everyday objects such as windows, creating not only aesthetic, customizing designs but also an energy-efficient method to store solar energy, convert it to heat, and emit it in absence of sunlight. This proposal aims to use MOST to facilitate efficient capture, storage, and release of solar energy: envision a color-changing window coating for both residential and commercial applications.
PI: Sue Birren
Technical Lead: Josh Harrison
World-wide, cases of hypertension have increased from 594 million to 1.13 billion between 1975 and 2015, with 20% of cases being resistant to current therapies. This defines a major health crisis since uncontrolled blood pressure dramatically increases the risk for stroke, heart attack, heart failure, and even death. Heightened sympathetic drive, defined as overactivity of the sympathetic neurons that directly communicate with peripheral organs, precedes and drives the development of hypertension. Current drug treatments lower blood pressure by targeting a variety of specific pathways in organs downstream of these neurons. These treatments successfully lower blood pressure in 80% of the population; however, the remaining 20% is drug-resistant with no effective drugs to lower their blood pressure. This project proposes a new therapeutic product (for those 20% population) that inhibits the activity of the sympathetic neurons driving hypertension allowing for the treatment of drug-resistant hypertension.
PI: Jennifer Gutsell
Mood disorders and their treatments have been widely researched using neurophysiological methods such as (electroencephalography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). However, laboratory contexts do not reproduce everyday experiences. Laboratory research is also limited in sample diversity. For example, it is hard to recruit lower-income homebound older adults to the laboratories.
Using neural signals from mobile EEG in combination with machine learning (such as EEG-Based Emotion Classification) to assess emotions can provide reliable data on mood and mood dysregulation, opening the way to effective remote therapy for mood disorders. This invention aims to implement a multisensory system in a mobile health care app that assesses and tracks users’ emotion regulation ability.
PI: Seth Fraden
The present invention is an inexpensive, x-ray transparent microfluidic chip for protein crystallization which has applications in drug development and pharmaceutical engineering. This technology was further explored for other applications where its unique features can be more useful than the currently available solutions. Towards this, the team explored a water quality testing application. The team conducted interviews with the professionals involved in the town water departments who need to monitor water quality periodically. The team found that the current method of collecting water samples across the town/city and testing them in a central place is a cumbersome process and the current device can be developed towards this application in order to provide real-time, low-cost and more efficient water testing ability to customers.
PIs: Benjamin Gomes-Casseres, Pito Salas
Teachers are perennially looking for ways to engage better with their students. We try different pedagogies learned by experimentation and from colleagues. But it’s hard to know what is working and not working. With online learning, this concern takes on a new dimension. There are new opportunities for distraction, and it is harder for teachers to read the room. Engagement is critical because it affects learning success, student retention and completion, and the satisfaction of students (and alums). Better measurement and analysis of engagement can provide early-warnings to advisors, help with student retention, and improve the quality of online courses. Our technology offers a new level of reliable, objective, and detailed information about student engagement and participation in online synchronous courses. This information helps teachers engage students more equitably and effectively, and gives students actionable feedback on their performance.
PI: Niels Bradshaw
p38 MAP Kinase regulates inflammation and is a major target for drug development for conditions including autoimmune diseases, myocardial ischemia, and cancer. Existing inhibitors of p38 have failed clinically because of on-target toxicity, indicating that tissue- and process-specific p38 inhibitors are needed. Previous efforts have focused on identifying inhibitors that are specific to particular downstream targets of p38 or particular upstream activating mechanisms. Here, we take an alternative approach, leveraging the native inactivation mechanism of p38 by protein phosphatases. This project exploits synergy between pharmacological p38 inhibition and inactivation by tissue- or condition-specific phosphatases to identify beneficial p38 inhibitors to potentially treat a myriad of diseases.
PI: Paul Garrity
Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a powerful, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly strategy for controlling and even eradicating invasive species, crop pests, and vectors of disease. In SIT, sterile males are released into the environment to seek out and mate with wild females of the same species. A major bottleneck in implementing SIT is the difficulty of generating large numbers of sterile males (currently done using the irradiation method) that are otherwise competitive for mating. Genetic engineering can specifically inactivate genes required for fertility, leaving animals otherwise healthy and competitive for mating. However, identifying and propagating mutant strains at scale remains challenging, particularly for sterile phenotypes. To address this limitation, this project is a simple generalizable strategy to create and identify sterile individuals at scale. The lab has already successfully created identifiable sterile male and female individuals (among fruit flies and mosquitos) capable of inducing mating refractoriness in wild counterparts and plans to develop the tool further.
PIs: Grace Han, Xiang Li (graduate student)
According to a 2007 World Health Organization (WHO) report, 1.1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water supply; 88% of 4 billion annual cases of diarrheal disease are attributed to unsafe water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene, while 1.8 million people die from diarrheal disease each year. In addition, treatment of oil spills and organic solvent pollution is an important issue for environmental science and technology.
This project is a wastewater treatment device that can complement the conventional pollutant adsorption methods for industrial and household applications by using state-of-the-art nanoporous materials that are capable of adsorbing organic pollutants and releasing them upon light irradiation. It makes wastewater treatment easier, more flexible, and more cost-effective.
PI: Prof. Thomas Pochapsky
Cancer Fighters+ is an ambitious group of researchers, business strategists, and students of medicine working together to address unmet needs in the treatment of cancers such as breast cancer and prostate cancer! Their focus is to identify clinically significant Cytochromes P450 that technology developed in the Pochapsky laboratory can target, and then bring this impressive new tool to industry partners to enable its development into a novel therapeutic. They hope to bring selective, effective treatments to market that minimize side effects for patients, leading to simplified care and increased quality of life!
Professor Kenneth C. Hayes is the main inventor of palm fruit juice (PFJ) from Brandeis & has held a patent outlining PFJ's prevention of diabetes and related metabolic imbalances since 2016. PFJ is a cost-effective source for dietary phenolics which are known to delay or prevent the onset of serious cardiovascular and metabolic diseases through their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. PFJ is generated as the water-soluble byproduct in the palm oil production process & can be used as a functional ingredient into foods for humans, pets and farm animals. It can also be further concentrated and delivered in pill, powder, gel or liquid formulations.
TeamLift is building the missing infrastructure for the skills economy through the first skills wallet. The skills wallet is a validated representation of a user’s skills and abilities on the blockchain. TeamLift has built superior human-centric AI that turns passive unstructured data from meetings, emails, productivity tools into real-time validated skills. Instead of relying on self-reported experience or skill assessments, the skills wallet serves as a ledger of what people have actually done. TeamLift’s tech is disrupting a process that is costly and highly manual and simply has no space in the dynamic post-covid work environment.
NextZyme is a sustainable biotechnology company that upcycles single-use plastics into new plastic material. The PET, polyurethane, and polyamide plastics industry is expected to grow 10% from a $29 billion dollar industry to $32 billion dollar industry in 2025, and yet the production of a key starting material, benzene, has declined by half in the past 20 years. We can meet this market demand by giving single-use plastics a second life by engineering proteins to efficiently degrade polymers into their pure monomeric form and then upcycle those monomers into new polymer materials.
iPSCs can be differentiated into different cell types, having enormous potential for cell therapy, but the risk of tumor formation from undifferentiated cells (cells that stay the same) remains a major obstacle. This project will develop a molecular method to eliminate undifferentiated iPSCs.
There is a critical need for self-decontaminating, self-deodorizing, self-disinfecting, and/or self-cleaning surfaces, particularly for textiles used in individual protective garments, especially so during the current global pandemic.
This invention uses a novel chemical method to functionalize various surfaces with a stimuli-responsive hydrogel polymer that responds to external stimuli by taking up, storing, and controllably releasing gaseous or aqueous chlorine dioxide (ClO2) for the purposes of inactivating harmful microorganisms, neutralizing odors, and eliminating pathogenic virus.
OptMark is a toolkit that quantifies the quality of a query optimizer, independently of any other component of the database management system. This toolkit is able to accomplish this by two ways: first, by decoupling the quality of an optimizer from the quality of its underlying execution engine; and second, by evaluating independently both the effectiveness of an optimizer and its efficacy.
OptMark’s approach for evaluating the effectiveness of an optimizer involves reporting the three effectiveness metrics absolute performance factor, relative performance factor, and optimality frequency. OptMark is able to report the relative and absolute performance factor of a given profiling query by generating and executing a sample of plans compared with the optimizer chosen plans.
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that affects 3.4 million Americans with an associated direct cost of to the US of $28 billion per year. Underlying seizures are due to local imbalances between excitatory and inhibitory connections within neuronal circuits causing abnormal hyperexcitability within specific areas of the brain. This novel therapeutic intervention involves resetting such imbalances.
Hydrogen is a zero-carbon fuel that can reduce humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions for a sustainable future. However, most hydrogen is currently produced from fossil fuels because it is difficult and energy-intensive to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. State-of-the-art platinum catalysts are expensive and can be poisoned by contaminants. This project promises to harness solar energy, efficiently producing hydrogen from water at a lower cost by reducing the amount of expensive metal required.
Ricky Brathwaite (MS Biotech), Jane Jin (MS, Finance), Kevin Xiao (MS, Finance), and Shrek Yin (MBA, Finance)
It's common knowledge nowadays that mutations in the genome cause diseases. These mutated genes often code for mutated proteins that have altered functions which cause them to either interact with proteins they don't normally interact with or their regulation is altered and they malfunction. With these proteins having novel interactions with other proteins, a number of diseases can ensue. Currently, there are a handful of tests that can be done to identify protein-protein interactions, but they either require enzymes, stringent conditions, or a substantial amount of time to complete, which make these assays expensive and time-consuming. The goal of this project is to develop a diagnostic test that has the ability to detect these protein-protein interactions in a faster, cheaper, and more efficient process. This test will have the potential of becoming a point-of-care assay, which can be implemented to quicken and improve the bench-to-bedside treatment, allowing for quicker diagnosis and thus treatment for individuals with diseases such as cancer, autoimmune, and neurodegenerative.
S. Ali Aghvami (PhD, '20), Achini Opathalage (Postdoc, Physics), Zhongxing Jiang (MBA student), Seth Fraden (Faculty, Physics)
Crystallization remains the bottleneck of structure determination, which is a fundamental need for targeted drug development. Screening through a wide range of parameters such as protein concentration, precipitant concentration, pH, temperature, etc., manually or by expensive pipetting robots is the current strategy of obtaining crystal hits. Harvesting these precious crystals, and transporting them to the synchrotron facility to X-ray diffraction damages them, because stresses introduced by environmental changes and mechanical manipulation can strain or destroy protein crystals. We overcome above mentioned limitations by formulating, screening and X-ray diffracting the crystals all in one microfluidics device.
Anna Henkin (PhD Student), Yawai Soe (MBA, '19), Lizbeth Hedstrom (Faculty, Chemistry)
Mechanistic target of Rapamycin (mTOR) is a master regulator of cell growth and metabolism and a clinically validated target for cancer and immunosuppression. Aberrant up-regulation of the mTOR pathway is implicated in proliferative and neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. Current treatments that directly target mTOR can induce diabetes, limiting their therapeutic value. We have discovered a small molecule (CB3A) that inhibits mTOR through a distinct mechanism, which may not induce diabetes. We seek funding to elucidate the mechanism of CB3A action, and to determine if it provides a therapeutic advantage as a treatment modality.
Andrew Sawyer (PhD Student, Molecular Biology), Denise Hilton (PhD Student, Cell/Cellular and Molecular Biology), Nicholas Clark ( PhD Student, Molecular Biology)
3-D Printing Functional Models for Education, is developing hands-on models to help teach complex biological concepts. Using 3D printing to create prototypes for inter-connecting proteins and biological concepts.
Justin Freeman (MS, Biotechnology), Benjy Cooper (BS’11)
Using our patented ABX platform technology, our mission is to deliver long-lasting pain relief and restoration of mobility to sufferers of osteoarthritis. Through deep understanding of patient and clinician needs, combined with innovative breakthroughs in medical device technology, Articulate Biosciences strives to bring back quality of life by eliminating chronic joint pain.
Debarshi Nandy (Faculty, IBS), Kate Salop, former Senior Administrative Dean, IBS, Stephen Cecchetti (Faculty, Finance)
Using data analytics and a portfolio and securitization approach, we have developed a proprietary predictive algorithm which improves the viability of brownfield remediation and redevelopment, making it attractive to private sector funding from impact investors.
Joel Meyerson (Faculty, Biochemistry), Jungwon Park (Faculty, Biochemistry)
The first step in obtaining a 3D protein structure with cryo-EM is freezing the target protein molecules into a thin layer of ice. This requires specialized technology which has remained largely unchanged since its inception 30 years ago. The problems associated with cryo-EM sample preparation are rooted in lack of control over the geometry and environment of the protein in the moments before freezing. Their solution aims to mitigate this problem by creating a small fluid cell to encapsulate the protein prior to freezing. This is accomplished with cutting edge materials science and nanofabrication.
William Tarimo is (PhD '16), Kesey Sar
Discovery Teaching, A web based platform for dynamic teaching and learning that improves academic results and methods by using real time classroom interactions, feedback, and data-based insights.
Galen Karlan-Mason (MBA’17), Rafael Martins Guimarães (MBA Student, Data Analytics), Peitong Xue (Faculty, Data Science)
GreenChoice, is an information technology company, developing software to help consumers quickly identify & purchase products that align with their values.
Eduardo Beltrame (Faculty, Biophysics), Rian Reis
A platform for innovation management - the process that goes from sourcing ideas, choosing the best ones, managing a project, and evaluating the end results.
Ingrid Marko (PhD Student, Biochemistry and Biophysics), Megan Robidas (MS/M.B.A Student, Biotechnology, Heller/SSPM)
Redesigned Scoliosis Brace, is a new brace model that has a modifiable hard plastic brace that can be mass produced and adjusted to provide proper treatment and curvature correction as a patient grows, therefore addressing issues of comfort, affordability, requiring multiple braces throughout development, length of treatment period, and manufacturing delays.