Biological Engineering

Scientists at EPFL have developed an implantation technique that allows unprecedented optical access to the “spinal cord” of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. This work can potentially lead to breakthroughs in the fields of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and bio-inspired robotics.

Mildly stressing mitochondria with an antibiotic can increase tolerance against respiratory infections, shows a study by scientists at EPFL.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a method to explore the possibilities of how the pandemic virus could evolve. Thanks to their work, it may be possible to develop antibody therapies and vaccines that are more likely to be effective also against future viral variants.

A new technique keeps cells alive during extraction to track the activity of thousands of genes across time. The breakthrough method is called Live-seq and was jointly developed by scientists at EPFL and ETH Zurich.

Scientists at EPFL and the Karolinska Institute have tested and confirmed a protocol for growing human embryonic stem cells into retina cells to treat eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration.

The multidisciplinary Zurich research team Liver4Life has succeeded in doing something during a treatment attempt that had never been achieved in the history of medicine until now: it treated an originally damaged human liver in a machine for three days outside of a body and then implanted the recovered organ into a cancer patient. One year later, the patient is doing well.