Biosciences

CU ��«��Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion in impact nationwide

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 20:00:00 +0000

CU ��«��Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion in impact nationwide Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 14:00

Daniel Leonard

Activities led by Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ, the university’s commercialization arm, generated an economic impact of $8 billion nationally and $5.2 billion in the state of Colorado over the last five years, according to a report from the Leeds School of Business, reflecting a four-fold increase in impact since the previous report published in 2019.

Notable findings from the report on fiscal years 2018-2022 include:
The economic impact on the national economy included an estimated 39,000 jobs.
Commercialization of licenses and startups spanned 36 states and 26 countries.
Agreements generated $20.1 million in revenue for CU ��«��Ƶ in licensing technology.
CU ��«��Ƶ inventors and researchers received $45.4 million in commercialization-specific grants.
Startups founded on CU ��«��Ƶ technology generated $3 billion in capital funding.

Collaboration + support
Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ

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CU ��«��Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion impact nationwide

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Inscripta, Inc., a CU ��«��Ƶ spinout company, is a global leader in automated, CRISPR-based gene editing.

Sniffing out diseases in real time

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:45:00 +0000

Sniffing out diseases in real time Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 13:45

Lisa Marshall

Breathalyzer based on frequency comb spectroscopy quantum tech shows promise as a non-invasive diagnostic test for an array of diseases

With each breath, humans exhale more than 1,000 distinct molecules, producing a unique chemical “breathprint” rich with clues about what’s happening inside the body.

For decades, scientists have sought to harness that information, even turning to dogs to literally sniff out cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis and more.

Now, scientists have developed a new laser-based “nose” powered by quantum technology and artificial intelligence (AI) that could someday diagnose an array of diseases swiftly and cheaply.

Already, research shows, the high-tech breathalyzer can detect COVID-19 in minutes with excellent accuracy.

“There is a real, foreseeable future in which you could go to the doctor and have your breath measured along with your height and weight . . . or you could blow into a mouthpiece integrated into your phone and get information about your health in real-time,” said senior author Jun Ye, a JILA fellow and adjoint professor of physics at CU ��«��Ƶ.

As far back as 2008, Ye’s lab reported that a technique called frequency comb spectroscopy—essentially using laser light to distinguish one molecule from another—could potentially identify biomarkers of disease in human breath.

Ye’s team has since improved the sensitivity more than a thousandfold, enabling detection of trace molecules at the parts-per-trillion level. They’ve also increased the number of colors the laser emits, enabling them to detect more species of molecule. And they’ve harnessed the power of AI.

Qizhong Liang, a PhD candidate in JILA and the Department of Physics, demonstrates how the laser-based breathalyzer works, in the Ye lab at JILA. Photo: Patrick Campbell/University of Colorado.

“Molecules increase or decrease in concentrations when associated with specific health conditions,” said first author Qizhong Liang, a PhD candidate in JILA and the Department of Physics. “Machine learning analyzes this information, identifies patterns and develops criteria we can use to predict a diagnosis.”

Mid-pandemic Liang and Ye collaborated with scientists at the BioFrontiers Institute, which headed up the campus COVID-19 testing program, to see how well the system did in detecting the virus.

Between May 2021 and January 2022, the team collected breath samples from 170 CU ��«��Ƶ students who had, in the previous 48 hours, taken a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test by submitting a saliva or a nasal sample. Half had tested positive, half negative. The breathalyzer process took less than one hour from collection to result.

When compared to PCR, the gold standard test, breathalyzer results matched 85% of the time. For medical diagnostics, accuracy of 80% or greater is considered “excellent.” The future health applications are huge, the authors said.

“What if you could find a signature in breath that could detect pancreatic cancer before you were even symptomatic? That would be the home run,” said collaborator Leslie Leinwand, chief scientific officer for the BioFrontiers Institute.

Unlike other diagnostic tests, the breathalyzer is non-invasive and doesn’t require costly chemicals to break down the sample. But there is still much to learn before it can be commercialized.

Today, the system consists of a complex array of lasers and mirrors about the size of a banquet table.

A breath sample is piped in through a tube as lasers fire invisible mid-infrared light at it at thousands of different frequencies. Dozens of tiny mirrors bounce the light back and forth through the molecules.

Because each kind of molecule absorbs light differently, breath samples with a different molecular makeup cast distinct shadows. The machine can distinguish between those different shadows, boiling millions of data points down to a simple positive or negative in seconds.

Efforts are now underway to miniaturize such systems, allowing for “real-time, self-health monitoring on the go.” And the team plans to soon collaborate with colleagues at the Anschutz Medical Campus to see if their system can detect other diseases.

“If you think about dogs, they evolved over thousands of years to smell many different things with remarkable sensitivity,” said Ye. “The more we teach our laser-based nose, the smarter it will become.”

Principal investigator
Jun Ye

Funding
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR); National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); National Science Foundation (NSF)

Collaboration + support
BioFrontiers Institute; Physics; Chemistry; Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; JILA; Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ; NIST; University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

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New laser-based breathalyzer sniffs out COVID, other diseases in real-time

Breathalyzer based on frequency comb spectroscopy quantum tech shows promise as a non-invasive diagnostic test for an array of diseases.

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Prenatal pollution exposure may impact baby’s brain

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:30:00 +0000

Prenatal pollution exposure may impact baby’s brain Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 13:30

Lisa Marshall

When pregnant moms breathe dirty air, it may adversely impact their baby’s brain, CU ��«��Ƶ research suggests.

The study followed 161 healthy Latino mother-infant pairs, using government data to calculate mothers’ prenatal exposure to airborne pollutants. At age 2, toddlers who had been exposed prenatally to more inhalable particulate matter scored significantly lower on cognitive tests. Exposure in mid-to-late pregnancy, when key sensory and motor brain circuits form, proved particularly detrimental.

Previous research suggests inhaled pollutants may come into direct contact with the fetus, causing inflammation that can disrupt neurodevelopment.

Racial and ethnic minorities and low-income populations are more likely to be exposed to unhealthy air.

“Our findings highlight the importance of addressing the impact of pollution on disadvantaged communities,” said author Tanya Alderete, assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology.

Principal investigator
Tanya Alderete

Funding
National Institutes of Health (NIH); The Gerber Foundation; Health Effects Institute

Collaboration + support
Integrative Physiology; Emory University; University of California, Los Angeles

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Prenatal pollution exposure linked to lower cognitive scores in early life

When pregnant moms breathe dirty air, it may adversely impact their baby’s brain, CU ��«��Ƶ research suggests.

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‘Magic beans’ produce ingredients for vaccines, cancer treatments and more

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:00:00 +0000

‘Magic beans’ produce ingredients for vaccines, cancer treatments and more Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 13:00

Lisa Marshall

CU ��«��Ƶ’s International Genetically Engineered Machine team has developed a “magic soybean” that can churn out scarce pharmaceutical compounds while going easy on the environment.

Soybeans are cheap and efficient to grow, restoring nitrogen to the soil rather than stripping it as many crops do. Using synthetic biology, Brian DeDecker, teaching associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and his students devised a way to infuse the beans with genetic instructions to make ingredients like: squalene, an oil used in vaccines but typically harvested from shark livers; paclitaxel, a chemotherapy treatment normally extracted from old growth yew trees; and immune-boosting proteins accessible only through human breast milk.

DeDecker and former student Simon Kalmus spun off a company, Seedling Biosystems, to commercialize the idea. They envision a day when soybean fields across the Midwest are dedicated to, as they put it, “biopharming.”

Brian DeDecker with students in his lab. Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado.

Principal investigators
Brian DeDecker; Simon Kalmus

Funding
Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ

Collaboration + support
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology

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New ‘magic beans’ produce ingredients for cancer treatments, vaccines and more

CU ��«��Ƶ’s International Genetically Engineered Machine team has developed a “magic soybean” that can churn out scarce pharmaceutical compounds while going easy on the environment.

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Brian DeDecker in a soybean field at his family farm in Illinois. Photo courtesy of Brian DeDecker.

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Brian DeDecker in a soybean field at his family farm in Illinois. Photo courtesy of Brian DeDecker.

Charting a course from research to impact

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 17:15:00 +0000

Charting a course from research to impact Wendy Turnbull Thu, 10/19/2023 - 11:15

Daniel Leonard , Chris Yankee

Vitro3D founders Hergert and Uzcategui. Photo by Relena Gordon.

Researchers building a budding life sciences startup leverage venture development programming to achieve a major funding milestone

Vitro3D, a CU ��«��Ƶ startup pioneering volumetric 3D printing for life sciences, closed its first investment round of $1.3 million in late 2022. The vote of confidence from the investment community will allow the promising new venture—and founders Camila Uzcategui (CEO) and Johnny Hergert (CTO)—to pursue ambitious technical advances while continuing to build critical business capacity.

Uzcategui and Hergert started Vitro3D together when they were PhD students in Professor Bob McLeod’s lab in CU ��«��Ƶ’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. They often sat together in class, collaborated on papers and explored innovations with 3D printing. In late 2019, they jointly disclosed their first invention, “Orthogonal 3D control of properties in 3D printed structures,” to Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ, CU ��«��Ƶ’s commercialization arm.

Uzcategui and Hergert saw the potential to print larger and more detailed parts, achieve faster speeds, and reduce cost and waste in 3D printing applications.

The company has licensed a portfolio of intellectual property from CU ��«��Ƶ, based on foundational work developing a novel volumetric 3D printing technology. The approach has potential applications in the dental, medical and drug development industries.

At first, Vitro3D explored using the technology to regenerate growth plate tissue for children with growth-threatening long bone injuries by printing structures that could be infilled with cells and hydrogels to recreate cartilage. Through several exploratory Venture Partners programs, it became clear that the marketplace could benefit from their approach, but regulatory hurdles and other market characteristics would prevent the technology from reaching patients for decades.

“We were realizing we had a technology platform that could do many things,” said Uzcategui. “The technology development for our original vision could still take place, but we wanted to find a different initial market that would allow us to create our impact faster.”

Uzcategui and Hergert dove into market research through Venture Partners’ Research-to-Market (R2M) and Starting Blocks programs, both part of CU ��«��Ƶ’s I-Corps™ West Hub. After conducting more than 150 customer discovery interviews, they were confident they had found their initial market: dental aligners.

Once the company identified the dental market, progress accelerated quickly. Vitro3D gained visibility and accolades in the campuswide Lab Venture Challenge (LVC), drew notice from investors at the CU ��«��Ƶ-hosted Destination Startup^®showcase, and finished as runners-up in the New Venture Challenge (NVC). Along the way, the company secured nearly $450,000 in “non-dilutive” grants—including $250,000 from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT)—allowing them to transition off campus by the summer of 2022.

The company has already produced the fastest, largest part ever printed using the volumetric 3D method, but they are just getting started. The funding they’ve secured has allowed them to hire a senior engineer working to advance the printer’s hardware, algorithms and materials to continuously improve the size, speed and quality of printed parts.

With an eye on three distinct markets—first the dental market, then 3D cell culture for drug development and scaffolds for human organ and tissue regeneration—Vitro3D is now equipped to meet the technical goals and grow the business infrastructure needed to make the kind of difference Uzcategui and Hergert always envisioned.

Complex shape demonstrating Vitro3D’s novel volumetric 3D printing potential.

Principals
Johnny Hergert; Camila Uzcategui

Funding
CU ��«��Ƶ New Venture Challenge (NVC) and Lab Venture Challenge (LVC); Buff Venture Fund; Caruso Ventures; Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT); Deming Center Venture Fund; Rockies Venture Club

Collaboration + support
College of Engineering and Applied Science; the McLeod Lab; Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ

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Key investment is the latest milestone for CU ��«��Ƶ startup Vitro3D and founders Camila Uzcategui and Johnny Hergert

Researchers building a budding life sciences startup leverage venture development programming to achieve a major funding milestone.

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Dental aligner prototype

What the Nose Knows

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 12:30:00 +0000

What the Nose Knows Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/12/2021 - 06:30

Kelsey Simpkins

New international network explores how odors lead to actions

CU ��«��Ƶ is leading a groundbreaking new international research network dubbed Odor2Action, which includes 16 scientists from 16 institutions around the world working together to better understand the brain and its evolution by reverse-engineering how it interprets odors. Part of the Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience (NeuroNex) Program, the five-year project is aimed at understanding how animals use information from odors in their environment to guide behavior, with far-ranging implications for our understanding of the human brain.

The network will examine all the steps involved in how an odor stimulus is encoded by the brain and then activates the motor circuits to produce a behavioral response in an animal. The model species they are working with, including fruit flies and mice, will help the researchers understand these same steps in humans.

“The chemical sensing process (i.e., smell) evolved in the very earliest life forms on Earth,” said John Crimaldi, lead principal investigator on the network and professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering. “The idea here is that all brain evolution has taken place in the presence of chemical sensing. And so it’s thought to be a primal portal from which to view brain function.”

While Crimaldi and CU ��«��Ƶ have previously received significant awards to research how animals find the source of an odor, this project is much broader and aims to understand the whole brain and the mechanism that goes into a behavioral response to smelling something.

Smell is the least understood sense, and humans have struggled to replicate odor-based searches with machines, Crimaldi said. Doing so, however, would allow robots to take over treacherous duties instead of humans or dogs, unlocking a new area of advancement for autonomous systems. These robots could one day rescue a person buried in an avalanche, locate valuable natural resources, or find chemical weapons and explosives on their own, for example.

This network is among the largest the College of Engineering has ever been involved in, said Keith Molenaar, interim dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science. He said the work would result in transformational research around our understanding of the brain that could also lead to cures for diseases that connect to our sense of smell—or even understanding why loss of smell is a symptom of some diseases like COVID-19.

As an engineer, Crimaldi said he never expected to end up working in neuroscience, but it turns out a lot of engineering is involved in understanding what odors look like. He currently studies fluid mechanics from a theoretical perspective, using lasers in a nonintrusive way to measure flows—like odors—through air and liquids. He’s looked at everything from why coral reproduction underwater is successful to how animals can tell where a smell is coming from.

“Life forms have evolved to take advantage of specific opportunities and constraints that are imposed by their physical environment,” Crimaldi said. “I like to say we don’t just use physics to understand biology or ecology, or the brain. We also use evolutionary processes that have evolved in animals to help us understand details of what’s going on in the physical world.”

Principal investigator
John Crimaldi

Funding
National Science Foundation (NSF); Canadian Institutes of Health Research; UK Research and Innovation Medical Research Council

Collaboration + support
Arizona State University; Caltech; Duke University; Francis Crick Institute; Lehigh University; McGill University; NYU School of Medicine; Penn State University; Salk Institute; Scripps Research; University of Hertfordshire; University of Pittsburgh; University of Utah; Weill Cornell Medical College; and Yale University

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New international network explores how odors lead to actions.

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New CU ��«��Ƶ COVID-19 test

Wendy Turnbull — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 21:00:00 +0000

New CU ��«��Ƶ COVID-19 test Wendy Turnbull Wed, 02/05/2020 - 14:00

Lisa Marshall

Sara Sawyer

Cheaper, faster test trades uncomfortable nose swab for spit-in-a-tube simplicity in effort to detect virus before it spreads

CU ��«��Ƶ researchers have developed a rapid, portable, saliva-based COVID-19 test that can return results in 45 minutes and is easily used in community settings like schools and factories.

“We are facing a serious testing shortage in this country as more people want to get tested and diagnostics labs are overwhelmed,” said Nicholas Meyerson, a postdoctoral associate in the Sawyer Lab at the BioFrontiers Institute at CU ��«��Ƶ. “We’ve developed a COVID-19 screening test that could get results to people much faster, easier and cheaper.”

The test, described in a preprint manuscript posted on the online archive MedRxiv.org, is designed for widespread screening of people who show no symptoms. Research shows people infected with the virus but with no obvious symptoms make up as many as 70% of cases and can still spread disease.

Developing ways to identify those cases early is key to reopening schools and the economy, and containing the spread of the virus, said Professor Sara Sawyer, a virologist in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology who led the development of the test.

“Most tests approved to date require that the sample, even if it’s saliva, be processed using sophisticated equipment in a clinical diagnostic lab or at a doctor’s office. That can take days,” she said.

In the new test, the user drools saliva into a tube and hands it off to testing staff to process it through a simple system requiring little more than pipettes, a heat source and an enzyme mixture.

If the sample turns from pink to yellow, the test is positive. If it doesn’t, it’s negative.

Because no swabs or fancy laboratory equipment are needed, the tests are also less vulnerable to backlogs and supply chain shortages.

The test is based on a 20-year-old technology known as reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP). It has been used to screen mosquitoes for the Zika virus in remote regions of South America and in other applications.

To process, the saliva is added to three tubes, each containing a custom enzyme mixture. When heated to a certain temperature, the mixture undergoes a chemical reaction when the genetic material from SARS-CoV-2—the virus that causes COVID-19—is detected.

In one experiment described in the paper, the researchers conducted what is known as a “contrived clinical validation.” One researcher spiked 30 out of 60 saliva samples with inactivated SARS-CoV-2 in the lab, then shuffled the samples and gave them to another scientist to test with the RT-LAMP technology.

“The test predicted with 100% accuracy all of the negative samples, and 29 of 30 positive samples were predicted accurately,” Meyerson said.

While the test is slightly less sensitive than those performed in clinical labs, a separate computer modeling study found that quick turnaround is even more critical to curbing the pandemic than test sensitivity.

“Our modeling showed that whether a test is sensitive or super-sensitive is not that important,” said BioFrontiers Director Roy Parker, co-author of that paper. “What is important is frequent testing, with the test results returned as fast as possible, which identifies more infected people faster and can limit new infections.”

Those who test positive could quarantine themselves as they await confirmatory testing, Sawyer said.

The research team, with support from Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ, has created a spinoff company, Darwin Biosciences, to commercialize the test.

“While we are all very optimistic about a coronavirus vaccine, scientists have been working on an HIV vaccine for 30 years without success,” Sawyer said. “Meantime, the HIV pandemic showed us that pervasive testing, out in the community and not just at hospitals or urgent cares, can make a big difference.”

Principal Investigator
Sara Sawyer

Funding
National Institutes of Health

Collaboration + support
BioFrontiers Institute; Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ; Darwin Biosciences

Cheaper, faster test trades uncomfortable nose swab for spit-in-a-tube simplicity in effort to detect virus before it spreads

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Kryptonite for superbugs?

Wendy Turnbull — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:18:00 +0000

Kryptonite for superbugs? Wendy Turnbull Tue, 10/01/2019 - 10:18

Lisa Marshall

With antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” infecting 2 million people per year, and a dearth of new medications in the pipeline to treat them, CU ��«��Ƶ researchers are taking a novel approach to addressing the looming public health crisis:

They’re developing new drugs to make old drugs work better.

“We believe the compounds we’ve discovered have the potential to rejuvenate existing antibiotics—to make bacteria that are now insensitive to multiple drugs sensitive again,” said Corrie Detweiler, a professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) who recently launched a new company, Bactria, to turn her laboratory discoveries into life-saving new treatments.

More than 23,000 people die annually in the United States from bacterial infections that have evolved to resist antibiotics. Thousands more suffer life-threating bouts with once-easily-treatable illnesses like strep throat, urinary tract infections and pneumonia. And some forms of tuberculosis and gonorrhea are now resistant to all available drugs.

“As our antibiotics work less and less, we risk essentially going back to a period 200 years ago when even a minor infection could mean death,” Detweiler said. “Even the risk from routine procedures like knee surgery is going to go up.”

Most antibiotics in use today were developed in the 1950s, and the last time a new class of antibiotics hit the market was in 1984, according to the Pew Charitable Trust.

“With industry largely turning away, it’s up to academic labs like ours to step up and help feed the pipeline,” Detweiler said.

A new way to fight superbugs

With help from a $50,000 Research & Innovation Seed Grant in 2015, Detweiler developed a new technique called SAFIRE for screening for new compounds with anti-microbial properties.

“The old way of discovering antibiotics helped us get to the low-hanging fruit, but that stopped working a long time ago,” she said.

Rather than pour potential new antibiotics into a test tube teeming with bacteria, as in the past, SAFIRE uses cutting-edge cell imaging techniques to observe what the compounds do to mammalian cells infected with bacteria over 18 hours.

Of 14,400 candidates screened, her team has zeroed in on five with strong potential.

They work not by killing the bacterium itself, but by getting inside it and shutting off cellular machines called “efflux pumps,” which bacteria use to protect themselves from both antibiotic medications and the body’s own immune-boosting proteins.

“Bacteria are really smart, and they have learned to use these pumps to pump out whatever we throw at them to kill them,” said Edward Yu, a professor of pharmacology at Case Western Reserve University. “The compounds Corrie is working on inhibit those pumps.”

From bench to bedside

Because the compounds don’t kill the bacteria themselves, the bacteria don’t learn to resist them, a fact that could give the treatments more staying power than conventional antibiotics.

The compounds are also potent.

In one study, they synergized with the common antibiotics erythromycin and ciproflaxin to reduce replication of Salmonella in cells by 20-fold. Preliminary results also show they work in animals, reducing bacterial load eight-fold.

Since earning that first seed grant, Detweiler has raised $2 million in additional National Institutes of Health funding.

She recently filed for an international patent. And through her new company she hopes to move to the next phase of testing. The ultimate goal: To save lives.

“If you had a patient who had an infection that was resistant to available antibiotics, you might someday be able to treat them by giving them one of our compounds in addition to the antibiotic,” she said. “It could not only make the old antibiotic work better but also make the patient’s own immune system work better. It’s exciting.”

Principal investigator
Corrie Detweiler

Funding
National Institutes of Health (NIH); CU ��«��Ƶ Research & Innovation Seed Grant; Venture Partners at CU ��«��Ƶ (formerly Technology Transfer Office)

Collaboration + support
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB); Bactria

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A shot in the arm

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 14:00:00 +0000

A shot in the arm Wendy Turnbull Thu, 11/02/2017 - 08:00

Trent Knoss

New shelf-stable vaccines could bolster lifesaving immunization deliveries worldwide

Vaccines are crucial to the health of millions in developing countries, but timely delivery of these lifesaving immunizations has always been hindered by the need for refrigeration. Now, a unique interdisciplinary collaboration at CU ��«��Ƶ’s BioFrontiers Institute aims to change that.

Professors Robert Garcea, Theodore Randolph and Al Weimer specialize in different areas of biochemistry; but recently, the trio banded together on a multiyear effort to develop shelf-stable, nonperishable vaccines that can be stored at high temperatures for months rather than days.

If successful, such an advancement would radically ease the difficult task of distributing immunizations to rural hospitals and population centers.

The magnitude of the challenge requires a wide range of skill sets and ideas, something that the researchers were all too happy to take on. “It’s really merging three different people with three different sets of expertise into one project,” Garcea said.

In Garcea’s lab, investigators work on new vaccines such as those for human papillomavirus (HPV), a leading cause of cervical cancer that is particularly devastating to women in developing countries.

One corridor away, Randolph’s team, which focuses on creating stable dosage forms for therapeutic proteins and vaccines, developed a process for making vaccines thermostable, or resistant to damage from heat or cold. In its final form, this vaccine resembles a glassy powder.

The two began collaborating about two years ago and even formed a spinoff company, Vitravax Inc., which has seen encouraging results in mice thus far.

Weimer contributed the final piece of the puzzle. His lab coats the vaccine microparticles with protective layers of aluminum oxide, a process known as atomic layer deposition. This nanometerthick barrier shields the vaccine particles while helping trigger the body’s immune response.

The trio are now forming extended-release vaccine dosage forms. When the formulation is injected, the outer layer provides an initial vaccine dose. Next, the aluminum oxide layer slowly dissolves, eventually releasing the inner core, which acts as a second dose of vaccine. Patients receive their second or third “dose” without ever knowing it and without a return trip to the doctor.

Individual results have been promising, but scaling from test batches in the lab to manufacturing millions of vaccines for public use is a challenging process that might not succeed quickly—or at all. “We’ve done many of the individual parts of this project,” Randolph said. “Now we’ve got to put those pieces together and have it work.”

Still, the professors say they are optimistic about the collaboration, which might never have happened if not for their proximity on CU ��«��Ƶ’s East Campus and the interdisciplinary mission of the BioFrontiers Institute, which drives innovation by combining researchers from different fields.

“One of the hopes of the BioFrontiers Institute is that investigators will, by their proximity, do new and interesting things,” Garcea said. “In a sense, we’ve fulfilled the mission. If the technology works, we’ve really fulfilled the mission.”

Principal investigator
Robert Garcea, Theodore Randolph, Al Weimer

Funding
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Collaboration + support
Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; BioFrontiers Institute; Chemical and Biological Engineering; Vitravax Inc.

New shelf-stable vaccines could bolster lifesaving immunization deliveries worldwide.

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Could a dose of good bacteria prevent PTSD?

Wendy Turnbull — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Could a dose of good bacteria prevent PTSD? Wendy Turnbull Thu, 11/02/2017 - 07:00

Lisa Marshall

Mounting evidence shows healthy resident bacteria can play a pivotal role in supporting physical health. New research by CU ��«��Ƶ integrative physiology professor Chris Lowry suggests it can also bolster mental health, fending off anxiety and possibly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Lowry’s study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in May, was named among the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the leading nongovernmental funder of mental health research.

It found that when healthy mice were injected with Mycobacterium vaccae and placed with an aggressive male for 19 days, they exhibited fewer anxiety-like behaviors and behaved more proactively. They were also less likely to suffer stress-induced colitis, produced more of an enzyme key to production of the feelgood brain chemical serotonin and had less inflammation.

Lowry is now studying the efficacy of an oral probiotic for veterans with PTSD.

Ultimately, he believes, good bacteria could be given to soldiers and emergency room workers to prevent stress-induced disorders.

Principal Investigator:
Christopher Lowry

Funding:
Department of Veterans Affairs

Collaboration/Support:
Integrative Physiology; University of Colorado School of Medicine

Mounting evidence shows healthy resident bacteria can play a pivotal role in supporting physical health.

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Biosciences

CU ��«����Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion in impact nationwide

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Sniffing out diseases in real time

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Prenatal pollution exposure may impact baby’s brain

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‘Magic beans’ produce ingredients for vaccines, cancer treatments and more

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Charting a course from research to impact

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What the Nose Knows

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New CU ��«����Ƶ COVID-19 test

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Kryptonite for superbugs?

A new way to fight superbugs

From bench to bedside

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A shot in the arm

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Could a dose of good bacteria prevent PTSD?

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CU ��«��Ƶ commercialization drives $8 billion in impact nationwide

New CU ��«��Ƶ COVID-19 test