{"id":156183,"date":"2024-10-02T10:29:11","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T14:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=156183"},"modified":"2024-10-02T10:29:11","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T14:29:11","slug":"big-federal-award-tiny-living-factories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2024\/10\/02\/big-federal-award-tiny-living-factories\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Federal Award, Tiny Living Factories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of multi-million-dollar, multi-institution project, BU synthetic biologists to engineer cells to produce diabetes drug<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Patrick L. Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Instead of a weekly needle jab, someday a yearly injection might be all that\u2019s needed to treat Type 2 diabetes. That annual shot\u2014the goal of a large collaborative team that includes researchers from Boston University\u2014would implant a tiny bioelectronic device that can manufacture up to a year\u2019s supply of medication, making treatment easier and more affordable. The team of 18 investigators has been awarded up to $34 million from the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H<\/a>) to make that vision a reality within six years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis project is crazy ambitious,\u201d says Associate Professor Wilson Wong<\/a> (BME<\/a>), who along with Professor Ahmad \u201cMo\u201d Khalil<\/a> (BME) will be responsible for the BU College of Engineering\u2019s contribution to the project, RX On-site Generation Using Electronics (ROGUE). \u201cThe idea is, what if you could actually make the drug inside the patient? That\u2019s never been done before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
BME faculty Mo Khalil and Wilson Wong.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wong, Khalil, and their students will work on identifying the optimal cell chassis to serve as a living pharmaceutical factory; and on developing and testing the gene circuit technology that will enable this tiny workshop to produce, on demand, the molecules that make up therapeutics such as Ozempic, which is used to treat type 2 diabetes, and Wegovy, which the FDA has approved to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death in adults with obesity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty sophisticated genetic circuit engineering we have to build,\u201d says Wong. \u201cThe cell has to be able to produce the drug, to be able to be regulated via electricity\u2014via signals sent from your phone. It can actually measure and control how much of the drug is made. It has to be very robust, to last a year. And ultimately, it\u2019s going to be a safe clinical product.\u201d<\/p>\n

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic disease that affects 38 million people in the U.S. alone. \u201cIt\u2019s a big problem,\u201d says Wong, \u201cand so is the affordability of the medication, the logistics and the hassles and the expense of buying it and administering it every week all your life.\u201d The ROGUE system would replace that hassle and expense with a low-cost, minimally invasive procedure at an outpatient clinic, providing continuous, adjustable therapy for a full year.<\/p>\n

Led by Tzahi Cohen-Karni at Carnegie-Mellon University, the ROGUE project also includes collaborators from Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Rice University, University of California\u2013Berkeley, the Mayo Clinic, and Bruder Consulting and Venture Group, encompassing backgrounds in medicine, synthetic biology, materials science, electrical engineering, and other fields.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis project brings all this expertise together\u2014cell engineering, miniature electronics, hydrogel materials,\u201d says Wong. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting. It\u2019s ambitious, which I like. And it\u2019s highly collaborative.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe idea is, what if you could actually make the drug inside the patient? That\u2019s never been done before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":156205,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,899,1050,1080],"tags":[350,633],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156183"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156222,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156183\/revisions\/156222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}