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Category: bioengineering – Page 22

Dr. Nina Siragusa — Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany — Bridging Science And Nature To Shape Tomorrow

Bioconvergence — Bridging Science And Nature To Shape Tomorrow — Dr. Nina Siragusa Ph.D. — Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany

#NinaSiragusa #MerckGroup #Darmstadt.

Dr. Nina Siragusa, Ph.D., MBA, is the Strategy, Business, and Data & Digital Lead within the global R&D organization of Merck Healthcare KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. In this role, she leads strategic projects, manages business operations, and drives digital transformation.

Previously, she served as Chief of Staff to Dr. Laura Matz, Chief Science and Technology Officer at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. As part of the Science and Technology Office Leadership Team, she was responsible for fostering cross-sectoral collaboration, innovation, and digitalization across Merck’s three business sectors. She also spearheaded the company’s efforts in Bioconvergence, a multidisciplinary approach that synergizes biology, engineering, data, and digitalization. This initiative promises groundbreaking advancements in healthcare and the life sciences, heralding a new era of scientific collaboration for a healthier, more sustainable future.

Prior to that, Dr. Siragusa contributed to corporate innovation in several leadership roles:

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AI That Can Design Life’s Machinery From Scratch Had a Big Year. Here’s What Happens Next

One used AI to dream up a universe of potential CRISPR gene editors. Inspired by large language models—like those that gave birth to ChatGPT—the AI model in the study eventually designed a gene editing system as accurate as existing CRISPR-based tools when tested on cells. Another AI designed circle-shaped proteins that reliably turned stem cells into different blood vessel cell types. Other AI-generated proteins directed protein “junk” into the lysosome, a waste treatment blob filled with acid inside cells that keeps them neat and tidy.

Outside of medicine, AI designed mineral-forming proteins that, if integrated into aquatic microbes, could potentially soak up excess carbon and transform it into limestone. While still early, the technology could tackle climate change with a carbon sink that lasts millions of years.

It seems imagination is the only limit to AI-based protein design. But there are still a few cases that AI can’t yet fully handle. Nature has a comprehensive list, but these stand out.

New software unlocks secrets of cell signaling, showing realistic simulations

Researchers at University of California San Diego have developed and tested a new software package, called Spatial Modeling Algorithms for Reactions and Transport (SMART), that can realistically simulate cell-signaling networks—the complex systems of molecular interactions that allow cells to respond to diverse cues from their environment.

Cell-signaling networks involve many distinct steps and are also greatly influenced by the complex, three-dimensional shapes of cells and subcellular components, making them difficult to simulate with existing tools. SMART offers a solution to this problem, which could help accelerate research in fields across the life sciences, such as , pharmacology and .

The researchers successfully tested the new software in biological systems at several different scales, from cell signaling in response to adhesive cues, to calcium release events in subcellular regions of neurons and , to the production of ATP (the energy currency in cells) within a detailed representation of a single mitochondrion.

Proof-of-concept study bioengineers therapeutics for improved cancer treatment

A team of Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI) scientists has identified a new method for producing a therapeutic product that has the potential to improve the treatment of cancer.

The work by Associate Professor Leszek Lisowski and his Translational Vectorology Research Unit is published in the journal Molecular Therapy.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, also known as CAR T therapies, are a relatively new form of treatment showing very exciting results for several types of cancer. While initially validated for the treatment of B cell malignancies, especially (ALL), the technology has also shown promise for other cancer types, including solid tumors.

ENGINEERING EARTH: Official Trailer

If humans want to survive long-term — millions of years into the future and beyond — we will have to grapple with existential threats to civilization and life itself. But we are more empowered than any species in history. This film is a journey far into the future to explore the extreme challenges we will face, and a vision into how far humanity might go to reinvent our planet.

Coming Spring 2025.

Beyond batteries: Researchers bring body-heat powered wearable devices closer to reality

Noting that recent advances in artificial intelligence and the existence of large-scale experimental data about human biology have reached a critical mass, a team of researchers from Stanford University, Genentech, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative says that science has an “unprecedented opportunity” to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create the world’s first virtual human cell. Such a cell would be able to represent and simulate the precise behavior of human biomolecules, cells, and, eventually, tissues and organs.

“Modeling human cells can be considered the holy grail of biology,” said Emma Lundberg, associate professor of bioengineering and of pathology in the schools of Engineering and Medicine at Stanford and a senior author of a new article in the journal Cell proposing a concerted, global effort to create the world’s first AI virtual cell. “AI offers the ability to learn directly from data and to move beyond assumptions and hunches to discover the emergent properties of complex biological systems.”

Lundberg’s fellow senior authors include two Stanford colleagues, Stephen Quake, a professor of bioengineering and science director at the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, and Jure Leskovec, a professor of computer science in the School of Engineering, as well as Theofanis Karaletsos, head of artificial intelligence for science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Aviv Regev executive vice president of research at Genentech.

Stanford scientists transform ubiquitous skin bacterium into a topical vaccine

Imagine a world in which a vaccine is a cream you rub onto your skin instead of a needle a health care worker pushes into your one of your muscles. Even better, it’s entirely pain-free and not followed by fever, swelling, redness or a sore arm. No standing in a long line to get it. Plus, it’s cheap.

Thanks to Stanford University researchers’ domestication of a bacterial species that hangs out on the skin of close to everyone on Earth, that vision could become a reality.

“We all hate needles — everybody does,” said Michael Fischbach, PhD, the Liu (Liao) Family Professor and a professor of bioengineering. “I haven’t found a single person who doesn’t like the idea that it’s possible to replace a shot with a cream.”