Biological Engineering

Researchers at EPFL have made a surprising discovery about how bile acids act as signaling molecules to boost intestinal regeneration. The discovery sheds light on the role of bile acids as hormone-like molecules and opens new ways for regenerative therapies of the gut.

Bioengineers at EPFL have created miniature intestines in a dish that match up anatomically and functionally to the real thing better than any other lab-grown tissue models. The biological complexity and longevity of the new organoid technology is an important step towards enabling drug testing, personalized medicine, and perhaps, one day, transplantations.

A liver organoid developed at EPFL offers new promise in transplantation and the study of liver disease.

Scientists at EPFL have developed robust and easy-to-implement multicolor super-resolution imaging. The approach is based on the simultaneous acquisition of two spectral channels followed by spectral cross-cumulant analysis and unmixing. They exploit fluorophore blinking and spectral crosstalk for the generation of additional color channels with super-resolved images.

EPFL researchers, in collaboration with UTSW and UCSD scientists, have developed a computational protein design approach, and used it to obtain the first ever high-resolution structure of an activated dopamine receptor in its natural cell membrane environment. The breakthrough will open up a new dimension in drug discovery for Parkinson’s disease and perhaps other disorders.

Scientists at EPFL have developed a new method that simplifies the processing of genetic-metabolic data by picking up changes in metabolism, a hallmark of numerous diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s. The new method, named redHUMAN, is robust and features guaranteed predictability.