News


    • ASBMB TODAY article: Nobel for ‘breakthrough in biochemistry’

      October 2024

      During the COVID-19 pandemic, Baker’s group collaborated with scientists including Michael Jewett, to design “miniprotein inhibitors” to block the SARS-CoV-2 virus’ interaction with its receptor. Baker and collaborators created a nasal spray containing that potent novel miniprotein inhibitor, and it is now in clinical trials for protecting against SARS-CoV-2.

       

      “These innovations change the way people think about proteins and how they do protein science,” Jewett said. “Success in harnessing AI and computational predictions of protein structure is bringing new solutions to address some of society’s greatest challenges in human and planet health.”

       

      Read more about it here!

     


    • Mike is highlighted in Cell Chemical Biology’s 30th Anniversary Special Issue

      September 2024

      Michael C. Jewett: Chemical biology is an interdisciplinary research field where chemical tools and technologies are used to probe, understand, and build with biology. Research efforts span multiple scales, from molecular to cellular, and are applied to natural and new-to-nature systems.

       

      Read more about it here!

     


    • Kit makes CRISPR education affordable and accessible

      September 2024

      “Our goal is to democratize biology,” said Lau. “The demand is there – this could serve as a model to bring these kinds of opportunities to classrooms.”

       

      Read more about it here!

     


    • Science in 60 Seconds

      July 2024

      Ravalika Damerla, a BioE PhD student in the Jewett Lab introduces her research on utilizing cell-free systems for fungal enzyme expression.

       

      See more about it here!

     


    • Scientists have created an organism that defies the rules of biology by using nonstandard amino acids

      September 2023

      “We decided to build the seatbelt before the car,”. The biocontainment strategy relies on a property called “synthetic auxotrophy.”

       

      Read more about it here!

 


    • Chemists convert electricity into the fuel that powers the body’s cells

      August 2023

      “ATP generated with renewable power could potentially be used to manufacture proteins and medicines”

       

      Read more about it here!

 


    • Cell-Free Synthesis of Peptidomimetic Drugs by International Research Team

      April 2023

      “Cell-free protein synthesis offers exciting benefits for making peptidomimetic drugs because of the freedom of design to incorporate non-canonical chemistries when working without the constraints of living organisms,” says one of the authors, Michael Jewett, PhD, professor of bioengineering at Stanford University (formerly at Northwestern University). “Put another way, we are able to repurpose the molecular machinery of the cell to make new-to-nature products that have therapeutic benefit.”

       

      Read more about it here!

 


    • How cell-free processes could speed up vaccine development

      March 2023

      Cell-free vaccines and other cell-free innovations step ever closer to becoming commercially viable, thanks to researchers like Mike Jewett. Biochemical engineering breakthroughs not only promise advances in manufacturing, but storage and transport as well!

       

      Read more about it here!

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      • Mike Jewett, TEDxChicago: Make anything, anywhere with just-add-water biotechnology

        January 2023

        Hey party people – the wait is over! Mike’s TED talk with TEDxChicago invites viewers into a world of scientific imagination, led by his vision to re-think how biotechnologies are created and shared, and made possible by biology without cells. Mike poses the questions, can just-add-water biotechnology turn us all into biomakers, and does it make possible on the frontiers of medicine, diagnostics and much more!

         

        Check it out here!

     

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      • “Just Add Water” – Low-Cost, Thermostable CFPS Biomanufacturing Platform Obviates Cold Chain

        January 2023

        An inexpensive, thermostable, cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) platform for decentralized vaccine production has been developed by the Jewett Lab and collaborators. Because glycosylated products now can be produced in a lyophilized CFPS system, “This creates opportunities to target many diseases and manufacture medicines for deployment in resource-limited settings that current economics simply do not allow,” says Jewett, calling this a “just-add-water” CFPS system. “Think of it like baking: we mix wet and dry ingredients along with a recipe encoded in DNA to make vaccines. This opens a lot of exciting opportunities to make medicines by just changing the DNA.”

         

        Read more about this exciting development here!

     

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      • Northwestern and MIT receive funding from Army’s synthetic biology center

        January 2023

        Collaborations between Northwestern and MIT have secured funding from the Army’s synthetic biology center. NU’s project, titled “The Center for Predictive Materials Design (PreMaDe),” is lead by Mike Jewett and hopes to combine synthetic biology and materials expertise with engineering and computational modeling strengths to create new biomaterials with precise control over their functional properties. Potential applications of such materials include electronic circuitry for wearable electronics, optical materials that dynamically sense and respond to their environment, and rugged cell-free materials with embedded sensing and actuation functions for molecular diagnostics.

         

        Read more about it here!