Bioengineering at Illinois

A multidisciplinary team led by U. of I. chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Huimin Zhao has received a Phase I award through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission to develop the world’s first foundation models specifically designed for metabolic engineering. “Biological design presents an enormous challenge because of the complexity of genes, enzymes, metabolic pathways and environmental interactions,” Zhao said. “Our goal is to create artificial intelligence foundation models that can learn from diverse biological data and help scientists predict and design new biological functions much more efficiently than is possible today.”

Bioengineering professor Yang Liu’s team, including first author Phuong “Hong” Nguyen, has developed a novel approach to immunofluorescence that is easier, faster, and more accessible. The discovery, called Universal Multiplexed Immunofluorescence (umIF), is outlined in a paper published in Small Methods. "Our goal was not simply to create another multiplexed [immunofluorescence] protocol," said Liu, "but to make spatial protein profiling more practical for real clinical specimens and large-scale tissue mapping studies.”

Professors Brad Sutton and Andrew Webb have been named to leadership positions with the MRI research community at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Brad Sutton, a Founder Professor in Bioengineering, became the director of Beckman’s Biomedical Imaging Center on June 15. And beginning August 15, pending execution of a final memorandum of understanding, Andrew Webb, a professor of bioengineering, will become co-director of the Carle Illinois Advanced Imaging Center. The Beckman Institute will confirm the appointment once the agreement is finalized.

The High School Visitation (HSV) program is aimed at fostering a sense of community among high school students, particularly those from underrepresented populations. Long sustained through self-funding, HSV has recently been bolstered by a GIANT (Grassroots Initiatives to Address Needs Together) Grant from the IDEA Institute.

Researchers in the Wang Lab at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have reported a novel platform for developing mRNA cancer vaccines. “We have developed a new class of mRNA delivery vehicles that do two jobs at once,” said Wang. “They carry tumor-targeting mRNA into dendritic cells and properly activate those dendritic cells so they can better alert T cells to attack cancer."