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Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University
One of the first biomedical engineering programs in the United States, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University consistently ranks among the best in the world. As the department has grown, our faculty have continued to pioneer new areas of biomedical engineering, with strengths in tissue engineering, biomaterials, drug delivery, biophotonics and neuroengineering. Duke BME’s ethos reflects the department’s aspiration to advance biomedical engineering to serve society. As we strive towards this goal, we continue to attract outstanding faculty and students who create innovative solutions to the world’s most challenging healthcare problems.
This collection of articles from Nature Research journals is produced with support from Duke University. Duke University retains sole responsibility for the selection of articles.
Randomly adsorbing chemically synthesized silver nanocubes, each of which is the optical analogue of a grounded patch antenna, onto a nanoscale-thick polymer spacer layer on a gold film results in a metamaterial surface with a reflectance spectrum that can be tailored by varying the geometry.
Using a new form of spectroscopic optical coherence tomography, researchers demonstrate three-dimensional molecular imaging of both endogenous and exogenous chromophores with high spectral fidelity. This scheme has significant implications for a range of biomedical applications, including ophthalmology, early cancer detection and understanding fundamental disease mechanisms such as hypoxia and angiogenesis.
Patch-clamp recordings are used to study the function of ion channels, but the method does not allow the assessment of tissue-level function. Kirkton and Bursac introduce a biosynthetic system for the study of channel activity and electrical conduction, facilitating studies of ion channel function.
High-throughput synthesis of long DNA molecules would open up new experimental paradigms in synthetic biology and functional genomics. Quan et al. take a step toward this goal by integrating oligonucleotide synthesis, amplification and gene assembly on a single microarray, and apply the technology to optimization of protein translation in a heterologous host.
A one-pot, high-throughput method for the recombinant polymerization of monomer DNA sequences is reported. The method enables the rapid synthesis of diverse libraries of artificial repetitive polypeptides, exemplified by the isolation of protease-responsive polymers and a family of polypeptides with reversible thermally responsive behaviour.
In an effort to develop safer therapeutic agents and to limit unintended side effects, Sabah Oney and her colleagues have designed a set of antidote molecules for a series of aptamers exhibiting anticoagulant activities. These so-called universal antidotes are shown to sequester circulating aptamers and reverse their activity, irrespective of the primary sequence and folded structure of the aptamer.
When artificial polypeptides are conjugated to a variety of hydrophobic molecules such as chemotherapeutics, the resulting molecules spontaneously self-assemble into nanoparticles. Delivering the chemotherapeutics to a murine cancer model, the nanoparticles have a fourfold higher maximum tolerated dose than the free drug, and induce nearly complete tumour regression after a single dose.