Biotechnology & Society

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Recent advances in genetic screening have made the science fiction allure of choosing our children’s traits ever more possible. Many parents-to-be already screen human embryos derived from in vitro fertilization (IVF) to avoid passing along harmful genetic diseases. However, with the falling cost of genetic sequencing, along with increased understanding of the genetic basis of many characteristics, fertility clinics are starting to offer couples additional technologies. These allow prospective parents to screen embryos before implantation in the womb, to see how likely each one is to develop conditions or traits that depend on many genes, such as schizophrenia, Crohn’s disease, and even high IQs. Some of these applications are quite controversial.

Join Dr. Vardit Ravitsky, host Dr. Insoo Hyun, and instructor Lauren Walsh in this interactive webinar as they wade through the thicket of the promises and perils of polygenic embryo screening.

Speaker: Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, President and CEO, The Hastings Center, Senior Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Contact the MoS Boston team if you have questions.

Is it possible for humans to consume meat without killing animals? Using biopsied cells from livestock, researchers are now able to bioengineer cultivated food products that offer “no-kill meat” alternatives—essentially, pork without the pig and beef without the cow. 

Join Niyati Gupta, cofounder and CEO of Fork & Good, host Dr. Insoo Hyun, and instructor Lauren Walsh as they discuss the innovations that have made cultivated meat possible. What does the future hold for this technology? How can partnerships be forged with leading food companies? Is it possible to move toward a future where cultivated meat can be more scalable, sustainable, and humane?

Speaker: Niyati Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO, Fork&Good

Contact the MoS Boston team if you have questions.

Implantable Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) devices offer a unique means of restoring communication in people with severe paralysis and communication disabilities. Electrodes are placed directly on, or in, brain tissue and recorded electrical signals are amplified, wirelessly transmitted to a computer, and then translated to commands in computer software. With rapid progress in translating brain signals to computer-generated speech, commercial exploitation is expected to soon become a reality. Yet, many hurdles must be overcome before BCI technology can benefit potential users. 

Join Dr. Nick Ramsey, host Dr. Insoo Hyun, and instructor Lauren Walsh as they discuss the lessons learned from a first-in-human study with a fully implanted BCI system aimed at reliable daily use at home. The various stakeholders in the BCI field addressing chronic use, and their different demands and expectations will be described, and the ethical issues raised in accordance. A tentative prediction will be presented of where BCI research will go next.

Speaker: Nick Ramsey, PhD, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, UMC Utrecht Brain Center, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery

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Featured Speaker: S. Eliza Lockwood, MD FACMT, Medical Affairs Lead and Senior Science Fellow, Bayer U.S. Crop Science

With climate change well under way, global populations are facing major challenges in food production. How can countries produce enough healthy food to feed the world using fewer resources and arable land? To answer this call, crop scientists have turned to using biotechnology and genetic modifications to develop new strains of crops resistant to pests, weeds, and climate extremes, all while improving the nutritional value of the foods produced.

Join Dr. Eliza Lockwood, host Dr. Insoo Hyun, and instructor Lauren Walsh for an interactive conversation that addresses both the advancements and challenges facing modern crop science. What are the common misconceptions about modified crops? Is it possible for these new approaches to crop science to exist in harmony with conservation, biodiversity, and sustainability?

Watch the recording on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube channel. Contact the MoS Boston team if you have questions.

Speaker: Susan M. Wolf, JD, Professor, Univ. of Minnesota Law School and School of Medicine

The term “biopreservation” covers a family of rapidly advancing technologies aimed at slowing down biological time. In the medical context, biopreservation could be used to extend the viability of human organs for transplantation. This would be achieved through new cryopreservation techniques that can extend organ storage times indefinitely without intracellular ice formation and permit rewarming without tissue destruction.

If successful, biopreservation would transform current organ allocation practices by removing geographic barriers and time constraints, thus allowing for higher quality matches between organs and recipients, fewer organs going to waste, recipient preconditioning, and improved equity in allocation. However, realizing the promise of organ biopreservation will require major changes in the transplantation system and its oversight, including the creation of facilities for organ preservation, storage, and reanimation; additional oversight focused on safety and efficacy; and new ethical guidance.

Join Susan M. Wolf and host Insoo Hyun for a frank discussion of how biopreserved human organs will drive opportunities to improve transplantation and equitable access, while requiring innovation in law, medicine, and ethics. Both Prof. Wolf and Dr. Hyun participate in the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center for Advanced Technologies for the Preservation of Biological Systems (ATP-BioSM).

Watch the recording on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube channel. Contact the MoS Boston team if you have questions.

Featured Speaker: Daniel Promislow, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology, Univ. of Washington School of Medicine

As dogs age, they experience many of the same changes that people do. They slow down. Their senses can become less sharp. And their risk of contracting diseases, many that humans also suffer from, increases dramatically.

The Dog Aging Project is a nationwide U.S. study of tens of thousands of pet dogs, designed to understand the biological, environmental and lifestyle factors that influence healthy aging. The goal of the Dog Aging Project is to learn how to help our beloved canine companions live their healthiest lives possible. And because dogs experience many of the same age-related diseases that people do, and share our environment, what we learn about dogs is likely to teach us about human aging as well. Research like this, which also includes testing the ability of drugs to increase healthy lifespans in dogs, raises many fascinating questions that go well beyond the basic science of aging to include questions of ethics, economics, sociology, and more. Join Dr. Daniel Promislow, Co-Director of the Dog Aging Project, and host Dr. Insoo Hyun as they delve into the heart of the Dog Aging Project and explore these far-reaching issues.

Watch the recording on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube channel. Contact the MoS Boston team if you have questions.

Featured Speaker: Regina Barzilay, PhD, School of Engineering Distinguished Professor for AI and Health; MacArthur Fellow, MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab, MIT

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that aspires to develop computer software that mimics aspects of human intelligence, such as learning, logical reasoning and problem solving, perceptions, and language use. Given its enormous potential, could AI be used to improve patient outcomes in medicine?

Breast cancer inflicts a heavy toll on society. One out of seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime, a fraction of them contributing to about 450,000 deaths annually worldwide. AI could play a role in supporting our understanding of cancer prevention through recent advances in machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision.

Watch the recording on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube channel. Contact the MoS Boston team if you have questions.

Featured Speaker: Jun Wu, PhD, The Virginia Murchison Linthicum Scholar in Medical Research, Department of Molecular Biology, UT Southwestern Medical Center

Recent news of "synthetic embryos" has been making headlines around the world. Although these creations are "synthetic" in the sense that they are bioengineered in the lab, stem cell-derived models of early human development could reveal real insights into assisted reproduction, pregnancy failures, and the causes of many developmental disorders. Scientists and physicians know precious little of what happens after a five-day-old embryo implants in the womb and goes from a clump of cells to its initial elongated shape. It is during this crucial period that over 60% of pregnancies fail and many developmental disorders are thought to arise.

In this interactive webinar, Dr. Jun Wu joins host Dr. Insoo Hyun to discuss how human embryo modelling could lead to better infertility treatments and a greater understanding of how certain birth defects originate.

Watch the recording on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube channel.

Dr. Mark Skylar-Scott recently received a grant from the NIH's High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program to help realize the dream of 3D-bioprinted organs on demand. Approximately 1 in 100 children in the U.S. is born with a congenital heart defect. For the most severe defects, such as children with single ventricle disease, the creation of bioprinted hearts engineered from their own tissues may provide hope for a normal and healthy lifespan.

Join host Dr. Insoo Hyun in this interactive webinar to learn more about the possibility of bioprinting human hearts for transplantation. Participants can ask Dr. Skylar-Scott what technological advances now make it possible to pursue the dream of 3D-bioprinted organs.

• How can science fiction become science reality in the coming years and decades?
• What ethical challenges need to be addressed now to enable this progress?

Featuring:

• Mark Skylar-Scott, PhD
  Department of Bioengineering
  Betty Irene Moore Children's Heart Center, Stanford University
  Chan Zuckerberg Biohub

Watch the recording on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube channel.

Since 1983, researchers in Sweden's Lund University have been pioneers in cell replacement strategies for Parkinson's disease. Dr. Malin Parmar leads the group that works to develop stem cell-based approaches for cell replacement in Parkinson's disease and stroke, in addition to gene therapeutic strategies for neuroprotection and neuroregeneration.

Join host Dr. Insoo Hyun in this interactive webinar to hear Dr. Parmar discuss the early days of cell replacement research for Parkinson's disease and to learn where the future of this field is heading. Participants can ask Dr. Parmar how far we are from seeing cell replacement therapies in the clinic and what ethical challenges continue to exist in this exciting yet controversial area.

Featuring:

• Malin Parmar, PhD
  Professor and Research Team Manager,
  Developmental and Regenerative Neurobiology,
  Lund University, Sweden

Watch the recording on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube channel.

The International Space Station (ISS) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) can serve as accessible, unique environments to study human development in microgravity. At the forefront of this new frontier is Dr. Arun Sharma, who led a project that sent human stem cell-derived heart cells to the ISS to study the effects of microgravity on human heart function. 

Join host Dr. Insoo Hyun in this interactive webinar to learn how stem cell biomanufacturing in LEO is being explored through commercial, governmental, and academic collaboration. Participants can ask Dr. Sharma how this work might benefit people back on Earth.

• What can we learn from sending stem cells into space that we otherwise cannot learn from labs on the ground?
• What data are still needed to determine the full potential of growing stem cells in space?

Featuring:

• Arun Sharma, PhD
  Stem Cell, Heart, Space Biologist and Assistant Professor
  Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Regenerative Medicine Institute

Watch the recording on Museum of Science, Boston's YouTube channel.

The statistics are grim. In the United States alone, approximately 13 people die each day waiting for a life-saving kidney transplant. Meanwhile, every 14 minutes a new person is added to the kidney transplant wait list. Could transplanting genetically-modified pig kidneys help alleviate this dire shortage?

Dr. Robert Montgomery is a pioneer in xenotransplantation. His team was the first to transplant genetically-modified pig kidneys into newly brain-dead patients. Dr. Montgomery explained how he accomplished this medical milestone in this interactive public webinar. Hosted by Dr. Insoo Hyun, and joined by discussant Dr. Robert Truog, webinar participants were able to ask experts in transplantation medicine and bioethics what this new technology might mean for patients and for society at large. Questions included:

• Why were brain-dead patients chosen to be the first recipients?
• What scientific and ethical challenges lie ahead?
• How might xenotransplantation disrupt the organ transplantation field?

Featuring:

• Robert Montgomery, MD, PhD
  Director, NYU Langone Transplant Institute
• Robert D. Truog, MD, MA
  Director, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics