Catch and release
A research team at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) has developed a novel device that may one day have broad therapeutic and diagnostic uses in the detection and capture of rare cell types, such as cancer cells, fetal cells, viruses, and bacteria. The device is inspired by the long, elegant appendages of sea creatures such as jellyfish and sea cucumbers. The study will be published online on Nov. 12 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The device, a microchip, is inspired by a jellyfish’s long, sticky tentacles that are used to capture minuscule food flowing in the water. The researchers designed a chip that uses a 3-D DNA network made up of long DNA strands with repetitive sequences that — like the jellyfish tentacles — can detect, bind, and capture certain molecules. The researchers, led by senior study author Harvard Medical School Associate Professor of Medicine Jeffrey Karp, of the...