Search

This book offers a comprehensive overview of how to utilize the bioconvergence revolution to substantially enhance research productivity. It carefully addresses critical issues such as ethical dilemmas, collaborative dynamics, funding, and operational efficiency, complete with concrete examples of how to overcome these challenges. Historically, the natural world has served as a profound source of inspiration for technological innovation. The natural materials, structures, and processes found in organisms have facilitated numerous scientific advancements. Presently, the integration of nature with scientific research is intensified through convergence. The book explores this convergence as a multidisciplinary approach that leverages the synergies among digital technologies, material sciences, and biotechnology, aiming to significantly accelerate and broaden the scope of scientific breakthroughs. This volume provides a scholarly account of the emerging opportunities catalyzed by bioconvergence, emphasizing the necessity for rigorous ethical frameworks and standards as biotechnologies and digital tools converge to explore new frontiers. It delves into the challenges of financing scientific advancement and articulates how funding underpins multidisciplinary research efforts. Featuring Israel as a leader in this revolutionary field, the book meticulously outlines the Israeli ecosystem as a paradigm of innovation in bioconvergence. This work possesses a broad interdisciplinary appeal, making it an essential resource for researchers in both industry and academia, as well as for scholars and funding bodies dedicated to the advancement of science.

This operations manual offers an accessible, step-by-step guide to launching, running, and achieving success with a life science and biotechnology business incubator. Written by the founder and President Emeritus of the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center (PABC), one of the most successful biotech and drug discovery incubators in the United States, it is designed to introduce researchers and funders to the broad considerations and minute details of managing an incubation program.As of 2023, there are more than 1100 business incubators in the United States alone, and more than 5000 worldwide. One of the fastest-growing industries of the'new economy,'science business incubators are a tool for regional economic stimulation and commercial development for universities and research organizations. The PABC was founded in 2006 as a state-of-the-art research facility; its purpose and operation is unusual and its success has been remarkable. It was created by the nonprofit Hepatitis BFoundation and its research arm, the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute, to help their effort to find a cure for hepatitis B. But it has proved to be more than a source of funding for those nonprofits – it has become a major economic driver for its region and Pennsylvania, creating thousands of jobs and bringing in billions of dollars to the local economy. The PABC's model has drawn attention from economists, legislators, and the research community. The strategy of bringing nonprofit research organizations and biotech startups under one roof was a founding principle, and has created powerful, lasting collaborations between scientific innovators, entrepreneurs and investors. The partnerships forged at the PABC have led to the discovery, testing, and FDA approval of new drugs for cancer and gastrointestinal diseases and medical devices, as well as multiple multimillion-dollar IPOs, and thousands of jobs. There are currently more than 50 startups housed in the Center's offices, ranging in focusfrom pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, to medical wearables and nanomedicine research.Curing Disease from the Ground Up: How to Operate a Biotechnology Business Incubator tells both a personal story about the ups and downs of leveraging a business incubator to fund and find a cure for a deadly disease, as well as providing a practical guide to running a business incubator. It is a first-hand, expert perspective for running a science business incubator, and explains how the success of the PABC can be learned and replicated. Whether it is developing a mission-focused framework, the practicalities of managing a scalable, business-savvy research nonprofit, identifying ideal tenant partners, or planning for the infrastructure needs of a large research facility, this manual is the first and last stop for entrepreneurial thinkers in this field.

This book describes the basic concepts and recent advances in new discoveries and technologies related to microbial omics and their role in environmental research and human health. The term'omics'refers to a blend of high-throughput analysis and traditional methods including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, lipidomics and metabolomics for a variety of applications in the field of life sciences, biomedical sciences, environmental sciences, and related industries. The book aims to fill the existing gap in terms of a comprehensive approach that incorporates recent advances in this dynamic field and provides an answer to why this field requires an interdisciplinary research approach. The focus of this book is on the applications of genomics, epigenomics, metagenomics, integrative omics, machine learning and microbiome research in environmental health, disease, wastewater epidemiology, antibiotic resistance, drug discovery, cancer, production of secondary metabolites of microbial origin, oxidative stress alleviating mechanisms, etc. The overall construction of this book emphasizes three major perspectives, namely, elaborate knowledge from fundamentals to recent advances in technologies about omics in general and its application in microbiology, environment, and health in particular; illustrative figures capable of easy visualization of complex pathways; and serving as a platform for highly demanded bioinformatics strategies including relevant codes, programming scripts, machine learning and use of artificial intelligence strategies needed to streamline the research outcomes. With global contributions from authors from internationally renowned organizations who excel in relevant research, this book will benefit bibliophiles and prospective audiences from the research fraternity, academia, professionals, and experts in the field of life sciences, biomedical as well as industries related to the development of drug design and novel advances in biotechnological applications.

Blockchain is a new type of technology that combines and secures information exchange between different stakeholders such as medical practitioners, patients, healthcare providers, and other applicable parties. Among them, Blockchain Technology is one of the most important areas in the bioinformatics application of biomedical research and healthcare systems utilizing unique requirements and integration features. All the chapters are written by experts and researchers working in various areas of the biomedical and healthcare domain and they also dive into one of the most overlooked methodological, practical, and moral questions to secure and handle the enormous amount of data being generated from IoT-enabled biomedical and healthcare systems. In the beginning, this book presents an overview and then discusses open issues, challenges, and applicability aspect of Blockchain technology in healthcare. Then, this book presents a variety of perspectives on the most pressing questions in the field, for example: how IoT can connect billions of biomedical and healthcare information; how the blockchain-based secure access control mechanisms in biomedical and healthcare work; how to address the Quality-of-Service (QoS) and real-time accessibility requirements for healthcare applications; and how to ensure communication with efficiency. Also, it discusses Blockchain for IoT-enabled healthcare systems and presents a comparative analysis with respect to various performance evaluation metrics too.

This book explains the main problems of industrial wastewater treatments and how they are being treated by innovative biological processes. The need for clean water in developing countries has become difficult to achieve as a result of globalization and industrialization and because of an increase in population, urbanization, and per capita water use. Residential, commercial, industrial, and educational institutions produce immense amounts of wastewater. Wastewater is treated to extract toxins to produce processed effluent by physical, chemical, and biological processes. Most of these innovative treatment systems are membrane filtration, advanced oxidation processes, and electrochemical approaches, which are strongly committed to offering solutions to help protect public health and the environment. For wastewater treatment, different forms of bioreactors are used which are reliable, cost-efficient, and effective in removing a wide variety of contaminants. This book outlines the capacity of various bioreactors that are most widely used for the treatment of different industrial and domestic wastewater, such as a rotating biological contactor, biological fluidized bed reactor, packed bed reactor, membrane bioreactor, continuous stirred tank bioreactor, up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor, and photobioreactor, etc. Despite this, the acceptance of these technologies and their commercialization on an industrial scale, the performance is still limited. Therefore, a broader use of cost-effective in situ remedial approaches to natural phenomena like bioremediation is needed. The role of numerous bioreactors in industrial effluent treatment has, including recent developments, also been explored in depth. Furthermore, it includes the operational factors affecting their performances, advances in their architectural design, their amalgamation with the existing setup, scale-up studies, life cycle assessment of those reactors, materials and cost analysis, etc. This information helps the reader to understand the insight into the mechanism, pros and cons, moreover efficient utilization, and commissioning of bioreactors.

This book provides insights into the recent developments in the field of bioprocess technology and bioreactor design. Bioprocess engineering or biochemical engineering is a subcomponent of chemical engineering, which encompasses designing and developing those processes and equipment that are required for the manufacturing of products from biological materials and sources, such as agriculture, pharmaceutical, chemicals, polymers, food, etc., or for the treatment of environmental process, for example, waste water. The main focus of this book is to highlight the advancements in the field of bioprocess technology and bioreactor design. The book is divided into various chapters briefing all aspects of bioprocess engineering and focusing on the advances in bioprocess engineering. The book summarizes introduction to bioprocess technology and microbiology, isolation and maintenance of microbial strains, and sterilization techniques for advanced-level students and researchers. Different models depicting kinetics of microbial growth, substrate consumption, and product formation are discussed. The applications of enzymes have increased tremendously and therefore understanding their metabolic pathways to increase yields is also briefly discussed. The calculations of mass and energy balances associated with entropy changes and free energy. This book also covers the approaches for handling different types of cell cultures and current advancements in the area of bioprocess strategies for different culture types, which scientists and researchers working in the different cell cultures can refer to. The downstream processing of various industrially important products is also a part of this book. Apart from that, the process economics which ensures the feasibility and quality of any biological process is also dealt with as the last section of the book.

The book explains the use of natural products as scaffolds in tissue engineering. It presents an introduction to the concept of natural product-based scaffolds and explores various fabrication strategies for their synthesis. The book highlights the wide range of applications of these scaffolds in tissue engineering, including their use in tissue regeneration, wound healing, plastic surgery, and breast reconstruction. Specific natural products, such as gums (xanthan, gellan, arabic, guar, ghatti gum), chitosan, collagen are discussed in separate chapters. In addition, various application of natural product loaded PCL and PLA scaffolds have also been discussed. Each chapter focuses on the application of these natural product based scaffolds and explores their potential in tissue engineering. It also covers specific applications of these scaffolds in tissue regeneration, including angiogenesis, bone, skin, and nerve tissue regeneration. The book addresses important considerations regarding the toxicity and regulatory aspects of natural product-based scaffolds and explores the challenges associated with their implementation and emphasizes the need for safety and compliance in their use. Overall, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the field. It serves as a valuable resource for researchers, scientists, and professionals in the field of tissue engineering.

Emergence of lifestyle diseases, e.g., type II diabetes, cancers, obesity, cardiovascular disorders, liver cirrhosis, etc., are exponentially increasing day by day. Modern drifts toward the utilization of herbal medicines in different healthcare aspects necessitate (demand) the replacement of synthetic molecules with phytoconstituents because of their biocompatibility, biodegradability, economic extraction process, and ready availability from the natural source. This book provides a thorough insight into the comprehensive and up-to-date trends of phytomedicines in the management of lifestyle diseases and its mechanisms, modern methods of extraction and purification of phytoconstituents, and chemical characterization as well as standardization of phytoconstituents using modern equipments.

This book reviews all important aspects of Microbial sustainability in food production and food safety with the aim of shedding new light on these microbes through combined understanding of traditional and novel paradigms. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which reinterprets fundamentals of food microbiology, examining the beneficial aspects of microorganisms in food and microbial responses from food environments and preservation. The second section discusses recent advances in understanding of the sustainable food production, covering, for example, agriculturally important microbes, farming microbes, and fermentation. A wide range of bio-factory issues in food production are also addressed, before turning attention to contemporary food safety approaches in the context of novel assessment methods for microbiological food characterization, improving food safety and food quality, etc. The final section is devoted to public health and its importance of microorganisms in food processing as well as the economic importance of microorganisms as this is also an increasingly important area as we move toward microbial research advances.

This book provides a meticulous view on methodological drug discovery and development insights from bench to bedside. The current book threads almost each step encompassing drug the discovery and development of a molecule. The chapters focus on computational modus operandi, pharmacological optimization approaches, modern high-throughput screening methods and in-vitro procedures, role of structural biologists in drug discovery and development, medicinal chemistry approaches for drug design, formulation and drug delivery, in-vivo evaluations of candidate molecules, clinical trial procedures and others. The book also covers specific case studies, regulatory approval proceedings, and industrial view point alongside the aforementioned conceptual layout. And at the same time, the volume integrates medical, biological, medicinal, pharmacological and computational streams, and it is suggested as an ideal guideline to a wide audience including molecular biologists, biochemist, pharmacologists, medicinal chemist, toxicologists, drug discovery and development researchers, and all other students interested in these disciplines.

This book updates knowledge on recent advances in computational, biophysical and bioinformatics tools/techniques and their practical applications in modern drug design and discovery paradigm. It also encompasses fundamental principles, advanced methodologies and applications of various CADD approaches including several cutting-edge areas; presenting recent developments covering ongoing trends in the field of computer-aided drug discovery. Having contributions by a global team of experts, the book is expected to be an ideal resource for drug discovery scientists, medicinal chemists, pharmacologists, toxicologists, phytochemists, biochemists, biologists, R&D personnel, researchers, students, teachers and those working in the field of drug discovery. It will fill the knowledge gaps that exist in the current CADD approaches and methodologies/ protocols being widely used in both academic and research practices. Further, a special focus on current status of various computational drug design approaches (SBDD, LBDD, de novo drug design, pharmacophore-based search), bioinformatics tools and databases, computational screening and modeling of phytochemicals/natural products, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and network pharmacology and systems biology would certainly guide researchers, students or readers to conduct their research in the emerging area(s) of interest. It is also expected to be highly beneficial to various stakeholders working in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries (R&D), the academic as well as research sectors.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction and review of state-of-the-art biotechnological tools in enhancement of bioactive compounds in medicinal and aromatic plants. Plant bioactive compounds are plant-based natural products that display a variety of pharmacological applications. These bioactive compounds are important as medicines, pigments, flavorings and drugs because most of the pharmaceutical industries are highly dependent on medicinal plants and their extraction. The book introduces a systematic overview of state-of-the-art biotechnological techniques such as Omics, Crisper /Cas9 and RNAi to enhance the plant bioactive contents as well as enlists various in vitro techniques, hairy root culture and transgenic technology to enhance plant bioactive contents using plant tissue culture approaches. The book also provides an overview of the role of induced mutation, biotic and abiotic stress to increase the bioactive contents in plants and discusses the significant role of endophytes to enhance the contents of plant bioactive compound. The book also opens discussions related to standard operating procedures using hydroponics system of cultivation for significant enhancement of bioactive compound(s) and much more. This book serves as an excellent reference book for the researchers working in the field of plant secondary metabolites and pharmaceutical industries at global level.

This textbook is an introductory guide to applied machine learning, specifically for biology students. It familiarizes biology students with the basics of modern computer science and mathematics and emphasizes the real-world applications of these subjects. The chapters give an overview of computer systems and programming languages to establish a basic understanding of the important concepts in computer systems. Readers are introduced to machine learning and artificial intelligence in the field of bioinformatics, connecting these applications to systems biology, biological data analysis and predictions, and healthcare diagnosis and treatment. This book offers a necessary foundation for more advanced computer-based technologies used in biology, employing case studies, real-world issues, and various examples to guide the reader from the basic prerequisites to machine learning and its applications.

Biotechnology involves an interdisciplinary science that provides an interface between biological, molecular and cellular aspects of living organisms with broad technologies applicable in the fields of health, environment and materials. This book “Biotechnology applied to inflammatory diseases: Cellular mechanisms and nanomedicine” is focused on elaborating especially on two trendy areas from Biotechnology. In this volume, different inflammatory pathologies in terms of cellular and molecular mechanisms are characterized to better understand the science behind current precision medicine. The second part of the book focuses on the main biotechnological advancements for the understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in the progression of various types of inflammatory diseases, highlighting up-to-date contributions of nanomedicine. The reader will be able to explore the utilization of technologies for various inflammatory diseases and will be able to enable an engaging and valuableknowledge for further research and clinically applied scenarios.

This edited book explores the use of technology to enable us to visualise the life sciences in a more meaningful and engaging way. It will enable those interested in visualisation techniques to gain a better understanding of the applications that can be used in visualisation, imaging and analysis, education, engagement and training.The reader will be able to explore the utilisation of technologies from a number of fields to enable an engaging and meaningful visual representation of the biomedical sciences, with a focus in this volume related to anatomy, and clinically applied scenarios. The first six chapters in this volume show the wide variety of tools and methodologies that digital technologies and visualisation techniques can be utilised and adopted in the educational setting. This ranges from body painting, clinical neuroanatomy, histology and veterinary anatomy through to real time visualisations and the uses of digital and social media for anatomical education. The last four chapters represent the diversity that technology has to be able to use differing realities and 3D capture in medical visualisation, and how remote visualisation techniques have developed. Finally, it concludes with an analysis of image overlays and augmented reality and what the wider literature says about this rapidly evolving field.

Title from PDF cover (viewed on Mar. 22, 2007).