April 2011

Bioartificial kidney addition wins LEGO robot design awards

In fall 2010, a team of 8 school children won multiple awards in the Wisconsin regional and state FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL®) 2010 Body Forward™ Challenge, an international biomedical engineering competition involving a research project and robot games.

Drug safety is the aim of UCSF-Optivia research partnership

Pharmacogenetics expert Kathy Giacomini, PhD, co-chair of the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, is leading the UCSF arm of a research partnership in which her team will profile 2,000 prescription drugs against key molecules in the liver and kidney that are responsible for ferrying those drugs across the cell membrane and into the cell.