Recent News

Friday, June 26th
Bioengineering Grad Students are Finalists in $250K Global Business Plan Competition

University of California, San Diego bioengineering graduate students led by Raj Krishnan are among just 16 finalist teams from across the globe who will compete on June 30, 2009 for $250,000 in a global business plan competition. The competition is open to student teams who have either been sponsored directly by a DFJ member or have won a regional qualifier such as a university-wide competition. It is sponsored by Cisco and Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) an early-stage venture capital firm.

Biological Dynamics, led by Raj Krishnan (center), took first place at the 2009 UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge. Raj Krishnan is the leader of Biological Dynamics, a UC San Diego student-driven startup aimed at inexpensive early detection systems for cancer. Krishnan and Biological Dynamics have earned a long list of awards this year at the department, school, university, regional, and UC system level.

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Tuesday, June 2nd
Early Cancer Diagnosis Startup Wins Entrepreneur Challenge

A biotechnology company aiming to revolutionize early-stage cancer screening last night won the UC San Diego Entrepreneur Challenge. Biological Dynamics, led by bioengineering PhD student and CEO Raj Krishnan and his fellow graduate students David Charlot and Roy Lefkowitz, took home the $40,000 first prize.

Biological Dynamics has developed a screening tool that identifies secondary cancer biomarkers such as free circulating DNA from unnatural cell death. Krishnan’s technology helps to detect signs of early stage tumors with a cost-effective blood test that takes less than 30 minutes and shows signs of almost every cancer type, according to the already much-awarded team.
Friday, May 8th
Setting The Bar Higher

Raj Krishnan, a 5th year Bioengineering Ph.D. student, has accomplished a rare if not unprecedented feat this year by being awarded the 1st place best poster award in three symposiums at the University of California, San Diego. Based on his research with Prof. Michael J. Heller (Prof. of Nanoengineering and Bioengineering), his posters and presentations are about a new technology to identify and separate cancer biomarkers directly from blood for early cancer diagnostics. In addition, the novel technology can also be used to manipulate cancer cells and stem cells in a simple manner using AC Electric Fields.
Wednesday, April 22nd
New Method Developed by UC San Diego Bioengineers Gives Regenerative Medicine a Boost

Bioengineers at UC San Diego have developed a breakthrough method for sequencing-based methylation profiling, which could help fuel personalized regenerative medicine and even lead to more efficient and cost-effective methods for studying certain diseases.

To do this, theresearchers, led by Kun Zhang, an assistant bioengineering professor in the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, developed an accurate assays for quantifying DNA methylation digitally on an arbitrary set of nonrepetitive genomic targets using padlock probes.
Monday, April 20th
How Cells Change Gears: New Insights Published in Nature Genetics

Bioinformatics researchers from UC San Diego just moved closer to unlocking the mystery of how human cells switch from “proliferation mode” to “specialization mode.” This computational biology work from the Jacobs School of Engineering’s bioengineering department could lead to new ideas for curbing unwanted cell proliferation—including some cancers. This research, published in Nature Genetics, could also improve our understanding of how organs and other complex tissues develop.