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Synthetic bacteria-fighting organisms win Lemelson-MIT prize
Timothy Lu, who is trying to bring back a method for fighting bacterial infections that fell out of favor in the West decades ago, has won the prestigious $30,000 Lemelson-MIT student prize for 2008.
Lu and J.J. Collins, professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, created two bacteriophages that target E. coli. Bacteriophages are viruses that attack bacteria. The idea is to combine bacteriophage with antibiotics to better stamp out infectious diseases. Bacteriophage can also be used in food processing to prevent E. coli from infecting meat or vegetables. (Remember the 2006 spinach recall?)
Administered together, a genetically … Read more
