This is a broad portfolio that includes all aspects of life sciences. Some of the representative areas are bioengineering (brain computer interface, chips to grow and monitor cellular activities, and bioprinting), vaccines and therapeutics (nanolipoprotein particles for the delivery of vaccines and drugs, carbon nanotubes for drug delivery, KRAS inhibitors, and anti-bacterial minerals), medical diagnostics (molecular diagnostics, point-of-care testing, imaging, and forensic), life science instrumentation (PCR instruments, rapid PCR, fluid partitioning, microfluidics, and biosensors), and methods for the extraction and purification of rare earth elements using lanmodulin and other natural/synthetic bacterial proteins.
Portfolio News and Multimedia
A new cancer drug candidate developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), BBOT (BridgeBio Oncology Therapeutics) and the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) has demonstrated the ability to block tumor growth without triggering a common and debilitating side effect.
The discovery of BBO-10203 brings together DOE high-performance computing with AI and biomedical expertise to accelerate drug discovery. LLNL is leveraging its Livermore Computer-Aided Drug Design (LCADD) platform — combining AI and machine learning with physics-based modeling — and world-class DOE supercomputing resources like Ruby and Lassen, to simulate and predict drug behavior long before any compound is synthesized.
Rare-earth elements are essential for many electronic, energy and advanced defense technologies. A research collaboration between LLNL and Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) has generated a portfolio of intellectual property (IP), jointly owned by both organizations, that uses bacterial proteins to pick out critical metal ions.
LLNL has licensed its interest in the joint IP to advanced biochemistry start-up Alta Resource Technologies for commercialization of the resulting technology to transform mineral separation. Similarly, Penn State is negotiating a license agreement with Alta for its interest in the joint IP.
LLNL and neurotechnology company Canaery have developed an advanced nose-computer interface (NCI) capable of enhancing the ability of scent-detection animals to simultaneously identify contraband such as explosives and narcotics, as well as other types of important scents such as biomarkers for neurological and infectious diseases.
Nanofabrication of the implantable device is led by staff research engineer Travis Massey in LLNL’s Implantable Microsystems Group, and initially began under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) through LLNL’s Innovation and Partnership’s Office (IPO). The work is now part of a strategic partnership between LLNL and Canaery.
As an important step toward overcoming the technical and environmental limitations of current REE processing methods, the LLNL team has patented and demonstrated a biobased, all-aqueous REE extraction and separation scheme using the REE-selective lanmodulin protein. Lanmodulin can be fixed onto porous support materials using thiol-maleimide chemistry, which can enable tandem REE purification…
LLNL researchers have discovered that some inexpensive and commercially available molecules used for other applications, could render certain lanthanide and actinide elements highly fluorescent. These molecules are not sold for applications involving the detection of REEs and actinides via fluorescence. They are instead used as additives in cosmetic products and/or in the pharmaceutical…