Wired reporter Megan Molteni highlights Prof. Aviv Regev’s work leading the Human Cell Atlas, an effort to catalog the cells in the human body that could eventually serve as a roadmap for understanding and treating disease. “From the beginning we have designed this as a public good and an open resource to enable science around the world,” Regev explains.
Prof. Aviv Regev speaks with WBUR’s Karen Weintraub about her work exploring human cells. Regev says she was inspired to study the human cell as, “it’s this phenomenal entity that knows how to take many different pieces of information, make very quick and sophisticated decisions, act on them and continue on its way.”
STAT reporter Justin Chen writes about a new study that examines why patients with pancreatic cancer often experience significant weight loss. Prof. Matt Vander Heiden explains that the findings show, “pancreatic cancer patients clearly have a lot of tissue wasting and whether it’s good or bad, we can now say that it’s not necessarily bad at diagnosis.”
Professors Edward Boyden and Feng Zhang have been named to the 2018 class of Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators, reports Jonathan Saltzman for The Boston Globe. “We selected these scientists because they know how to ask hard and interesting questions with skill and intellectual courage,” says David Clapham, vice president and chief scientific officer of the institute.
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is developing a Drug Repurposing Hub, which looks to “acquire samples of every drug ever developed to see if they can be used to treat diseases besides those for which they were intended,” writes Jonathan Saltzman for The Boston Globe.
Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have programmed CRISPR to “in essence, make edits when significant cellular events occur,” writes Kristin Brown for Gizmodo. “All this adds up to the potential of CRISPR as not just a gene-editing powerhouse, but a multifunctional tool that also works as a biosensor, a medical detective, and an invaluable instrument for basic research.”
A gene-editing tool called SHERLOCK, developed in Prof. Feng Zhang’s lab, allows for faster detection of infections and viruses, such as Zika and Dengue fever. “It does this by combining different types of CRISPR enzymes, which are unleashed together to target distinct bits of DNA and RNA, another of the major biological molecules found in all forms of life,” writes Alessandra Potenza for The Verge.
A new study by MIT researchers provides evidence that antibiotics can change the body’s chemistry and make it more hospitable to bacteria, reports Melinda Wenner Moyer for Scientific American. “We suspect that the strength of this effect will really depend on the type of infection and types of antibiotics used,” explains postdoc Jason Yang.
MIT scientists have developed a technique that could potentially be used one day to treat diseases of the brain, muscles, liver and kidneys by using CRISPR to edit RNA, writes Melissa Healy for The Los Angeles Times. Making edits to the chemical message of RNA, “doesn’t effect a permanent change in a cell’s architectural plan; rather, it essentially alters the implementation of that plan,” explains Healy.
Prof. Feng Zhang and his colleagues have created a CRISPR-based system that can edit RNA in human cells, reports Amy Dockser Marcus for The Wall Street Journal. “The new RNA-editing system, which the scientists have dubbed Repair, allows the editing of individual RNA letters, correcting a common mutation known to play a role in a number of diseases.”
Financial Times reporter Clive Cookson writes that Prof. Feng Zhang and his colleagues have engineered CRISPR so that it can edit single RNA letters in human cells. Cookson explains that the researchers believe that, “RNA editing offers a safer and more flexible way to make corrections than the permanent changes involved in DNA editing.”
Prof. Feng Zhang has been awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize, reports Sharon Begley for STAT. Zhang was honored for his, “track record of innovations and of coming up with big ideas that change fields,” explains Prof. Michael Cima, faculty director of the award. “Zhang is one of those individuals who move through groups of talented people sparking new ideas.”
Prof. Feng Zhang has been honored as one of the recipients of this year’s Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for his work contributing to the development of the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, according to the AP. The AP notes that CRISPR-Cas9, “has sparked a boom in research over the past five years.”
Nature reporter Anna Nowogrodzki spotlights Prof. Aviv Regev’s quest to map every cell in the human body. “One of the things that makes Aviv special is her enormous bandwidth. I've never met a scientist who thinks so deeply and so innovatively on so many things,” says Dana Pe'er, a computational biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Scientists at the Broad Institute are trying to map every cell in the human body, reports Sy Mukherjee for Fortune. Once complete, the human cell atlas could “ultimately tailor drug discovery and treatment to a person's genetic makeup,” explains Mukherjee.