Research published in Science Translational Medicine suggests that inflammation caused by tumor removal surgery may actually encourage the emergence of new tumors. Daniel Uria for UPI reports that the study, led by Prof. Robert Weinberg, identified “perioperative anti-inflammatory treatment” as a way to substantially reduce the likelihood of “early metastatic recurrence in breast cancer patients.”
New research from MIT and the Whitehead Institute suggests that “the body’s own mechanism for healing” may cause cancerous cells to spread after breast cancer-related surgeries, reports Karen Weintraub for WBUR CommonHealth. “The post-surgical wound-healing response somehow releases…cells that have already spread to distant sites in the body,” explains Prof. Robert Weinberg, “releasing them from the constraints that have previously prevented them from growing actively.”
Led by Prof. Tim Lu, Senti Biosciences has received $53 million in venture capital funding to launch their startup that will focus on cancer therapies, writes Jonathan Shieber for TechCrunch. Ideally, these therapies “are able to be controlled (programmed) at the cellular level and respond to conditions in a variety of ways,” Shieber explains.
Originally created by the Zhang Lab in 2017, CRISPR tool SHERLOCK has been improved upon to be three times more sensitive for detecting viruses and infections using an inexpensive test strip. Sharon Begley writes for STAT News, “A paper strip, like in a pregnancy test, is dipped into a sample, and if a line appears, the target molecule was detected — no instruments required.”
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.
Paul Solman of PBS Newshour speaks to Prof. Andrew Lo about getting investors to finance research into treatments for cancer and genetic diseases. “We now have the opportunity to treat disease in many, many different ways. We just don’t have enough money to explore all of the different pathways,” explains Prof. Lo.
STAT reporter Dominic Smith highlights how MIT researchers are applying the art of origami to developing a new way to deliver cancer medications. Prof. Michael Cima explains that, “the idea here was, is there a way we could do a minimally invasive procedure to deploy some sort of device that will deliver the drug over that entire course of the therapy?”
Prof. Regina Barzilay, a breast cancer survivor, participated in a Washington Post Live discussion about “her own experience with the disease and how she uses data and machine learning to advance detection and treatment.”
Boston Magazine reporter Jamie Ducharme writes that MIT researchers have developed a non-invasive technique for assessing cells, which could eventually be used to help diagnose diseases. The researchers are “working with doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, who hope to use the technique to study diseases such as cancer and asthma.”
Scientific American reporter Lindsay Brownell writes that MIT researchers have developed a technique to enlarge pathology samples. “Not only are expanded samples easier to see because they are larger and more transparent, fluorescent tags and other labels can also be added to track individual molecules of interest.”
Reporting for WBUR on efforts to develop a treatment for glioblastoma, Karen Weintraub highlights Prof. Paula Hammond’s work creating a method to get drugs across the body’s blood-brain barrier. “By disguising her tiny, drug-carrying nanoparticles as proteins that normally carry iron across the barrier, she's been able to sneak them past the armor that lines the brain’s blood vessels.”
Reporting for WBUR, Karen Weintraub speaks with Profs. Angela Belcher, Sangeeta Bhatia and Paula Hammond about their work developing tiny tools to target cancer cells. Bhatia explains that their collaboration feels like, “a dream team of people that are interested in nanoscience and nanotechnology and focusing those advances on cancer.”
Prof. Regina Barzilay’s research group is working with MGH to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve cancer diagnoses, reports CNBC’s Meg Tirrell. The group also hopes to allow doctors to use “the huge quantities of data available on patients to make more personalized treatment decisions,” explains Tirrell.
Boston Herald reporter Lindsay Kalter writes that Prof. Ed Boyden is working on a new effort to develop technologies that would allow doctors to explore tumors using virtual reality. Boyden explains that he and his colleagues hope to use virtual reality to explore “what a tumor’s weaknesses are, and what makes it thrive.”
Prof. Bob Weinberg of the Whitehead Institute spoke with Karen Weintraub at WBUR about the best ways to prevent cancer. Reducing obesity and smoking will lead to “decreases in cancer mortality, at least over the next decade or two, that dwarf anything I and my colleagues can produce in terms of new, miraculous cures,” he said.