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.”
Boston Globe reporter Robert Weisman writes about how a new startup is using technology developed in part by Prof. Robert Langer to try to reverse hearing loss. The company is applying Langer’s research to “regenerate sensory hair cells in the inner ear to treat the noise-induced hearing loss that affects an estimated 48 million Americans and millions more worldwide.”
Popular Science reporter Rob Verger writes that MIT researchers have identified a way to prevent the body from developing scar tissue around medical implants. The “discovery involves using drugs to affect the behavior of a type of immune system cell called a macrophage in a way that prevents the buildup of scar tissue.”
MIT researchers have developed a drug that could reverse hearing loss by regenerating hair cells in the ear, writes Thomas Tamblyn for The Huffington Post. Hearing loss affects about 45 million Americans and “repairing or regrowing those hair cells would be a major breakthrough,” explains Tamblyn.
Postdoctoral associate Phillip Nadeau speaks with CBC reporter Nora Young about a new ingestible electronic device developed by MIT researchers that could potentially be used to transmit patient data or deliver medications. Young explains that the new device “doesn't require a battery, because it's able to create an electrical current from the acid in your stomach.”
Research affiliate Giovanni Traverso speaks with Ira Flatow of Science Friday about a new ingestible device powered by stomach acid. “When you start thinking about keeping a system inside of the body for a long time,” Traverso explains, “powering that system becomes a challenge, and that’s exactly what we tried to aim to address here with this study.”
MIT researchers have developed an ingestible device that is powered by stomach acid and can deliver drugs for up to one week, reports Brooks Hays of UPI. "Our work helps pave the way toward a new era of pill-sized electronics, which can operate over the course of weeks or even months in the gastrointestinal tract,” says Giovanni Traverso, a research affiliate at the Koch Institute.
MIT researchers have developed a pill that uses stomach acid to run sensors in the body and can deliver drugs over a long period of time, writes Hallie Smith of Boston Magazine. By attaching zinc and copper electrodes to the exterior of the pill it “reacts with stomach acid to create electricity,” explains Smith.
MIT researchers have developed a new drug capsule that can deliver doses of medication over the course of several weeks, reports Robby Berman for Slate. Berman explains that the star-shaped device is like “a little pharmacy stationed in the stomach, ready to dispense doses at the desired times.”
Prof. Robert Langer speaks with Kathryn Nave of Wired about the future of drug delivery. Langer explains that a problem facing medical professionals is that many drugs are not taken regularly or as prescribed, and describes how he is developing a “long-acting pill that you could swallow to release the right drug dosage for weeks.”
MIT researchers have developed a sensor capable of detecting single protein molecules, reports Brooks Hays for UPI. The sensor could be used “to aid efforts to better understand disease and develop drugs. The array could even help scientists engineer human cells to produce therapeutic proteins.”
In this video, Wired spotlights how Prof. Michael Strano and his team developed spinach plants that can detect explosives in groundwater. Strano explains that in the future he thinks people will be “surprised about what you can do with a living plant.”
MIT researchers have developed a new 3-D printing method that allows users to alter the printed object, writes Amelia Heathman for Wired. The new printing method enables users to “add polymers that alter the material's chemical composition and mechanical properties.”
MIT researchers have found that water can stay frozen, even when heated to boiling temperatures, when molecules are placed inside tiny carbon nanotubes, reports Sam Lemonick for Forbes. The researchers hope to use the “ice-filled tubes as wires to move protons,” a key step in creating hydrogen fuel cells.
A new drug delivery system developed by MIT researchers may help eradicate malaria and could boost medication adherence, writes Rachel Zimmerman for WBUR’s Bostonomix. "People don't take their medicines and this might be a way, someday, for Alzheimer's patients to have much better treatments and people with mental health diseases to have much better treatments," says Prof. Langer.