Writing for the Financial Times about how technology is advancing the field of health care, John Browne spotlights Prof. Bob Langer’s work developing new methods of delivering drugs with improved precision. Browne explains that Langer is working on “a device smaller than a grain of rice that he can inject into a tumour to test the efficacy of dozens of chemotherapy agents in parallel.”
MIT researchers have developed a machine learning system that could reduce the number of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments that glioblastoma patients receive, reports the Xinhua News Agency. The system “finds an optimal treatment plan, with the lowest possible potency and frequency of doses that should still reduce tumor sizes,” Xinhua explains.
MIT researchers have developed a sensor that can determine if cancer cells are responding to a certain chemotherapy drug. “Another potential use is to screen patients before they receive such drugs, to see if the drugs will be successful against each patient's tumor,” writes Li Xia for Xinhua.
A team led by Prof. Michael Cima is developing an implantable sensor that can monitor a tumor’s response to cancer drugs, writes Eric Levenson for Boston.com. “The sensor would function like a long-term medical biopsy, giving doctors a continuous look at how a tumor is developing,” Levenson explains.
Jamie Ducharme writes for Boston Magazine that MIT researchers are developing a biochemical sensor that could provide updates on cancerous tumors. The sensor “could be implanted in cancerous tissue during a patient’s first biopsy. After that, it would stay in the tissue and transmit data about the state of the tumor to an external device.”
Lindsay Kalter reports for The Boston Herald that MIT researchers are developing a device that can be implanted into a tumor to help determine the best course of cancer treatment. “We wanted to bring the laboratory into the human body,” says Langer.