A team of researchers led by Prof. J. Christopher Love has developed a system to produce on-demand clinical-grade vaccines and drugs, writes Dr. Francis Collins on the NIH Director’s Blog. In addition to allowing on site production for hospitals the systems could also “produce biologic treatments specially tailored to attack the cancer of a particular individual,” suggests Collins.
Researchers at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology are part of a team that developed a potential treatment for drug-resistant malaria, which is expected to be publicly available within the next decade. The research “could lead to other drugs against cancer and infectious diseases such as dengue and tuberculosis,” writes Casandra Wong for Yahoo! News.
Writing for STAT, Karen Weintraub spotlights Prof. J. Christopher Love’s work developing a new desktop drug manufacturing process that can produce thousands of doses of biopharmaceuticals on demand. “I think in the long run there’ll be an opportunity to think about manufacturing for patients in a new way,” says Love.
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.
Boston Globe reporter Jonathan Saltzman writes about how MIT alumnus Bernat Olle’s startup, Vedanta Biosciences, Inc., is looking to “collect a sample of every type of bacteria that lives in the gut.” The hope is to one day use what’s learned from this ‘library’ to help treat diseases.
Prof. Andrew Lo speaks with Lisa Mullins of WBUR’s All Things Considered about investing in biotech. Lo explains that, “if we can use finance to reduce the risk, we will actually be able to bring lots more capital into the industry and be able to get therapies to patients faster.”
Elise Takahama writes for The Boston Globe that MIT researchers have developed a new technique to create “xenoproteins,” manmade proteins that could be used to battle infectious diseases like Ebola. Unlike drugs developed with natural proteins, the xenoproteins, “are more stable, easier to administer, and manufactured more quickly,” Takahama explains.
Researchers have developed a microfluidic platform called “physiome on a chip”, which allows them to determine how certain drugs will affect up to 10 different organs. “Because the animal and human immune systems are different, [drug] testing is difficult in non-human trials,” writes Allen Cone for UPI, “but [this] system could help with that.”
Prof. Linda Griffith has created a “complex platform where researchers can put up to 10 organ tissues in separate compartments, regulating the flow of substances and medications between them in real time,” to determine how each organ will react, writes Devin Coldewey for TechCrunch. The scale of this model “represents a huge jump in the capabilities of this kind of system.”
Prof. Linda Griffith has developed ten miniature models of human organs “to create the closest we’ve come yet to a human-on-a-chip,” writes Jessica Hamzelou for New Scientist. “This is still only a minimal representation of a human,” said Griffith, but this kind of system could eventually eliminate the need for animal testing.
MIT researchers have developed a new capsule that allows HIV medication to be delivered over the course of a week, and could allow patients to forgo daily pills, reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. Researchers also found that using this method for the pre-exposure pill, “would manifest in approximately a 20 per cent increase in efficacy” for weekly dosage compared to the daily regimen.
HuffPost reporter Sophie Gallagher writes that MIT researchers have developed a new capsule that would allow patients to take a week’s worth of HIV medications in one dose. The researchers believe that, “the innovation could improve the efficacy of HIV preventative treatment by approximately 20%.”
MIT researchers have developed a new slow-release capsule that could free HIV patients from having to take a daily dose of medication, according to the BBC. “Changing a medication so it only needs to be taken once a week rather than once a day should be more convenient and improve compliance,” explains research affiliate Giovanni Traverso.
UPI reporter Alan Mozes writes that MIT researchers have developed a new capsule that could be used to deliver a week’s worth of HIV medications in a single dose. “The new pill sits in the stomach for a full week, as each of seven pill compartments opens up, one-by-one, to deliver a 24-hour dose of three HAART drugs,” Mozes explains.
BBC News reporter James Gallagher writes that MIT researchers have developed a new technology that could eventually enable doctors to administer multiple vaccines in one shot.