A team from MIT has been named a co-winner of this year’s STAT Madness, a bracket-style competition for biomedical research. The team, led by visiting scientist Junwei Li and Prof. Gio Traverso, “developed a solution that, once inside the small intestine, undergoes a reaction and coats it with a temporary adhesive,” which could be used “to make drug delivery more efficient," reports Rebecca Sohn for STAT.
A new study by Prof. Jeffrey Harris finds that the extensive research invested in developing a vaccine for HIV has contributed to the successful development of Covid-19 vaccines, writes Derek Thompson for The Atlantic. Nearly 90 percent of COVID-19 vaccines that made it to clinical trials used technology that “could be traced back to prototypes tested in HIV vaccine trials,” Harris found.
7 News reporter Byron Barnett spotlights how MIT researchers are developing new face masks aimed at stopping the spread of Covid-19. Prof. Giovanni Traverso is creating reusable masks with pop-put disposable filters, and Prof. Michael Strano is developing a mask that could “destroy the virus, using a nine-volt battery to heat the mask and kill the virus before the wearer breathes it in.”
A new assay developed by researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP), an Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), can profile the “rapidly changing host immune response in case of infection, in a departure from existing methods that focus on detecting the pathogens themselves,” reports the Scientific Inquirer.
Wall Street Journal reporter Suzanne Oliver spotlights two MIT efforts to innovate the face mask. Prof. Giovanni Traverso and his colleagues are developing a reusable, silicon-rubber mask with “sensors that give feedback on fit and functionality,” while Prof. Michael Strano has designed a version that “incorporates a copper mesh heated to about 160 degrees that traps and deactivates the virus.”
Boston Globe reporter Andy Rosen writes that the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has launched “a new, $300 million initiative that applies advanced computer science to some of the hardest problems in medicine — an endeavor it said could uncover new ways to fight cancer, infectious disease, and other illnesses.”
Prof. Gio Traverso speaks with CNN’s Jeanne Moos about his new study examining how comfortable patients were interacting with Dr. Spot, a robotic dog outfitted with a computer tablet that allows ER doctors to engage with patients remotely. “The robot looks like a dog, and dogs are endearing to many, so actually, the reception was very positive,” said Traverso.
Research scientist Andreas Mershin speaks with Noam Hassenfeld of Vox about his work developing a new AI system that could be used to detect disease using smell.
Researchers from MIT have developed a new kind of surgery that could offer amputees better control of their muscles and prosthetic limbs after surgery, reports Cara Murez for U.S. News & World Report. “In this new type of surgery — called agonist-antagonist myoneural interface, or AMI — surgeons reconnect those muscle pairs so they retain the push-pull relationship they've always had and improve sensory feedback,” writes Murez.
AP reporter Jake Goodrick spotlights alumnus John Mansell’s commitment to advancing treatments aimed at reducing pain. His goal is to anything we can do to reduce suffering,” Mansell says. “What we’re doing here is trying to take mechanisms that fight where your body overdoes it.”
A new AI-powered system developed by researchers from MIT and other institutions can detect prostate cancer in urine samples as accurately as dogs can, reports Tanya Lewis and Prachi Patel for Scientific American. “We found we could repeat the training you use for dogs on the machines until we can’t tell the difference between the two,” says research scientist Andreas Mershin.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, spotlights new research by Galit Alter of the Ragon Institute of MIT and Harvard. Alter and her colleagues found that “the antibody responses in kids and adults with mild Covid-19 are quite similar. However, the complications seen in kids with MIS-C and adults with severe Covid-19 appear to be driven by two distinctly different types of antibodies involved in different aspects of the immune response.”
CNN reporter Jacque Smith highlights Prof. Amy Moran-Thomas’ work calling attention to how pulse oximeters can overestimate oxygen levels in darker-skinned patients.
ITV reporter Liz Summers spotlights how researchers from MIT and other institutions have developed a new system that could eventually be used to help detect diseases via smell. The researchers hope the results could “eventually result in the production of a ‘robotic nose’ perhaps in the form of a smartphone app.”
UPI reporter Brian P. Dunleavy writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system, modeled on a dog’s keen sense of smell, that could be used to help detect disease using smell. “We see the dogs and their training research as teaching our machine learning [sense of smell] and artificial intelligence algorithms how to operate,” says research scientist Andreas Mershin.