MIT researchers have developed “self-injectable contraceptive shots that work similarly to contraceptive implants,” reports Margherita Bassi for Gizmodo. “The shots would result in a highly effective and long-term contraceptive method more accessible to women who lack easy access to medical infrastructure,” explains Bassi. “Additionally, the design could be used to administer other long-term medications, such as those for HIV.”
MIT researchers have developed a “simple way to administer long-acting drug delivery systems without the need for invasive procedures – an appealing prospect for parts of the world with poor medical infrastructure,” reports Nicola Davis for The Guardian. “It’s suitable for any poorly soluble hydrophobic drug, especially where long-acting delivery is needed,” says Prof. Giovanni Traverso, “This includes treatments for HIV, TB, schizophrenia, chronic pain, or metabolic disease.”
Prof. Jeffrey Harris speaks with Newsweek reporter Jasmine Laws about how a recession could impact Medicare. "A recession could impact many critical decisions of federal lawmakers, private insurers, healthcare providers, and patients,” says Harris. “The U.S. Congress may decide to let stand the Medicare physician payment cut that became effective on January 1 of this year. Reduced physician payments under conventional Medicare may cause doctors, hospitals and other providers to shift their resources toward the care of younger, commercially insured patients."
Researchers from MIT have “identified genes that the tuberculous bacteria rely on to survive and spread,” reports Allison DeAngelis for STAT. “Until now, very little was known about how tuberculous bacteria survived temperature changes, oxygen levels, humidity, and other environmental factors during the journey from one person’s lungs to another’s,” explains DeAngelis.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Pierre Azoulay and Prof. Jeffrey Flier of Harvard Medical School make the case that any reforms at the NIH “should be grounded in evidence rather than tradition, avoiding the influence of special interests or political considerations.” They add that this approach “is an acknowledgement of NIH’s accomplishments and a charge to adapt it to the new realities of 21st-century science. The overarching goal must be to secure and enhance the decades-long role of the United States at the forefront of biomedical research, an outcome that the public both wants and deserves.”
MIT has multiple projects represented in this year’s STAT Madness, a bracket-style competition “highlighting important scientific advances emerging from labs at the nation’s universities, medical schools, and other U.S. research institutions and companies,” reports STAT staff.
MIT researchers have developed a technique to use a damage suppressing protein called “Dsup” to help protect cancer patients from the side effects of radiation therapy, writes Shane Galvin for The New York Post. “Scientists, encouraged by this remarkable discovery, believe they can create an upgraded version of Dsup which can be used to radiation-proof human cells without any unwanted drawbacks,” writes Galvin. “They also believe that the protein could be used by astronauts to prevent space-related radiation [damage].”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that a protein developed by tardigrades could be used to help protect cancer patients from the side effects of radiation therapy, reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. “The findings could someday lead to an invaluable add-on treatment for many cancer patients,” writes Cara. He adds that the new technique “could even possibly be used to protect astronauts from space-related radiation or to protect cancer patients from other sources of treatment-induced DNA damage, such as chemotherapy drugs.”
According to a new study co-authored by researchers at MIT, harnessing the damage suppressor protein found in tardigrades, a microscopic organism known for its resilience, could help ease the impacts of radiation therapy on cancer patients. “The Dsup protein, which binds directly to DNA and reduces radiation-induced strand breaks, immediately struck us as a promising tool to mitigate normal tissue injury during radiotherapy,” Prof. Giovanni Traverso explains to Corinna Singleman of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.
Writing for Forbes, Paula Schneider, CEO of Susan G. Komen, highlights Prof. Regina Barzilay’s research using AI to detect breast cancer. “Using her own mammograms in her research at MIT, Dr. Barzilay demonstrated how AI could have detected her breast cancer much earlier, potentially improving her prognosis,” writes Schneider. “Studies show that incorporating AI into mammogram analysis boosts cancer detection rates by 20%, without increasing false positives. This is a significant leap forward, as early detection is key to a better chance at positive outcomes and survival.”
Evan Ehrenberg PhD '16 co-founded Waterlily, a company that “uses artificial intelligence to predict a family’s future long-term care needs and costs” with the right care and financial planning, reports Mary Ann Azevedo for TechCrunch. “Ehrenberg — who had previously founded and sold Clara Health — helped with early research and was struck by the industry’s response,” writes Azevedo. “Curious, he tested the platform and was shocked by his long-term care predictions — so much so that he changed his diet, hired a personal trainer, and updated his financial plans.”
In an article for The New York Times, Prof. Pranav Rajpurkar of Harvard and Prof. Eric J. Topol of Scripps highlight a recent study by MIT researchers that examined “how radiologists diagnose potential diseases from chest X-rays.” They write that the study’s findings “broadly indicate that right now, simply giving physicians A.I. tools and expecting automatic improvements doesn’t work. Physicians aren’t completely comfortable with A.I. and still doubt its utility, even if it could demonstrably improve patient care.”
Prof. Giovanni Traverso speaks with the Nature Podcast hosts Benjamin Thompson and Emily Bates about his work developing an ingestible capsule capable of delivering drugs directly into lining of the GI tract. “Part of the work that we did was really defining how much force needs to be applied so that that jet can go through the tissue,” says Traverso. “But not only go through the initial part of the tissue, what we wanted to understand for each part of the GI tract was exactly how much pressure is required to essentially deposit some amount of drug under the surface of the tissue.”
WCVB-TV's Chronicle spotlights Prof. Linda Griffith, “a forerunner in the field of biological engineering,” for her research investigating endometriosis and breaking the stigma around menstruation. Griffith founded the MIT Center for Gynepathology Research in 2009 and “one of their objectives is to help develop ways of staging endometriosis, similar to how cancer is characterized.” Griffith notes that by focusing on menstruation and making it a science, “I think we will really change the game for women.
Prof. Giovanni Traverso speaks with GBH’s “All Things Considered” host Arun Rath about his work developing new approaches to weight loss treatments that don’t involve surgery or pharmaceuticals. “Our team does a lot of work on ingestible systems, ingestible capsules that can do many things,” says Traverso. “You know, we recognize that we live now in a world where we have really incredible therapies that are very effective for the treatment of diabetes and obesity. But we also recognize that they’re not for everybody. There are people who have side effects, people who can’t take them, so these are certainly alternatives, or potentially synergistic interventions, that could work together either with those drugs or, as I was mentioning, for folks that have side effects from the drugs.”